John Martz

Red-Headed Monster Soul

Just playing around with using a limited palette, and started browsing my music collection for inspiration. I’ll probably do more of these.

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The TCAF, it is a-comin’

I’ll be at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend, Saturday May 9th and Sunday May 10th.

I’ll have a new mini-comic in tow, entitled It’s Snowing, We Should Go For a Walk. The short autobiographical story of this year’s first snowstorm will be available in my online shop after the weekend.  As will a collaborative mini with Zach Worton and Aaron Costain. We have compiled a 40+ page collection of jam comics under the name Team Society League. Here’s the cover for It’s Snowing:

I’ll have proper previews of all the new stuff soon, but wanted to draw attention first to the two appearances I’ll be making away from my tablespace at the festival, which is at the Toronto Reference Library.

Sunday, May 10th
1:00pm-2:30pm: Newspapers, Comic Books, and The Internet.
Learning Centre 1

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years, you know that newspapers—and especially editorial cartoonists and daily comic strips—are undergoing a radical change thanks to the Internet. Comic books are facing this sea-change as well, and everyone wants to know what’s going to happen. What’s next? Luckily, we’ve got the answer. We’ve assembled a crack team of panelists to discuss the future of newspapers, the future of comics, and their possible future on the internet.

On the panel is R. Stevens, the creator of the webcomic Diesel Sweeties. He entered into a deal with United Features Syndicate to distribute his comic in newspapers, and ultimately left that deal to concentrate on his web efforts. Joining him will be: Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics and the controversial futurist text Reinventing Comics; Stuart Immonen, an accomplished “mainstream” comics artist on Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man, and also a self-publisher who prints his own books and comics, and serializes work online; Brendan Buford, Comics Editor for King Features Syndicate, and a cartoonist, publisher, and someone who works with mainstream book publishers; and John Martz, co-creator of Drawn.ca and Chair of the Canadian Chapter of The National Cartoonist Society. The panel will be moderated by Steven Murray, writer, illustrator, self-publisher, webcomics artist, and cartoonist and journalist for Canada’s National Post newspaper.

And for kids:

Sunday, May 10th
3:30pm-4:30pm: Kids Draw!
Owlkids Day Gallery Space

Do you wanna learn how to draw? Join a fantastic lineup of kids’ cartoonists as they teach kids the basics of cartooning! Cartoonists include Frank Cammuso (Knights of the Lunch Table), Tom Fowler (MAD Magazine), John Martz (Drawn.ca, Kayak magazine) and Kean Soo (Jellaby). Moderated by Naseem Hrab of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre.

Check out torontocomics.com for the full line-up of panels and events.

Finally, the one-page comic Zach and I contributed to Comics Festival can be seen in its entirety here. Whew!

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Cloudy Collection - Earth Day Promo

It’s Earth Day, so an extra $10 from each Cloudy Collection print set purchased today (April 22nd, 2009) will be donated to the Nature Conservancy, an international organization devoted to saving wild, untouched, and rehabilitated natural places for future generations. That’s in addition to the $250 we are already sending them.

The Cloudy Collection is proudly enviro-friendly. The printer, Boxcar Press is run on 100% wind power, uses vegetable-based inks, and our prints are on paper made from bamboo.

As of yesterday there were only 15 print sets left, but I should have a few extras at TCAF if you’re going to be there.  I’ve already posted pictures of mine, so the ones shown here are from the lovely Meg Hunt and Amy Crehore.

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The Cloudy Collection - 7 prints for $35

One sale today: The first Cloudy Collection series of prints. Edition 1, Cloudy Characters, features seven letterpress prints with art by Meg Hunt, Bill Fick, John Martz, Amy Crehore, Tom Kaczynski, Steven Weissman, and David Huyck. A portion of the sales will go to The Nature Conservancy. The set of all seven prints is just $35, and shipping to the US and Canada is free! (International shipping is just $10.)

