This cartoon is based on actual events. (Yes, even that coat.)
(click to embiggen)
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Category Archives: Things I just did
Carolina Moment: Brent Brown – WLOS – ABC
Drawlloween 2015: Days 30 and 31
Day 30: SPIDER
Day 31: DRAGON
I couldn’t help but keep the comic book character theme going until the last day. Spider, of course, made me do Spider-man, and he is fighting on the next page, Iron Man villain, Fin Fang Foom! for the dragon.
click to make larger
That was an enjoyable exercise that, though tedious at times, kept me drawing for a full month and produced some good work. I will likely try to do it again next year!
click to make larger – First half of the challenge
click to make larger Second half of the challenge
Drawlloween 2015: Days 28 and 29
Day 28: BLACK CAT
Day 29: SCARECROW
Yay! More easily-made-into-comics-characters prompts! One Spider-man villain (Felcia Hardy AKA The Black Cat) and one Batman rogue (Dr. Jonathan Crane AKA The Scarecrow) gives a nice bi-partisan Marvel/DC feel to this spread in the sketchbook.
click to make larger
Drawlloween 2015: Days 26 and 27
click to make larger
Day 26: RAT
Day 27: WITCH
Making shape-shifting rodent-man, Peter “Wormtail” Pettigrew and student-witch, Hermione Granger go together in one spread was not a magic trick.
Local Cartoonist on News
2014 Mountain Xpress Halloween Art
In 2012 and 2013, the alt-weekly paper I do a weekly cartoon for, The Mountain Xpress in Asheville, NC, has asked me to come up with and create a Halloween-Election themed cover for that particular week’s issue.
This year, they just wanted Halloween ideas , but local Halloween ideas. So I came up with a bunch, mostly playing on the current “beer city” spate of breweries and such that seem to be cropping up locally.
Then Margaret, one of the editors tells me, “Looks like we’re going a different direction for the cover for Oct. 29, but I like your cartoon ideas for that issue.” So I used some of the ideas for my usual (but not as high-paying as a cover assignment, just the same amount of work) inside cartoon.
For the cover, they ended up not going with a humorous cartoon theme, but rather using a nicely done, local landmarks, spooky cover design from Jason Krekel instead. I think it turned out well, but I kind of wish they had just decided to do that from the beginning, and not wasted my time.
u Asheville Halloween ideas
AVL Halloween ideas for cartoons
Some of the ideas for the cover did end up taking the form of this weekly cartoon, which I spent a lot of time on coloring for best effect. I think it turned out pretty good, but it seemed to garner the same “meh.” response from the public as any other, less work-intensive cartoon I would do, (as far as I can tell from online and social media responses, anyway). Here is a vertical version I made for online use and the actual, horizontal one that ran in the print issue:
finished MX AVL Halloween cartoon 2014 vertical
Horizontal version, as ran in the printed issue. Click to make larger.
2013 Mountain Xpress Halloween Art
Last year I did a Halloween/Election cover (and inside Halloween art) for the local alt-weekly paper in Asheville: The Mountain Xpress. This year, they wanted another one, so I had to come up with a new idea and it was a little harder to try to combine the two. Here are some of the things I doodled and brainstormed on before coming up with the one we used.
The final cover ended up looking like this once the heads and subheads were added:
2013 Mountain Xpress Halloween Cover by Brent Brown
I thought it was funny using the names of actual candies like Mr. Goodbar and Milk Duds to represent candidates that may be good or duds and having the costumed children/voters have to just pick one and hope for the best.
Some people didn’t think it was an original idea, but I promise if it was not, it was unintentional, as I can’t claim to have read every single other publication in every little or big market in the previous decades to make sure we were using something no one had ever thought of before regarding the common occurrence of these two events being so close together!
Anyway, I also drew some inside illustrations, the paper said they wanted. They just meant some bats or cobwebs or something, but I thought they wanted more and spent too much time drawing these classic monsters with appropriate Halloween candy to go inside:
Some of them actually got used!
And finally, my weekly cartoon in that issue needed to be Halloween-related as well (I thought, anyway) and so it turned out like so:
Cartoon by Brent Brown
ahhhhhhh….. GHIC OUT!
I’m interrupting my current spate of blog posts responding to fits of pique, to announce an upcoming fit of geek. Namely the second annual incarnation of our local geek (comics, sci-fi, gaming, general pop culture) festival and/or “con” called, Geek Out!
I missed last year’s inaugural GeekOut, due to commitments to offspring matriculation in other parts of the state occurring simultaneously, but I’m glad to announce that I will be included in the Artist Alley section of the con this year.
Along with offering to draw caricatures in exchange for only some devalued US currency, I will also be selling copies of my new 62-page full-color paperback book. It is a compilation of selected comic strips from the last 5 or so years of my “Land of This Guy” cartoon that has appeared on a mostly weekly basis in the local alt-weekly, The Mountain Xpress. Sure, you probably saw most of them already for free, but here they are printed on good paper instead of awful newsprint and additionally, I supply a director’s commentary on each one as an added bonus feature and page-filler!
I only have 50 copies, so be sure to stop by to get one either signed or not signed, depending on whether you like your reading material defaced with other people’s scribbling inside or not.
Any copies left over will be available for sale here or on any of my other sites and any left over from that will be stuffed into a pillowcase and buried with me when I die, so that I can take the shame of my failure to get even 50 people interested in purchasing a small segment of my life’s work for less than $10 with me to the grave.
So, while I’m still here, come out to Geek Out this Saturday, May 4, 2013 at the Sherrill center at UNC-A from 9:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. and in addition to seeing cool guests and cosplay and a plethora of geeky goodness all in one place, also try to make my life have meant something!
Happy Egg Bunny Day
Why not keep my blog updated as much as my other social media crap, I say to myself? Good idea, I say back to myself, with no quotation marks to hinder the conversation. Why not do it today with that twisted Easter Bunny illustration you drew on your iPad in Procreate yesterday? Hey! Say I, that would be the perfect thing to put there for all me to enjoy, since I’m talking to myself, why not update a blog that only I read for myself as well??
Something Wicked This Way COMES PETER COTTONTAIL