malandchad.com

Recently, Scott King interviewed me for the cartooning class he’s teaching at UMES, asking me some questions on behalf of the students. Scott King is not just a teacher of the craft, but also a writer of various comics projects, most notably a webcomic called Holiday Wars. Be sure to check it out!

In this interview I turned on screen share to show what I was working on, so you’ll get a chance to see me inking Mal and Chad book 3, Belly Flop! I hope I was able to give the students some kind of insight into cartooning.

A little while after the interview, Scott sent along some fan art that some of his students did for me– so great! It’s awesome to see different artists take on my characters. Thanks you guys!

Thanks again! Until next time…

Here’s a screen shot from a page from Mal and Chad book 3: Belly Flop! that I’m proud of. In this book, I’m trying to up the detail and care I put into each page.

I know I’ve already shown you guys the design for the cover, but don’t think that means the book is done! I still have another 130 pages to draw! It’s been quite stressful with the impending deadline, and even more so now that the preorder for Belly Flop is up on Amazon. It makes me feel like I better finish this book on time or else! It’s definitely crunch time, but I’m trying my best to meet the pace and keep up the quality.

Last week we saw the inked version of the cover of the third Mal and Chad book: Belly Flop! This week I present to you the final, colored version.

I’m pretty bad at working with color, so, like the last cover, it took a lot of iterations to finally get the right color scheme.

The tricky thing is that the cover image is not merely treated as a representative for the interior contents of the book. It also needs to function as an advertisement for the book. As such, it needs to be bright, and eye-catching, like a good ad would be. With the help of my cartoonist friends Josh and Michael, we finally came up with this:

There you go! And look! Mal and Chad: Belly Flop! is now available for Pre-Order on Amazon! The book comes out in December– please pre-order now!

Last week, I showed you all the iterations I went through to finally arrive at this cover design for my third book, entitled Mal and Chad: Belly Flop!

This week, I wanted to show you guys what my cover sketch looked like once I inked it!

Ta-da!

Tune in next week for the final exciting conclusion– the final cover in color!

Hey friends– I wanted to share with you my process for drawing the cover of my next book– the title of which will be, Mal and Chad: Belly Flop!

This week, I’ll share with you the penciling stage. At this point, my main goal is to find a dynamic composition that compliments the text elements as well as catch the eye.

My editor and art director wanted to have Mal falling forward more– to unite the image with the title “Belly flop!” Foreshortening is hard! It took me a long time to figure out how to draw Mal falling forward.

Finally, it clicked.

Any questions about this process? Feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them!

Up next week I’ll show you guys the inked cover.