Heroes of the North–Hornet: Dark Origins

Just finished up some work for the Heroes of the North. I’ve done lettering for them before, but this is the first time I’ve coloured…wildly intimidating following MAS colouring his work as he has an incredibly distinctive and amazing style, so I just went off in my own direction. Click through and give it a read, and make sure you check out the whole site–it’s amazing what this production company has managed to do with their own money to make this webseries and webcomic series.

Art by MAS, story by Yann Brouillette, colours/letters by me

 

Holmes Incorporated #2 pinup

by the One the Only Gibson Quarter. Haven’t had a chance to work with Gibson in a while, so this was a lot of fun. Bit disappointed though–I’d made a point of trying to bump up my colours and sex them up a bit and while I was happy when I was finished, now that I’m seeing it “out and about” on the ‘net, it’s not quite the same. So, I may have to go in and see what I can do (when I have some free time, of course).

deviantART!!

Oh, yeah…so did I mention that I started up a deviantART site? Because I did…just a quick way to look at some of the stuff I do. Just colouring at this point, and not a lot of it–I just started uploading stuff and then it occured to me that maybe I should have put it up in sequence of oldest to newest, but by then I discovered that people had already come and looked at stuff posted and because, yeah, we artistic types are pathetic needy people wanting constant approbation, once a couple of people had favourited stuff I didn’t want to delete and start again…

anyway. (take a breath after getting through that incredibly run-on sentence)

Keiren Smith on deviantART

 

Holmes Incorporated #2 Cover

Pencilled and inked by Leonard Kirk, coloured by me. Book is officially launched July 22 with an Open House at Toronto Cartoonists Workshops new studio space (587 College Street West–for those of you in the GTA who want to stop by, see the space, meet the instructors and students, pick up a copy of the book!).  Read all about the project over at the Holmes Incorporated comic blog…

The new space sounds pretty amazing–it will be utilised by The Joe Shuster Awards for gatherings (The first one will be July 15:   Joe Shuster Awards–presentation to Toronto Winners and a Wrap Party); Guerilla Printing is moving into the space; and (yes there’s more!) there will be a framing store…name not yet announced. And the space will be used for monthly Industry Nights for those in the comics, illustration, animation fields beginning August 22.

 

Holmes Incorporated #2 Pin-Up

A pinup I coloured for the Holmes Inc. website promoting the upcoming second issue of the comic. Done for Toronto Cartoonists Workshop, Fit to Print class…four months of working together with an industry professional (this time out, Ty Templeton) to create a comic book from start to finish, simulating the “real world” of comics publishing.

The pinup is drawn by Daniel Wong—whose art has to be seen to be believed. When he first pulled out his portfolio to show his art (part of the process was for the artists to show off their ability to do sequential work, giving the editor and asst. editor a chance to see what their styles are like so as to know what writer/story to pair them with. It also gave the writers a chance to see what artists to jockey for…), people thought he’d “copied” someone else’s art. I actually had a confused moment where I thought he was keeping posters and pinups in his portfolio along with his art. Everyone—editors included—were flabbergasted to discover, nope, this is just what comes out of Daniel Wong’s hands! This will be his first professionally published gig (?)—but it certainly won’t be his last…

And, I’m clearly getting “spoiled”—I’m off to colour a cover pencilled and inked by the one and only Leonard Kirk.

Tights and Fights–FREE Preview Weekend

So, for this one little tiny short weekend, you can go to the Tights and Fights site and get a downloadable FREE version of the comic, written by Robert Pincombe, drawn by Christopher Yao, coloured and lettered by me, formerly KT Smith, currently Keiren Smith.

What’s the catch? The catch is they ask–nicely, ’cause they’re Canadian and all that–if you would be so kind as to join the e-mailing list for Tights and Fights and then they’ll send you a link to a downloadable version of the comic via that very email.

How easy is that? EASY.

So, click through and join in on the fun… TIGHTS AND FIGHTS.

Tights and Fights

Whew–haven’t posted since mid-December. I’ve actually been doing lots of behind-the-screen work on Ty’s blog (Ty Templeton’s ART LAND) but I’ve also been doing actual work. I can’t post stuff until it’s been approved by the publishers so I just try and be a very quiet colourist, keep my mouth shut and my eye on the computer screen.  But now! Tights and Fights has received their files, and one of the pages I coloured for them is up…

Tights and Fights is a webseries based on the wacky (mis)adventures of five superheroes:  Ronin Force. Check out the website for all the Whys, Wherefores and What nows…  I was hired to colour and letter a series of webcomics about each hero. All the art was done by Christopher Yao (might remember him from Toronto Cartoonists Workshop, “Fit to Print” project. Christopher drew the opening story in the Holmes Incorporated comic.) The project was organised by Rob Pincombe who wrote all the stories. When I find out where they will be posted and when, I’ll add that information here.

For now, the pinup/cover for Tights and Fights, featuring (clockwise upper right, Major Faultline, Evil Trojan Borscht, The Plumber, Captain Euchre, Fantabulous Gal and Leopard Woman) is up on their Facebook Page. Click through to join the page and keep on the releases of all their upcoming webisodes. Each character also has their own page on the website, a Facebook page and a Twitter account to follow (check each character’s webpage to follow them on Twitter).

Northern Guard #1

is out today. Coloured and lettered by moi.

Too busy to breathe today, so that’s all…

Extinction Hunter: the art

that keeps going and going.

Just got word from Gibson Quarter, artist extraordinaire on Extinction Hunter (and quite a few other things in my art files) that the cover (used on FutureQuake #15) has been selected for an art book being published in England, this fall. SciFi Art Now, according to the blurb on the website,

“is a book collecting some of the best in contemporary science fiction art by a wide range of creators. The book, edited by John Freeman, will be published in October 2010.”

The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

Latest colouring…

(from Ty Templeton’s Art Land)

Given that Ty taught me (almost) everything I know…it seems only fair to help him out with some colour every now and then. He’s been posting previously unseen and brand-new cartoons on Saturdays, over in Art Land.  A couple weeks ago, he asked if I could quickly throw some colour on a strip for him, so he could return to his panic-on-a-deadline work. This wasn’t one of my harder gigs as you can see…very simple colour here, colour there–done!

Usually, an artist will have a colour request or two…when the artist actually lives in the house with you, and can wander up behind you at any moment to stare at the monitor, they can end up requesting quite a bit! I’ve been known to argue back in these moments… Ty wanted the colour on the Horny Toad costume to be dark enough that it would obviously seem like he was Batman, which was easy enough to do. But,  I disagreed with his decision to make the shades the same in the first and second panel–I thought they should be quite dark, a green-grey in the first and then lighter and brighter in the second for the reveal. Ty figured the reveal was not that the costume is obviously green not black and grey, but that the face mask is all bubbly like a toad.  Given that he wrote the strip–he wins!  Not my joke…

(I’m usually a bit of a pain-in-the-ass for verisimilitude, and horny toads are actually sand coloured, given their habitat. But that wasn’t going to work here, for the joke.)