COMIC BLAST FROM THE PAST: Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy in "Model Citizen"

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy was another cartoon series that appeared on Cartoon Network and was part of what I consider to be the second "Golden Age" of animated cartoons. I have a lot of sketches that I had drawn of Grim as there was a lot of exciting visual poses you could do with him and I took full advantage of it during my morning sketch warm-ups.

Here follows a short comic story that I had drawn and my favorite part of it are the opening panels at the local mall where the characters are hanging out. A lot of planning went into it visually that wasn't in the script and it was a lot of fun to design. Also, I needed to create a magical creature that was made of wire clothes hangers. That was quite a challenge and I went through a lot of scrap paper sketches before I settled on the final design! Enjoy this blast from the past!

COMIC BLAST FROM THE PAST: Ed, Edd n Eddy in "Spare Ed"!

Here's one of my favorite stories I drew featuring the Eds for your reading pleasure! As with a lot of comics based on animated cartoons, the script was rather wordy and I had no control over the placement of the word balloons or sound effects. I did draw the "END" at the end of the story and it was a thing I did to show a defined ending.

I sold the original artwork many years ago but have scans of it here. Overall, I still really love the original final art and layout for the story. The inks were super clean and the storytelling was clear and readable. There was a lot to get into the panels but it all works really well. The word balloons, however, killed some parts of the art though in a lot of spots. One such spot was the word balloon covering up the broken wood leg on the ground on Page 4, Panel 3. You see them all reacting to what happened but you don't see the actual broken wood leg until the next panel. So, I'm posting the original scans of the final inked artwork I did so you can see it in its glory. Enjoy! You can click on the pages and see the art in a bigger format!

As a final note, I used to love working on the Eds as the loose ink line was fun to do. It was freeing in a lot of ways and the Eds always had a lot of "squish and stretch" to them which pushed you to exaggerate the characters. I must have done it well because they kept offering it to me to draw. 

 

I ran across my MICKEY MOUSE work at a BJ's Wholesale Club!

I was doing some shopping at a local BJ's Wholesale Club and came across a stack of Mickey Mouse books in the kids section. They had a Mickey book and a Disney Babies book (where the characters are all drawn like babies). Any time I see a Mickey Clubhouse book like this I feel compelled to check it out and I was not disappointed.

I turned the cover and the first page was MY art! Wow! I turned to the second page and it was mine again! I kept turning and, needless to say, I had to buy it for my archive. While my name is not in it, it features some of my work that sits in the official Disney archive for future use!

This was published in 2024 by Phidal Publications that is in Canada! They have a US office in Florida. I did check out their site (phidal.com) and they have many other Disney books available. I didn't see these particular books so I'm guessing these are now currently out of print.

Always nice to run across my work by accident and I am happy it continues on! 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, POKEMON! Today marks the 30th Anniversary!

 

 

Pokemon turns 30 years old today and is still going strong! Here's some old sketches I had kept that were done back when I did some work on it in 1999. I would do sketches as warm-ups and they were drawn on cheap copy paper. Like many of my sketches, I would save the better ones and sell them at conventions that I attended.

 

 

2025 was a PHINEAS & FERB year!

Last year was mostly a Phineas and Ferb year here for me outside of the Scooby sketchcards I did for Upper Deck that were finally released. As chaos reigns in the industry, it was good to have some solid ground under me.

2026 has started with the work on TWO new Phineas and Ferb covers!