D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Thought I’d share the sketchcard samples I did for Marvel and Lucasfilm a couple weeks ago– haven’t heard back from them. Doing the sketchcards are really fun though, I might be doing a bunch of Flobots ones soon, we’ll see. These were all done with Prismacolor markers… Here’s a look…

There’s been no “break” for me. Especially with not a steady paycheck coming in, I find myself back in freelance land doing some small jobs here and there. The little $2 dollar drawings I’ve done have actually brought in a few job offers for higher paying gigs, from company logos to blog headers… so I’m trucking along I guess.

I’m looking to kick the Flobots comic into a higher gear here. I did some writing and plotting and figuring out where it’s going on the sci-fi angle. I’m also thinking more along the lines of graphic novels for the future of my own projects, but I don’t want to jump in and commit to some giant project of my own right now.

I noticed I’ve been locked out of the Drunk Duck account to update Hero By Night or do anything over there (check pageviews). Not even a peep or heads up to me by anyone. They edited the header in a rush getting rid of the email the creator link and the Hero Gram Newsletter link. They also deleted the last entry saying Hero By Night is on extended hiatus, and all of the fan comments wishing it would come back. Another person on Twitter told me he voiced some critique on Drunk Duck in the forums , and his comments were deleted. So it appears, even if they don’t want it to, that Platinum Studios has adopted a sort of corporate fascist police state where while they have deals and contests going on, they can’t allow for ANY discourse in the conversation , or any critique of their services. They want new people and new contestants and their families, new investors to be able to come on and see that “EVERYTHING IS OKAY!” — Again… not very good business ethics at all going on there. I can’t say that it makes me very happy to report that, but I also can’t say that I really give a damn either.

Onward!

I’ve also done a lot less internet communication lately due to keeping myself busy. If I were to stop and “take a break”, i fear I might actually lose my mind or just drop over dead. Sort of like Samson and his hair or something, you know?

Fooling around with the prismacolors. I was feeling Lone Wolf and Cub today.

I’m off to Cuyahoga Falls for the day.

Here’s a Flobots sketch from the new sketchbook… the band doesn’t actually appear in the comics (yet), but I wanted to draw them anyway to practice and I have a few things planned for a surprise.

Check out FloBots.com for the latest, or over on their myspace page to listen to some tunes. I think they’ll be on Jay Leno on June 5th as well–  www.myspace.com/flobots

Thought I’d let the cat out of the bag here about “top secret project X” - I’ve had a lot of people asking what it was and what I was up to– and I’m not sure why it was kept a secret in the first place, just that I wanted to make sure it was go– and since we’re ALMOST go, here it is.

Yup. I’m doing a FLOBOTS comic. Readers here know I’ve been yammering on about the Flobots since I first discovered their music back in April… the comic won’t be launching JUST yet, but let me talk a little more about how it came together and what the goal is here, what it’ll be about, etc… this might take a moment as I ramble…

This whole entire year, I’ve felt pretty politically charged up. Back in January, I heard that Speech from Obama in Iowa, and the ones that followed… it gave me JUICE. Hearing lines. I felt like FINALLY someone is coming in and talking about real change– things I’ve thought about in my own head that I wish would be said out loud, this guy was speaking them. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” — I was so inspired, I drew a little sketch of Obama one morning in January– I laughed to myself and said, some day I’ll meet him and he’ll sign this.– In March, that happened. I’d get to meet Senator Obama only about 20 minutes from my house. He signed the sketch and thanked me for drawing his ears smaller.

After I started openly supporting Obama in my area (southwestern Pennsylvania) I began coming face to face with closeted bigotry and racism– sometimes from people I actually care or cared about. It was sort of a wakeup call to action. That’s when I painted the Obama “vote for change” sign for my yard before the Pennsylvania primaries. - This was right around the time I discovered the Flobots online and downloaded their album, and it chimed right in with how I was feeling. When I was away at New York Comicon, my wife let me know the sign had been stolen and she had been scared that somebody might come back and do more damage to the yard— I was a little scared, but furious. –Instead of sitting down and letting someone get away with that, I painted ANOTHER sign and put it out, because I felt like no matter what, I wasn’t going to allow somebody else to smother my freedom of speech and expression on my own property or anywhere.

That same week I was fired up, I emailed the Flobots because I was thinking a lot about the social messages in their music and how well it was put together– I wanted to know if they’d be down for a webcomic of some kind or graphic novel. I never expected a reply…. but they indeed replied right away.

