HAPPY EARTH DAY 2026!

 

In the immortal words of Stan Lee... 'Nuff said!

COMIC BLAST FROM THE PAST: Ed, Edd n Eddy in "An Ed For An Ed"

Here's another Ed, Edd n Eddy comic I did that was a lot of fun. It was titled "An Ed For An Ed." It was a busy script with a lot going on even though it all took place in Ed's basement bedroom. Page 2, panel 5 took some time in planning out as I had to draw multiple Edd's cleaning Ed's room which was a single background plate. As with any Eds script, there's a ton of "squish and stretch" exaggeration going on at all times. 

Drawing the Eds took some time but I normally could do a page/a page and a half a day. Inking the art was much faster as you had to match the loose "boiling line" look that the cartoons had and I could ink it all in a day if I had to. Everything, including panel borders, were done by hand. No rulers needed and that made doing the Eds comics a lot of fun! Usually I would ink half the story and then scan those pages in, digital clean them if needed, and then format them in the template. I liked breaking up the job into segments to keep things fresh. Nothing is more boring than a full day of constant scanning and file prepping.

Here's the whole story for your reading enjoyment!  

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!

My creator page was updated at Papercutz!

 

 

Papercutz has updated my creator page to reflect my current list of available books and they put up a pic and bio I gave them!

https://papercutz.com/creators/scott-neely

Got my copies of the PHINEAS AND FERB OGN Vol. 1 early!

Another box showed up today with the mail. It had the hardcovers I pre-ordered through Papercutz of the Phineas and Ferb OGN Vol 1: Phineas and Ferb's A-MAZE-Ing Creature Double Feature!

It was a long time coming for this release... for a long time I didn't know when it was actually going to be done (and I only did the cover art, which took six months!). If you can believe it, there was more drama behind-the-scenes than in the actual book itself. 

As I flipped through it today, I noticed a lot of story changes they did from the original script I got...

More on all this drama is coming, but I'm trying to celebrate the positive here! It's finally out, and it does look great!

The book comes out tomorrow officially! 

 

My order of PHINEAS AND FERB books from Papercutz arrived!

WOW! I got my big box of P&F books I ordered from Papercutz today! From the tracking I thought they would be delivered next week, but they arrived early today with the normal mail! I ordered all this when they had their site-wide sale for 50% off. I ordered two copies each of the hardcovers and paperbacks for my archives. Papercutz did a beautiful job with them and the hardcovers are simply beautiful!  

I will say that Papercutz does know how to pack a box! They wrapped the books in a big piece of bubblewrap and placed the stack dead center in a sturdy box and then dropped packing peanuts all around the sides and top. They arrived perfect! Amazon should take notice, though they have recently upped their game a bit for other orders I made through them by using proper shipping boxes for books. 

I also had to order some copies of the Comic Book Inator from Scholastic too. It was an exclusive and you had to buy it from the Scholastic site! Luckily, they also had a site-wide sale the same weekend as Papercutz! It's a good thing I checked when I did! I bought them right after I placed my Papercutz order and saved some money! I got these copies about a week ago and decided to add the pic of them to this post.

You're probably asking yourself, "Don't they give you copies of the stuff you work on?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No. 

I do have it in my Mad Cave Studios contracts to get two complimentary copies of both the Comic Book Inator and the A-MAZE-ing Creature Double Feature (OGN Vol.1) books. The Comic Book Inator was released back in August and I've still not received anything. The comic industry is in the toilet (DC Comics has always treated me fairly though), and you mostly have to buy your own unless you bother them about honoring their contracts.

Anyway, my box from Papercutz was a nice treat to receive after Christmas! They take a few weeks to fulfill your order, but they do take proper care in getting it to you!

