Zombies and Blue jeans (things that will never go outta style)

panel from How Kurtrell Almost Died.

“How Kurtrell Almost Died” Is done. The 4 page story is done and for the most part turned out the way I hoped. It’s fun, funny and all about the zombie hoard! What more can you ask for?
Did the 3 Alarm Illustration Gathering yesterday and had a pretty good time. Got to see a couple of guys I enjoy sketching with, so that’s always a good day for me. Another good thing was I had the opportunity to sell several “Knowing Your Zombie!” posters. They sold better than I thought they would.
The next step for me will be to start on the next story…Denial (story of the Shaman)

-Jesse

just goofing off at the table.

Wade and I with our mummy.

Kurtrell Presents: Zombie Knowledge

From the Mouth of Kurtrell comes ZOMBIE KNOWLEDGE! Kurtrell has become my face of the undead. He’s an expert on the subject. I needed one so I went ahead and drew one. Why? Because that’s how my world works! I, like many others, am a fan of the Zombie so I whipped up a little goofy character who can share my geekism of the subject. I present to you Kurtrell. The ultimate Farmer…the Ultimate Foe! These are his words, not mine.
Anyway the character is based after a friend named Kurt, who, believe it or not, loves zombies too! Little Kurtrell is featured in the first book as well as holds a couple of pages in book II, Storylines.
This weekend I will be attending 3 Alarm’s Illustration event and wanted to bring something new to the table so I spent some time designing something I thought might be appreciated by others. It’s an 11X17 mini poster, “Knowing Your Zombies!” It will be a full color poster printed on cardstock and also come in a Toploader protective case. I will be selling them for $10. If they sell ok, Anthony and I will probably design a matching poster, “Know Your Local Slayer!”
-Jesse

One Step Close

Thought I am still working on stories that are not quite done and stories that NEED to be done, I am finding myself going back and forth from story to story making sure they are all up to par.

I have recently revisited "Bigger Game" which is done but needed proper word balloons as well as proper text. Once doing those corrections I realized that the cover was not done yet….ooops!

I had Cooper reach into his bag of goodies and pull out some prologue text for the cover page and I finished up the illustration. So what you see now is the (hopefully) final look for the cover to “Bigger Game.” It’s a 12 page short story from Berona’s War Book II Storylines.

I will try to get a list of stories that we are expecting to be in the book as soon as we lock them down…which shouldn’t be long!

-Jesse

Dawn and the Dead color.

We are still trying to get a lock on exactly what stories as well as their page amounts for Book II. While we are doing that we are also still working on the stories we have written and are ready to go to the next level.
The problem that we came across and never expected to have is we actually have too much for the book. I remember at one point we thought we would never have enough to fill it up…wow, I wish!
We just cut four or five stories from the line up because it went over our page limit. We are not trashing the story altogether but rather putting them on a back burner to be used in a future project; maybe for the Blog or an online comic…we could even put them together to do a spin off comic. Who knows? But as for now we are still pushing forward with the stories we KNOW we will be using. I finished inking Dawn and the Dead quite some time ago but needed to add color to it. I have recently done just that. It was not a fun or even pleasant experience BUT I did it and am happy to say that I don’t think it turned out bad at all. I wanted to share a couple of pages with you and hope you enjoy it.
-Jesse

At the CON!

I’ve just returned from a long and fun weekend in Dallas, TX for the Comicon. It wasn’t one of the largest cons we’ve done but I have to put it up there with one of the more fun ones.

We sold some originals, which is ALWAYS HARD FOR ME to do!!!! I know its good money but damn, I hate to see them go!
There were some “interesting” lines this year which led to some great sells. Not only did we sell some originals we sold a good amount of books as well. We saw some old faces from previous cons and also made some new fans….which is what we LOVE to do.
We also met up with one of the guys (Kraig) from our publisher. We had a chance to goof off for a little while in-between selling some books. We always enjoy handing out with him!

And on to OUR FAVORITE part of the con… Sean Patrick Flanery. When things started to slow down we had a chance to talk and get some pictures. We took one in particular that we all seem to love!
-Jesse

DALLAS COMICON!

With the Dallas Con right around the corner, a friend (Brian Thompson) and I tried our best to get a Necklace design locked down before the opening day. Anthony and I had been playing around with a few designs, trying to get one made that resembled the ones from the book.
After about the first two or three hours or drilling, sanding, cutting, crimping and tieing we felt like throwing the drimmel through the wall. We stepped back, took a breather and finally came up with a good design that we all liked. So the plan is to try to get several of these done before Wizard World Chicago. This would normally be an easy task except that we have a serious deadline for getting out our second book, Berona’s War Book II…not to mention making corrections to the second edition of the first book (Berona’s Hundred Year War) before its release. Here's to hoping!
-Jesse