The Classroom Curses: Of Lockers and Lockets

Here’s a short spooky comic I created, just in time for Halloween! The Classroom Curses: Of Lockers and Lockets is free to read here: ClassrooomCurses2

Awards season

I was happy to learn that Cooties #11 was nominated in the Comics category for the 2018 Association of Mormon Letters award! Feels nice to be noticed.

While unrelated to anything noticeably Mormon, the theme of the issue, sibling relationships, was heavily influenced by both my Mo upbringing and my experience as a parent.

Just having my name mentioned in the same category as such great people as Jake Parker, Brandon Dayton, Noah Van Sciver and Brittany Olsen is such a huge honor for me. It blows my mind that putting the challenge to myself to produce an entire comic issue in 30 days has resulted in this kind of reception. I’m more stoked than ever to keep producing stories for this series!

 

 

New Nerdy Storybook Cover print design

I’ve finished another design for my Nerdy Storybook Covers print series! Combining Harry Potter and Dr. Seuss. I think it works! I’ll have these available for purchase at FanX in April.

Served: a missionary comic anthology

While I am not much of a churchy person anymore, from 1995-1997 I served as a Mormon missionary in the jungles of Guatemala and Belize. I had a ton of memorable experiences, and I get to share an aspect of them in a new book put together by a bunch of former missionaries! Served: A Missionary Comics Anthology is about a week old on Kickstarter, and has already been funded, so this thing is a go!

My contribution is a 6-page story entitled Creatures Great & Small, mostly chronicling my encounters with Central American bugs. I’m really proud to be able to work alongside so many talented artists & writers; check out this article from the Deseret News for more info. You can back the project on Kickstarter to get a copy, as well.

Update: Additional coverage on LDS Living

Salt Lake Comic Con 2017

Earlier this year I purchased booth space at an Artist Alley at a video game convention. It was pretty much a huge disaster. A scene that epitomized the whole experience happened when a shirtless man carrying a giant faux battle-axe walked through the mostly deserted aisle where my table was located. He was dragging his significant other by the hand, and said in a very loud voice, “We are not here to buy ART!” So yeah.

Even though I had tried to mentally prepare for the fact that I was experimenting with a new venue, and that it might not turn out that great, it still put me in a huge artistic funk. I just felt burnt out on the whole convention experience, and was not in the mood to keep coming up with ideas for new products to sell. Putting pen to paper was a super frustrating experience, so I was not looking forward to Salt Lake Comic Con this year, even though I had already purchased the booth space.

I packed up what few things I had available and trudged to the Salt Palace on Thursday morning. My son Nate had some space at the table as well, and I was grateful I didn’t have to try and fill it. I was actually kind of pissy as we set up the booth. I was not looking forward to dealing with my social anxiety for the next three days.

Thankfully, I have a good friend who recently introduced me to some techniques for dealing with anxiety. I won’t go into the details, but these combined with the atmosphere that is Comic Con combined to lift my spirits immensely. Out of the streams of people walking past my booth for the next couple of days, it was great to see the various reactions to my Storybook Cover parody prints, among several of my other drawings; and I was able to push through my introversion to have a few great conversations with some truly awesome people.

So, although I made most of my table money back, it wasn’t a great success nor a huge disaster. However, the experience has motivated me to create like I haven’t done in a long time. I’m in full-on writing mode for my next Cooties book, and hope to have it completed in time for next year’s convention, along with as much other stuff as I can create. I’m so grateful to be a part of the great community of artists in Utah!

 

SpiderForest Anthology Kickstarter

The awesome webcomic collective I belong to, SpiderForest, is Kickstarting a 100+ page comic anthology! It includes a 4-page Cooties story by yours truly, and the $40.00 tier comes with a sketch card by me of a character of your choice! Go back this project here.

You can also contribute a small amount to show support even if you don’t want the book. Thanks!

Where you can stick it!

I’ve been keeping up with my sketch card habit; I love being able to take a few minutes one or two nights a week and doodle a fun character. I’ve also been trying to come up with ways to make each drawing become a source of passive income, instead of just selling the drawing at the next comic convention or my Etsy shop and having it vanish.

My latest attempt at this is…stickers! I’ll be tabling at Salt Lake Gaming Con in July (more info on that soon), and I thought that would be a good place to try selling sticker sheets of some video game characters. I got these small batches from stickermule, and I think they turned out pretty good! I really hope this becomes a good way to do something additional with my sketch cards.

You can see all of my doodles over on my Instagram.