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

This is a cropped close up of a digital illustration I painstakingly did for Delaware County Magazine, which I was Editor-in-Chief and designer for. Unfortunately, the publisher had to shut the business down in fall of 2024 as printer fees, paper costs, ink, distribution fees, etc, etc, etc all played their part. We kept it running as long as we could, and it was sustainable if it wasn't for the constant price increases our printer kept making us pay (I'm looking at you, Gannett). It was a great job and I had fun as I got to do a lot of different and creative work with minimal oversight!

I drew the initial design on paper based on the cover specs we used. Then scanned it in and painted over it in Photoshop, using my tight pencil sketch as a guide. I used the computer mouse to paint with and a set of brushes I had created at the time. Probably could have been much easier if I used a drawing tablet with pen sensitivity (didn't have one at the time) but it came out pretty great in the end! I did a lot more to the illustration than I needed to and used a lot of layers to keep it easy to change (or swap out) some aspect of it. I have 2/3rds of Santa's body done but only used the top half. In the end, I used it twice on two covers we published. First time was in 2019, and then tweaked it to look different in 2023.

This was all done in a pre-AI world. I still have the pencil drawing and still use my Photoshop brushes I created on various work like Scooby and the like.

This particular size and crop was for a holiday card version I created for the magazine to send out to our advertisers. I also created a computer wallpaper and email "thank you" pics.

Hope you like! 

 

Happy 100th Birthday, Winnie The Pooh!

On this Christmas Eve, exactly 100 years ago, Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name (he was originally called Edward Bear) in a children's story by A. A. Milne that was commissioned by London's Evening News for Christmas Eve! The story was later included in the first Winnie-the-Pooh book that was published in 1926! 

While my art I'm posting is of the Disney version (which most people generally think of), I'm happy to have worked professionally on such an iconic character who is celebrating a 100th Birthday all next year! 

Long live Winnie and his friends who inhabit the Hundred Acre Wood! 

My New PHINEAS & FERB book arrived on Christmas Eve Day!

I got a surprise today when I got home mid-afternoon from my last minute Christmas errands. My pre-order of the Phineas and Ferb Classic Comics Collection Vol. 5 arrived from Amazon! I ordered two hardcovers from Amazon on their Cyber Monday sale. They were released on the 23rd and I had them in my hands on the 24th! They were supposed to be here on Saturday but they arrived early. A nice Christmasy treat!

PHINEAS & FERB Classic Comics Collection Vol. 5 Out Today!

As this is the day of release for Volume 5, I thought I'd post this as the Papercutz site uses my story art in the preview!

Posted above is the original sketch of a panel and below is the final, revised, original rough art of the full page. You can see the final color version on the Papercutz site! The panel above shows Doof holding up a Perry the Playtpus mock-up which he called a "practipus." It's a log of wood (painted to look like Perry) with a fedora hat, a paper birthday party hat as a beak, tennis balls for eyes, tree twigs for arms, rubber gloves for feet, and a tennis racket (his tail) which is tied to the log. He uses it to taunt and train the Goozim to attack Agent P.

As you can also see at the top, the original title for the story was "Invitation Monster" which got turned into the more exciting "Night of the Goozim!" Things would get changed over the time you did them and you would see the final titles on the work contracts as the job numbers and titles had to match up.

No AI. It was all drawn by hand on paper with care. I feel stupid having to type that, but this is where we are sadly. The original art for this was sold. Another reason to draw on paper!

As with most Disney work, you would get the script and draw it, then submit it, then get any notes or changes to do. If you were lucky, most notes were about fixing small things like noses or hands. You submitted the revised page back to Disney for a final check. Once it was approved you moved onto the next step, which in this case, was the inking stage. Yes, I know my art looks inked. It was, but it was a rough ink job to lock in every aspect as this was Disney. I worked tight when I worked on licensed stuff. If I inked my own work I would normally tweak some minor things as I inked. Not always, but you could catch something that the powers-that-be might have missed. The approval times were quick then (which made it fun) and a fast turnaround to get paid (even better)! Not so much in today's world.