Today
5PM EST
FEENSTUH FOLLOW RAFFLE PRIZE DRAW
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Play Nice
Just a reminder that I updated the Gallery section
I added some recent posts and sectioned it off between 2011 and fond Memories from the distant past before 2011.
Further updates and posts are coming. Stay tuned.
Also, check out the new episode of Paperkeg Comics Podcast. It’s their best cast yet and it has a quick cover by me (I’ll do better for future covers)
Play Nice
Brad
2011
It’s been a pretty decent year so far.
The previously posted comic with Chris Jones, aka @JonesyLovesBeer, is going well. It’s back on track after some confusion, vacations, and unfortunate battles tween science and nature. And thanks to a brief interlude, doing covers for Paperkeg Comics Podcast, I’ve worked out some kinks and have a better plan moving forward.
That being said, the good news is that I’m just as stoked now as I was at the beginning. The only bad news is that I’m rounding a corner where my “open schedule frame” is closing substantially.
Along with that, things have been perking up at work; which I have to be honest- is a bit of a surprise.
The project I’m working on is on the final lap on its way to the finish line Then I have a pick of a couple of projects that could both use a little help. And then an x-factor project that could be very interesting for the category of, “Yeah- I get paid to do this”, department. Even though that one is being presented as an option, I’m not seeing anything other than “scheduling needs” keeping me from it.
Kind of an exciting time for me the way I look at it.
That’s that for now. In the meantime, you can check out my newest works over at the Paperkeg Comics Podcast and look for podcast covers Sleeper, volume One, and X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills; while I add them to my galleries and make some adjustments to their presentation as well.
And I plan to update a lot more than I have been.
Play Nice
Brad
2010
What a year.
It was one of the best, yet worst years I’ve experienced in a great many years.
Professionally, I can say that it was more draining than rewarding.
There was lots of personal growth. The typical losing myself and finding myself stuff that ends up sounding cliché. In the end, it’s a matter of losing focus.
Recently I’ve put too much faith and responsibility for my direction in the hands of others and it’s simply just ended up kicking me in the teeth.
2011 will be different. This year I look to start laying down a bit of my own path and a bit of that process has already begun in the form of a new side project.
Destroying You One Metal Hand At A Time
NEW PROJECT
I know I’ve threatened before, but I’ve actually begun a new comics project with writer @jonesylovesbeer (seen above) that has already proven to be rather interesting in its beginning stages. Our only goal (for now) is to finish the first issue and then see where the winds take us. It was officially announced on the formidable podcast - NERDCAST.ORG, and you can listen to the big news here. (it’s just after the spectacular Keyboard Cat intro- at not quite the first quarter mark)
I will start marking the process for the new project on here, but I’ve already begun over at my twitpic collection. You can see some samples below:
From there, who knows? 2011 will bring some interesting twist and turns as all years do, but it will be my ‘bend and don’t break’ resolve that will make it a success. The obstacles from the previous years have been set. I’ll just have to do some stretching to make those hurdles.
All in all, things are certainly looking up and I’m super excited to view the results.
Here’s to an awesome New Year to you and yours.
-Brad
As I’m in the middle of my third Bakshi movie of the day, I find that I’m really relaxed and this is but the first day of a much needed three day weekend. So awesome.
Next on the agenda is probably some tv I’ve been meaning to get to for a year or three and then on to the second volume of the Strangers in Paradise pocket editions.
After that, who knows? I might sit down and doodle while finding the gumption to clean the house….maybe do some laundry. Or at least clean it out from the bedroom as its collected into the space where my desk chair is. That’s cleaning, right?
In the meantime, I make an offering of new art. Well, newish art. It was done the week after I made the Cheeks pic and then had comings and goings and work and stuff in the way and I just got around to posting it to my CG HUB gallery, where I haven’t got the amount of viewers I’d like to have. Maybe I should do something more fantasy driven with a half naked lady under some sort of male dominance theme that seem to get the big viewers and downloads. You know…for science.
This pic is of J. Torres, the Shuster Award winning writer of Love as a Foreign Language andTeen Titans Go as well as the Eisner Award nominated Alison Dare and the YALSA listed Days Like This and Lola: A Ghost Story.
Play Nice
Brad
It’s been a sort of busy year this year.
I’m starting to find some holes in my weird schedule and working and driving and this and that to make time for personal work. I usually end up taking that time to shrug and go watch tv or something, but it’s making me lazy art wise. I guess the day job’s been taking a lot out of me….too much.
So, I was inspired recently when Sean “Cheeks” Galloway decided to make it his personal agenda to work on an aspect of his art he felt he was weak: Caricatures.
