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

Wrapping It Up!

I finished all the clean-up drawings for the Fallido story and have moved onto coloring. It’s one of the easier stories to color so I should be done with the whole story (all seven pages of it) by the middle of next week.

I would be finished sooner with the process but we have the Dallas comicon this weekend and I will be heading to Anthon’s in TX for the weekend. It’s all good because we don’t get too much time together to actually work on our projects….other than through Skype. Anyway, before I go, I wanted to post a page from Fallido so you can get a taste of the look I'm going for. It’s a fun, simple, funny story that I hope you will enjoy as much as I do.
-Jesse

Fallido

On to the next! This is the story of Fallido (foul-eh-dough). This story has a bit of a funny background. I wrote it about 10 years ago. If I remember correctly I had written it on an old piece of scrap paper and it had sat on my art room floor for a couple of months and was pretty much lost in the art shrapnel that was strewn about. Then one day a buddy of mine (Shawn) was over doing some sketching with me when I heard him laughing. He picked up the story and said “This is great!” I had somewhat forgotten about it and had to re-read it to see what he was talking about. I have to admit, I did think it was pretty funny. If it werent for Shawn pointing it out to me, it would have probably been scrapped.

Since then I had posted it on my website and even went as far as making a little book out of it (kinko style). I got some really good feedback from it (plus Im pretty sure its one of my mom's favorites...so I guess I had to do something with it) and always wanted to do something with it. Berona’s War, Book II is my chance. The original story was about a paranoid dog, since that wouldn’t work for Berona, I had to do a little improvising. Its now about a Cropone soldier.

It’s only going to be 6 or 7 pages but I'm pretty confident it will bring a smile to your face.
I am illustrating it in a very simple looking style…bold colors, cartoony character, simple background, etc. I think it will match the story much better that way.

-Jesse

Whatever it Takes

I took a bit of a different approach on “Whatever it Takes,” I just didn’t want to use the same look I have been using for the other stories I did. I wanted to give it more of a messy feel…Its more of a “controlled messiness” but messy none the less. I can see people liking this story a lot, at least I hope they will. Its only seven pages so I can’t show too much of it without giving it away, but than again, the two pages I do show makes it look like the most boring story EVER! Take my word on it…you’re gonna dig it.
-Jesse

Dawn and the Dead

I finished the pages for Dawn and the Dead and will be coloring them in the near future but since this is a three part story I want to have all three done before I start coloring them....so the style doesn’t accidentally change halfway through. I did want to go ahead and post a few of the pages (even though they aren’t colored) so you can see the look of the story. I really enjoy these characters.
-Jesse