First things first. The plugs!

There is a great little webisode show that get’s put out by Lazy Horde Productions called “664: The Neighbor of the Beast“. They recently came out with a DVD for sale including all of Season 1. Season 2 however has just launched and can now be viewed here. Go check them out. Good comedy, free for all… what more could you want?

A lot of exciting things have been going on over at Vaute Couture. Products are becoming to come out. Preorders are available. Please go take a look around. Fashion sense and eco-sense no longer have to be exclusive of one another and Leanne is proving it.

Now for my stuff.

I have a new t-shirt design up on Woot. It’s the best scoring I’ve gotten so far. At the time of this posting I’m in 18th place with 124 votes so far. Now granted that a few hundred short of taking the lead… but I’d still like to see how high I can climb with it. I think I can make it to 15th with a little push. So if you see this before Thursday the 11th and you’ve been a customer of Woot.com in the past… then please come vote for my design.

In other shirt news I’ve opened an account on Mysoti and I’ll be posting my t-shirt designs as I format them. I only have 4 up at the moment but it’ll grow quickly.  So if you like my stuff please feel free to swing by.

Last but not least… I’ve put the word out in the right channels to try to get permissions to sell the Vote Sylar poster so now it’s just a matter of keeping on them and trying to get a solid answer. :-) I’ll keep you posted.

The podcast that I co-host with Wes Toma is still running strong. You should go listen if you haven’t already. It’s called Painful Addictions and not only does it have nothing to do with addictions but soon it’ll have a new website to run from. That’s all on that note. :-) 

Here’s my entry for the Project Rooftop contest. You can’t vote on it at all but I thought you’d like to see it since you probably won’t see it on their site. :-D

I built the new costume based on Logan’s history in feudal japan. I figured if I cross build a samurai/motorcycle helmet then I could sneak in the classic mask shape in a justifiable way. I added some light scale plating to round out the samurai feel without giving him any heavy armor since he wouldn’t really need it. Then I threw on a more modern, jacket with an almost japanese student jacket cut and some loose kendo=ish pants all the while keeping the “three line slash” theme which carried onto the jackets back. There is a pretty classic samurai sigil of a diamond cut into quarters. By extending those cuts it creates a simple three claw X symbol.

I also entered a Deviantart.com contest on the theme of good versus evil. I would appretiate it if you went to the entry by clicking here and either marked it as a fav or added it to any of your collections (if you have a deviant art account of course.)

I also did my first pin-up style illustration of Katie as the DC Comics character Black Canary.

I’m also working on some new scripts and characters for another span of web comics. I’ve already started on the characters. Here’s the first two of them.

Last but not least… I’m going to college with the intention of getting a PsyD with a focus on Forensic Psychology. Don’t try to understand it. :-)

Hello stalkers! It’s been a little more than a week since my last big update but a lot has happened since then.  So this is gonna be a fairly long post but I’ll try to label everything easy so you can go to what you want and skip what you don’t care about.

Let’s begin. :-)

First and foremost, I’m in desperate need of new projects to work on. I’ve got way too much free time and way too little money. So if you, or someone you can think of, might be in need of my services please don’t hesistate to say so. I’m available for pretty much anything currently. Book covers, comics, coloring, editorial, story boards, childrens, fashion, portrait, pin up, design, technical, t-shirt, etc. Send me an e-mail at shadedareas.com@gmail.com and let me know.

I have a new store! I had a store set up here locally but I’ve decided, mainly for easy of organization and distribution, to go to Deviantart.com for my print shop needs. While this leaves me at a significant loss in terms of profit, even though the cost of the products and prints is higher than I would likely have charged on my own, the certainty of product quality, delivery time, consistency and thoughtlessness  is a comfort to me.

In any event you can still access the main information of products here on my local site, you will quickly find yourself at deviantart’s site if you start examining what is for sale.

I am a published comic book artist. This started a few weeks ago at the Boston Comiccon (discussed in Painful Addictions EP#028)where we, being the lovely and talented team at Fat Cat Funnies and I, launched the new Small Town Type: King Size anthology. At this point the book is on shelves in many of the Boston area comic book stores. Soon it will be getting distributed and should also be available on the soon to be launched official website for Fat Cat Funnies.

