This Blog Has Moved To http://davidjhahn.blogspot.com

Work still eating me alive, but I love it. I just received volume 4 of Paranoia Agent and I am dying to watch it, but not until I've gotten caught up. I haven't been in my beloved Mercury Studio in days. I hope those bastards are missing me.

Today's sketches are roughs for the Luna Moth pin-up I'm doing. It's an Avengers/Emma Peel riff, if you couldn't tell.

I'm slowly getting caught up on my work. The past few days I've been penciling pages for Bite Club: Vampire Crimes Unit as well as doing breakdown/page designs from the script, a side commercial illustration, and a Luna Moth pin-up for Dark Horse Comics' The Escapist. I'll post the penciled version of the pin-up here soon.

Little Cleo slept through the night for a second night in a row. For all you parents of infants out there, you know what a triumph that is.

Below are some of the sketches I did for the pencils for my Bite Club pages.

Still deadline crazy. Lame, I know.

Sketch:

Yikes, deadline coming down on me! No time to blog...must.....draw.....


Here's the sketch:

Not much to say today.

We have little Cleo on a regime that is allowing her to go to sleep right away at bedtime and sleep longer through the night. HOOOORAY! Now she's teething, so we have a whole new adventure in front of us.

Remember when...

...items in your grocery cart were unloaded by the cashier, not you?

...city bus tokens were actual little coins, not slips of paper?

...you could buy whale oil out of vending machines?


And now, the sketch of the day, brought to you by Bounty, the Quicker Picker-Upper:

The work the city is doing on the street outside my house is my wife's problem today, as I am at the downtown studio. Let her deal with the sound of an armored German Panzer division as it rolls down the street, rattling the house.

I'm into this new anime series called Paranoia Agent . I've watch volumes 1-3 several times and I'm waiting for volume 4 to arrive. Intelligent writing and nice character design, and it also has an opening theme song that permanently attaches itself to your brain.

The sketch of the day is a character I am trying to design for a comic. It's about a girl who finds a pair of magic sneakers hanging from a phone line:

The city is doing major roadwork to the street right outside of my house. They have every type of industrial Dr. Suess-road-tearing-up-asphalt-chomping-and-street-making-mobile going full force out there. I thought for sure this was going to ruin Cleo's nap time (my 4 month old). Instead, the droning and vibrating of the house seems to lull her to sleep. Small miracles.

The sketch of the day is one of the new Bite Club characters, Det. Betty Lou Yama.
Bang!

There's this asshole (maybe more of a prick, actually) who rides my bus in the morning. This guy has TWICE stepped in front of me to board the bus when I was clearly at the bus stop first, and it ticks me off something fierce. It's not like it's a crowded bus stop where you can't really tell who was there first. It's just me and him waiting for the bus. Now, it's not so much that my day is ruined because we didn't board the bus in the proper order, what's annoying to me is that it doesn't even seem to occur to this cretin that civilized people acknowledge turn-taking. It's a tenant of our society. To add insult to injury, his favorite seat on the bus (last row, right side) is also mine! So when he cuts me off to get on the bus, he sits in that seat! Arrrggg. I told myself that if he steps in front of me a third time, I will put my arm out and stop him and threaten him with bodily harm. I am NOT a violent person, but it's rude/oblivious shit heels like this that need to have their teeth knocked down their throats once in a while simply for the betterment of society. Even among a collective of monkeys, when one is annoying the others, it gets its ass kicked for the sake of the group. So, the other day, I walk up to the bus stop and he is there first, for a change. My first inclination was to step in front of HIM when the bus arrived and turn and say "Sucks, doesn't it?" or something. But I took the high road, literally. I proceed up the street to the next bus stop, therefore insuring I boarded the bus before him. I got my favorite seat, and watched him as he boarded at the next stop. His eyes went right to me in the good seat. He had no reaction and I didn't expect one. He has no clue that I'm waging this secret war against him and his kind. I'm glad I felt personally vindicated at having bested him. I'd still like to see him swallow his bloody teeth, though, just for investment purposes.


