For all of you that have been waiting with bated breath, my new sketchbook has finally arrived and available for purchase by all of you very discerning art fans.

You can either pick it up from me personally at WonderCon where I'll be in Artist Alley (table AA-038) March 29 - 31 or at Big Wow where I'll be May 18 and 19 or you can order a copy through the CTN store where you can also pick up my other sketchbook.

While at those conventions, besides selling books and prints I will also be doing on-site commissions. With my busy schedule I don't always have time for commissions, but it is my practice to take on commissions prior to a convention. I have taken on as many as I can already prior to WonderCon, but I will start taking on more commissions shortly before Big Wow. I'll announce when that will happen pretty soon.
Here are a few of the commissions I'm working on for WonderCon (there are a couple I can't show due to they are planned as surprises - or are NSFW)







Now for the mad rush to get these finished in time for WonderCon so I don't have to work too much on them while there....

I'm the artist for a proposed graphic novel called The Craver. It's a really cool story that features a cool monster design (my design of course), mad scientists and Nazis. The plan is for this to eventually make it's way to film and Doug Jones (of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth fame) is going to play the Craver. I can't imagine anyone that likes monster movies wouldn't like this project.

I'll let you read more about the project here: The Craver. There's details as to what you receive for a specific contribution and there will be updates aplenty.
Here's some of the art of created for the project:






I assume all of you know what Kickstarter is...? If you don't, it's what is called "crowd funding" which means a project is put out to the masses and everyone can contribute and by contributing they can receive some cool rewards as well as helping to get a project they like made. The money you promise to the project is only given to the project if it receives full funding. If it doesn't reach the set goal then no money exchanges hands. This is a really great way for independent productions to get funded without having to go through the usual corporate back and forth.

So go there and contribute. You'll be glad you did...

...and feel to pass this onto anyone that you think might also find this interesting.

I was having a discussion with someone on my "art of..." page on FaceBook about the different face and body types I designed for the ladies of X-Men: Evolution and I thought I would share it here as well.

The obvious reason I designed different body and face types was to help try and create specific personalities for each of them. Though if you're familiar with animation (and comics) you know that's not really necessary since so many other animated shows create cookie cutter faces and body types and just change voices, hair color and costumes to differentiate one character from another. The other reason is because I was inspired early on in the process.

Boyd Kirkland showed me a lot of artwork he admired from comic artists to try and get the ball rolling. Comic artists I was unfamiliar with since I hadn't really looked at comics much since the glory days of Buscema, Kane, Kirby and others from that era. The art he showed me had one particular piece of art by Adam Hughes (who since then I've become quite enamored with). It was this piece he created for Wizard magazine of these super heroines ladies all lined up.



Every one of them had a unique face - and a face I'd never seen before in comics or animation. Even though I greatly admired the great artistic abilities of the legends Buscema, Kane, and Kirby, I recognized that for the most part each of these great artists had an idealized version of a woman they drew and all their women were all basically cookie cutter designs.

I was so impressed with the unique and individual faces Adam Hughes gave each one of these women (as well as their body types) that I decided that was how we should proceed with our show's designs and, thankfully, Boyd agreed.
From that point on I strove to make Jean different from Rogue who was different from Kitty and they were different from Mystique/Raven who was different than Storm.





This carried on into the second season when we introduced Boom Boom and the other new recruits.




Jean was more athletic and had a runner's figure and wasn't very large on top while Rogue didn't have much of a butt even though she was very busty ( in fact she was the bustiest of the girls). Kitty was very slender and somewhat gawky while BoomBoom had a more curvaceous bottom though her bust was pretty non-existent.
The details on their faces that made them different from one another are too many to really list, but I will say that almost all of them had different head shapes, types of lips and often different eyes and noses.


I also carried this through with the guys as well, but that's not quite as unusual in animation - or even comics.
This idea also followed through when I designed attitude poses for each character and their walk cycles. No one was ever posed or moved the same way. They were all unique and kept in character as i perceived it.