I’m thrilled to be participating in a project with some of my favourite artists, and the prints look great. The series is limited to 100 sets. Get ‘em while they’re hot! Here’s a closer look at mine:

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Drawing perspective in Manga Studio

I’ve been quiet around these parts, but I’m knee-deep in working on a kids’ graphic novel with my friend Zach Worton. It’s called Barbarian for Hire, and a preview will be in Comics Festival, one of the free titles available in comic stores on Free Comic Book Day this year (May 2, 2009). Chris Butcher’s blog has the full line-up, and it’s mighty impressive.

One thing I hate drawing is perspective.  It’s not particularly difficult, but it’s time-consuming, and frankly, I’m lazy. Ultimately drawing should be fun, and the more it feels like work, the less I’m going to want to do it. But there are times I can’t avoid it, and this particular scene in the book necessitated a nice wide angle.  And drawing this traditionally, would’ve meant positioning a vanishing point so far off the page, I would’ve needed another drawing table.

Enter Manga Studio.  I’ve been drawing the book completely digitally in Manga Studio, and today I finally took the application’s perspective tools for a spin. It’s really as simple as positioning your vanishing points and then when you draw on the canvas, your lines automatically follow the right perspective.  It’s kind of like magic.  I was able to take this rough doodle:

And in just a few minutes, create this sketch:

I think it may have taken me longer to write this blog post than it did to draw that barroom. Awesome.

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A walk in the snow

Here’s the first panel of a minicomic I’ve made for TCAF.  I’ll share the entire thing eventually, but for now here’s a teaser.

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Canned

I am currently engaged in a fight-to-the-death with Brian ”Etherbrian” Brasher. Over at Veer’s site, the two of us are battling it out for glory and honour in their latest Lightboxing bout.

Lightboxing duels present each fighter with the same set of elements culled from Veer’s vast collection of stock photos and type. The participants then construct an image using only these elements, and the public votes.  The theme of this bout is Canned, and this is what I came up with using the given ingredients.

Check out the fight, and vote for your, ahem, favourite.

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The tools artists use

I was interviewed over at The Tools Artists Use. The site is a growing collection of interviews with various artists and illustrators, all sharing their favourite pens, brushes, and other tools.  Fun. 

Above, a quick drawing I did after a marathon viewing of one of the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse DVD sets recently. I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I?

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Moose spot

Here’s a spot illustration I did for Kayak Magazine about the lengths gone to ensure delivery of the mail in Canada’s history. I love any job in which I can draw a purple moose.

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Barbarian for Hire and Free Comic Book Day

Here’s a one-panel preview of a one-page Barbarian for Hire comic I did with Zach Worton for this year’s Comics Festival book for Free Comic Book Day, which is Saturday, May 2, 2009.

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Yes We Scan!

I finally have a working scanner, so to celebrate here’s the original sketch for this recent comic.

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More OpenSRS Illustrations

Before the new year I completed a whole series of header illustrations for OpenSRS.

The idea of a neighbourhood handyman mascot was expanded into a vast team of friendly professionals, and the website was given a header illustration depicting the mascots acting out an appropriate mid-century small-town metaphor for its various sections.  Shown here are the headers for “Forum” and “Security”.

See the whole set over at Flickr, and visit OpenSRS.com to see the entire website populated with my work (and to, ahem, meet all your domain name related reseller service needs!)

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Hot dog!

A little illustration I did a few weeks ago for a thank-you card.

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Momentile

Ahhh, a new year, a new place to waste time on the Internet.  Well, as time-wasters go this one is pretty minimal, and allows me to update it on-the-fly, on-the-go, on-the-spot. I rarely have the discipline or time needed to maintain one of those 365-days-a-year projects, but I was intrigued with Momentile. Momentile seems to be what would happen if Twitter and Flickr had a baby—one image a day, no commentary, no titles, no social-web-2.0-taggery, no fuss. A year in pictures, and nothing more.

So I’m chronicling 2009 by way of taking a daily photo with my iPhone and uploading it to my new Momentile account. I have no specific goal other than to watch the year unfold, but would be happy to learn new things about discipline, repetition, composition, distillation, and the passage of time.

Also, I’m just a big nerd. Here’s the view from where I’m sitting today.

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Life in the Dead of Winter

I illustrated this album cover for the band George under the art direction of Scott Boms of Wishingline who also happens to be the drummer for the band. After waking up to a light snowfall it seemed only fitting to post this today.

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