The Sketchbook Project

So here is the first character sketch I’ve done for The Sketchbook Project. This sketch actually translates into pg 3 of the book. The 2nd pg, which I have yet to do, will be a description of the character and who created him/her.
In this case, I drew the character Hide. Hide is one of the characters from Parry Shen’s Hibakusha story.
Parry was actually the first person I asked to write up something. Even though most if not all of you know Parry from films like Better Luck Tomorrow and Hatchet, he is a really really talented writer as well.
His story The Hibakusha is about the children of the survivors of Hiroshima experience and the strange side effects from it. The Hibakusha is one of the featured stories in our graphic novel, Secret Identities.
I’ll refrain from explaining exactly who and what Hide is, as I’ll be designing a “bio” page for each drawing. And I’ll scan and post that page once I’m done with it.

But I wanted to get this sketch up because I was just pretty excited to get it done.

So many thanks to Parry for being so cooperative on this. I’ve also asked a few other friends to participate in this project with me. Jeff Yang, Keith Chow, Keiko Agena and Bao Phi to name a few.
I’ve also been getting a bunch of great ideas from people. And am getting ready to start all of those. This book is turning out to be a really fun project for me to be a part of.

-jerry
www.epicprops.com

The Threadless Loves Comics Contest!

Hey everyone.
Recently my good friend Cliff Chiang had done a comic themed tee for threadless.com.
The shirt had debuted at the San Diego Comic Con and was a hit!
Honestly, talking to Cliff about it while he was doing it…made me want to do one as well. But I mean…honestly, there is basically no way I could hang with him on something like that. I mean he’s friggin Cliff Chiang!
But lucky me…Threadless was good enough to open up the contest to us commoners. And…I figured I had to take the chance to do a design.

I knew going into it that I wanted to do something a little more cartoonic. And something that would allow me to fully utilize multiple panels. I always thought super heroic drawings on a t shirt looked a little wonky unless it was a silhouette.

Soooooo, I came up with this idea. I call it “The Evil Within”. I thought it would be cool using a innocent looking character having some sort of demonic creature coming out of his “soul”.
I drew the original on a 11″x14″ piece of smooth bristol. Using a 6H pencil to draw it first. I love using 6H pencils as it gives you a light grey clean line. I then used a sharpie pen to “ink” it in. And then finally scanned it in and did the flat colors in Adobe Illustrator. I then did all the textures in Photoshop.
Honestly I’m a little scared entering this contest…as I mean…there are sooooo many talented artists that submit to threadless daily. I’m just hoping to keep it respectable and stay in the game. I read that they will boot your design right off the site if you score very low in the beginning.
So please….please help me make sure that doesn’t happen to me.
And vote for me…HERE!

If this goes well, I’m hoping to get more involved and submit more designs to threadless.

Thanks a lot guys.
-jerry
www.epicprops.com

The Sketchbook Project

Hey everyone!
I’ve recently signed up to take part in The Sketchbook Project. Which is basically a touring art exhibit comprised of multiple sketchbooks. The tour will go through Brooklyn New York, Austin Texas, San Francisco, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago.
Basically anybody can sign up for a fee of $25. You’ll then receive a moleskin sketchbook in the mail. Then you’ll choose a category and fill it up in anyway you want. Complete the book by January 2011 and then mail the sketchbook back to them.
Afterwards your book will go on the tour and finally remain in the Brooklyn Art Library as part of their permanent gallery.
You can also pay an additional $20 to have your entire book scanned and uploaded onto their website.

So I decided to do a book and I chose the theme of “Face in the crowd”. I chose this category for a reason. I want to be able to fill my sketchbook with Asian Superheroes. Much like what I do with my partners Jeff Yang, Parry Shen and Keith Chow when we go speaking at schools and run our “Build a Hero” workshop.
This is where YOU come in!
I’m hoping with the help of some friends, that I’ll be able to reach out to YOU, the reader. And ask you guys to come up with original relevant Asian American Superheroes for me to draw.
What does “relevant” mean?
Well, I’m not looking for some sort of secret agent spy that travels through Europe that happens to be Asian. I’m looking for characters with backgrounds that influence the type of character they have become.
Think about where this character was born and how that effected him/her. How their environment effects the powers he/she may have.
Being Asian American is a unique experience. And I think this is another great way to share our experience with others to give them a better understanding of who and what we’re all about.

Every character chosen will be credited inside the book next to their character’s illustration. And I’ll have the description that you wrote along side my drawing.
Unfortunately I can’t give you the original drawing as I won’t even own the book when it’s all said and done with.
But I will mail out print outs and email you a hi res file of the drawing for you to keep!

