More character art! Plus Lover Boy Changes Clothes again

So this past week I've been having a lot of fun drawing some Switch pages...a lot of characters (many introduced the past couple updates) with a lot of crazy interaction.  We have another character peek to introduce, so here's this week's batch of art clues:

Lover Boy looking sketchy/creepy as always.  His ever-changing wardrobe is now a too-tight Under-Armour-type shirt.

And yet a new character, this one easily the most handsome of our universe so far

A better look at Snow, introduced last week.

Our girl Electricia is not too pleased in this shot

This weekend Keith and I will be working on the exclusive art print for our upcoming appearance in Bloomington, MN for Comic Card on Saturday, November 5th.  Attendees will get the print signed!
Till next week...

Meet The Gang!

I thought this week, I'd take you through to meet a handful of the other members of Murderer's Row, Electricia's cohorts in crime and villainy.

If memory serves, I believe last week Tom showed off Putin, Omerta, and Komodo so this week, let's meet some more of the gang!

First up is Nagenghast. She's the ghost of a German espionage agent that was killed in the 80's. She's named (with slightly modified spelling) after my childhood friend Liz Nagengast, whom you can see hawking Spanx on QVC quite often. IF you remember, the Ghost Of Ronald Reagan is a member of the team of heroes in this graphic novel so that gives him two natural enemies on Murderer's Row. Nagenghast and Putin.

Next up, we've got Walking Fred. He's the zombie crime boss of the criminal underworld and a snappy dresser to boot. He's also telepathic and speaks only in thought balloons. 

And the dapper Asian gentleman below is our good friend Snow. He's a bit like Marvel's Sandman except instead of being able to turn his body into sand, Snow is able to transform into pure cocaine. As he tells Electricia at one point, he's worth millions on the black market. 

Snow's goons are called Snow Angels, by the way.

And meet Tom's design for Nasty Cat. If you remember from a bunch of blog posts ago, my character design for this one was a human body with the head of a cat grafted onto her neck. Tom decided to take her into more of a Catwoman direction which was a nice surprise. It's always cool to see how he interprets my ideas his own way.

And finally this week, we have Crom The Barbarian God. He's either the evil God Of Barbarians or a beefy, insane gym rat who played too much Dungeons and Dragons when he was younger and now believes he's the evil God Of Barbarians. Either way, Crom spouts off one of my favorite lines of dialogue in the book when he advises another character, "All women are born to vex. The electric bitch is no different."

I asked Tom if I could ink the spread on which all these new characters appear for the first time so I promise I'll try not to ruin it.

Hope you guys enjoyed meeting these new members. A lot of them sound a little absurd but I swear, it all works in the context of the book. 

Catch everyone next week! Thanks for reading, as always and by all means, share this blog with your friends. We've got a loyal readership but we can always shoot for the moon.

Keith

New Characters!

Tom here for this week's update while Keith does much more important/pressing work such as Superman: Rebirth.  So I'm drawing away on The Switch pages when I run into a part of Keith's script where we are epically introduced to a slew of very cool characters.  I'm only teasing a few of them here, but one character in particular that I knew ahead of time that I was very much looking forward to drawing....the president of Russia himself?!  We've got some really fun stuff cooked up in the pages I'm currently laying out  ;)

Introducing comic-book Vladimir Putin!

A badass lizard named Komodo. As Keith describes him, he's about a foot taller than Moss.

why not another shot of Electricia?

Interstellar glances at Omerta.

Have a great weekend!

Look, up in the sky! It's a complete page!

Hey everybody, welcome to another thrilling installment of the weekly Switch blog. My name is Keith and I'll be your tour guide this week through all the happenings and snappenings in the crazy world of comic book production.

I went back into the script last weekend to revise the dialogue for lettering. Once I read something I've written with fresh eyes, I always find stuff I want to tweak and freshen up but this time, I got a little bit carried away. I kindasortamaybe decided I had a better idea for the last third of the story and ended up throwing out the last thirty pages of script.

Was there something wrong with the way the story ended originally? Probably not and I'm sure some lines of dialogue might sneak their way back into the new pages. I guess the new idea I came up with just felt more true, more organic to the character of Electricia and the world that we've set up in this graphic novel. Anyone out there that writes a bit here or there knows that in the back of one's mind, things are always percolating and marinating and a story is never really done until it's off to the printers. I'm lucky on this project to have the freedom to go back in and make these changes, it's hugely liberating to be able to really stick the landing.

SO this week, I thought I'd unveil the first completely pencilled/inked/colored/lettered page that we've shared with you to date. You're seeing it out of context so it won't spoil anything for anybody. Hope you all dig it and we'll see you back here next week!

(By the way, if there's an issue with seeing the file on your phones, try looking at it from your computer. The last time the files didn't show up on phones, they were completely fine on laptops around the world.)

Thanks for reading,
Keith

Production Art For Reals

Last week we goofed somehow and it didn't seem like people were able to see the sneak production images that Keith posted up.  So for this week I am reposting them along with another sneak peek of art from The Switch.

The lettering process has begun, and it's very satisfying to me to see the fully finished, colored pages as they roll in.  I'm still pinching myself that this is happening!

This weekend I'll be in Southaven, MS for Delta Fan Fest to hawk my art and of course to promote The Switch.  I hope to meet some of you there if you're in the area.  In the next few weeks Keith and I will be cooking up yet another exclusive Switch print--once that I pencil and he inks.  This will be for our upcoming appearance in Minnesota for Comic Card show.

Page 1 pencils

Inks.  Do you notice anything different?

Keith's flats

My final renders.

And a sneak preview of Lover Boy making himself comfortable.

catch the rainbow

Tom and I are both swamped this week so excuse me for just throwing a little art your way and then vamoosing back to the drawing board. I thought you might find it interesting to follow the progression of page one from black and white inks to my flat colors to (seen for the first time) Tom's fully rendering coloring. This is a production blog after all, so have a little production!

We'll see you next week! Thanks for your attention, as always.
Keith

Hey everyone, sorry for the late-ish blog post today. I've had a busy day with physical therapy and then racing the clock to get some Justice League work turned in before the long weekend.

As Tom mentioned last week, we were both blown away by the positive reaction and support over our publishing agreement with Dynamite. About the most negative comment we received was that it was weird to announce the publishing delay so close to the time the book was supposed to ship but honestly, we couldn't announce before the deal was done and the process took about four months from starting the conversation to signing the paperwork. Once we were clear to share, we did.

There were some individual questions that I'll reply to shortly but one backer suggested an idea that I liked: a fan art variant cover. We don't have the resources to print a second variant cover (we have the Doug Mahnke variant already lined up) but it's possible we could squeeze a couple of pages of fan art into the actual Switch hardcover. So if anyone wants to submit some fan art, by all means send it over and we'll try to get some of it in print.

This week, I thought I'd share some of Tom's lovely efforts. First up is a convention poster our little buddy designed featuring The Transient, Electricia, Dr. Hate and The Moss. This one made the rounds on Facebook so apologies if you've already seen it. It's worth sharing again though...

And secondly this week, Tom's design for a new villain we haven't shared yet. This is CROM, an evil barbarian God who is a member of Murderer's Row. I didn't throw one of my crappy character designs Tom's way for this one, he just ran with it. I dig the mustache the most.

And that's about all the news that's fit to print! See everyone next week. Thanks for reading!

Keith