Knights...

Okay, so Knights of the Old Republic is finally out there. Yesterday I completed my semi-regular ritual of buying my own issue at the comics store instead of waiting for the freebies I get from Dark Horse Comics a while later. It was a ritual that I picked up from a mentor of mine, Dave Finch, when I was a penciling assistant. He took pride in the fact that he could walk into a comic store and pick up an issue that he had actually worked on-- it was something he always thought about doing before he became a pro. Anyways, I guess I picked up on that and adopted his ritual. So if there's anyone who lives near the Pasadena area and likes signed stuff, I signed about 20-25 copies of KOTOR at the Comics Factory. It's a great comic store and has a bunch of good guys to help you out.

Above is a pic of two versions of the Snivvian species-- one from the original SW movie, A New Hope and the other by me from KOTOR#1. As you can probably tell, I took artistic license with him and made him a little "cuter" than the movie version. C'mon, that movie one is pretty ugly right? And what is he? A pig, a hippo?


-B

The Ricky Gervais Show

I'm a little obsessed with this guy right now... his two shows, The Office and Extras, and now his podcast are three of the funniest things I've ever seen or listened too. The podcast is probably the easiest thing to check out-- it's free! Ricky and his co-host, Stephen Merchant (co-creator of The Office and Extras), spend all their time making fun of the third wheel, Karl. Karl has so many idiotic ideas and some strange obsession with monkey stories-- it's too difficult for me to explain-- just download the podcast and listen for yourself.



-B

Artists-Allied

I've been invited to be a part of Artists-Allied-- a cery cool site that lets people know what the Star Wars artists are up to. Be sure to check it out. Big Thanks to Grant Gould for the invite and hooking me up.


-B

BTW, the image here is what it looks like from my drafting table-- Struzan artwork all over the walls :)

KOTOR's creative team...

For any fans of the Dark Horse Star Wars line on Comics, or fans of the Expanded Universe in general, or just fans of comic books-- our first issue of Knights of the Old Republic hits the stands next Wendesday (Jan 25th). The whole creative team is really excited about it all and I just wanted to mention who is exactly on the creative team.

First up is our writer, John Jackson Miller. He's a big dog over at Krause Publications-- they produce the Comic Buyer's Guide (CBG) and Scrye (it's a gamer's guide). He's also written a couple of titles over at Marvel -- Iron Man and Crimson Dynamo. John brings a lot to our book-- he has a real love for the Original Star Wars movies and he's trying to bring that flavor to KOTOR. That broad range of characters that don't always get along, that sort of vibe. Check out John's site.

Next is our colorist, Mike Atiyeh. Mike has been doing great things with the colors on this book. He's had a hand in finishing off all the character and prop designs for KOTOR. It's hard for me to descibe how happy I get when Mike sends me the finished colors for each page. When I hand it in it looks something like this:



















And after Mike gets through with it, it looks like this. Pretty damned cool, huh? Anyhow, that's pretty much my reaction when I get the pages back. In addition to working on KOTOR, Mike will also be working on the DC comic, Warlord, with Bart Sears ( very cool!).




















Our covers are being handled by Travis Charest. Can't tell you how psyched I am that Travis is doing our covers! Thanks to guys like him and Adam Hughes, who keep raising the quality of comic art, I can maintain my inferiority complex. Be sure to check out his artwork at this site. Here are his first two covers!




















Thanks,

-B

the evil puppy

I couldn't resist popping in the picture of my dog, Luke. He's in our backyard roaming around in the dirt-- he's a small 24 pound dog and yet in this picture he looks like he's in the wild stalking his prey. Fans of Conan O'Brien will get the "Evil Puppy" reference. It was one of his new characters he revealed last week and he put a small Golden Retriever puppy on a chair made of skulls and bones and played dark opera-type music in the background.. very cute and funny.

Our Heroes...sort of

It's been too long since my last post. A lot of fun things have happened since. I got sick twice during the Holidays -- once during Thanksgiving and the other after Christmas (Hey, it's fun to be around a lot of coughing and sniffling nephews and nieces) but still, it was nice to be around family and eat great food.

The Rose Parade, which I've never seen live although I've always lived within 25 minutes of the parade route, was rained on for the first time in 50 years.

The Lakers went on a monster win streak in December (winning 9 of 11) and a big fat losing streak in early January (losing 5 in a row).

I haven't been able to show any new art recently. The problem is that all the drawing I'm doing is on Knights of the Old Republic and I can't show any of that stuff yet. But with the first issue coming out in about 11 days (January 25th, I think) I thought it would be nice to share what our heroes (well, at least our protagonists) look like. So the above shot is a glimspe at our young Padawan, Zayne (left) and his Snivvian counter-part, Gryph (right). They're not typical of any of the characters we have seen in the prequel movies (since most of the characters in those were either politicians or skilled Jedi) but just might remind you a little of the characters from the original movies. Hopefully they will, they have that rough edge to them that makes for some fun scenes.




-B