So please start sending your ideas to me at: info@epicprops.com

I’ve already asked a few close friends to help kick start things off. With the first two characters coming from Parry Shen and Keiko Agena.

The sketch above I actually drew earlier today to have as the first page of the sketchbook. The pages are only 5″x8.25″. So it’s actually a bit difficult to draw in. And I’ll have to deal with the ink bleeding thru to the following page by using lots of collage throughout the entire book.
I believe there are about 96 pgs in the book. So I’m hoping to get atleast 45 original characters in there.
I hope you guys are excited about this as I am.

To get more info on the project, go HERE.
And to email me your ideas, send them to: info@epicprops.com

Whenever I actually finish the entire book, I was thinking of reprinting the book myself. And selling them myself with a good chunk of the proceeds going to a charity.
But that is a long ways from now. So one thing at a time.
Thanks for hearing me out and hope to hear from you guys soon.
-jerry
www.epicprops.com

Comic Con International 2010!

WHEW!
So it’s all over. Wow. What a week. Where do I begin?
It’s been crazy.
Before I flew to San Diego, I had to go to North Carolina to visit a factory to try to develop new inks for t shirts. Which…was about as much fun as going to the dentist.
While I was there, I had received a Cease and Desist from the Bruce Lee Enterprise.
Which…as you can imagine…is even less fun than going to the dentist.
So I basically went to Comic Con with a lot on my mind.
But the best remedy for stress is to be surrounded by your friends, and that’s exactly where I was this past week. Comic Con itself has less and less meaning to me as each year goes by. But the one thing I can’t help but get excited over, is going there and seeing so many friends in one place.
This year was special to me for a few reasons.
I had the opportunity to have some of my tees listed as Con exclusives in the program. So it was fun being part of that morning rush craziness each day of the Con. And then HoChie Tsai of Taiwanese American was doing a short film interview type of thing of Cliff Chiang, Bernard Chang, Sean Chen and myself. So just being mentioned with those guys was a great honor.

So a lot of people always want to know what goes down as an exhibitor at these things. Basically, it gives us the artists a chance to meet all the people that support what we do and also try to broaden our audience. It gives us a platform to introduce our work to people that might not have ever or would have ever have heard of us. And we do so by either telling them about what we do or showing them what we do. Either by doing some sketches or just having them get some of our products.
Each day is pretty long. There is a lot of prep work involved. But it’s really gratifying when you’re done and have achieved a small level of success when the day is over.
I met a lot of people that I will hopefully have a chance to work with in the near future and I do believe I helped push my brand a little bit more.
So without further ado, I’ll just post some pictures and let them do the talking for me. But before I do that, I’d like to thank all the following people for helping me out this past week. Whether it was helping me at the actual booth or even just through conversation. In no particular order:
- Ken Knudtsen, James Decola, Cliff Chiang, Michael Velasquez, Naoko, Gordon Chu, Marcy Lee, Parry Shen, HoChie Tsai, Bernard Chang, Sean Chen, Brian and Jess Ferrara, Adam Miller, Eric Nakamura, Cate Park, Michelle Borok, Soohee Cho, Lauren King, Christa Bender, John, Michael Le, Dariane Nabor, Stephen Nguyen, Larry Hama, Geof Darrow, Walt Simonson, William Morales

I thought these three Street Fighter costumes took the cake. I hate the store bought costumes. I love when people go the extra mile and paint themselves up and take on the personality of who they’re dressing up as.
But…

…I think this guy was just amazing.

Thanks to Soohee, Lauren and Christa for helping me out at the Con. I still can’t believe what a difference these girls made.

I got to become Parry Shen’s personal photographer…..again….

I don’t know this guys name, but he’s pretty funny.

Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot!

Larry Hama!

I got to eat at Nobu twice last week. I can’t recommend the Flambee Washu Beef with Truffle Miso sauce more. I’m honestly dreaming about it…

And I’ll leave you with a photo of our hotel pool. It was such a nice place to get a drink at the end of the day.
Now, I’m going to sleep for about 72 straight hours…
-jerry
www.epicprops.com

Comic Con International

Hey everyone. As some of you probably know, Comic Con is just around the corner. And I’ll be there with all things Epic Proportions and Secret Identities.
And with each shirt purchased, you’ll get one of these “ep” buttons as a small token of my appreciation.

To sweeten the deal, I’ll be doing free sketches for anybody that wants one each day from 10am-12in the afternoon. It’ll be a good way to force me to wake up each morning.

