Art Store

I’ve put together a store section of my site, featuring the originals I have up for sale, and also information on my current commission rates. I’ve decided to move things onto my site instead of going through Etsy, for simplicity’s sake. As I put new pieces in there, I’ll be linking them to their blog posts, with info about the art, and all that good stuff. If you see something that catches your eye, feel free to drop me a line at coyotepuck@gmail.com!

Many of the pictures up in the store haven’t been offered for sale, before, and some haven’t even made it online before now, so check it out! http://www.ninjahijinx.com/store/

Commission information is now here - http://www.ninjahijinx.com/store/commissions.html

To launch the store, sales of originals and commissions between now and this Sunday will include a MYSTERY SURPRISE!

In other news, things are going well in my neck of the woods. I’ve been busy, working on the pencils for Icon Day, getting website stuff sorted out, and a few other things. August is already shaping up to be a cool month. I drew some dinosaurs I still need to get scanned in to show you guys…

Also, Ekwara is off my vacation hiatus and updating Tuesday through Saturday, though I seem to have misplaced yesterday’s update. I’ll be remedying that today along with today’s page. Dracula is going off vacation hiatus this Saturday. Crimson Flag continues to update every Saturday!

I’ve been doing more writing, lately, which is awesome. I picked up a fun program called Write or Die, which lets you enter in a time or word count goal, and punishes you if you don’t stick with it. There’s a free online version, too! If you haven’t seen it already, it’s worth a look.

Back when I was writing adventures for the summer camp in Colorado, my writing ability was the sharpest it’s been, I think. I enjoy writing fast. It keeps my inner critic busy and lets me focus on the story itself. There’s something about that zone of words pouring out of your mind, through your fingers and onto the page at a breakneck speed that is satisfying in a way even drawing isn’t. I’m not so confident in my descriptions and all that good stuff, but I’m working on it, and might have something to show for that, too. For now, I’m happy to practice.

Comics!

Of course, Ekwara’s been updating all week!

In other news, Zazzle is doing a Memorial Day sale for this weekend with some big discounts on a few things.  Use the coupon code MEMORIALSALE at checkout to get 50% off posters, 40% of business cards and 30% off aprons.   I have three pieces up in my shop on sale as posters, and a handful of designs on aprons, along with a few business card templates (though this reminds me to make more).  The discount applies to all shops on Zazzle, too, and they have a ton of cool posters and whatnot.  My shop is here!

The Crimson Flag poster is here.

Friday Art, Saturday Comics

First, comics! I didn’t get a post up yesterday, because I was off hanging out with friends last night. I decided to take the rest of the day off, but if I get any new art done today, I’ll upload it tonight.

I finished this, yesterday:

Comics!!!

Saturday comics brought to you… very, very early on Sunday morning.  Man, how did it get so late so fast?

Two Dracula pages this week, thanks to tips! This is the start of Chapter 10. Van Helsing is so much fun to draw. I’m happy to finally be at this part of the story, where the action really picks up. It helps that I think I’m getting a better hang of pacing in my comic pages, too.

I have a small buffer and am working on coming up with more, so I decided to make the switch with Ekwara’s schedule. It’ll be updating with pencil pages Tuesday-Saturday, and color pages will be switched in to replace them as I finish them. When I have a big buffer and an idea of how this works with the rest of my schedule, I’d like to have a regular update day for those final color pages, too. Maybe that’ll be what Saturdays are for.  In the meantime, though, I know some of you prefer to see the color pages right away. Doing the comic this way will really help me make the color pages that much better, and seems like the best way for me to move forward with the project right now.

Comics This Week!

Behold, my uncanny ability to finally catch on to the existence of the thumbnail link on the bottom of my comic pages

There’s another page after this one, but it’s only text. I’m due for a double page update of Dracula, but am doing that for next week, because this week hardly counts as two pages, unless you imagine that Dracula is on page 440, and invisible.

Thanks for the input on how I’m going to be doing Ekwara for now on.  Along with the poll on my livejournal, I asked some other folks, and here’s what I’ve decided:

Ekwara will continue to update with a colored comic page on Saturdays until I can come up with a reasonable buffer of penciled pages.  I’m going to use a couple weeks to see how many penciled pages is reasonable for me to come up with in a week, then come up with a schedule based on that.  I’ll continue to post finished comic pages on a regular basis - in their own gallery, perhaps, in addition to replacing the penciled pages in the main comic as they’re created - but not on a specific deadline unless it works out for me to do a few penciled pages a week and a weekly colored page.  We’ll see how these next few weeks go, and then I’ll solidify my plans.

For today’s Ekwara page, I inked and colored the page from a more developed, finished pencil page, itself drawn from my rough sketch.  The finished page took about three times as long, overall, as a page usually takes, but I think the difference shows.  I had a chance to tweak poses, backgrounds and panel layout that I wouldn’t have otherwise done in transferring the rough sketch to a final page.  This is the extra step doing the penciled pages will add, and I think it will make the comic a lot higher quality with the added bonus of more frequent updates!

Saturday Comics

Comics have updated for Saturday!

Dracula - Page 337

Crimson Flag - Page 88

Ekwara - Page 44

I started putting some Ekwara art up into a new section of my Zazzle store, and want to follow up with some Dracula art soon, too.  You can check that out here - click on Sparrow’s goofy face.

I also made this coyote cartoon for a shirt for Ian’s baby.

