anyhow, last week we got a digital proof of our baby. Milo and I went through it and made some notes and corrections and eventually gave the OK to our awesome local printers, Brown. 

So today we went down and did a press check as they printed up the covers and one of the signatures!

My buddy and fellow TMNT Maniac Joe Keatinge and I were playing around with the idea of pitching a turtles series to IDW after we heard that they had gotten the license from Nickelodeon. It felt like sort of a long shot, but Joe and I are both big big fans of the Turtles and we knew we had to at least give it a go.

Once we started talking about our ideas, I immediately started drawing the boys and some of their awesome cast mates in my sketchbook, mostly from memory. Not like the turtles are the most complex designs, but I was surprised at how ingrained in my psyche these characters were. I hadn't drawn them since I was a teenager and they just came right back to me, easy-peasy.

We hadn't gotten super far into the process of working up designs and plots for a pitch before we heard that series co-creator Kevin Eastman was coming back to the turtles to do the new series! You pretty much can't go wrong with one of the people who created the series, so while I'm really sad I probably won't ever get to draw the turtles professionally and make my childhood dreams come true, I'm excited to see what Kevin and series artist Dan Duncan get up to!

Figured I'd go ahead and post these sketches up just for fun. Also included are layouts for 5 pages of comics we were going to do for the pitch, drawn from Joe’s script. There’s a bit more to the dialog than I included, my word balloons are mainly there for placement/design. In any case, here’s to what might have been!







]]>http://www.zacksoto.com/blog/2011/7/3/opp-other-peoples-properties.htmlZack2011-07-03T19:43:26Z2011-07-03T19:43:26Z

D-MAN ANNUAL #8 GUEST-STARRING U.S.AGENT

A D-Man pin up for Dylan's new "LET’S DRAW D-MAN!" tumblr. Obviously this is a tribute to the cover of CAPTAIN AMERICA ANNUAL #8 by the mighty Mike Zeck. I thought it'd be cool to swap out these two knock off characters for Wolverine and Cap from this iconic composition. All apologies to Mike Zeck and thanks to Dylan for giving me a reason to do this, it was super fun.

David Lafuente is so fucking good. I can't speak highly enough of his work on the Ultimate Spider Man title. For my warm up drawing one day I decided to do a study of this panel from USM (v2) #4.

On a separate note, I'll be rocking out at PDX's First Thursday event tonight. Of particular note are the Mike Allred show at Floating World and the STUMPTOWN CARTOONIST'S SHOW at Pony Club. I have some pieces in the latter show, and will be attending both for sure. 

Premiering April 7th, 2011 at the Pony Club Gallery in downtown Portland, OR, the Stumptown Cartoonist Show! Join us in celebrating cartooning and illustrative storytelling. Featuring work from Trevor Alixopulos, Andrice Arp, Zachary Baldus, Sean Christensen A.B.T., Farel Dalrymple, Jason JFish Fischer,Julia Gfrorer, KC Green, Chuck Groenink, Meg Hunt, John Isaacson, Amy Kuttab, Brian Lee, Jed McGowan, BT Livermore, Katy Ellis O'Brien, Mare Odomo,Jennifer Parks, Jesse Reklaw, Zack Soto, Hopskotch Sunday, Corey Thompson, Sophie Yanow and more!

First off: The Stumptown Comics Fest! It's going to be awesome!

I'll be there with Ben Catmull and Kazimir Strzepek and we're going to be collectively awesome at table #D-15 too!

My anthology Studygroup12 #4 has also been nominated for two Stumptown awards, and.. well it looks like the voting is closed, but at one point you totally COULD have voted for us. Oh well, That's what I get for being busy.

I may have some new stuff for sale, in addition to the old minis and the new Studygroup12 I've been floggin for a few months, but the one FOR SURE new release I'll be rockin'? I've got a two page spread in the upcoming DIAMOND COMICS #6. DIAMOND is an awesome art & comics anthology, and I'm proud as punch to be included in the new one. Not only is it a pretty amazing line up in this issue, but a few hundred copies will be inserted into copies of the PORTLAND MERCURY the week of Stumptown, so I'll have two big tabloid pages out there on the streetz™ and let me tell you, that's exciting. Oh, heck, let me just post a small image of it: 

Kind of cool? Maybe? I think it'll look pretty neat all printed on big pages and stuff. Pre-Apocalypse funnies. At least that crippling anxiety is good for something?

ANYWAY, hope to see you at Stumptown!

xo

z

A lot has been going on around here lately!

Firstly, I've been drawing lots of SECRET VOICE comics! If you caught the episode of The Comix Claptrap podcast I was on, you might have heard me talk about how I'm going to be posting SV as a serialized webcomic with weekly updates. I'm also really excited to say some of my favorite cartoonists, AMAZING CARTOONISTS(!), will be contributing webcomics to a revitalized STUDYGROUP web anthology! I will post names and more details soon, but you can hear some of the names NOW if you check out the interview. 

Secondly, the print magazine anthology STUDYGROUP12 #4, which Jason Levian and I recently published, recieved a couple of very cool reviews: 

• There was this mostly positive piece by Sean T Collins, in which Sean grapples with what he sees as a bias towards the single image. While I did make a concerted effort to expand the not-quite-comics content this time, and asked many of the artists specifically to do single images, I definitely tried to balance both sides of the spectrum in the book..
• J Todd Dockery writes a travelogue of his very different time spent with the book. It is gratifying to read of someone sharing a book you made with their friends. For someone who makes these THINGS, that's the ultimate compliment, right?