In Honour of MJ

Thoought I would post a link for my all-time favourite music video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyJbIOZjS8

Recent Design Work

Every year I work on the Student Handbook for the Laurentian University Students' General Association. I am currently working on the handbook for the 09/10 year and thought I would share the designs.

This is the cover. The above ties in their school colours, creates a theme for the school's 50th Anniversary, and incorporates the people/community aspect of the school and the SGA itself. The SGA asked that the people be androgynous rather than overly male or female. The gold represents the past and is smaller than the blue that represents the future of the school, looking to the future.

The inside basically takes the design elements from the front cover and uses them in a way that allowes for content to be displayed and read easily, and allows the most room for text and ads for local businesses. This content section is to be printed in black and white.

The calendar section will be 2 colours (blue and black), and requires even more space than the content section. I used the lineup of people and the blue as the constant design elements in this section to tie the whole book together. If all goes well, this project will be completed this weekend and off to press by mid July.

If you would like to see more of my design work, please visit http://www.dhdonline.ca/

In Honour of Father's Day...

A few posts back I mentioned that I was working on a mural for my 14 month old son's new room. This weekend I finally got around to finishing it. Before I get to the pictures though, I figured I would start with the first mural I did for the nursery before my son was born.

The artwork for this mural came from the bedroom set we chose for the nursery called "Little Pond". I painted it before the baby was born. Each animal was drawn on and cut out of 1 inch thick styrofoam. I then painted each animal, colouring the edges black to make them pop off the wall. I was originally just going to put an animal here and there on the walls, but then decided to paint the pond background on the wall. I then mounted the animals on top. His crib was placed underneath, so he would sit in his crib and look at the animals.

Now with the new baby on the way, we wanted to keep this room as the nursery, so my son got to move to a new room. We choose another animal theme for his room and decided to do another mural. Since the walls in the room were already green and I wasn't planning on painting it, I used a green and brown blanket with animals on it that he got when he was born as a theme. The result is the below.

These are three of the animals from the blanket. These were just painted right onto the wall. I painted all but the black outlines. For this I used a paint marker I picked up at Michael's. This was the first time using one of these markers and I really liked the outcome. It's wedge tipped so you can vary the thinkness of the line, and the paint flows very smoothly. I may experiment a little more with these, as I normally dislike paint as a medium.

And by the way, my son likes his new mural very much.

More Recent Artwork

Now that I have had the chance, I have scanned some more recent artwork I have done. I have completed some face sketches to work out my comic book style and to get me back into the groove of drawing. Below are 6 of these face sketches.


All of these were done with photo reference to capture the expressions, etc... though I have made these faces look different from the source material.

I also took one of the above and created a colour version.

I used coloured pencils to create the coloured version of this face. I think it turned out fairly well for it having been quite a while since I picked up a pencil and drew in a more comic book/cartoony style.

My next round of drawing will include some figure work, as my skills relating to the human figure are lacking in my opinion. Plus, if I want to write my own comics and illustrate them (even just the covers) I think I will need to improve in that area. My problem is I am quite slow when I am drawing because I need everything to be perfect, which is an issue when trying to build on basic shapes to create a human figure. I just need to get past that mental block.

Quick Update

Just a quick update on how I spent my weekend. I split my time between painting a mural in my son's new room (had to make room in the nursery for the coming little one) and working on a Student Handbook for Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. It's a yearly project that I have been doing for them for about 10 years now, both with my old design company and now on my own. I really enjoy working with them.

Once I am done working on both, I will get some pictures posted.

Homemade Christmas Gifts (2008)

Having posted some of my work last night, I thought of some of the gifts I gave to family this past Christmas, which were items that I made for them.

My neice, whose name is Briar, is into Barbie dolls. So, I decided to make a custom "Briar" doll for her.

I had to look high and low for a Barbie doll with brown hair that didn't cost close to $20 (trying to be economical with my gifts, hence making things). I eventually found one for $2 at Value Village. I designed the packaging, printed it in colour and put the box together. My brother has 2 beagle pups, so I included a small beagle figure in the box as well, along with a small Nintendo DS that I made using a piece of Popsicle stick.

For my other neice, Logan, I created a comic book cover. As she is into Manga and Anime, I did it in that style.

She is also part of a group (along with my brother and the whole family) called the Society for Creative Anachronism, and her character is a Pirate named Loki, so I based the comic off of that, using her garb as the character's costume. Once I had the picture drawn, I coloured it with coloured pencils. I should have used a different medium for the background (it was getting too close to Christmas to draw an actual background) as you can see the pencil strokes way too much and I don't personally like the look of it, but overall I think it turned out well. I plan on doing one for her each year.

