January 2012
1 post
CONTRACTING COMMUNICATION
If you ask an artist what skills does he need to master, to become a household name in the comics business, most of them have all the right answers: perspective, proportion, and storytelling; ability to draw consistent faces, animals, buildings and everything else; to know how to make backgrounds a part of the scene; know how move the camera so you have the best angle for said scene; know...
December 2011
1 post
Mike Deodato at your store or event!
INTERESTED IN MIKE DEODATO APPEARING AT YOUR STORE SIGNING OR CONVENTION EVENT? Guidelines: * Roundtrip airline tickets for Deodato and his wife Paula from Joao Pessoa, Brazil * Transportation from airport and back * 10-foot minimum booth/table space with signage (8 foot for stores) * First-class hotel accommodations * Meal stipend for two * NOTE: At some events, Deodato may require his...
November 2011
2 posts
ARIES MENDOZA, R.I.P.
I just learned that Filipino inker/pinup artist ARIES MENDOZA died yesterday of a heart attack. A hard worker with a fine technique, Aries — and his work — will be missed. Condolences to his family may be sent via his manager, Michelle Principe. If you knew him, you can post your thoughts, remembrances, and condolences on Facebook. As we mourn his loss, we celebrate his talents. A...
MIKE DEODATO and WILL CONRAD at the FiQ!
GHG’s Marvel artists MIKE DEODATO and WILL CONRAD were special guests at the FiQ! convention in Belo Horizonte, Brazil last weekend. Here’s their panel, shared with CB Cebulski and others!
https://twitter.com/#!/mikedeodato/status/137280503396040705 https://twitter.com/#!/mikedeodato/status/137279162615468032 https://twitter.com/#!/mikedeodato/status/137277752184291328
August 2011
6 posts
TWO SIDES OF THE COIN
I got in a few hours ago from Wizard World’s Chicago Comic Con — which was excellent, by the way — and started going through days of piled-up Emails. Two in particular caught my attention — opposite sides of the coin:
First, this one: David,
Just wanted to say I’m a big fan. Been collecting your works for a long time. I bought all of original Exposure...
PORTFOLIO REVIEWS AT CHICAGO COMIC-CON
For those of you wondering a bit about the portfollio reviews I’ll be conducting at Chicago Con — with the help of our artists Mike Deodato, Will Conrad, and Jinky Coronado, of course! — check out this info, courtesy of Wizard world — Mike Deodato, Will Conrad, and I will be doing a panel Sunday afternoon about Creating Comics, as well.
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JOIN US AT WIZARD WORLD'S CHICAGO CON!
Glass House Graphics is rolling out big-time for Wizard World’s CHICAGO CON from Thursday through Sunday, August 11th through 14th, at the Rosemont Convention Center. We’ll be setting up in our biggest booth display ever — 511A/511B/610. Among our roster of talents are MIKE DEODATO of Dark Avengers and New Avengers --
And WILL CONRAD of Wolverine:...
MEMORIES OF COMIC-CON!
What a week! The first day of Comic-Con started off well, with me catching up with STAN “The Man” LEE, so we could finally get a picture together — with him and me and the book I wrote for him, STAN LEE’S HOW TO DRAW COMICS.
Then it was off to meetings with the fine folks at Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Dynamite, Ape, Random House (including finally meeting my editor on STAN...
July 2011
1 post
SEE ME AT COMIC-CON 2011!
Yes, I will be at Comic-Con in San Diego all five days. Nope, I won’t have a big Glass House Graphics booth top worry about this year. Instead, I will be setting up camp at the Keenspot booth, #1231, which has this display graphic — Why Keenspot? Good question! They’re producing quite a few FREE comic books series online, and Glass House Graphics is providing three of them...
March 2011
3 posts
OUR NEW SELECTION OF AMATEUR SUPERCHARACTERS NEED...
…That was the Email subject of an inquiry I received today. Here was the text of it: «<Hello Glasshousegraphics contact, from amateur supercharacters creative team, from UK Britain… Please view our selection of new and original supercharacters on direct photobucket link below, we do not have the skills to develop ourselves, and would like help from professionals like...
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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BABY...GOTCHA ON MY MI-I-I-IND!
Today marks the 18th Anniversary of my Glass House Graphics agency/studio, which launched on March 11, 1993. That was the day I left Innovation Publishing, the company I’d started in late ‘88 and rose to #4 in market share by ‘91 with Lost in Space, Dark Shadows, Quantum Leap, Anne Rice titles and a host of other books. It was a scary first month, deciding to be an agent and...
