Webcomics, Orcs and Help the Hersheys!

Blog folks! How have you been? The year is almost up and things are going as well as I could hope. If you haven't seen yet, I started a webcomic a few weeks ago.
Head over to ImaginaryMonsters.com to check it out. The story is full swing featuring the adventures and mishaps of a disembodied slimy skull, and his necromancer and wizardly friends. Let me know what you think! It's been a lot of fun so far. I'm going to be keeping this blog active to discuss work/process/news (like usual) and ImaginaryMonsters.com will be more focused on my comics, and other things I make like books and posters. So stay tuned.

I'm getting super stoked for this January to arrive since Mike and Raina will be moving to R-Town. We're going to set up some shared basement screenprinting space and I'll be able to make some new killer screen printed oddities. Stay tuned for Eat World 2, some collaborative projects between Mike Turzanski, Tom Smolenski, and I, and who knows what else! I think we don't have any shows until next spring (MoCCA and Buffalo Small Press Book Fair), so we'll have some time to cook up a stack of awesome stuff for 2010.

Here's some recent work in progress for an Empty Room Studios concept art project focused on orcs. I've been making some big bruiser orcs to start with.




In other Empty Room Studios news, lately Rick and his family have been having a rough time making ends meet. Rocky Dohmen set up a blog to spread the word and hopefully help out Rick and his family. Please go check out helpthehersheys.blogspot.com/. I know the economy and the health care system has been rough a lot of us, but it is the holidays and if you can spare some support I encourage you to do so.

Stay warm everybody. The snow is coming down...

Dune book club: SHAI HULUD

I write SHAI HULUD in all caps because I am PUMPED! I was talking to Smo earlier and somehow after reading Dune the first time I forgot about so many details in the story. It's like reading it completely anew and I'm getting frequently surprised. So stoked.

I took a stab at creating an image of a Dune sand worm / Shai Hulud. So frickin pumped about this! Just 3ish hours in Photoshop and a volcanic hot sand worm is screaming across my desktop.

Dustin Harbin is a prince for getting me to read Dune again. Check out the discussion here! http://www.dharbin.com/blog/2009/11/dune-book-club-week-03/

ArtOrder: Flaming Coward!

Here's my entry for another ArtOrder topic. The title of this week's topic was Flaming Coward. The idea was to design a creature that had a nasty bite, general physical weakness, and would emit a large amount of heat/flames/energy if it felt it lost the upper hand in a battle. Behold...


I'll paraphrase the flavor text from each of the images in case you prefer viewing from afar:

The Flaming Coward has an extraordinarily high metabolism. The heat generated by it’s numerous spinal stomachs makes the creature semi bouyant, allowing for swift and nimble hunting. It’s head and lower body is thick skinned to withstand attacks and it’s own body heat.

The Flaming Coward will fight potential prey ferociously, unless it’s stomachs are struck or wounded. Fearing further harm to the most delicate part of it’s body, the Coward will vomit forth the contents of it’s heated stomachs, releasing a great deal of molten matter. With luck, the foe will be too busy trying to douse the surrounding flames to notice the Coward’s retreat.

More or less, it's nimble, bitey, and pukes when it's scared. Yessss.