Finally, for my wife's brother and his fiance (the Godparents of my son), I drew a picture of them with my son Christopher at his Baptism.

I didn't scan this one, I just took a picture of it once it was in the frame, hence the shadow in the lower right half. I drew this from a picture from the Baptism, modifying it to bring the two of them closer together.I really like how this one turned out, though I am still not happy with how her mouth turned out (everyone else in the family tells me I am being picky and that it is fine, and I probably am). This was done with graphite pencils.

I will get some other pieces together and post soon.

Bat Vehicles

Just to get some artwork posted up here, I thought I would start with a couple of comissioned pieces from about 2 years ago. A girl from work asked me to draw these pictures of the Batmobile and Batjet.

I worked on the Batmobile first and it was based off a picture of the Batmobile from the Tim Burton Batman movies. I think this was actually from an Onstar ad.

I followed that up with the Batjet. This too was from a photo, but it was a photo of a model version of the Batjet from the first Tim Burton Batman movie (wanted to keep the vehicle look consistant).

I used graphite pencils to draw each of these images, and they were both done freehand (no grid method for me). I was actually upset to have to give these away once I was done.

I do really well when working from a photo or reproducing another's art, but the quality slides dramatically when I try to do anything right from my brain. It's drawings that I do like these that make me call myself the human photocopier.

Weekend Work

This post is a bit of a diversion from the intended use of this blog, as it's about work around the house rather than comics or tv or anything.

Well, this winter I had 2 sections of my fence blow out in a huge windstorm. I had to trudge through the snow and brace the rest of the fence that was now blowing in the wind. Since my yard is about 3 feet higher than that of the people behind me, I wanted to make sure my fence didn't fall into their yard, possibly on top of someone.

After that, this spring I came home from work one day and about 6 more sections of fence along the side had blown down due to strong winds. Upon inspection, the metal fence spikes were all broken, explaining the fence falling in. So, I now had my summer yard work for the year.

I managed to salvage the majority of the lumber from the old fence, replaced the fence spikes and rebuilt the entire thing. I spent this past weekend finally finishing it off. It took a few weekends to work on it, since I was doing it on my own and couldn't work on it during the week at all. It was a lot of work, but I actually really enjoyed it.

I also spent some time cleaning out the spare bedroom. We are moving our son into that room to make room for the coming baby in September. So now instead of a spare room packed with extra junk, we now have even more extra junk in the basement :)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I have been eagerly awaiting the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and recently I went out to see it and my initial feeling at the end of the movie was .... meh.

It was alright, entertaining overall, but I was really hoping for a lot more Wolverine berserker action, cutting through bad guys left and right, and being the best there is at what he does. Instead, Logan seemed to be the calm voice of the movie, trying to keep Victor (Sabertooth) calm, and not really doing anything himself.

Now, there were some pretty damn cool action sequences, and there were some good moments of Logan taking care of business, I guess I was just expecting more.

I did however leave with some items knawing at my brain. If you haven't seen the movie, these may be spoilers.

1. Sabertooth doesn't know Logan in the first X-Men movie. Having them so involved in this movie seems to forget that or not care.

2. The reason Wolverine doesn't remember Sabertooth is because he lost his memory. Ok, got it. But adamantium bullets to the brain? He's not the wolfman. Does that mean Logan has 2 holes in his Adamantium skull now?

I get it, I know it's just a comic book movie and I am most definitely sounding like a whiny fanboy right now. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the movie overall, it was just a different type of movie than I was expecting.

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts regarding my issues mentioned above?

V is coming back!

A friend of mine provided me with the link below



The original V the miniseries blew me away when it first aired in the early 80's, and V the Final Battle was a superb follow up. The ongoing series that followed that...well, left something to be desired. Having tapes both mini series and the ongoing series, I watched all 32 hours of it at least once a year when I was growing up, and I have been waiting over 20 years for some new V material. I am a die hard fan of the original material.

That being said, the first time watching this video one night before going to bed, I had a grin from ear to ear. This new series looks like it will visually blow away the old one. I just hope it can live up to the original storytelling, the small plot details that made the Visitors seem so superior and scary as hell.

Let's just hope this series will live up to 20 years + of expectations!

Pilot Episode

Hello all, and welcome to the PanicAttak Blog.

I plan on using this blog to share interesting things (well, things I find interesting anyway), possibly post some of my art, and generally get me into the habit of writing on a regular basis.

Themes that may and will be covered will be comics, movies and television, games, art, with others in between. I hope to add content daily, but I know right now it will be less than that. Hopefully someone out there will find what I have to say interesting. Please feel free to let me know what you think as I get more content up here.