To my surprise, not only would they be down, but they had actually heard of my work and read Hero By Night before as well. We shared ideas through email about what we could accomplish with a webcomic or something bigger. The idea of somehow involving the community, or inspiring others to activate in their community— I shared my story about the Obama signs with Flobots member, Brer Rabbit– I kinda told him my frustration and how “I would have painted 1000 signs if you know what I mean.” — His response was…

Let’s paint those signs!
This is the time, man.

This lead to some deep phone conversations with Brer Rabbit about comics, politics– It was pretty clear that these guys had a real love and passion for comics too. My goal is to be able to do with my sequential art, what Flobots are doing with their music. Communicating ideas…. activating minds. They forsee a much bigger picture than JUST music, they see it all as art and creativity– Making people think… inspiring people to stand for change. The kind of revolution they propose isn’t one that involves violence or storming the White House, it’s about being creative and sharing stories with one another– fighting with TOOLS– they have their music, my tools will be the comics– but it’s the same ammunition we’ll be firing.

They actually have a great non-profit group being setup, Flobots.org which can be read more about here.

All along, I had no real idea just how BIG Flobots were blowing up, and are currently in the process of blowing up even more. I’m pretty humbled to even be working with them on this project, and the fact that they’re pumped up by what I’ve shown them so far. I want to launch it as soon as possible here, but there are still a few kinks to hammer out– But definitly stay tuned here on my blog, and you’ll know when it happens because I’ll be yelling it from the rooftops. Things are happening pretty rapidly all around.

All I can say is… it’s pretty amazing how this all came together. I’m pretty stoked.

To prime yourself, go checkout Flobots.com - Buy their album (7.99 at Best Buy!) and LISTEN to their lyrics and enjoy.

Something for this week’s Digital Webbing Draw-Off– I envision that Electro would devise gloves that would help him control and program in different nasty electro weapons, like electric knives, bolts, etc.

I think I forgot to blog yesterday. I’ve been throwing myself into work and avoiding things on the internet that distract me. Sometimes I can be dicsiplined enough to muscle through tough times, but some stress lately has just weakened me to the point where I find myself drifting along reading blogs or doing research or learning more about business. It’s easy to procrastinate online, I guess at least while i’m doing it, I’m learning and absorbing stuff.

Our pal Jorge has a cool little “bonus” thing up on his site for Gunplay, they are old timey spoken stories, I guess written by “Priest” (Christopher Priest) that is. And it says it’s read by our old pal, Wiz Rollins, although that doesn’t sound like the Wiz I know! But I digress… this is a very cool concept, so pop it on and listen in to tales from Vega’s old west… http://www.gunplaythecomic.com/blog/?p=26

If i were an EIC or Publisher at a company, I’d want to handle my business like our old friend Chris Ryall does over on his blog: http://ryalltime.blogspot.com/ - You can tell he’s passionate about projects they’re putting out, and he enjoys showing off sample work and talking up the creative teams. Even though I don’t know the inter-workings there personally, it sure seems from my outside view that he brings good, reliable creators together, and they are a good working team there.

I can seriously see myself just taking over a company in that regard and being the number one cheerleader for it’s products. I’d love to do that, while keeping my own title going, and sort of using the way Jason and I work as a model to show to other creators. I don’t think you can just say “hey, do it like those guys do it” — I think it has to be me or Jason talking to creators and being there for encouragement. And we also have the skills to go in and actually FIX or edit things with color, inks, whatever might be off or missed. Any companies out there who want someone serious and passionate about comic books, who knows the history, past, present and future… look me up and make me an offer. I could be your huckleberry.

Hey, there’s a WAY awesome page of Hero By Night up today, featuring Doc Nowhere and another dimension. I want to do a whole spinoff sometime of Doc Nowhere adventures… see here.

People ask me what KTOF means, I put it in my comics a lot for band t-shirts, etc. Well it means KING TESTICLES and the ORACLES OF FEAR!

It was my old friend’s band. He’s not in this world anymore, but I always reckon that he went off to the mystical unknown, the other side, the great beyond… and I know he’s simply OWNING it. He had this thing about squids and tentacles, and elvis… so if I had to draw or write him into a comic as a character he’d be some omnipotent being from another dimension, battling the forces of FEAR in all of existence.  Under his Elvis cape, he’d have tentacles out his back, tentacles which could enter multiple dimensions at will to do his bidding.

