Lovely day. So far I've worked on the interior design of the 1st D'ORC TPB. I've finished the outside covers and spine, the chapter pages, the map, the credits page, and an interstitial page. I think I just have our bio page left. Now I'm going to finish lettering American Caper #10.

60°F!! Afternoon walkies.

Happy 50th issue of I HATE FAIRYLAND! Out today! Can’t believe we’ve done FIFTY! Congrats to my pal, @skottieyoung.bsky.social

New guitar pedal day! This is the Ghost Vibe by Tru-Fi pedals. Can’t wait to plug it into my rig. It’s built old school—by hand—right here in the USA. I’m trying my best to buy gear from small businesses lately.

Pro design tip: plan before you execute, and stop being so damn precious about everything. Successful graphic design is not inextricably linked to how much time you spent tweaking...

Okay, so here's my idea for the chapter pages in the D'ORC Trade paperback. That ink splatter from this morning was for the background element. I added some additional splatters from my design morgue. (Years ago I splattered some coffee and scanned it in. Comes in handy.)

Hot take: Sam Neill would make a great addition to the Star Wars or Star Trek franchises. Just putting it out there.

Ha! And executed in about 5 minutes. 3 of which was just figuring out which brush I wanted to use. But I've been doing this stuff for 20+ years.

Exactly. Whenever I need some organic element, I go directly to analog tools. Faster, and the element of unpredictability adds something special.

Believe it or not, this is my job right now. Splattering ink for the chapter page design of the first D’ORC trade paperback. I think the 2nd from the bottom is the winner. I’ll show you what I’m doing when this is dry and scanned in. Stay tuned.

Lovely day. Turned in final files for D'Orc #5 this morning. Right now I'm working on a secret project that's super exciting, and later I'll be lettering American Caper #10, and working on fonts. Listening to the new Foo Fighters album.

Lovely day. Weekend emails answered and Monday morning clerical work is finished. Now I can actually be creative. First up: lettering the last 7 pages of the re-mastering of Elfquest: Siege at Blue Mountain #5. Listening to Audioslave in the studio.

Using the leftover roasted chicken from last night, I made some chicken salad. Here’s my recipe.

Since some of you were excited about my last “food” post. How’s about a perfectly roasted chicken with whipped potatoes and garlic roasted green beans?

Janice Chiang's custom font is finished! We made Regular, Italic and Bold Italic. Each includes European accented characters, barred-I correction, and double-letter auto-ligatures. It was an honor and a treat to work on this with one of my favorite letterers!

Ace in your face Friday

I doubt people care about me playing guitar. They barely tolerate my guitar pics! Ha!

Janice Chiang's custom font is finished! We made Regular, Italic and Bold Italic. Each includes European accented characters, barred-I correction, and double-letter auto-ligatures. It was an honor and a treat to work on this with one of my favorite letterers!

All 669 glyphs are in place for Project BNib Shouts Condensed regular! All are default-spaced and ready to be kerned. Getting close to the finish line on this one.

Finished! Fralin Blues Special hand-made pickups installed on this limited edition, matching headstock Burgundy Mist Metallic Fender American Professional II Stratocaster. Tortoise pickguard for some added spice.

Lovely day. My main workhorse Mac wouldn't finish booting this morning no matter how many times I tried. Started disconnecting peripherals one at a time and once I unplugged one of my external HDDs, the computer booted just fine. Time for a new HDD, I guess. At least I'm up and running again.

Lovely day. I'm busy kerning Janice Chiang's bold italic custom font with my proprietary list of 15,000+ kerning pairs. I'm about half finished.

Last week: 73 degrees. This week: 44 degrees. Back to my creepy winter look, I guess.

Laid up all day yesterday with a migraine. Had to be in a dark bedroom from 10am to 5pm yesterday. Barfed. Not fun. Dealing with the "migraine hangover" today. Not sure how long I'll be in the studio, but for now, I'm here, working.

Ace got out of the house today. I accidentally left the front door open about 6”. He was sitting calmly right outside the door. I cautiously walked into the breezeway and called his name. He turned around and walked back into the house. #heartattack

Wired up the new Stratocaster project. I installed hand-made Fralin Blues Specials. Next, I’ll string it and do a proper setup.

I love how Amazon buries their live chat customer service option deep beneath layer after layer of unhelpful reference topics. So efficient. No way I'd rather spend my time than an endless romp through sleight of hand misdirections.

Interesting topic of discussion for D&D folks: In almost every campaign I've DM'd or played, coins become the least important/least sought-after treasure by about 3rd level. PCs stop caring about money acquisition almost entirely. Anyone else have this experience in general?

Ace in your face Friday

With the state of the world right now, I think the comics industry needs more comedies. "Dark & gritty" doesn't feel like entertainment right now. That's why books like D'ORC and LOBO are selling like hotcakes, IMO. We're giving people a 20-min break from REAL dark & gritty.

I have a copy of this and it upped my lettering game massively. Highly recommend it.

Okay, I spoke too soon...just got word from Image that we're not QUITE sold out of the 2nd printing of The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering, but we're CLOSE. Less than 1000 copies remaining. So if you've been dragging your feet, now might be a good time to score a copy somewhere!

Jamming to Trombone Shorty in the studio today. I'm tired and the grooves are keeping me motivated.

Update on Project BNib Shouts Condensed: All 669 glyphs are in, including 6 versions of every letter, 3 versions of numbers and punctuation, barred-I correction, bouncy baseline repeating letters, and manga glyphs. Next up: kerning.

Trailer for Devil in Silver looks pretty interesting! youtu.be/4pMW1Jw5wsY?...

When I'm asked what it's like to be a freelance designer, I tell them it's the best job in the world. I also tell them that every day, I have to wake up and produce something from nothing that's even better than what I created yesterday...for the next few decades or so.

Signing another box of Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering! The 2nd printing is officially sold out, and I only have 3 boxes left in the studio. Snag your copy on Blambot.com!

I finished my first abstract painting. Acrylic on 15" x 30" canvas. All done with a palette knife.

LOBO #2 is out today! Look at all them variant covers! Go fraggin’ get some! (We’re having SO much fun on this.) Skottie Young/Jorge Corona/Jean-Francois Beaulieu/Nate Piekos

Great news! After I bought the limited edition American Strat body in Burgundy Mist Metallic, I managed to find its original neck listed for sale by matching the serial numbers! The headstock is also painted BMM! #reunited

First sound effect of the day. From Umbrella Academy #5.

I love that the Navy sailor filming the recovery of the Artemis II astronauts in the pacific deployed the metal horns when the hatch was popped open. \m/ \m/ #rockon #heavymetal

Pretty much finished designing the glyphs for Janice Chiang's custom bold italic font. Next I'll move these over to Fontlab.

New pedal! I am a sucker for fuzz, especially when it’s an octave fuzz!

Getting a late start today--I was invited to a local high school to talk to a student about to graduate. He's a comics fan and an artist interested in working in the industry. Had a great conversation and offered some info and advice. Now...back to work!

Back in the day of cheap newsprint, publishers were afraid that a single slash I used for the personal pronoun by itself was at high risk of being misprinted. Adding the bars increased its visibility.

Yup. This is how the convention began. Legibility due to ink bleed on cheap newsprint.

In the old days it was, but that's not standard practice in mainstream US comics anymore.

Comic lettering 101...

Update on Janice Chiang's custom font set: Got the A-Zs done for the bold italic.