Painful Addictions has been broadcasting pretty steadily. We’re getting ready for a site redesign and our listeners have almost doubled recently which is giving us a pretty strong boost of confidence. We’ll be trying to add new features to the site including a forum, and a video blip section.

In honor of the TV show Heroes coming back to, what I feel is, a more solid nature I’ve revisited an old illustration. Touched it up. Restored it. Updated the graphic design portion and put it up for view. I’m trying to find th proper channels to go through in order to get permission to turn it into a print/product item for my store but I don’t want to jump the gun and risk getting sued.

If you’re a fan of Sylar or Heroes though you may want to keep your eyes and ears here to see if I get this worked out. A lot of people have already expressed interest in a print so there’s not way I’ll just let this slide without inquiring. In any event… I hope you enjoy it.

Last but not least in my news, I finally broke and am using a twitter account. (The story of how I got it is a pretty amusing one and can also be heard on Painful Addictions EP#028.) I’ve been using it for general work related apbs and to announce when new blog posts take place. So watch me if you will. I’ll talk either way and I’m not a big spammer. I just wish there was a way I could participate in conversational tweets without forcing genpop to get flooded by them.

Now that I’m done with all my personal news… I need to plug some friends of the site.

I recently added Ninja Mountain to my sidebar links. These folks are illustrators specializing mainly in the fantasy genre who put out a weekly podcast discussing the professional aspects of illustration work. So if you happen to be an artist in need of a little insight of how to navigate professionally… check them out.

My good friend, and occassional Painful Addictions co-host/repalacement, George over at Lazy Horde Productions just announced the release of the season 1 dvd of 664: The Neighbor of the Beast. I highly reccomend you head over to their site and keep an eye peeled for ordering options.

Also the lovely and brilliant Leanne over at Vaute Couture has been making a lot of little updates and announcements. I think you should all be watching her site for updates on product release, the creation of the art shop and just an all around buzz that’s building in her neck of the woods.

The con was well met. We sold many copies of “Small Town Type: King Size”. I’m working on the Fat Cat Funnies website next week. Hopefully I’ll be getting into another project with Ian shortly.

Due to a trip to NY and Easter happenings Wes and I have failed to record any significant episodes of Painful Addictions but I promise we’ll have something up shortly.

I did a self portrait. Or at least that was the intention. It has become something far more interesting though. See for yourself.

Almost last but not least… There is a shirt up on Woot! today by a lovely lady known as Bootsey. She’s a powerhouse in the shirt networks and for very good reason. She carries milliseconds of genius in abundance and has no flinch with execution. She’s been kind enough to try to help me with my shirt designs through her critiques and wisdom. So I’m gonna take this moment to plug her for my 600 or so regulars. Hopefully, enough of you see this on my site, on my facebook page or through however else you follow my updates to bring her a fast sell out status.

Finally… my latest entry. It’s not doing so well. I could use some voices. If anyone would be kind enough to come with me on this I’d be pretty pleased. Click on the image below to vote for me. (commenting in my entry thread also helps.)

Click to vote!

First off… I just hosted a small seminar at my former high school (Cathedral High School in Boston) on the focuses a professional illustrator or designer needs to have to function professionally versus the ones an artist cultivates for their expressions. It was a very interesting experience as it was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to do anything like this. I’ll likely be talking about it in more detail on the Painful Addictions podcast with Wes Toma next week.

The reason there is no show this weekend is because of scheduling conflicts. On my end it’s Boston Comic Con that’s holding things up. I’ll be there all day tomorrow selling and signing copies of Small Town Type: King Sized for Fat Cat Funnies. I’m hoping to see a lot of familiar faces and catch up with some friends and maybe make some new ones. If you’re in the Boston area and plan on being at the con tomorrow please make a point of looking for the Fat Cat Funnies table and checking out the new issue.

Last but not least I have another new t-shirt entry for the Dinosaur Woot Derby. Please come show me some love. :-)

Batman 2.0 winners were announced. I didn’t make the cut. We’ll see what happens when the honorable mentions get announced later this week.

I have more more T-shirt designs. I REALLY need some support here. Come vote for me. :-)

Threadless <3's Green is below. Two more coming tomorrow.

If you’re interested in purchasing you can either get 8 x 10 photo prints in the SA store or you can go to my ebay auction for the 1 mounted print available.

These will be limited edition prints. All signed and coded.
I need the loot. :-)