And my Secret Identities Managing Editor/Actor Parry Shen will be at the booth on Friday and Saturday! Parry will be at the Con promoting his movie Hatchet 2.
And of course I’ll be at my booth 1737 with Ken Knudtsen who will be promoting his new book My Monkey’s Name Is Jennifer.

Also, whenever someone gets a Walter Simonson TRex tshirt, they’ll get these 2 pins for free as well.
One pin will feature Walt’s famous signature and the other will feature the illustration of the TRex.

And as if that wasn’t enough, whenever someone gets a Geof Darrow Shaolin Cowboy tshirt, they’ll also get these 2 pins for free. One being Geof’s “arrow” signature and the other being the illustration used for the shirt.

So definately stop by and say what’s up.
Epic Proportions booth 1737.
-jerry
www.epicprops.com

The 2nd Annual Pan Asian American Games!

So on July 17-18, I’ll be repp’ing Team Taiwan at The 2nd Annual Pan Asian American Games!
My boy Ren Hsieh of Fastbreak NYC was cool enough to let me play on his squad and take part in this tournament.
Apparently Team Taiwan shocked everybody last year and made it to the Finals. Hopefully by adding me to the roster, I won’t hold them back too much.

It has been a WHILE since I last played in a game of any importance. But Ren insists that the squad will be able to piggyback me into glory!
hahahaha

Anyway, I love what Ren is doing with Fastbreak and want to support him in everything he does. Even if it is to stink it up on the court a little.

So check out the Pan Asian Games if you can.
And watch me try to not turn the ball over too much.
-jerry
www.epicprops.com

Next shirt design…

So a little while ago I had written about this illustration I did HERE.
Seriously, I have no real reason to like this drawing so much. But I just do. And I thought long and hard about what I was going to do with it. So I figured, why not just slap it onto a tee?

So here it is.

I’m thinking I’m going to make this shirt when I get back from Comic Con. Meaning sometime in August/September, depending on how long it’ll take me to recover from Comic Con.

This’ll be a 4 color screen job on a navy blue shirt.
Hope people can get behind this as it is pretty different from what I normally do. This is actually more along the lines of what I do at my day job.

-jerry
www.epicprops.com

1 - Most of your fans know you for your work on Thor, Fantastic Four, X-Factor, Batman, Orion and Manhunter among many other titles. But only the good fans know about your passion for dinosaurs. Could you explain a little bit about why you chose to do an illustration of a Tyrannosaurus rex?

Walter -
There are a lot of really cool-looking dinosaurs out there, herbivores as well as carnivores, but I thought for that for my first t-shirt, I’d go with something iconic. And no dinosaur is more iconic than a T.rex. Setting aside the debate about whether or not a T.rex could actually run at a fast pace, they just look great when you draw them that way!

2 - Also, this illustration style looks a little different than the way you handle your normal comic work. How did you approach this piece and how did you know when it was “done”?

Walter -
The original ‘drawing’ for the T.rex image is in fact a collage. Initially I was working through a series of pencil drawings on layout bond, searching for the right angle of view and composition and pose and all that stuff. Several of the drawings weren’t worth developing further, but parts of some of them I liked a lot. Just not as a whole. So I began cutting out the bits I liked, a head here, a torso there, and taping them together. Occasionally, I would xerox the assemblage and then add more drawing onto it. Eventually, I had a running T.rex I really liked. He was missing his feet. Since I wasn’t composing for the page, and the page itself was made up of bits and pieces, I wasn’t concerned about the complete creature in these early stages.

The collage was intended to be the ‘rough’ to show Jerry the direction I meant to go with the finished drawing. However, both he and Weezie liked the drawing so much as it stood that we decided just to go with the rough as the finish. Easier for me! I added some more paper to the bottom of the sheet, drew in the feet, scanned it all, cleaned it up just a little, and we had a finished T.rex.

That was easy.

3 - Could you explain a little about how your signature came to be the silhouette of a dinosaur?

Walter -
Every kid who aspires to be an artist knows that artists have to have cool signatures. When I was in high school, I was already drawing and had been for years. But I didn’t have a cool signature. During the summer between my junior and senior years, I began fiddling around with the idea of reconstructing my last name in the form of an animal of some sort. It was a place to start. I believe my Mom suggested that perhaps I should try fitting ‘Simonson’ into a dinosaur. And that was that.

4 - Do you find doing an illustration for a t-shirt any different than doing an illustration for print?

Walter -
The considerations are a little different. For a t-shirt, I’m looking for a design that functions as a vignette rather than as, for example, a completely composed panel. Basically, I want a drawing that will stand by itself without borders to frame it.

