Charles Christopher #10
Who’s that emerging from the bushes?
The Abominable Charles Christopher is back in another exciting installment. There’s a great deal of violence in this week’s strip, so consider yourselves warned!
Archive for August, 2007
Son of HorCast!
The Horcast has been gone a long time but not at all forgotten. Beginning on Friday, September 28th TX-TV will bring the spirit of our old podcast back to life in a series of 26 brand new video shorts featuring the comic book stars of the Transmission-X collective. Watch the trailer, subscribe to the YouTube feed and read the daily updated comics on www.transmission-x.com!
How Karl Got His Groove Back
I’m back in the studio, working on an actual page of Teen Titans! All of these conventions keep sidetracking me and while it’s fun to go and talk about comics with people, it’s frustrating to have all these big gaps in the workflow.
When I stop working on a specific project for a few days I find it really hard to get back in the groove, and it’s not because my drawing hand feels rusty (though that happens, too) but rather because I lose the momentum of the scene and the characters. I think that to tell a story as effectively as you can, you have to be in the heads of your characters. They have to breathe on the page, and the only way to achieve that is to understand them, who they are, where they’ve been and where they’re going. Every little nuance of character in your head, whether you’re conscious of it or not, is reflected in their actions on the page. The way they stand, the expression on their face. How they’re glancing at another character. So to leave that headspace for too long is dangerous to the overall process. I had to spend a long time just staring at my desk this week and remembering who these kids were before I could get back into the actual drawing.
And the Toronto Fan Expo starts tomorrow! Wheee! See you all there!
sigh.
Charles Christopher #9
This standee graced our room at TCAF (at least my section of it) and now it’s propped up behind my drawing table to inspire me every day. So far so good, as there’s a new Abominable Charles Christopher strip up at Transmission-X! Huzzah!
More next Wednesday!
Golden CAF
TCAF is over! And if it were any other convention or comics show, I’d be relieved and happy to go back to my daily routine, but I’m actually a little sad. This year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival was, as multiple reports confirm, the best show of the year. Great crowd, wonderful laid-back vibe and a general (surprising?) feeling of maturity and appreciation for all things comics. Our Transmission-X room was busy all weekend with curious art-loving con-goers and I think we were all kept busy just socializing.
Here we are on the Transmission-X panel, which looks a lot like The Last Supper. Which would make either Scotty or Andy the Son of God…
High point for me:
- Meeting caricaturists Joe Bluhm and Sam Gorrie, both of whom did sketches of me (I haven’t scanned Sam’s yet, but when I do I’ll post it here). I’m so jealous of their ability to capture likenesses, and so quickly! Each sketch was done in 5-10 minutes.
And now I must hunker down and start this week’s episode of The Abominable Charles Christopher so you’ll all have something to read tomorrow.
Oh yeah, and Teen Titans too… ;)
Commence Au Festival
I’m so tired.
It’s almost 4 AM and I just got home from setting up the Transmission-X room at TCAF. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and we’ve (that’s me and the rest of the Horhaus crew, along with all of my Toronto studio-mates and some friends) got a whole room to ourselves that’s set up like an art gallery. Lots of original art, prints and books, mostly representing our respective webcomics and independent projects.
And speaking of webcomics, the lot of us are doing a panel on Saturday (3 pm) to talk about the hows and whys of Transmission-X and comics for the web. It’s moderated by Darwyn Cooke and it’s sure to be interesting.
Also, Ragni will be set up there with books, CDs and shirts, and they’ll be playing a live show at Sneaky Dee’s later on Saturday night.
You know what, though? All of this info is on the TCAF site and I desperately need to sleep. So hopefully I’ll see some of you at the show.
zzzz…
For Mike Wieringo
I drew this a few months ago.
I’d received an e-mail from Mike saying how much he loved the work I’d done on The Flash and I responded, as I’d done the few other times we exchanged emails in the past, with humble thanks and a sincere hope to finally meet him at one show or another. But for some reason my e-mails kept getting bounced back to me, and Mike didn’t attend many of the bigger conventions in recent years, so we never got a chance to meet face to face. I wish we had - I always felt that Mike was one of the few guys in the industry I could relate to. His sketches captured the exuberance of youth and the tranquility of nature in a way that I can only aspire to. I wish someone would have just paid him to draw kids and animals and forests all day, because that’s so obviously where his heart was.
Anyway, I did this Tellos fan sketch to send to him, but when I finished it I didn’t like it and I put it back in my bag and forgot about it until today. I wish I’d just sent it.
- karl
Animal Party
It’s (rather late on) Wednesday, and I’ve posted another exciting installment of The Abominable Charles Christopher, in which there is much revelry and… suspense?! Chuck C. is absent again this episode, but he’ll be back soon, I promise…
Commission lines are now open
I’m going to be at Wizardworld Chicago next weekend, August 10-12. I’ll be in in Artist Alley sharing table space with General Jack Cosmo Productions which will be spread across tables 5106-5110. Come say hi.
I’m also taking commissions for the weekend, so if you’re interested, drop me an email and I’ll be sure to add you to the list. For more info click here and scroll down to the bottom. Do not use the paypal link as it adds shipping cost to the price.
I can usually manage about 8 pieces on a good weekend so if you’ve been hedging and you’re heading to Wizardworld… hit me up!
Love Knife
I love The Knife.
…and not in the Jack Black sense, I just think their music is astounding. I’ve been an avid fan ever since Pass This On cut through a noisy bar and I knew I had to have whatever it was I was hearing, press it close to my breast, and never let it go.
I was originally commissioned to interview the band by UKULA magazine, and never being one to keep things simple, I suggest the final form of the interview be illustrated. I didn’t have the clearest sense of where this ad-hoc comics journalism was going to go, but it didn’t matter. Due to pregnancy and other bedlam, the band’s responses never materialised.
So we kept the illustrated part, and moved forward from there. For the first time in my career I wasn’t just sweating the art, the content was up to me as well.
The Knife only allow publicity photos when costumed and masked, and their music, videos and related imagery (including not one, but two short films) describe a world populated with a host of strange characters.
If I couldn’t interview The Knife about their music, I’d “interview” their world about The Knife. What it ultimately became was this two page strip, a sort of faux-documentary love letter to the band.
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