STAN LEE'S HOW TO DRAW COMICS (AND OTHER STORIES)
Yup, I KNOW I haven’t updated this blog in month and months. (It was almost as though I’d disappeared into the bowels of Epic Con…it’s been that long since my last exciting episode.) There’s a reason I’ve not posted here. Well, lots of reasons, actually. But one of them is pretty simple: I’m now posting just about every day on Facebook (as David...
September 2010
2 posts
I'M OFF TO BRASILIA AND SAO PAULO FOR EPIC CON AND...
Yup. I’ve started packing for another trip to Brazil this week. I’m flying down on Thursday to spend time with some of my favorite people. First, Glass House Graphics’ biggest comics superstars will descend en masse this weekend for Epic Con — this Saturday and Sunday, September 18th and 19th, at the City Park Pavilion in Brasilia, Brazil. Comic book greats MIKE...
SIMPLE SAMPLES
Yesterday, I received another Email that made no sense to me. It’s pretty typical of some of the submissions that I receive each week, and I thought it might be helpful to share it with you.
See these three images? They were the entire Email.
NO cover note. NO info about the person sending the images. NO details that put the images in context of WHY they were being sent to us,...
August 2010
1 post
GLASS HOUSE GRAPHICS AT CHICAGO CON (AGAIN!)
This makes 10 years in a row, and probably 17 of the past 28 years, that I’ve been to Chicago Con — later called Wizard World Chicago Con — then Chicago Con once again. I enjoy these trips, not only to rub elbows with editors and publishers with whom I work, but to spend time with artists and writers and friends, relationships built up across those 28 years of professional...
July 2010
3 posts
WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, SLAM THE DOOR HARDER?
If you were a young artist seeking career opportunities and were given the chance to be featured in a national magazine showcasing your art talents, how would you handle it? Here’s a tale of two such artists. One of the perks for artists attending my Creating Comics Seminar in the Philippines this year was that TWO of them would get featured in a top Manila magazine, with an article...
WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
Given that this is the week of Comic-Con, where hundreds — perhaps thousands! — of artists go to find work or to break in with their first jobs, I thought this would be the right time to recount the ways I’ve seen some people deal with opportunities — in a way that isn’t necessarily in their own best interests. A young man I’d known for a long time stopped by...
GHG AT COMIC-CON 2010!
With so much work coming in to Glass House this year — our biggest ever — I look up, blink, and realize that months are passing between my postings here. I’d planned, back in February, to write about the follow-ups to my big Seminar in Manila that I conducted back at the end of January. Obviously, that didn’t happen. And for that, I apologize.
I’ve gotten a lot of...
June 2010
1 post
AL WILLIAMSON (1931 - 2010)
Not again…*Sigh* Here’s what Marvel superstar artist Mike Deodato had to say about it today: It seems as though Al Williamson has always been with us in the comics world. Certainly he was out there doing the most amazing work years before I was born, and even then his pages radiated skills and imagination with every pen and brushstroke. A beautiful synthesis of his inspirations (a...
March 2010
2 posts
DICK GIORDANO (1932 - 2010)
I just learned that Dick Giordano has died of leukemia. He was 77 and had been a long-time executive/editor/artist/inker at DC Comics. Although I hadn’t followed his ’60s-era work at Charlton (those books weren’t distributed around here), I fondly remember his stuff from his days inking Neal Adams, and his bouncing around between DC and Marvel (I recall a lovely Red Sonja story...
TODAY'S TALK
Subject: I agreed to PAY a potentially very good artist — one we’re trying to train — for any sample pages he’d complete, so he could earn while he learns. (That’s not new. We’ve had an “earn while you learn” system set up at Glass House for some time.) If he’d do 5 pages a week, I’d pay him for 5 pages a week. And yet, in six months...
January 2010
4 posts
LIVING LEGENDS
The #1 reason I opened an office in Manila, Philippines 11 years ago was my long-time appreciation of the great Filipino artists whose work I grew up with in the ’70s. Nestor Redondo (with whom I worked on a story). Alex Nino (who drew some books for me!). Alfredo Alcala. Rudy Nebres (one of my wife’s friends!). Rico Rival. E.R. Cruz. Ernie Chua. The list goes on and on. They...
BECAUSE COMMON SENSE ISN'T COMMON?
Three thoughts today: * I am warmed by how many good submissions I’ve received from artists looking for a free ticket to our Creating Comics Seminar next weekend. I’m not looking for/expecting professional polish but, rather, raw talent that can then be taught to do it well and right. Being shy and “holding back” a submission for fear of “rejection” never...
WHAT DOES AN AGENT DO?
