(Update - Color) Daily Quick Sketch: Pencil Monkey

Another simian sketch of a playful flipping chimp.

Digitally colored and drop shadow filtered.

This was done with pencil on a Dura-Lar sheet.

Daily Quick Sketch Before & After: 'Tang

Been awhile since I posted.
With last week's NYC Comic Con and my current workload making Halloween costume designs . . . I've been pretty much exhausted. I'll try to get back into doing more things for the blog on a regular basis.

This post is one of several ape sketches I have been playing around with. I named this character 'Tang, because of the constant correction that people want to enforce on the animal's name lately. The confusion is that the name can be spelled ORANGUTAN or ORANGUTANG, but that "g" at the end is actually silent.

Personally, I think pronouncing the "g" at the end is more fun and more in character with the animal. Mostly because it brings me back to the orange space drink "Tang" when I was a kid and it rhymes with cool words like boomerang. But it's also one of those annoying English-language-breaking-the-rules kinda words with a silent "G".
The English language is full of rules that always have exceptions for no reason.

So go on, and break the rule of the broken English rule and say Orangutang with a "G" sound at the end! And when some smarty-pants tries to correct you - simply turn to them and say, "Oh! I suppose I'm should say boomeran instead of boomerang too, eh?!! In your FACE!!!"
Then walk away.

Bobby's Biggest Bubble: Now available online

Bobby's Biggest Bubble in now available online for purchase at Etsy and eBay!
There will be more marketing locations added in the coming months, but for now I need to control the amount of books being sold until I receive the bulk of my shipment in a few weeks.

Update:
eBay, Etsy, and other online book outlets are no longer linked to the book.
This is mostly due to cost and maintaining inventory.
You can still purchase the book via Paypal (at the lowest price with free shipping.) and with Amazon (which costs more because Amazon wants a larger cut of the sale.)

Bobby's Biggest Bubble: 1st Shipment of the Books have Arrived!

Books are in, and they look great!
Mailing out to KickStarters begins Thursday Oct, 4th.

New orders for the book will available in a few weeks in the middle of October; I'll be sure to provide links to where the book will be sold.

First shipment arrives and looks fantastic

Closer look at the bookmarkers

Showing the white bubble wrapped packet and it's contents going out to KickStarters

WOOT!

Daily Quick Sketch: Before & After Adventure Time

Below is a little Fan Art image of one of my favorite cartoons shows: Adventure Time.

Quick digital inking and color: Adventure Time!!!

Before: Pencil Sketch

Daily Quick Sketch: Before & After Spidey

After: Spidey Digitally Inked + Colored

Before: Pencil Sketch of Spidey

Daily Quick Sketch: Before & After Wolverine

After: Digitally Inked and Colored

Before: Rough Pencil Sketch

Daily Quick Sketch: Boid

Daily Quick Sketch: Skreetch

While working on a new owl costume, I sketch'd this baby owl.

A Tip O' the Hat to Print Ninja

Things are happening fast now.

I must take time here to thank Print Ninja's staff: Paula, Dak and Daniel for helping me get this book to final print. These people have answered my insane amount of questions and have taken the time to make this book look the way I envision it. I highly recommend their printing service; not only because they have a great quoting system on their website with great pricing -- but they have been the friendliest printing staff I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

So . . . The book's proof came in this week. It's looking good. They did a fantastic job making a hardbound proof.

I had several issues, such as the yellow coloring on the cover and the title page, the cover's background color not hit the fold lines and several of my own coloring errors inside the book. Most errors were minor issues and easily corrected.



With the revised work sent, the book is officially ordered to go to final print. The expedited shipment should arrive in about a week or so for me to get out the books to you KickStarters who funded $25 and up. The buttons are also here and ready to go. The bookmarks should arrive with or around the time the book shipment is delivered. So all things seem to be on track.

Bobby's Biggest Bubble Button (say that 3 times)

Here's the artwork for the book's button, showing two styles:

I'm still playing around with the artwork, trying to figure which would look better when in button format. I like the lettering looking more "blown out" on the left, which is similar to what I did on the cover. The image on the right: the lettering reads cleaner.

I also don't know which size of the "Bobby character" I want to use yet.
The smaller I make him, the bigger the bubble becomes, (which is the main idea.)
But if Bobby's image is too small on a 2.25" button, it will be harder to see and figure out what he is doing. I'm going to test out a few samples to see what works best for a 2.25" button.

Daily Sketch: Pumpkinhead

It's that time of year again, where all focus is on Halloween. I usually do Halloween designs from late August and well into November.
So today, I did a quick little warm-up sketch of a pumpkin headed character.

Bobby's Biggest Bubble: Bookmark

Below is the artwork layout for the bookmark for BobsBigBub.** Note there is a .125" bleed area on all sides of the artwork (you can see the thin black lines in the corners of the artwork.) That's the area that will be cut off so that there's a nice clean edge of the bookmark.  Everyone who pre-ordered the book via KickStarter will be getting several copies of this bookmark.

Later on this week, I will post the BobsBigBub button artwork.

** That's my new shorthand for Bobby's Biggest Bubble, which I have typed too many times in the past few months.

The Ol' Gum Promotional Gimmick

Talking to my cousin Cindy about Bobby's Biggest Bubble, she mentioned that maybe I should consider sending gum when trying to promote the book. Funny thing is, I did try something like that long ago at my first attempt to get the book published.

So I did a quick search on my archive drives. There, among the many archived files of rejection letters, I found the old gum wrapper design used to promote the book. I would send the redesigned gum packs with my dummy book submissions to various publishers.

The plan was simple:

• Buy several packets of Trident gum. 
• Measure the size of the gum packs. 
• Redesign a wrapper that featured Bobby and promote the book.
• Print the wrapper on high gloss film.
• Remove the Trident wrapper.
• Use double sided tape to attach new wrapper design around the trident gum.

It looked really good, but apparently it didn't work.

To be honest, I don't think many of the publishers I submitted to even looked at my book. In fact, I know several publishers never even cracked open the book's cover, because I placed very tiny seals on the edge of the books. When those books were returned - those seals weren't broken.

This is still a good idea.
I think I'll update the artwork and info and try this again.

Bobby's Biggest Bubble: Off to the Presses

After so many months/weekends working on the book, it's finally out to the printer.

WOOT!

In celebrating, I thought I'd post one of my favorite images from the book:

One of the many things Bobby does with his bubblegum winnings.

Below is the final dust jacket artwork that was sent today: 

Pictured above is the full length of the dust jacket wrap. (Plus Note: the book price was reduced down to $15.)

And below is a sample of the inner lining of the book:

Pencil sketches line the inside of the front and back of the book.