Needles to say the KidsWB execs were happy to see that not every female was built like a Playboy bunny.
Of course, by the time the animation came back from overseas some of that was lost, but I think enough of it still came through that it was clear to most of the audience we had tried to do something a little different....

Well, here I am blogging again - and it's only been a (relatively) short time since my last blog. Who'da thunk it, eh? I figured this time I'd give you a little of this and a little of that...
Last night was the Animation Guild holiday party so I guess the holiday season is officially over now. I believe they have the party so late after the real holidays so that they can get a good deal on a venue (the Gene Autry Museum near the LA Zoo) and since they're spending union dues they have my blessing on that. It was good to see old friends, meet some new people and just to be amazed at how big the animation community has grown. I recall union parties that were held in rooms no bigger than my living room without any crowding. Last night the upstairs and downstairs foyers of the museum were so crowded with people that several strangers probably left on more intimate terms than they arrived.

Just some small updates since last time.
I'm still working on new sketchbooks, etc I have a lot of more material then I originally thought so I'll have to weed through the folders and decide what works and what doesn't - and try to avoid too much overlap (not always easy) accept for the compilation book of the two Expressions & Attitudes books, of course.
Still working on development of the Captain Action series (did I mention that before...?) and that's coming along very nicely. If you want to see the teaser we created for last year's San Diego Comic-Con you can check it out here. We've come considerably farther than that, but I still like to watch this occasionally for inspiration...

The next season of NFL Rush Zone (that's the current show that I'm one of the directors on - as well as part-time designer) is starting up soon and I'm going to spend some time working up some walk cycles and other types of stuff that there never seems to be enough time for in the chaos of a first season. Even though our first season was technically the second season since the real first season were webisodes that were put up on the internet.

I'm still working on those graphic novels for Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics and the announcement about the secret project that I spoke of last time should be pretty soon. Here's another sample drawing I did with that in mind:


I've also started to do some work on some pages for a noir/crime comic for my friends at House of Secrets. They're the guys that put together my latest sketchbook (which is available at Stuart Ng Books and at CTN's Store as well as at House of Secrets.Come on, you knew I was going to plug that somewhere, right?)

I'm also currently working on a couple of new HarperCollins books. One features the JLA fighting Starro and another features the Green Lantern - not the film version, but the comic version. A Man of Steel adaptation that my son is working on the color for should also be coming out at the same time as the film hits theaters.

One last thing for now...someone asked for a specific page from one of my HarperCollins books that they could use for a wallpaper that they couldn't find on-line. So I thought I'd post it here (I'm quite the giver)...


Added: I should mention that I stole the title of this particular post from a song by Allan Sherman. An old recording artist I highly recommend if you enjoy song parodies...and Jewish humor.

...and Happy New Year!!
One of my (many) New Year resolutions is to blog more frequently so those of you that don't follow me on FaceBook (and even those of you that do) can keep up with what I'm doing. Assuming I can keep up,with what I'm doing, of course.

First up this year in addition to the other Graphic Novels I'm working on (ERB's The Eternal Savage and the Curse of the Werewolf of Paris) I'll also be working on an additional soon-to-be-announced secret project with many other artists for Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics and written by Martin Powell.
Here's a couple of teasers I did for it:




Now to bring you all up to date, I'm currently I'm still working on NFL's Rush Zone (on NickToons) and waiting for the next season to start.
I'm also working on a couple of kids books for HarperCollins featuring DC characters and I'm planning a new sketchbook or two. My original two (Expressions & Attitudes 1 and 2) sold out and the only one I have available is the The Art of Steven E Gordon that you can purchase at the CTNX marketplace for 11ドル.95.
I think one of the new sketchbooks will be a compilation of the first 2 sketchbooks for those of you that missed them as well as adding some new material. I also might create a sketchbook that includes mostly my convention sketches.
I'm also thinking about self-publishing a children's book, that my wife helped me create, that is pretty independent of anything else I've done.