And now, your sketch of the day:

The TV Guide Channel. TV is invented, it becomes a common household item, it spawns a guide about what's scheduled on tv, that guide then eventually becomes it's own channel on cable tv. Talk about coming full circle. The next logical step is The TV Guide Channel Magazine. Question is, will it also prop up Melissa Rivers's Carreer?

And now your sketch of the day...

I've decided that since I don't post on here nearly often enough, the least I can do (and probably a better idea) is to post sketches form my sketchbook. I draw in it nearly everyday, so I'll always have something new. We'll see how it goes.

This is a cover for a book called Chick Flicks and Party Tip: A Guide for a Girls Night In I drew this in Adobe Illustrator in about 6 hours. Fun fun fun.


Goddamn it's been too long since I last posted. I must really be letting the two of you down. I am in the homestretch of completing the drawing of thefirst issue of Bite Club: Vampire Crimes Unit, for Vertigo/DC Comics. It's a five issue series written by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman and is the sequel to 2004's big selling series Bite Club. I'm also drawing a Luna Moth pin up for Dark Horse's Escapist Book as well as developing numerous other pitch projects.

I received the pencils and some of the colored pages for the X-Men Unlimited story I wrote for issue # 11 (below). David Aja is the artist and his stuff is fabulous, reminds me of Karre Andrews's work. That's the New Mutants, Sunspot and Cannonball, hanging out there.






.

There's this young couple I see at the coffee shop every so often that I can't quite figure out and it's really bugging me. I have this need to constantly be figuring people out. The thing about this boyfriend/girlfriend unit is that the girl is so obviously light-years out of this guy's league. He's a 3 and she's a 9. Okay, maybe he's a 4, but she's still a 9. She is an attractive, young, together-looking girl. What is holding this relationship together? I don't think I am being shallow by judging on appearances because we all know that people attract and end up with people in their own "class of appearence". Water always seeps to it's own level. He doesn't appear to be rich, so we can rule out gold digging. He's thin, not an ugly guy, but definitely a nebbish, wears glasses, fairly plain/normal. Oh, and he has blue hair. Not I'm-a-cool-punk-rock- rockstar-or-eccentric-artist type of blue hair. More like I-want-to-do-something-cool-and-alternative-and-I-live-in-Portland-where-it's-safe-to-have-blue-hair-and-makes-me-cool type of blue hair. Just picture a lanky Radar O'Reilly with blue hair and you get the picture. Now, when I see these two, they are always very lovey-dovey. He fawns and dotes on her and she is receptive and kind in turn. I figure he knows he is out of his element, so he's doing all he can to be a nice guy who she'll want to stay with forever and ever. Which is fine. As far as she goes, I'm thinking that this is either her first boyfriend, which means ultimately he's doomed, or she is a former stripper or something and has dated/slept with 86 guys, all of them assholes, and now she's glad to find a nice one. Whatever the case, good luck hot girl and dweeb.

Okay what else is bugging me, let's see ...

Local evening news reports that use the term "deadly" in reports, even when there were no fatalities. I also hate when they do this:

"Up next: A semi truck careens off the Ross Island bridge and plummets 100 feet into the river, and we caught it all on tape!" When a claim like that is made, I want to see the truck fly off the edge of a bridge. But, they DON'T have it all on tape. All they have is footage of the aftermath. Jerks.

Also, let's loose any 'news' stories about how to talk to your kids about how they can deal with tragedies they see on the news, like 9/11, sunami, Hurricane Katrina, etc. Are there enough parents out there there with emotionally troubled kids that it warrants a news story to tell them how to talk to their kids about, well, that life can be violent and random?

Speaking if disasters, our studio is auctioning off art to send relief to the Red Cross to help the people in Louisiana and Mississippi (or where ever Red Cross help is needed).
Check out the details at Hurricane Art at

http://mercurystudio.blogspot.com/