I got my mind on the comics and the comics on my mind…

What else is new? So– my little promotional zip code list is growing. Not sure when I will have the time to sit down and contact some shops directly, but I have another BONUS awesome idea to add on now– my goal is to send some of my passionate webcomic readers into comic book shops as new customers there. Some people are questioning my sanity I think, do I really want this added workload? But honestly, it’s kinda nerdy fun to me. I like looking through data. Quick example, if I have a list of 25 people, their zipcodes, etc (which I currently do), and I’ve also been pasting in the small notes people leave with the messages. Say 5 of them say they’ve never been to a comic shop before but are willing to do so… these are the guys I will likely hit first on a priority list. And when contacting their local retailer, I can maybe work something up special with them, perhaps they can suggest titles in house that my readers would like in their shop? INvincible? Anything Kirkman? Some Image titles I’m not up on right now…  — and I won’t leave out the people who know where their local shop is either– if they know where it is, but haven’t gone there, same deal. The goal is to get more online readers into shops. Is it worth it– I think so.

Almost every day I think to myself, what would those old guys have done with all this stuff? The internet… print on demand. It’s that kind of thinking that helped make services like Comixpress.com pop up. But forget services for creators– what can we do now for the whole system?

Anyways– off to work here.

There’s a Saul face for no good reason to begin your Monday morning. Isn’t that how most of you feel on Mondays, before coffee? Click him to go to his origin comics in the old journals. And if you want more Saul, go from there and check out the fan forum and see the pencil-inks-color page I posted.

It’s odd to have so many places to update what I’m doing, that’s why I keep this blog here as more of my personal blog, where I very well COULD go into a tangent about politics, or how I think deadbeat Dads who don’t pay their child support or play with their kids, but have time to sit around getting fat playing video games should be beaten repeatedly with something blunt…. but I digress.

Thinking about my own personal goals this year, primarily being that I want more and more people to discover Hero By Night, I decided to take the step of forwarding the Yirmumah archives for a week or so and seeing  how it goes. I have a lot of old links out there with people looking for old tagged topics, and according to the traffic patterns, people stumble in, fumble around and leave. So I’m hoping that by trying this out for a week it’ll bring some new people into comics, who otherwise would have stumbled upon the bitter half of our operations, now they can stumble upon this other vision and drive we have. So far so good, I’m using a third party tracking thing called Reinvigorate to track my unique visitors there for the day, and it looks like they’ve ballooned considerably. The experiment will go on for a week until I can digest the numbers of people who stayed or returned and if it grew a little or not.

I had one of the most productive Sundays I think I’ve ever had. I finished the cover to issue #4, and laid out and wrote 4 pages for the Free Comic Book Day special we’re doing. By the end of the day, around 10pm or so, I was in a groove and probably could have kept going until 3am or something– but I heard my wife playing Wii bowling, and I like watching her play. Sue me.

So I’m back up and at it today. We’re thinking about going to join the gym. I’m not thrilled to add another bill, but maybe we can exchange money we’d put into the occasional fast food experience, and spend it on that instead to budget things out here. I have no idea what a hermit like me will do at a public gym, but it might be hilarious or really friggin sad to watch. At least I think I’d be getting healthy. — Speaking of which… I’m doing this REAL simple thing and losing weight. I read it in a Betty Crocker cook book of all places– To figure out how many calories you’re eating to stay the level you are, there’s a chart, for active people, sedentary people (like me!) — you take your current wait, and multiply it by 12 or 9 or something, and thats the amount of calories you’d have to eat to maintain your weight. Mine was something outrageous like 3600 calories or something. So the idea is, try to eat a 2000 calorie diet, and anything less of your maintain point, you will end up losing weight. For the first couple days I was counting calories on everything and stayed under 2000. I just weighed myself his morning, and since I’ve been doing this slowly, I’ve lost about 8 pounds. Not bad. So I can imagine if I actually dieted and exercised, I might turn into Mr. Universe here. ( HAH! )

Alright…. much to do here. Unfortunately there aren’t 5 more of me to get things done.

This morning’s sketch is just what’s on my mind. I don’t think I’ve ever drawn a politician before that I wasn’t mocking in some way in a cartoon or something. But, yes, Obama is my guy in this upcoming election. Warning, more political gabbing after the jump if you dare to read those types of things… Read more