Needless to say this should be a pretty busy year for me....

I felt I needed to blog a little bit about how it went at CTNX since I cajoled everyone into going.
This was my second year having a table and selling books and doing commissions and I know now that the first year wasn't a fluke. Not only did I sell out of my first two books (Expressions & Attitudes 1 and 2), but I sold quite a few of my new one, drew several commissions and got to meet a lot of very talented students and some old friends and fans.
This is easily one of the most professional conventions I've been too and that's even more impressive when you consider that this is only its fourth year. If you are interested in animation and want a chance to meet some of the big names (and not so big names like me) in animation, listen to lectures, see demos and check out art schools then this is the con for you. And if you want to try and break into the industry then you absolutely need to go to get advice from professionals and to get your portfolio reviewed by artists and studios.

Here are a few of the commissions I drew up at CTNX this year:





Sorry about the quality of these...I opted to use my phone instead of my usual portable scanner....

If you're interested in animation in any way - whether as someone in the business already, a student or just a fan - then this is the convention/expo for you. It's in Burbank (the heart of the animation industry) and all the info is available at this link


Animation expo


This convention has been a huge success and is easily one of the best I've attended. There's lots of great panels and speakers - something for everyone.

I'll have a table there selling my sketchbooks (including my new one), prints (like the ones below) and original Convention Commissions.



SO, if you do make it to CTNX swing by my table (T108) and say "hi".

Yep, I know it's been a very long time since my last post, but since I post so often on FaceBook (and sometimes on Twitter) I feel like I've remained in contact with most everyone - more or less. And the longer I went without posting here the more awkward it seemed to do it, but I guess I need to just jump right back into the water and start again. I will make more of an effort and I apologize to any that have gotten annoyed with my lack of postings...

So here we go with a brand new post:

I've been very successful for the last few years selling my two sketchbooks, Expressions and Attitudes 1 and 2, but those have pretty much sold out and so I got together with the fine folks at House of Secrets in Burbank and we co-produced my next sketchbook which you can see below.
It's different than the last two in several ways. There's color in it and less emphasize on expressions, attitudes and model sheets, and it's cheaper! 11ドル.95 for 60 5x8 pages (shipping is additional, of course)


Feel free to e-mail me or contact me if you'd like a copy and we can arrange it via PayPal.

BTW any of you that don't follow me on Twitter and FB probably should. My FB fan page is: https://www.facebook.com/StevenEricGordon and my Twitter account is: twitter@s_e_gordon

...and a good cause.

I know it's been quite awhile since I last blogged and I will blog again to bring you all up to date a little later, but in the meantime this seemed somewhat time sensitive....

As many of you know (or have surmised by now) I've been an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan since I just about started reading. One of my favorite series of his was the John Carter of Mars series. This was even before I started to see Frazetta's wonderful and sensual depictions of the characters in these books. I first started to collect the books with the Abbett covers.



It wasn't just the images that captivated me but the excitement and swashbuckling derring-do as well as the romance. If asked I'd have to say that ERB's sense of right, wrong and romance had a lot to do with shaping my way of thinking and treating women.
Over the years I'd tried my hand at drawing these wonderful characters and after entering the world of animation there always seemed to be plenty of opportunities to talk about the possibility of working on a feature based on A Princess of Mars. At one point I even worked out a Thoat run cycle that (if I recall right) was pretty decent and towards the end of production on Fire & Ice, Ralph Bakshi said he was in discussions with ERB, Inc. about producing a John Carter of Mars feature. Ralph said he wasn't interested in directing it (just producing it) so he approached me and another animator (my friend, Bruce Woodside) about directing on it. The budget was going to be minuscule and it all hardly seemed feasible. Thankfully, in retrospect, it all fell through for one reason or another. Even though it would've been exciting to do this (small budget or not), I suspect it would've been a major disaster and disappointment to ERB fans - including myself.
Since then I'd always kept the idea of a Barsoom film in the back of my mind and always thought it would make a great film if done right. Needless to say I kept track of all the various incarnations of who was currently working on developing it and when that would fall through and so on. So when Andrew Stanton finally took the project past development and to filming I was cautiously optimistic. Unlike many film fans (especially animation fans) I had issues with Stanton's Pixar films (Finding Nemo and Wall-E) and could argue to death why I thought they didn't work, but everything I read about his take on Barsoom gave me the feeling he was on the right track. Even the really bad marketing (or lack of ) couldn't deter me away from seeing this film when it finally premiered. I convinced my wife and oldest son to go with me using the lure of easy popcorn and candy.