He asked his many fans to help him out by sending him 3/4 photos of themselves and he’d make a quick sketch of them and post it to his blog and Facebook account under the gallery “Ugg Muggz“.
His goal with this I gather is to establish features of faces and quickly translate them down to paper in exaggerated form. A really nice exercise he wants to attack as he recounts a short time he worked as a caricature artist and he left due to the critiques of the clients. Attacking our weaknesses head on is what what makes us better artists, it’s just that the artist ego usually gets in the way enough to create haziness in what particular areas we might be weak. It’s finding those weaknesses and working on them that allows the artist to loosen up and be able to improve. As art is a continued process with no finish line, it’s important as an artist to be able to determine the areas that need improvement for us to able to draw, paint, sculpt- whatever- anything that crosses our path. If we feel we can’t make an expression of something, we’ve failed at what it is that we are: visual translators.
Eventually, we hone our craft to a point where we’re able to push and pull aspects of life and make them either caricatures or cartoons- but it’s knowledge of the process- or the rules- that allow us to know where and when they can be broken.
I think that nowadays, too many artists start in a discipline without knowing the rules or why they do things. Namely, 3D Art. 3D modelers, or “game artists”, start with a bevy of buttons that when pushed in a particular routine or order make the images they become accustomed to looking good or acceptable in the market they’re created for. Games have a certain look, film has a certain look, most media has a certain “Look”, and more people are trapped within the process of what makes that look than are driven to get away from it.
Back to caricatures. I got my dues in video games, but was lucky enough to be honing my art skills at a time in video games when artists were still artists. We did everything- modeling, texture maps, animation- it was weird to think of a time when everything would become marginalized and cornered into specific tasks where it would completely remove the art from the artist position. And anything and everything that was done personally or professionally was usually shown to the team and put under the scrutiny of other artists. Usually cruel, because it was also akin to a frat party; it was strengthening as it built our resolve and allowed us to take the critique and go back to the piece in question with a “screw you- I’ll show you I’m a good artist, damnit!” mentality rather than slinking in our corners and going fetal.
And I would put my art out for anyone and everyone to see, no matter how blatantly horrible or beautiful it might have come out. Mostly thru white board art. I’d draw on the white boards, being as funny or rude as humanly possible and the results would be the reactions. 1) if people knew who were in the drawings- win. 2) If there were laughs in the situations those people were put in- triumph.
I’ll admit that most the people I’ve worked with in my 16 year career know me more for the white board drawings I’ve made than any other work I’ve actually done. I take it with pride. Now, I don’t do many white board drawings anymore. A nasty experience at a certain company that will remain nameless (until the book comes out where I will pull no punches) plus working at Ubisoft, where the multitude of talented artists kinda force you to be the best all the time and put it into the work and working hard most of the time: not to be on schedule so much as just keeping up and showing that you belong. Those two experiences have put me in a weird place of where I want to be with my art in recent years.
That being said, Cheeks’ willingness to put himself back in harm’s way in order to attack what he considers a weak area of his already awesome arsenal is pretty inspiring and kinda lead’s the way for artists of all levels to follow.
With that inspiration I made an Ugg Mugg of Mr. Galloway and hope to follow it with many more and get back on track where my art, and where I’m going with it, is concerned.
Enjoy
Play Nice!
Brad
How’s it going?
Oh, me? I’ve been busy.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t done anything with the site recently and thought I should pop up some art- which is the purpose of the site last I checked.
The top two are more recent and they’re pics/ comics of some pals at work. The Machine Man cover was for an issue of Pulp Legacy, an APA I very rarely contribute to these days, that I’d done last year.
In the meantime, I continue to exercise my comic storytelling of people I know until I find myself at a point to go full on comic mode.
Stay Tuned
Brad
I’ve been ignoring the site.
Mostly because I haven’t had anything to offer it, like some virtual idol I feel obligated to appease with my sketches and such. But, alas, I have nothing and the idol sits and may just be bored.
Work’s been busy busy. So I’ve been all-work-no-play-guy.
I have, for work purposes, been trying to play video games again. Uncharted 2 is keeping my time, while I try to wrestle the new Call of Duty from my boy’s hands. As an environment artist, Uncharted 2 is some great inspiration. However, it’s a two edge sword as I’m want to make with that kind of style while the work I’m currently on doesn’t require such awesome details.
As is, I’m trying my best to make the current work interesting as well as challenging. More so challenging even than the seemingly impossible deadlines for them.
Work work work
Please stay Tuned.
So, I have some doodles that I’ve been working on and thought I’d post some for the WORMS project.