“So what does an agent do?” another inquiring mind wanted to know on the phone today. “Don’t you just hand out jobs? I mean, I can show my stuff to Marvel and DC myself.” I dealt with this subject a year ago; now, with a new Creating Comics Seminar around the corner, it bears repeating: What does an agent do?, indeed. To begin with, it varies from talent to talent — and from agency to agency. ...
SEMINAR SCENARIO 2010
Hello, everyone! I’m writing this from my Glass House Graphics/Studio Sakka Graphics offices in Manila, Philippines. As I look around, I see Anthony Tan frantically drawing and coloring “sketch cards” for Rittenhouse Archives. Tina Francisco is belting out beautiful storyboards for an animated feature. Jinky Coronado is drawing a project called Dangerous Secrets. Mel Joy San...
November 2009
2 posts
OUR MAN IN MANILA!
GHG Head Honcho DAVID CAMPITI is now in the Philippines, working from our offices there in Cubao, metro Manila. He’ll be running a new training session for fresh art talents all through December, January, and early February. He’s also writing a new project while there, soon to be announced. If you want to reach him there, dial 011-632-913—4619 or use his usual IM and Skype...
COMIC BOOK SEMINAR 2010!
Sorry I’ve not been posting lately. After my trip to three major cities in Brazil to meet artists and to teach, I came back to a mountain of work. I’ve been trying to catch up ever since. I’ve been hoping to post a bunch of anecdotes and photos about the trip, but this has been my first break since I got back, to post anything. My apologies. I do have some major news for all...
October 2009
2 posts
TEACHING THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL
Time to head salsa the border. Today I’m on a plane, en route to Brazil! I’ll arrive tomorrow and will be hobnobbing with Brazil’s finest artists for two weeks! * First stop: Belo Horizonte, where I’m a guest at the biggest Convention in the country, followed by me teaching a two-day Ultimate Seminar for Creating Comic Books & Graphic Novels. It will be held at...
HOW TO MAKE A GREAT IMPRESSION IN 35 SECONDS
It’s Saturday at Pittsburgh ComiCon, and something has gone wrong. Since we’d worked with Stan Lee on Who Wants To Be a Superhero? (art for the show and the resulting comic book, both seasons) and for others comics projects for his POW! Entertainment, Stan said that I should ask the Con to schedule my few minutes with him since he was booked wall-to-wall. The scheduled Friday night...
September 2009
2 posts
HOW TO MAKE A BAD IMPRESSION IN 35 SECONDS
…So we’d just set up our booth display for Pittsburgh ComiCon 2009, and this fellow walks up, portfolio in hand. He studies our booth for a moment, its banner modestly proclaiming us to be “The World’s Premier Agency for Creative Properties & Graphics Talent.” “Uhh…what are ‘Properties of Creative’?” he asks me. “Creative...
PITTSBURGH COMICON '09
Pittsburgh ComiCon hits the new Monroeville Exposition Center this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, September 11th, 12th, and 13th, and I’ll be there with several Glass House talents. David Lawrence, co-author/editor of the MERRCY THOMPSON graphic novel will be there, along with novelist Paul S. Brittain and Jinky Coronado (of BANZAI GIRLS and AVALON HIGH fame). Yup, we’ll have a GHG...
August 2009
5 posts
FAN EXPO CANADA
This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, comes Fan Expo Canada 2009. Watch for us at the the Glass House Graphics table. Marvel superstar artist Mike Deodato, Jr., will be hanging out there and drawing like crazy (along with his lovely wife Paula). Mike attended New York Comic Con early this year but, otherwise, hasn’t been...
TESTS & TRYOUTS
An artist recently insisted he should never do a tryout for a book; the editor, he explained, should simply give him the assignment based on his existing portfolio on our website. So I said, “Let me understand this…you want the assignment without doing a test to see if you’re right for it?” “Yes, it’s a matter of pride. I shouldn’t have to...
AMERICANISMS IN SCRIPTWRITING
“A woman runs through the night, holding her child like so much excess baggage, feet splashing through the alleyway puddles like ducks swimming to shore.” That’s from a script written awhile back and sent to a foreign artist. What the comic’s editor got back in the art was a woman running down a wet alley, with a kid under one arm and bags of luggage under the other, ducks in...
CHICAGO FOLLIES
So Wizard World Chicago-Con is once again Chicago Comic-Con, reverting to the name its previous owner bestowed upon it years ago. With its new name came a smaller show, with Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and other always-there publishers missing in action at last week’s show. It set a strange vibe for a lot of convention goers. GHG did have its usual space. Besides hanging out with some...
