The show runs Saturday and Sunday from 10am-5pm. Admission is $10-15 (can’t seem to find that info anywhere) and tickets can be purchased at the door.

Since this is my first show, if you don’t see me at the table, just pound on it for a bit. I’m probably hiding underneath the tablecloth, waiting for all the scary strangers to disperse.

While I’ve been preparing for this convention, I’m sure you noticed that Variables reverted to a once a week schedule. That will change one week after the con and the comic will revert to a three-every-two schedule, skipping an update every other Thursday.

Looking back at the first half of this issue, it’s a little amazing just how much my art has improved since I stopped work on the 1992 arc last October. I’ve completely changed my inking style, going with heavy blacks in lieu of coloring in the shadowed parts of the page. It’s much more dynamic and my coloring style is far more refined. It gets me excited to think about what my art will look like by the end of the third issue, which should be complete some time late this year.

To prepare for the convention, I’ve been drawing a fair amount of Marvel/DC stuff, getting used to the characters and their more superhero style of rendering, which is more of a departure from my Variables work than you’d expect. Variables has a little crossover with superhero books but given its slightly more realistic take on the genre, I rarely draw overly muscled characters dynamically swinging fists at one another in favor of drawing people in regular clothes or, in the case of the Karter Floros character, a patchwork costume put together from various SWAT, police, and paintball gear. It’s more functional than cool. It takes a bit of time for me to get used to drawing the tights and cape crowd but every time I take a stab at it, my work is better than it was before.

That’s about it for today so if you’re in the area this weekend, come by and visit! And as always, check out the Variables issue in progress here.

As you’ve probably noticed, Variables is updating once a week again… This is because I’m tabling my first convention this weekend at SpringCon on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St Paul. I’ve been spending the past several days brushing up on superhero drawings and doing other assorted things to get ready for the convention. Some time before the end of the month, Variables will revert to a three-pages-every-two-weeks schedule again. If you like in the Twin Cities area, come down and check out SpringCon, which runs both Saturday and Sunday.

And, as always, click through the image below to jump to the issue-in-progress of Variables.

In nine days, I will be attending my first convention as an exhibitor in St. Paul. It’s a little bit terrifying and I’ve been working furiously on the comic for the past couple of weeks to get ahead. Next week, I will work entirely on convention-related things and hopefully, will crank out a few drawings good enough to sell to attendees. I’d like to get at least five or six new pieces done and I figure an entire week should be enough time to finish a decent-sized pile of sketches.

As for Variables, what you’re looking at here is a four page Blake scene, the last time we’ll see Blake until the third and final issue of the series. The mysterious people are setting him up for testing… but for what? You’ll have to check back to find that out. After that, for the first time in nearly a year, I’ll return to the Isabel and Candice storyline. It’s a shame that it’s been so long since I wrote or drew them. Out of the Variables characters I’ve introduced so far, they’re probably my favorites. They’ll close out the issue with six pages and it all wraps up with a proper comic book cliffhanger scene.

As I said earlier, Variables will update weekly until I’m clear of the upcoming con and then it will return to either a twice-weekly or three-every-two-weeks pace until the end of the issue. My initial plan is to have this issue finished and posted by the end of June at the very latest. Variables is nearly its 18 month anniversary and my goal is to be close to releasing one page a week for those 18 months (or 78 pages). I’m a bit behind and want to get back to where the comic should be after that amount of time.

To check out the issue-in-progress of Variables 1992 #2, click here.

For the next two weeks, Variables is going to return to a weekly schedule while I get ready for SpringCon, a convention here in the Twin Cities. After that, the comic will return to either a twice-a-week or a three-every-two-weeks schedule until this issue is finished (20 pages). After that, Variables will go on hiatus for awhile but I’ll explain the hows and whys of that later.

This page is, uh, a little different stylistically than the previous pages. Since I haven’t worked on this issue in quite some time, I knew this would be a problem but I didn’t want to reel back my art quality just to make it fit in with the rest of the issue I finished over six months ago. It will look a little funny for a few pages but I’m sure everyone will adjust.

As always, click on the image below to jump to the second issue of Variables 1992.

Anyway, before I end up writing a thesis on the subject, the rest of the 1992 arc was rewritten and is much better for it. I only tweaked the rest of issue two because the final ten pages didn’t need a ton of work. The final Blake pages are interesting and from the moment I first wrote it, the way the issue concludes with Isabel and Candice is fantastic.

Now to the art preview. As you can see here, Blake looks, uh, different. It’s been over six months since I drew Blake  and my art style has shifted considerably. I briefly thought about reeling back my style changes to keep a story flow but I don’t think I could keep it up for ten more pages. So, I decided it’s better to just draw as well as I could, which is how I’ve always approached Variables. If there’s a shift in art style mid-story, so be it.

Want to brush up on the 1992 story arc? Then click here to jump back to the issue in progress.

As always, click through the image below to jump to the finished issue of Variables 2002!

At this point, it’s back to the 1992 arc to finish issue two. This shouldn’t take long, as I only have ten pages left in the issue until completion. Over the weekend, I started on the first draft of issue three and if there was a way I could magically finish issue two and start drawing that instead, I would. There are all sorts of crazy awesomeness that happens and my excitement about the 1992 arc has been rekindled. I can’t wait to start work on the visuals for it. Issue two also has a lot of great stuff and I should be excited to work on that as well but it isn’t the new hotness so I’m having a hard time getting too worked up about. On the other hand, the first page (partially penciled as I write this) looks so much better than my earlier stuff that it’s crazy to look at one page and then the other.

On this page, I started using what has become a pretty popular inking trick… I fling ink at the page. You’ll notice it around his cheeks and around the smoke. I’ve seen a lot of artists use this in the past and this page was missing something after I finished inking it like a normal person. So I busted out a card and started flicking the quill at the page, splattering ink all over the place. I like it. It’s not the sort of thing you can do for every panel but when there’s action that makes clean, straight inks look a little too polished for their own good, this is a nice trick to loosen up the inks and give the panel a little more “mess” to make it look more dynamic. It’s definitely something I’ll be using in future pages.

That’s about it for this morning. Click here to jump to the issue in progress of Varibles!

As always, click through the image below to jump to the (nearly complete) first issue of Variables 2002.

And then I’m done with the first issue of 2002! Production has been ramped up lately and given my newfound proclivity for waking up and starting work before 7am, I may be able to keep it up for awhile… which means that for the time being, Variables will be switching to a three every two schedule. The comic will update every Tuesday (as usual) and every other Thursday. I’ve been churning out more than two pages every week for the past three weeks so for starters, I think that schedule is something I can pretty easily maintain through at least the summer.

This is the start of the fight scene. As you can see, Karter is shooting. A lot. How does it end? Well, you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to see that.

In my never-ending quest to improve artistically, I’m trying out a new coloring style this page. Since this was the beginning of a fight scene, this messier style seemed like a natural fit. I’m not sure I’m really sold on it for long-term usage in Variables but I’m intrigued with the idea of using rougher, scattered brushes to do all my coloring. I’m definitely going to begin exploring various brushes and settings in Photoshop in hopes that I’ll find something I really like and want to use permanently. One upside of the looser coloring style I’ve been using over the past 6-8 pages is that I can churn out pages about an hour faster than my old, more detailed color style. It also gives my inks a bit more life so I think I’m on the right track here, I just need to hone the look a bit and I’ll be satisfied with it… Yeah, right. After a few months, I’m always looking for the next great thing to vault my art to the next plane. I’m really not one for sitting still.

So, check back tomorrow to see the full page in all its glory! And be sure to click here to see the full issue of Variables!