Well, we've been in our new house for about a month and a half now and things are finally settling down. We had lots of problems with basic necessities like electrical, hot water, phone (TONS of problems with Bell and then Rogers), & Internet.

I'm slowly getting into the swing of this working from home thing. It's got its pros and cons obviously. Overall the whole family is happy to be in London.

I'm also back at the drawing board! A friend, fellow cartoonist Zach Worton asked for a sketch from me about a year ago! I finally got around to it this month, and since it is so late I did a fully finished one for him. He's a fan of the Canadian painter Norval Morriseau and I found a really awesome old photograph of him looking very James Dean like that I did the drawing from.

Happy New Year 2008!
Sorry for the lag in between posts but December has been a very busy month for me! Dave got a great job offer in London, Ontario, and we have both quit our jobs in Toronto and sold out house already.

Rosie has gotten into our #1 pick for daycare (after much time and persistence on our part), and now we are house hunting in London. A goal in moving to London is to be closer to my family (my mom especially who's crazy about Rosie and vice-versa), to get away from the bustle of Toronto which we're kind of sick of, and to provide a more relaxed environment for Rosie to grow up in.

Another goal was for me to be able to devote more time to my artwork and comics in particular! It's been very hard with a 50-hour/week job, plus a toddler and a husband (who I like to see) to get much time to work on my artwork, but hopefully you will notice an increase of updates here of more art-related postings. Other than that, we'll see where the wind takes me.

Way Off Broadway
Here is some artwork of a recent commission I did for the "Way Off Broadway"singers. This is a singing duo from London who do local gigs and wanted an illustration to use on their CDs, business cards and marketing material. They wanted caricatures of their likenesses along with an image that showed that they're fun guys who don't take themselves too seriously.

Initially I did a drawing of both charaters running away from a Broadway sign (from their name - Way Off Broadway), and I tried to put equal emphasis on both. The client Abe, correctly pointed out that really both should be running in the same direction away from the sign.

Initial drawing












This meant that one character would be in the foreground though, and the other in the back. To try to keep an equal weighting on both I made Jeff substantially taller (which from the photos it looks like he is in real life), plus with cartoons you always have the license to exagerate features somewhat. Below is the final piece which I was quite happy with and the client too!

Final piece as approved by client














Rosie Stories Review
Lastly, Shawn Hoke recently gave my Rosie Stories mini a new review at his site.

Trampoline Hall

Monday night I was one of the cartoonists participating in Trampoline Hall, studiously documenting the speakers and the surroundings. Because of construction happening around Fort York as well as a film shoot, most of the streets were blocked off and I had a heck of a time trying to find the place.

I left myself time to get lost (since this is a regular occurrence for me), but was still in a panic after driving around aimlessly for 20 minutes and getting near empty in the gas tank. Finally I ended up picking up 2 other lost souls whose cab dropped them off on foot, because he gave up finding it, and together we got followed another car who was driving around looking for the event.

Teamwork saved the day and it made it just on time! It took me awhile to settle down, but once I did I really enjoyed myself. Here's the sketches I did during the evening. Click on the images for larger versions.













Fellow cartoonist Brian McLachlan and Zach Worton.


















Host Misha Glouberman



















Fellow cartoonist, (Reverend Aitor I think)? I was frankly more fascinated with the audience and the other cartoonists than the speakers. This gentlemen in particular had such a neat look that I ended up drawing him multiple times. Steve Manale suggested I do a montage of him.





























































The final speaker was a bit trying, he was getting so outrageous that people were starting to laugh out loud at some of his comments like the one here.

What I've done is more realistic in style, but lots of other people like Steve Manale and Johnny Martz were doing full-blown comics of the event. The Immonens were doing one-panel gags that looked so awesome that I was green with envy.

Becky Jonson who curated the evening is gathering all work done that evening into a zine which will be available this Sunday at Canzine as well as The Beguiling.

Below is a photo of me at the event (stolen from Kathryn Immonen's Flicker stream). Note my Spider-Man pencil case on the floor under my chair.

Upcoming Comics Events

I'm in a couple of comic related events in the next couple of weeks that are pretty neat that you should all check out if you have the chance.

Monday, October 22nd, Trampoline Hall
Created by author Sheila Heti, Trampoline Hall is a literary salon where each month, non-experts talk about subjects they are obsessed with.
This month, Trampoline Hall is temporarily uprooting itself and moving to Fort York's barracks, and will feature a bevy of Toronto area cartoonists. A bunch of us will be live sketching and documenting the evening and the event's speakers: Leaf Buckareff (on Hyberbolic Crochet), Waylen Miki (on Robotism), & Jakob Zimmer (on Diverse Curiosity). This should be a pretty fun evening. Tickets are $5.00, and it all starts at 8PM.

Confirmed cartoonists include: Zach Worton, Arthur de la Cruz, Ben Shannon, Steve Manale, Emily Holton, Shannon Gerard, Kagan McLeod, Roxanne Bielskis, Diana Tamblyn, Reverend Aitor, Stuart Immonen, Katherine Immonen, Blair Kitchen, and Jeff Lemire.

Sunday, October 28st - Canzine
I’ll have a table at Canzine this October 28th, at the Gladstone Hotel.

$5 at the door gets you the new Horror Issue of Broken Pencil Magazine (organizers of the event) and access to hundreds of zines, mini-comics, all-day horror screenings, DIY workshops, readings, and all sorts of other stuff. So drop by and say hello!

Finally, Diverging Comics recently did a pretty long interview with me and you can read it here.

The Rosie Stories Now Available for Order!

Hey everyone, I updated the comics section of my site and The Rosie Stories is now available for order through Paypal (you can also order from me directly, just check out the contact section of my site).

If you live in Toronto, you can pick it up at The Beguiling, or Comics and More.

There is already a review of it up on Diverging Comics here.

Dave's Nerd Heroes Moment
In other news, Dave was lucky enough recently to get a wristband for a copy of the Heroes DVD from Best Buy which allowed him to be one of 100 people to get their DVD signed by cast members who came to Toronto for the "Heroes World Tour". In the Toronto stop, the following were there: Noah Gray-Cabbey (Micah), James Kyson Lee (Ando), Zachary Quinto (Sylar), Dania Ramirez (Maya) and Jeph Loeb (co-executive producer/writer).

We were of course the most excited about Jeph Loeb, and though they said they would only sign the DVD - Dave took down an original Tim Sale Long Halloween page off of our wall that morning and took it with him to try to see if Jeph would sign it (we already had it signed by Sale).

Jeph was really gracious and apparently was really pleased that Dave was interested in meeting him (as most people were fawning over the cast). He had Dave stand behind the table and had a runner go get a pencil to sign the page with because he didn't want to use his gold sharpie. He even pointed out the page to the cast at the table. Dave was pretty thrilled.

A few days later, reading an article in the Toronto Star I noticed that the photo accompanying the article featured Dave getting his DVD signed by Ando! This even went out on the wire on Reuters! In the background, you can see our page in front of Jeph Loeb (highlighted in red by me in Photoshop). A true nerd moment. You can read all about on Dave's blog here.