Wizard World Chicago
Wow. Just days after Comic-Con wrapped up in San Diego, now Wizard World Chicago Con is upon us this Thursday through Sunday, August 6th through 9th, at the Rosemont Convention Center. And yes, I’ll be there, taking meetings and going through piles of portfolio reviews.
Glass House Graphics’ stalwarts Mason Johnson (our ever-vigilant webmaster) and Jinky Coronado (of BANZAI GIRLS and...
July 2009
3 posts
GLASS HOUSE GRAPHICS & COMIC-CON!
Glass House’s production manager, letterer, colorist, and all-around great guy ZACH MATHENY is, as I type this, working his way through the throngs of fans at Comic-Con International: San Diego. If you live under a rock, maybe you don’t know about pulp/pop culture’s latest and greatest gathering in sunny San Diego, California — where talents from movies, TV, books, comics,...
OH BEANS...
My good buddy Matt was in town for the weekend, so we stopped by the store for groceries. He watched me pull a jar off the shelf. “What’re you getting?” he asked. “Crunchy peanut butter,” I replied, placing the jar in the cart. “Man, there’s something wrong with it. Look at the top.” He indicated where oil and whole peanuts formed a top layer...
VICTIMS!
The blog request I receive most is to showcase some examples of the portfolio reviews that I give, by Email (frequently), at Conventions (many times a weekend), or by snail mail (a dozen or so a week). Sometimes the submissions fall into the “school kid with dreams” kind of thing, and they need a starting point from which to grow. Others are talented amateurs that need real direction...
June 2009
6 posts
MOMENTS IN TIME
Today I handed our little Sony digital camera to my 4-year-old daughter Jasmine and showed her how to turn it on and what button to press. That’s all. No further coaching. She spent the next few hours shooting pics of the floor, her feet, her toys, her Mom, my left ear, her Mom’s drawing table, her lunch, and she even shot a video of herself shooting a photo of herself via my...
DOUBLE-SECRET PROBATION BUDGETS
A job offer came over for us to draw a dozen or so spot illustrations for a book, in a specific style. I asked the client, an author, “What’s your schedule and budget?” the answers which would help to guide me through our talent roster of proper artists. I could then work with my managers to match up schedule, budget, and style to the best available talents. The client...
LETTERS, I GET LETTERS
Occasionally, I’ll share with you some correspondences that I think will benefit other people. Here we go…. This was in my Email today…(this is a cut-and-paste): ««<Hi David I checked out your art work and its awsome.Ill keep it short ,my son has talent,not like you ,but better then me when it comes to drawing and schetching this characters he comes up with.He...
UNBEARABLE SITUATIONS
…So this client contacts us about doing an animation job. That’s fine, we do quite a bit of animation for commercials, for websites, even a whole animated feature caled DAYO (“The Wanderer”). Scripts, designs, storyboards, full animation, the whole thing or any part of the thing that clients need. The client has the name, he explains, of a cartoon bear and wants a...
GHG BRAZIL APPOINTS NEW MANAGER
Big news today. My long-time co-worker, friend, and confidante Vitor Ishimura came up with such an exciting plan for a new division of my company, that I had to tell him, “Do it! What are you waiting for??” But there are only so many hours in a day, so something had to change. This article, appearing on our company website and elsewhere, explains it probably better than I could:
...
FIRE AT WILL!
Thanks go out to WILL CONRAD for the art and to ALE STARLING for the color to my blog logo, which you see over there on the right. Will Conrad, of course, is the amazingly talented Brazilian artist on Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER, and who has been doing excellent work on CONAN, KULL, SERENITY, and RED SONJA books over these past few years. As I type this, he’s drawing a few last-minute...
May 2009
6 posts
WHAT'S DISTRIBUTION GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Let me add an observation to this blog, that I hope all the COMIC PUBLISHERS take the time to read. They really need to understand this, and perhaps it will inspire them to make new methods of distribution their #1 priority: Most children don’t know about comics, it seems. My daughter Jasmine is in pre-school. This morning, she took in some Scooby-Doo and other youth-appropriate comics...
Memories of Things Still Alive
Not long ago, someone at an art school asked me this question: “Are you ever afraid comics will die out?” My answer: “Nope. At this moment my company’s doing well over FIFTY comics projects and over FIFTY non-comics projects — animation, web design, magazine graphics, advertising, photgraphy, and so on. Comics are half our business and they’re pretty good...
Gods & Monsters
As you read in a previous blog entry, an agent’s work negotiating contracts is only a small part of what we do. Much of our ability to provide all those services comes from years of learning many skill sets as well as making contracts and friendships that stretch into decades. Some artists have become the best of friends, godparents to my children, as close as family.
But it’s...