Everything is beginning to sort itself together and the writing events even seem to be just jumping into place. I hope to have a great portion of the timeline lined up and the first issue is all set save the scripting and dialogue. I love when a plan comes together.
I’ve also added Michael Cho to my Artists list (>>>>>>>) and I’ve started adding pics to my Cg Hub profile which I’ve linked under Brad Heitmeyer Links. I’ve got some decent responses via views and downloads, but hope to get myself into the Popular thumbs from the main page once I start pouring in the WORMS work.
Stay Tuned
Brad
**UPDATE*********************************************************************************************************
With the schedule of the day job ever increasing, I’ve put most to all of my personal projects on indefinite hold. Although, I’m enjoying a three day weekend. I’m doing just that. Enjoying it by getting caught up with reading comics, watching tv and movies. Sitting back and maybe even drinking a beer or three.
Happy Long Canadian Weekend for the Civic Holiday.
Play Nice
Brad
So, work work busy busy blah blah blah.
I’ve recently decided to scrap the comic I’ve been writing in favor for two, count’em- TWO, new ideas.
I know. Losing Momentum is the worst thing a comic and creator suffer more times than God can count, but in this case I felt simple was better. The first story had a lot involved and I wanted to do it right. So, I guess scrapped is kinda harsh. How about Shelved? I like shelved.
With the two supposed new concepts, I’m rehashing ideas from old notes that go back to High School.
I’ll give a short synopsis on the original stories, but I’m keeping the titles
The first is called SPILLED MILK. I, literally, created the concept on the car ride back home from seeing ROBOCOP (1987) in the theater for the first time. I was 14 years old and I couldn’t wait to get home to start drawing my cyborg adventures. The title, SPILLED MILK, comes from passing a grocery store that had milk on special and had it displayed as such in their front marquee. I thought that milk was a neat name to call blood and there’d be lots of blood in my epic cyborg future world- and the catchphrase of the anti-hero just jumped out of my mouth, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.”
I was a genius. Or so I thought. I basically just drew beat up cyborgs for a few years along with all the other stuff I was drawing ad nauseam at the time, (see- super heroes, super heroes, and super heroes) and then came one of the comic events that would change my life forever…or until the next big comic event- HARD BOILED. I felt like Frank Miller jumped inside my brilliant brain and pulled out my great idea and made it even better. Getting Geof Darrow for the art? GENIUS!!
I was so awestruck by this in the next ten or so years it took to come out (it was released quite irregularly-over the next two years, actually. It just seemed like 10) that I just figured that my story didn’t have to be told. Mr. Miller and Mr. Darrow had summed up everything I could have possibly said about a cyborg malfunctioning and creating a streak of terror thru people, robots, and cyborgs alike, that my mega epic masterpiece didn’t need to be revealed.( for the record, mine ended with the character finally being killed by a super tank, because- DUH- how else do you kill a super psycho cyborg…or psyborg!! Thank you, I know!!)
The second rehashed idea is simply called Worms. I’ve been a horror films fan since forever. It was being babysat when I was 4 that I was allowed to stay up with the babysitter as long as I stayed in the living room while he watched AMITYVILLE HORROR. I couldn’t tear my eyes away and I had nightmares for weeks and am just now able to look at flies without thinking they’re agents of Satan, but it was one of the first truly awesome character defining moments of my very young life. My parents gave the dude total shit and I never saw him again after, but the short effect for his awesome taste in movies combined with my parents having HBO was just the beginning of things to come.
Naturally, my taste in horror movies went on from Satan and possessed houses. Two of my favorite genres of horror are monsters and aliens. (Yes, they’re two different things. Although aliens can be monsters while monsters don’t necessarily have to be aliens.) So, it was actually a very good friend of mine (who I will keep nameless as he’s not much the public type) that created the concept for Worms and invited me in on helping with the creative and drawing it. I’d go over to his house and we’d listen to punk rock and read the John Byrne Fantastic Four run over and over while creating the horror genre defining comic piece that would forever be put up on the pedestal of awesome-itude. WORMS.
To be honest, I don’t remember what we called it back then, but we ended up stopping the idea after he moved away to college and I had another year of High School and the world would have to do without our opus maximus.
The basic premise was the classic pod people concept meets zombies, at first, then just went all out gross and beyond ridiculous. What all comics should be. And that’s why I still want to make it.
There ya go. Sometimes nostalgia comes back to kick you in the nuts and tell you that you need to remember the times where being creative was fun and nothing but cartoons and peanut butter and honey sandwiches could get in the way of that.
And sometimes that’s all you need.
Stay Tuned
Brad