Perhaps I was primed to like the film anyway (though I was braced for major disappointment), but I did find this film to do everything I had hoped it would. I was ecstatic and willing to see it again and again and that's something I can rarely say about any film. I was surprised to find that my wife really liked it as well and wouldn't mind seeing it again - this is really not her type of film at all.
I'm not saying the film is perfect in every way (what film is?), but it gets so much right that the minor flaws are completely overwhelmed and not even worth dwelling on in my opinion. The most important part is they got the TONE right. The feel of a pulp adventure with a sense of wonderment and romance. They also got the most difficult part right: Dejah Thoris. Even though she is an iconic character that every fan-boy worth his salt has an opinion on I hardly expected her to really work. But she does. In spades. If you need an excuse to see this film, Lynn Collin's performance is reason enough. Her acting is absolutely worth the price of admission alone. I hope Ms Collins gets an Oscar nomination, but I rather doubt the acting branch will acknowledge what she accomplished here.



Anyway, enough of the long-winded fan-boy prelude and time to get to the meat and bones of why I'm posting this and titled this post as I did.
Disney so screwed up the marketing on John Carter (in ways too numerous to discuss here), as I'm sure all of you know by now, appears to be a flop in the domestic Box Office and the chances of a sequel being made are pretty slim. So a bunch of fans that are as equally ardent as I am (maybe even more so, if possible) have started a Face Book page called Take Me Back to Barsoom and a petition to try and persuade Disney into greenlighting the planned sequels to John Carter.

Here is the link for the FB page - if you're a fan, and on FaceBook, I encourage you to join this group. There's lots of good people and discussion (as well as bellyaching) there.



And here's a link to the petition which was created to help show Disney the fans' desire for sequels to be made - it only takes a second to sign.

feel free to post your own thoughts here if you'd like, but I'd rather not get into any arguments if you disagree with me....you're obviously wrong and I don't have the time to educate you (just kidding, of course).

...Jim McClain and Blaze Rocket who correctly identified the original inspirations for the character designs for three of the X-Men: Evolution characters. Jim correctly guessed Rogue was inspired by Xenia Seeberg from Lexx and Wanda was inspired by Fairuza Balk of the Craft and Return to Oz. Blaze Rocket correctly identified BoomBoom's original inspiration as singer Gwen Stefani of No Doubt fame


For all their effort I promised to do a drawing of a character of their choosing. Blaze Rocket chose Wanda and Jim asked for a drawing of Jean in her normal uniform and what she would look like if she had ever turned into Phoenix on X-Men: Evolution. Before the questions or misunderstandings start I want to make clear that this design is just something I came up with to respond to Jim's request and was not something that was ever considered all those years ago on XME







So congratulations and thank you to Jim and Blaze Rocket for playing along. I might try this again sometime in the future since there were many more characters that were inspired by celebrities in XME as well as on The Ultimate Avengers.

This is a commission I'm working on of the XME bad girls. This is the first rough drawing for it and the tight rough that I transferred to an 11x17 board. I'll also post the next steps as I finish them.