I put this on Zazzle stuff, too, because that’s what I do these days.

Today, I’m going to get some preliminary stuff done on the upper part of the mural, and then working on commissions and penciling icons.

Comics, etc

I haven’t had much to show off lately, because I’m focusing on this huge icon batch, and the mural.  The mural, or at least, the lower part of it, is finished!  I’m going in on Tuesday to clean up the wall and get photos.  The icons will go up online when they’re done.  Oh my goodness, so many icons!

Comics updated today.  I was slow posting my update because I’m working on two bonus pages for Ekwara.  Tips funded two extra pages for this update, and I want ‘em to look their best.  The second page is done except for text and borders and all that good computer-added stuff, and then I need to wrap up the third page.  Next week and the week after that will be Sparrow and Ginger’s intro.  Remember that sketch I posted a little while back?  That’s two pages from now, and halfway through Chapter 2, already!

I post the comic links every time I update this.  I’ll spare you that, this time.  Page 336 of Dracula is up, page 40 (!!) of Ekwara is up, and page 86 of Crimson Flag is up!

And since I haven’t mentioned it in a little while, be sure to go check out the FULL NOVEL of Arcadia Snips now online If you like the story and want a copy of your own, the hardcopy books are on sale.  I just noticed that!

On the personal front, those of you reading this on my livejournal (instead of on my ninjahijinx blog site) have been subjected to my dream-journal voice posts.  I haven’t remembered my dreams the past few nights, but as soon as I get a good one, I’ll be right back on that.

And, here’s some art:

I’m using a lot of exclamation points today!  It’s because I’m really tired!

Comics!

Comics have updated!

Page 335 of Dracula - http://www.draculacomic.net

Page 39 of Ekwara - http://www.ekwara.com

Page 85 of Crimson Flag - http://www.crimsonflagcomic.net

Today!

Comics are all updated!

Page 38 of Ekwara - http://www.ekwara.com

Page 333 and 334 of Dracula, with bonus page thanks to tips reaching 20 dollars.  Enjoy! - http://www.draculacomic.net

Page 84 of Crimson Flag - http://www.crimsonflagcomic.com

Now that those are all in order, I’m spending the rest of the day on icons.

I’m currently open for commissions for April.  A 8.5″x11″ watercolor picture with a full background and one or two characters is $75.  Without a background is $40.  I am not taking commissions for sketches, badges or icon sets right now, because I still haven’t decided what kind of fun thing I’m doing after I finish the current huge batch of icons, and if I do a sale or Day of some sort, I don’t want folks to miss out on that.  However, I am offering a slot for a sketchbook commission, though I’m not sure how much to charge for it.  The size of the sketchbook and number of pages would depend on what we’d work out, but I’m thinking it would be based on a theme or your characters, in pencil, with potential for some inked and color work, depending on how much it went for.  If you’d like to get a commission or make an offer on the sketchbook commission, send me an email at coyotepuck@gmail.com

Behind the cut, progress photos of the mural, from yesterday, plus three little sketches from D&D.

more »

Comics, Icons and Mural

First of all, comics updated yesterday!  Dracula updated a little late last night, so if you stopped by and didn’t see a new page, there’s one there for you, now.

Page 332 of Dracula - http://www.draculacomic.net

Page 37 of Ekwara - http://www.ekwara.com

Page 83 of Crimson Flag - http://www.crimsonflagcomic.com

I’m still working on the pencil art for the icons and will upload those as soon as they’re done.  I was aiming to have those done for yesterday, but that project is now sharing time with a huge mural project.  They’ll still get done, of course, and soon!

MURAL PROJECT!  A local restaurant, Jeckyl & Hyde, asked me to make a big sharpie mural on their wall, and I’ve been working on that this week!  It’s a very exciting project - a Victorian street scene.  It’s right up my alley.  Here are some in progress photos.

Shot of the corner near the (real) window.  This part of the mural is the wall of a building up close.  For this part of the mural I needed to incorporate the big restaurant window and a little metal door that hides a water shut off valve.

The disguised metal door.  You can barely tell it’s there, any more, which makes it funny when you do open it.

Of course, I sneaked in a kitty!

Progress on the street scene beyond the close-up building.  I didn’t get a shot of the man standing in the foreground until after yesterday’s work, but here’s this part of the wall before I got started, yesterday.

A closer shot.  You can see my pencil work on here, too.  I’ve blocked out/measured out all the major areas, then go in and add details, measuring more as necessary.  I’m not working from a grid, but using a framework of strings and guidelines.  That’s working out very well with how I create art.  In a larger work, you need to be really careful about distortion.

After yesterday’s work.  Buildings!  There’s going to be a fountain and a number of folks wandering the street.  To the right of the street scene is a closer building in the middle ground, an alley where Mr. Hyde is lurking, and another close-up building on the far edge of the wall.  All of those parts are blocked out, but not inked, yet.

This is at an angle, so I can see some distortion that isn’t actually in the mural itself.  I drew this fellow earlier, but finished the brickwork on the wall yesterday.  He’s about life-size, a hair smaller, and is actually a full figure, but I didn’t get a shot of his feet.  The wall’s going to have a lot more ivy on it, but I’m saving that for last, because it eats sharpies.

Anyway, that’s why I’ve been quiet, though I learned that the pizza place has wireless, so I’m able to do in-progress twitter updates, now!