#143:Thunder-Tour begins!

Hitting the road for Third Earth/USA

Mar 12, 2024

ALL THE LATEST

-PROJECT RAVEN #1 is written. The first draft anyway, have gotten some notes to deal with. I’m working on some cover ideas before I head Stateside. I’ll be writing on the road.

-Been quite swamped lately, SO much to do in the last week or so, ahead of my trip. As mentioned, the first script for PROJECT RAVEN, a couple of short story scripts, meetings about THUNDERCATS and RAVEN, an outline for THUNDERCATS next arc, nailing down my travel itinerary, getting the OLD DOG DOSSIER to print a bunch of covers and wrapping up TURTLES all at the same time. Woof. Needed to get ahead on some covers too as I won’t be drawing anything while on the road for the rest of the month, starting tomorrow. Have to get some stuff in well ahead of deadline to cover my arse. Will be working away on scripts while travelling though.

-We have a new TIME BEFORE TIME trailer! I asked TAPE DEC editor Jamie Wood to make one to mark us wrapping the series, to push the series of books the series now is.

Please, please, please share this trailer far and wide. I’m incredibly proud of the book, what we were able to build, the stories we got to tell, etc. Would really apprciate it if ye could post this trailer on yere socials and let people know about the book.

-Had a really good time at Dublin Comic Con. As usual, didn’t think to take any photos but was great to see everyone and even sign my first THUNDERCATS copies. Had a proper catchup with Rapha Lobosco, PJ Holden, Chris O’Halloran, Danny Earls, Ellie Wright and Gary Moloney. Stephen Mooney was also there.

-Try as I might, I sometimes miss a cover in the OUT SOON section. Sometimes stuff doesn’t show up when I’m looking for it, or I did it so long ago, I didn’t realise the solicitation was posted. Anyway, here’s a WOLVERINE cover I did a while back, for #44 that came out a couple of weeks ago…

Look for the original in the ART DECO section below! And my DEFIANT #12 cover that also came out on the 28th. Some PROCESS on that cover below too.

Thank you for reading Declarations. This post is public so feel free to share it.

PROMO DEC

I cannot process this just yet but I’ll be at GalaxyCon Richmond this coming weekend! Will be there with Drew Moss, really looking forward to hanging out with him and high-fiving over all his THUNDERCATS craziness.

ALSO! I’ll be at…

Third Eye Comics in Annapolis, March 20th

Brave New Worlds in Philadelphia, March 21st

Midtown Comics in New York City, March 22nd

This kind of promo is extremely rare for me so if you’re in any of these areas, don’t miss out on getting your books signed or more importantly, telling me how great I am.

And of course, have been hitting the podcast circuit for THUNDERCATS. I’ve stopped taking requests for a while though, I’ve done LOADS and am about to be on the road, as well as trying to stay on top of work commitments.

AIPT Comics Podcast

TAPE DEC

The latest TAPE DEC is with THUNDERCATS artist Drew Moss.

This was a nice, in-depth chat. The podcasts seem to be running close to 2 hours! Is that too long? Should they be shorter…? Let me know.

THUNDERCATS

Issue Two is out tomorrow! Preview pages are out, but here’s some unlettered pages in decent resolution to gorge on…

I’ve just done a deeper breakdown of the next arc and today have a video meeting with editor Nate Cosby to discuss some super-secret plans. I’ll be writing #6 while on the road [just handed in my cover for said issue], expect some more THUNDERCATS surprises in the next couple of weeks. Can’t wait to see the reaction to this issue after all the hype post Issue One.

On that note… just announced! Issue One is getting a THIRD printing with a spiffy David Nakayama variant

This book is a monster. It’s crazy. If you haven’t bought it yet, what the hell are you waiting for?!

OLD DOG

I sent the DOSSIER to the printers last week! Man, that felt good. Expect to see the printing proof when I get back from the US, then sign off on the print run.

The OPERATIONS project is moving along nicely. Some VERY cool stuff pouring into my inbox. Hello, what’s this…?

PROCESS

The recently release DEFIANT #12 was a delight to work on. I mean, it was hard, nailing down all the reference, but VERY satisfying as an obsessive Trek fan.

Below is the original rough, the inks , and the flatted file that I got back from Tatjana Segelken, with some tweaks from me.

Next I went in and did the colour holds, mainly Tatjana did them I should say, but I tweaked them a bit and selected the colour. Then, went in and rendered the planet below and added a dark overlay on top of the ship. I wanted the planet to silhouette it somewhat, for a moody shot. It was important that the mountain below was legible as it’s meant to evoke a pretty infamous creature from the lore, from the TNG episode ‘Conspiracy’. I wanted it to be subtle, but not tooo subtle.

DEFIANT #12: colour holds/ overlay/ BG rendering, fully rendered ship/glows, final

Then did all the rendering on the ship, adding all the cool lighting and a subtle halo effect around the ship. Handed that in.

IDW had one note, that the mountain/alien was a little lost, which was a fair enough note, so I added in some light to the bottom left corner, to catch the mountain a little and draw the eye more. It worked with the lighting source I had on the Defiant too, so it all gelled together well enough.

ART DECO

The original art for WOLVERINE #44 is now available on the ART DECO Store as well as the DEFIANT cover, a Darth Vader cover for OBI-WAN ans MIDNIGHT SONS #1! I’ll wait 24 hours before I post this publicly, so that you Decolytes have first dibs. The Turtles one I posted last time was snapped up immediately. so don’t hang about.