I posted this on Facebook the other day and it received a lot of attention and a few curious people asking who they were. I'm sure everyone coming to this blog recognizes them so that's not an issue. I'm also sure many of you have heard me discuss the fact that many of the XME characters were based on actual people - celebrities to one degree or another. I then asked if anyone could guess what celebrities these were based on ...and I was surprised no one really tried to guess. So I even offered up a clue: One's from an old Sci-Fi show (I think BBC), one was an actress in 2 iconic movies and the other was based on a popular singer.
Of course, you need to keep in mind when XME was on TV, but at least one of the celebrities is still somewhat in the public eye.
Anyone willing to venture a guess?

Just to sweeten the pot I'll do a sketch for the winner of any XME character they choose and post it on this Blog.


And just for fun here's another commission I'm working on as well of Rogue and Gambit.

At the suggestion of my Art Director, Michael R. Hudson, I did a little tweaking to the colors of the promo piece for The Eternal Savage and added some more fauna and such. Definitely looks better, eh?
THE ETERNAL SAVAGE will be a Graphic Novel Adapted by Martin Powell and illustrated by me. Authorized by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. Coming your way soon from Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics

What do you think?


And here it is with the appropriate log and credits.

First I want everyone to know that my Holiday sale will continue until the end of the year, so if you're interested in any of the pieces still listed in my FaceBook gallery let me know. For those of you that don't do FB, you can look around on this blog (or my web-site's sketchbook page) and feel free to ask about any of the art you see there - though I can't guarantee they're all available for one reason or another. The FB page gives an accurate listing of what's still available for sale, but feel free to ask anyway.
Also I want everyone (that haven't already discovered it on their own) to go check out the latest incarnation of my web-site/portfolio . The old one was great (created by my good friend Francesco Francavilla) and did what I needed it to do, but it was getting old and dated looking so I finally found someone to give the site a fresh new look. Even though it's not complete yet I think he's succeeded wonderfully and I'm very happy with the results.

Okay, now that I've finished with business (more or less) I'll get onto something a little more fun. I've already posted this in several spots, but I wanted to make sure all of you got a good look at this as well. I finally finished the color for the promo piece for The Eternal Savage based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ THE ETERNAL SAVAGE as adapted by Martin Powell and illustrated by me (authorized by ERB, Inc. and published by Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics).
And so I continue my quest to be the oldest person to start a career in comics.




And here;s the black and white for that art.

For the first time I'm selling a lot of my original pencil (and some ink) sketches for the Holidays. Many of these were the drawings I did for Fan Request Friday.
You can view all of them on FaceBook on my "Art of..." page (just click on the link) and just message me to see if a piece you'd like is available and to arrange payment (through PayPal), The range from 45ドル to 100ドル +postage.

Yesterday I was alerted by Wren Price that one of my commissions had been copied and posted on Deviant art.

Oddly enough I've found myself with a little more free-time than usual and I'm not sure why.
I just finished a quick turnaround on a HarperCollins Batman book and I'm starting the next one (can anyone say Man-Bat?) and I'm still working on a Young Justice storyboard assignment as well as all my normal day to day duties on Voltron Force.
But I still manged to create a banner for CTNX (and probably other Cons afterwards - if I can get a table),...


...finish a long overdue commission based on a Fan Request Friday drawing of Spike and Buffy (Spuffy)...




...and do these 2 drawings for the FOCer's SketchBlog. Well, actually one of the drawings (pterodactyl) was done for the graphic novel I'm gearing up for and seemed like a good reason to use as a entry in the dinosaur theme week.


And this other drawing for the FOCer's Sketchblog was done for the Golden Age of Comics theme week. My choice was Miss Masque and as many of you know from reading this blog I have a soft spot for these Golden Age Heroines.


So overall I've filled in the free-time voids pretty decently I'd say. This coming week looks like I'll be able to wrap a couple of other projects I've been working on as well. I hope.
And remember to come to CTNX and say "hi". If you haven't already gotten your tickets you can still get them at a discount by using my discount code: GORANIX11

Animation expo