Heroes Con 2011

I'm heading to my 20th-something Heroes Convention this weekend and I can't wait! I almost screwed up and wasn't going to make it, but I know I'll regret it forever if I miss seeing everybody. It's more like a family reunion to me now (besides being the best comic book convention on Earth) so I can't miss seeing all my old friends.

This year I'm not going to set up as I usually do. I'm mostly going to float around and catch up with as many folks as I can. But, I will be sketching to raise money for the Mike Wieringo Scholarship for a few hours each day. So, just look for this banner in the 400 aisle:

I'll be there hanging out with Matt Wieringo and his lovely wife Suzanne in the afternoons. This will be the only place where I'm doing any sketching. Probably $30 for a sketch and all money goes to Mike's scholarship. Please drop by!

My good pal Randy Martin will be set up in Booth 813 with tons of great artwork for sale. Look for the Mighty Nib Original Art banner. Randy will have a lot of my original art from my comic work available there at the show, so you might catch me there, too. I'll try to tweet out where I'm going and what I'm doing, so go follow me on Twitter if you want to keep track. If you need me to sign some books, just give me a shout!

Looking forward to seeing everybody!

Hey, West Coast!

I'll be signing Vinylmation and hopefully meeting a bunch of Nightmare Before Christmas folks this Friday at D-Street in Downtown Disney at Disneyland!  There'll be a ton of Nightmare vinyl coming out, and I'll be around to sign all I can -- honestly, they'll have to run me off with the stick!

I haven't been to California since the San Diego Comic Con in 1994 with Marvel -- jeez!  I'm really looking forward to it.  So, come out and say hello if you're around and I'll introduce you to Vinylmation!

Linkage!

Hope to see you there!

New Marvel collections

I got some new books in from Marvel last week. Nice collections of some of the stuff I've done in the past. First up is this Excalibur paperback:

Excalibur Visionaries: Warren Ellis Vol. 2

Hard to believe I was 19-20 when I worked on this stuff! Hopefully I got a little better in past 16 years. It is weird to flip through this and have instant recall of what I was doing or listening to while drawing particular pages. Lots of memories of David Bowie and Richard Case! Loud, late-nite drawing with my buddy.

Nice to see these new colors on the Pacheco cover! Looks great. This is the first time Warren's Excalibur is being collected, so I'm glad to see it. Volume 3 will have the majority of my run, but this one has my first 3 issues.

Also new, is this giant Exiles TPB:

Exiles Ultimate Collection Book 5

I've only got 1 issue in this big book but it was fun to look through. I'll be curious if they continue with these Ultimate Collections through the Jeff Parker run where I drew a lot more. We'll see.

We have explosive

Another commission wrapped up. I think I'm actually going to color this one, so here's a look with some flats in place. The guy who got me to do this was very cool and let me have a lot of fun on it. He was also a Wipeout XL fan from back in the day, so that was brought up as inspiration. That soundtrack from back in the 90's was always great inspiration while drawing Excalibur, so it was fun to revisit it. Great memories of those times with Rob and David when they were in Greensboro. Hard to believe it was so long ago!
By the way, I've discontinued the old casey@caseyjonesart.com email address, so from now on please use the .mac address (if you email me!). Thanks!

Happy FCBD!

Thinking of good memories! Hope everyone has a great one!

-Casey

Artifacts

I've been going through a bunch of old paperwork in the past few weeks and found a bunch of my old contracts and letters from when I was first starting out in comics. I read a ton of biographies, and for whatever reason, I love seeing pictures of the actual artifacts from time gone by -- stuff like old telegrams, letterhead, check stubs, etc. It's the stuff no one sees unless they were around long ago or had similar careers. So, I thought I'd share some of the stuff I dug up.

Here's my first page rate at Marvel that good ol' Bob Harras set up for me. A lot of people badmouthed Bob after he was let go, but he was always true to his word with me and treated me well. And, he put me on Excalibur, so of course, I think he is truly brilliant.

And my first paycheck from Marvel. You have to love a company with John Romita artwork on all their stationary and checks.
You kids today don't know how lucky you have it with Marvel's new "direct deposit" accounting. Holy crap. I could write ten pages about how AMAZING this is. No more long walks to the mailbox to come back empty-handed -- no more being at the mercy of the postman! I was almost in tears when this went into place a few years ago. Go kiss Joe Quesada the next time you see him and say "thanks".

Studio Tour

Well, I finally vacuumed the studio, so I took some pictures to prove it. I always enjoy peeking into other people's studios (especially artists in other countries), so here's a look at mine. I hope you like the tour!
I try to get rid of anything I don't need. Clutter distracts me, so you won't find much here. I have 2 work stations -- the traditional desk for drawing and the Mac/Cintiq for digital files. The Cintiq is an amazing machine and it's made doing digital inking and rendering so much easier.
Here's a shot of the Left side of the studio. Lots of comics, mostly. This is all mainstream stuff -- nice to have close-by for reference. I have all the art books and black & white stuff in the house.

My drawing table is an old layout desk from Disney's Florida studio. It's a giant lightbox on a hydraulic lift, which is great for the work I do. They were used for doing backgrounds for the films (this one was used on Mulan, Lilo and Stitch, and Brother Bear). After they closed the studio, they sold off the desks and I bought mine from the artist who worked on it (he's all digital now and just didn't use it). It's sad. As happy as I am to have the desk, I would much rather it still be sitting in the Feature Animation building.
Closer shot of the work area. I've got the extra Dazor lamp on top of the book shelf there -- works great for working nights. That's a poster that a friend of mine did for The Dead Weather on the wall (for one of the shows in Europe). Can't wait to see them next month.
Swinging right, you can see the computer workstation. I got the Anthro desk about 4 years ago, and I'm really happy with it.
Further to the right, you can see the Marvel Masterworks. Those came in very handy while drawing Exiles -- Parker popped in a million cameos. I got started on those about 5 years ago -- my main write-off for the year.
Closer look on the computer. I generally pick up one big thing to write-off each year. Large format scanner, Cintiq, Mac, Anthro... after 15 years of doing this, I've accumulated most everything I need.
The last thing I got for the studio -- a couch! Now I can have visitors and they don't have to sit in the floor.
I'm lucky to have a little kitchen and bathroom as part of the studio. Mainly for coffee and cleaning up from inking or painting. It's handy.

So, that's the tour! For the record, the coolest studio I've ever seen is Joe Quesada's. But, I'm pretty happy with mine, and considering how much time I spend in here... it's nice to have it set up the way I want it after all these years.