5 -
You originally went to school to study Geology. At what point did you realize you wanted to draw pictures for a living and what lead you to that path?

Walter - It took me awhile. It wasn’t until the very end of my senior year in college as a Geology major that I decided not to go on to grad school. After that, I spent a year working in a bookstore and by the fall after graduation, I decided to give art school a shot. My only other real interest besides dinosaurs was drawing. I’d just never thought of drawing in any form as a career direction. I applied and was accepted at the Rhode Island School of Design where I majored in Illustration. I was already reading a lot of comics, mostly mainstream as that was about all there was at the time. It was while I was at RISD that I became more and more interested in trying to enter the comics field professionally.

6 -
Have there ever been any regrets for not pursuing a career in geology?

Walter - Nope.

7 - So I know and you know that you are going to HAVE to do another t-shirt illustration for me. Care to shed a little light on what this design could possibly be of?

Walter -
Feh. That would be telling. But I plan to do my own version of a character I’m well known for. The Simonson edition.

8 - And finally what is the best way for everyone to find out what you’re working on whether it’s art or writing?

Walter -
I never have managed to establish a website. However, I do have a FaceBook fan page where everyone is welcome. ‘The Official Walter Simonson Page’. I have a series of Galleries posted there that include a whole host of drawings I’ve done over the years going back to about 3rd grade. Pencils, inks, complete pages, individual panels, finished drawings done for charity auctions that have never seen print. And I try to field questions from fans. That’s probably the best place to find me on the web.

You can get the shirt HERE.

Thanks to Walter for taking the time to answer these questions.
-jerry
www.epicprops.com

I graduated!!!

I just thought this was super cool so I had to post this. Just this past weekend I was up in Washington DC with Jeff Yang and Keith Chow doing our Secret Identities thing at The Smithsonian Museum for the Folklife Festival.

Honestly it was an honor for me to just be there. But after we had completed our book signing, Phil Tajitsu had presented us with these Certificates of gratitude. I actually appreciate this piece of paper more than I appreciate my college diploma. As a matter of fact, I have no idea where my college diploma even is.
So I just wanted to say thanks to everyone at the Folklife Festival Staff for making it such a great experience for us.

-jerry
www.epicprops.com

New Logo Tees!

So I’ve been asked from multiple people about when the hell I would just make a tshirt with only my logo on it. And honestly…it just seems like….kind’ve a boring shirt to me is all.
But since Comic Con is coming up in a couple of weeks, I was thinking about making a tee that everyone at the booth would wear that would have the logo on it as well as the website. So I figured maybe it was time to make a “logo” tee.
On the front of this tee, the “ep” logo is made with a cad cut design. Which is different from regular plastisol ink. In fact, it is much more expensive to do and really jacked up the price of these shirts for me. But I really do like the way it looks. And on the back of the shirt going down the “spine” of the wearer, is the word “epicprops.com”.
But honestly, after seeing these shirts in person…I actually really really like them. And I can’t wait to wear one of them out.

Modelling these tees are my friends Jordan Viray and Tanya Kumar. You guys will hopefully be seeing and hearing more about Tanya as she has already begun to help me out with some projects. I’ve been doing all the designs by myself for so long that I’ve wondered if it has made me a worse designer for it. So it’s great having Tanya around to keep me sharp. Plus in a pinch, I can always use her to model the shirts for me! haha
Jordan on the other hand has been telling me what’s up for a little while now. And is a pretty amazing designer of his own. I’m currently trying to sucker him into doing some stuff with me.

Anyway, I’m not exactly sure when I’ll get around to having these tees for sale on the site.
But for now, you’ll see them being worn by the team at every event that Epic Proportions attends.
With the first being at Comic Con!
Comic Con this year for me has an extra special feeling. When I first started exhibiting at Comic Con, I just had this crappy little table all the way in the corner of the floor. After working my way up the ladder there, I got a spot that I L-O-V-E-D right by Small Press. But then for some reason after a couple years in that spot, they moved me to the spot behind it…
Which….was out of the main aisle. But at the very least, I was right next to my good friends at GiantRobot. So even though I was annoyed for the move, at least I got to shoot the shit with the guys over at Giant Robot. And let them show me how real design was done.
But finally…after 4 or 5 long years….I have been moved back to my original spot on the floor.
So please come by booth 1737 if you happen to find yourself surrounded by over 100,000 fanboys in SanDiego and say what’s up.
-jerry
www.epicprops.com
Hope to see you all there!