Flew me to places I’d never been

Image’s May solicitations are out!

IT GIRL & THE ATOMICS 10
story JAMIE S. RICH
art NATALIE NOURIGAT
cover MICHAEL & LAURA ALLRED
MAY 15
32 PAGES / FC / E EVERYONE
$2.99
“TWEENAGE FBI” Part One
BETWEEN GEARS creator NATALIE NOURIGAT joins the Atomics team! Someone broke into Flem’s lab and stole a dangerous invention. It Girl picks up the crooks’ trail, only to discover it leads to a team of underage secret agents – though the real criminal mastermind is centuries older than all of them.

Wait, WHAT?

Yes, friends, I got to draw an issue of It Girl!  Jamie’s script is crazy-fun, Mike’s universe is sensational, Allen Passalaqua and CRANK! take my black and white pages and turn them into magical complete perfect comics angelbabies.  This is the first superhero comic I’ve ever drawn and I couldn’t be happier about it.  Make sure to preorder your copy and enjoy It Girl & The Atomics #10!

I’ve got something to say my friends

The big SDCC news for me this weekend was Oni Press’s announcing my book with Jamie Rich, A Boy and a Girl.  I believe there will be more news at NYCC in October.  Here are some of the teasers you may have seen me post over the last year and a half:

In totally unrelated news, here are some animal sketches I did this weekend:

Get back get back up

I was too tired/happy to post anything at the time, but I finished my Oni book last week!!!!

I really wanted to finish before the holidays. Now I have a bit more capacity to handle the holiday+birthday+other time constraints and stress that are coming up.

I made this progress chart in November to help motivate me to finish:

(24 penciled/inked/toned pages in a month, what’s up)

The 9 check-offable boxes after ‘Celebrate’ were a joke, but looking at it later I decided that I should create 9 distinct rewards for myself — turn it into a kind of ritual and commemorate the end of a big book project. It was fun coming up with a list of things that I’d been wanting to do (rather than buy, it being the holidays anyway and material rewards requiring less creativity/more money):

• Spend a day drawing fan art
• Climb the *****’s fire escape onto the roof
• Hike somewhere nice and watch the sun rise on New Years morning for good luck
• Go to the Sky High trampoline gym (can you tell that I like heights??)
• Christmas movie marathon (The Snowman, Just Friends, Love Actually, Die Hard, Tokyo Godfathers, Elf, Rudolph)
• Get dressed up and spend a day going into EVERY boutique on 23rd (more to satisfy my curiosity than to actually shop…how are there so many nice boutiques on one street?!)
• Go into Counter Media (The porn scares me off every time I think I’m going to go in! xD But I’ve heard there are good comics in there…!)
• Spend a long, lazy weekend morning at the gym (work out, hot tub, sauna, shower and get dressed nicely, eat lunch at one of the nice restaurants upstairs)
• Draw a cover for my Ghibli sketchbook and give it to the next person to draw in

I’ve done 2 of these already, and am looking forward to the rest.

So take it easy I’ll make it so easy

I’m sorry for the absence here; I went out of town for a few days for Thanksgiving, got pretty sick right afterward, fell behind on work, etc. I’ve been having a lot of fun, though, too–going out more than usual and saying ‘yes’ to more invitations.

Emi and I did an interview on Wednesday with the Pedal Powered Talk Show that was SUPER fun. We talked about Emitown V2 and Between Gears, which are coming out at the same time next year. We also had an impromptu, on-show challenge with some high stakes! It will air in January, and I’ll be sure to post when it does. Here’s the set, Emi, the back of host Boaz Frankel, and 2″ of my forehead:

December is characteristically jam-packed with stress and joy. One of my books wraps up next week, my family is going on vacation again and I need to decide whether or not I can join, my birthday is the week after that, I still have pretty much all of my presents to make/buy, and then there’s a slew of holiday parties, the actual holidays, and back to encroaching (or blown!) deadlines…

I used to get really sick every Christmas; it was too much excitement and my body invariably succumbed to some awful thing. I’m going to try to get healthy quickly and stay healthy this year, take one thing at a time and not be dumb about biting off more than I can chew.

Okay okay okay, but how about some art??

I’m inking the LAST CHAPTER OMG of my book with Jamie! And I’m trying to find a panel I can post as a preview…but I’m pretty sure that every single one is in some way a spoiler. Sorry! There will be new art soon. Whole books full of it!

This is what I’ve been obsessively listening to lately.

Dare to be one of us girl

Here are some sneak peaks at my project with Jamie Rich:

I only have 24 pages left to draw! It’s racing by. I am thumbnailing the last pages for my other graphic novel this week as well. I’ve only been working on these books for 10 months, but it’s going to feel like the end of an era when I wrap them up.

My roommates and I are watching THE CUTEST cat this week. We are considering adopting her, but she tested positive for Feline Leukemia Virus and we need to learn more about that and whether or not we’d be able to give her a good home.

At least for now, though, KITTY!!

I really hope that it works out. We have been talking about getting a cat since we moved in last year, but we need a cat that is grown, well-behaved, can be alone during the day, and is alright being an indoor cat. Until now, we hadn’t found one. Toushe is a tiny, grown, female cat whose needs I think match ours. She’s quiet as a mouse, loves people, and has a calm demeanor I just LOVE. Having claws and long hair were not on my list of ideal traits, but the more time I spend with her, the less I care.

Everyone put on your jammies now!

Some more Christmas art for y’all:

Tally Nourigat’s Gift
Originally uploaded by Erika Moen

Circle Skirt by ~Tallychyck on deviantART

Audrey Hepburn by ~Tallychyck on deviantART

So make a move cause I ain’t got all night

There’s a nice article up on Neighborhood Notes today by Jamie Rich. He interviews Wonder Woman Day founder and organizer Andy Mangels, current Wonder Woman artist Aaron Lopresti, Emi Lenox, and myself about Wonder Woman, the charity, and the art that we contributed.

I am trying to draw as much as humanly possible today. Recruitment is over, but school continues to kill my drawing time day after day, and my very good friend Molly will be visiting and having super fun times with me this weekend. Art must happen today!!!

So far today, I’ve inked a few pages from the project I am doing with Jake Ingman. Next is Between Gears, then some more coloring on the Monsters & Dames piece. Lately, I feel like I’m getting nowhere, no matter how many hours I find for art, but I am going to change that! Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, lalalalalala~

Anoko to haneru to kokoro mo odoruyo paku-paku chu-gyu

Ponyo came out yesterday, but guess who saw it on Monday? xD There are perks to being friends with this guy. As everyone’s saying, it’s not my favorite Miyazaki movie, but it is right up there with Studio Ghibli’s others in quality and enjoyment. I love love LOVE the two main characters, Sosuke and Ponyo, and all of their interactions, but the rest of the movie was just (well-drawn) fluff for me.
Oh. And when you hear the first bars of the credit rock song, GET OUT OF THERE.

On the Miyazaki thread, take a look at these two gorgeous pieces Terry Blas gave me last week! I was in shock then, and I’m still reeling a bit now. Terry is a watercolor and character design master. He did the painting of Sophie a while ago, but he did the painting of Haku in an afternoon!!! MAN. I am still searching for proof that he’s not an artbot from the future. Wait…Robopocalypse…yes, it all makes sense…

Also, I’m over on Nico’s blog again. (A girl could get used to this! ) Written by Jamie, illustrated by Nico: