Inspiration Spotlight #17: Ben Templesmith & Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse

Speaking of artists who've inspired me early on (last week's post), Ben Templesmith is one of the first illustrators to ever really start influencing my work and this was long before I even really knew what illustration was. Ben is an very accomplished comic book creator...I say creator because he has been know to draw, ink, color and even write for the comics he produces. I've been enjoying Ben's work ever since I first picked up the Silent Hill comics he worked on for a little bit, way back whe nI was in high school.

 My favorite of Ben's works is one he created entirely on his own titled "Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse". The story takes place in a universe inhabited by corpse's that act as meat suits for an inter-dimensional traveling worm, demons, leprechauns and a whole mess of other crazy species.

Wormwood is super funny and enjoyable! Ben has created a really fun and interesting world with some really delightful characters with some great personalities. His style has a lot of character and grittiness to it too, and his color choices really drive home the perfect mood for the setting.

 I've been following Ben's work for a long time now and he always manages to keep me wanting more. He's done his own interpretations of superheroes and other famous characters...like Jesus! (see below) I really enjoy Ben's work a lot and he's got a pretty large fan base, so it's definitely not just me. If you like what you see check it out and maybe buy a comic or two of his!

Inspirtation Spotlight #6: Perry Bible Fellowship

Change of pace for the Spotlight this week. By now a lot of you know how big on the fantasy genre I am, and sometimes this leads to people overlooking my love for other genres, like humor. I take a more humorous route with my Youth work and my Comic Strip, and I think it's time to give a tip of the hat to one of my favorite comic strips, The Perry Bible Fellowship.

The Perry Bible Fellowship was created by Nicholas Gurewitch and a small group of his friends who give their ideas and input. The comic first appeared in Syracuse University's Daily Orange Newspaper, which is the same newapaper that I worked for and ran my own comic in during my own time at college. Turns out Nick and I share the same alma mater, the same page in the comics section of the Daily Orange, and we even had the same teacher for a class.

It was a huge surprise my freshman year in my Narrative Drawing class when my professor Yvonne Buchanan laid out a bunch of books for the class to draw inspiration from, and one of them was a book of Perry Bible comics. I remember telling Yvonne how much I loved the comic strip and was surprised to hear her say "Oh, I know him! He was in my class." It was really exciting to talk to her about it, as I was already a huge fan of the comic at the time.

An even bigger surprise came when I became Art Director for the Daily Orange newspaper. The D.O. had their own house off campus where they made the paper. I had a small room to myself to work in and the walls were covered in drawings and writing from art director's past. There were tons of drawings scattered all over the room and piles more lying in drawers, filled to the brim with archived comics and illustrations. One day I decided to go rooting through all the drawers when I came across a drawing that looked very familiar. I immediately recognized it as the original New Specs for Ken drawing/inks. Happily surprised, I rooted through every other piece of paper in the room (which was a LOT, trust me) and found about 2 or 3 more PBF drawings. Apparently Nick had been trying to get the drawings back from a previous Art Director, so he sent an email asking for an update on the comics. He used to work as the Art Director for the D.O. as well and I guess he left some of the comics there a long time ago while working there. I told him that I had found a bunch of them and sent them to him in the mail.

 

As a sign of gratitude, Nick kindly offered to send me a signed print of whichever comic I wanted. I'm now the happy owner of a signed print of Scorpy the Forest Friend (above). Nicks comics continue to inspire my humor and keep making me laugh, despite the comic not been produced regularly anymore.

If you enjoy the PBF, you should purchase the Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack. It's 256 pages of beautifully printed comics, included never-before released comics and an interview. It's one of my favorite books in my collection.

Mousey Dies: The Comic

I present to you my short comic, "Mousey Dies". A year ago I was given an assignment to create a 2 page comic with no dialogue, illustrating a character's death, becoming resurrected in the afterlife, then they have to go to heaven or hell. In addition to the 2 pages, we had to do a cover image as well. The pages had to be done in pencil or ink and the cover image had to be fully rendered in color. A year later and I decide to revisit the project, tweaking the color scheme of the color to fit what I wanted to do with the pages, and I fully colored the 2 pages. Below are the results of my reworking.

I hope you enjoy what I did with the assignment!

World Premiere of Issue 2 of Blue Shift webcomic!

Today's the world premiere of issue 2 of the Blue Shift webcomic on MTV Geek! I'm responsible for the coloring work on this issue and after months of working on it I'm happy to finally be able to show it off.


Click here to read the comic on MTV Geek!

Click here to become a fan of Blue Shift on Facebook

Mousy Dies: Cover

Here's the illustration I did for the cover of my 2 page comic "Mousy Dies"

Mousey Dies

Assignment was to show a character dead, leaving their body, going through some sort of portal, going to heaven/hell, and ending with the character confronting god/the devil, all told over the course of 2 pages of sequential art.

Internship! Blueshift webcomic colorist

Starting in September I will be working as an intern for Seed Studio as the colorist for the Blue Shift webcomic. I was approached by art director/penciler/inker, Dave Devries, and after test coloring a couple of pages I was approved to join the team as their intern! I am very excited to be working with them and I will be sure to post links once my own work is up on the site. Pages should be published on a weekly basis once they start so stay tuned. Until then I encourage you to check out the first issue of the comic as well as the other cool stuff on the website.

These are the pages that I test colored in order to get the internship, these pages have already been published on the website, colored by the previous colorist. This is just to give you an idea of what's to come.