Click on over to my youtube channel if you want to see more comic shorts.
Free Daily Comics Explode! Sophie's Potty Surprise Rocks 'Dog Eat Doug'
Sophie's Potty Surprise Explodes! Dog Eat Doug Free Daily Comic Gets Messy
I have to be fair to Sophie. She never did this. She only had a couple catastrophic potty accidents. One was after surgery and the other was when she was sick.
Dog Eat Doug Comic: Sophie Roasts Baby Doug's Baby Suit
To be fair, baby suits are super cute.
Caught in the Act: Doug and Sophie's Peanut Butter Mishap Revealed in 'Dog Eat Doug' Comic Strip!
Doug struggles with deception. And most dogs do too. Dogs are create at getting into trouble but hysterical at trying to cover up the crime.
How to do magic tricks
Panels from my webcomic, “The Conjurers”, a companion piece to the upcoming novels.
So you want to learn how to do magic tricks? Or do you want to be a magician? There’s a difference. Learning the secret of how a trick is done is disappointing. Trust me on that. Wanting to become a magician is much more than learning secrets. In this post, I’ll give a streamlined list of tips on how to get started.
in later posts, I’ll focus on different aspects of performing magic and my philosophy on the craft. Along with a behind the scenes look at the making of my middle grade fantasy series, “The Conjurers”.
Where should one start if they want to become a magician? These days, there’s a lot of answers, but I’ll start at my beginning. First, get yourself a magician Uncle.
Yep, as cliche as it sounds, my uncle was a magician. Not a “pulling a quarter from your ear” kind of magic uncle, but a legit, aces assembly type. And a charter member of the Magic Castle. I was in the second grade when he taught me my first trick. I was hooked. He’d send magic books every birthday and Christmas. Mostly books, which he believed were the best source to sharpen your magical skills.
You could of course buy individual tricks. A coin trick here, a special deck there, a set of rings, maybe a chop cup. However, it is much harder as a beginner to piece together a performance trick by trick. A book, on the other hand, not only gives you a bunch of magic, more importantly, it gives you insight from the author. Those insights come from years of experience. And that knowledge is infinitely more valuable than the secret to an effect.
To illustrate the point, let’s say we take someone with zero magic experience. Let’s call them Barbara. I buy Barabara a vanishing quarter trick and show her how it works. I’ll even let her practice it a few times. It’s an easy trick so she gets the hang of it after fifteen minutes. Now, I’ll have her perform it out on the street. Then, right after, David Blaine will perform the same easy trick. Who do you think will get the bigger reaction? The same trick, the same method. David Blaine wins every time.
No fault of Barbara’s. The success of a trick has nothing to do with the secret. Some effects, mechanically speaking, are easy. Some you can do right out of the box. The real secret is experience. Yes, that means, even after hours of practice, the trick can flop even if you performed it correctly. How can that be if you just demonstrated a miracle?
Simple. Too explain I must expose another truth of magic. The hand is not quicker than the eye. That myth, one I believe was started by a magician, actually helps hide secrets. Again, the goal of a magician is to create a moment of astonishment, not fool people. If people believe you are trying to fool them, they will be watching for the secret: the hidden coin, the card switch, etc. if the are transfixed by the performance then they will see real magic. Back to my point though, there will always be those who are looking for how the trick is done, those who are waiting for the hand to be quicker than their eye. However, most of the time, the trick is already finished before the magic happens. By that I mean a magician controls where, when and at what their audience is looking at. In other words, the spectators never witness the secret move because they aren’t looking at it. This is a long winded definition of what is called misdirection. Learning the art of misdirection is much more important than the method and the only way to learn it is from experience. Thus one of the many advantages of learning from books.
Obviously I could go on and on. The point, I hope, is clear. Just like wizards in fantasy novels, the true learning is in the spell book, which is a collection of knowledge from other wizards. One of my first books, and one of my favorites, is Bill Tarr’s “Now You See It, Now You Don’t”. I could recommend dozens of books. I won’t because my second tip will cover that bit of business.
My second tip is admittedly harder to pursue than the first and not everyone will have this luxury. Magic shops. Magic Shops are Diagon Alley and Hogwarts combined. A good magic shop, that is. I was extremely fortunate growing up near Boston. Once a month I got to visit Hank Lee’s Magic Factory. I didn’t have a lot of money for tricks or books but that was not a hindrance. Hank’s was always filled with magicians willing to share advice with a young, aspiring magician. Many times they wouldn’t sell you what you wanted. They knew if a trick was too hard, or in some cases too easy. They steered me towards tricks that, if I committed myself, I could successfully perform.
The magic shop from “The Conjurers” webcomic.
However, after a few years, I had more confidence, a clearer vision of the kind of magic I wanted to perform. So, on one Saturday morning, I walked into Hank’s asking to purchase John Kennedy’s floating dollar bill. I was in fourth grade at the time. I can’t remember the name of the magician working that morning. I do remember the way his blonde hair hung halfway over his eyes when he sighed and leaned on the counter. “I think you should wait a couple more years for that one,” he said and demonstrated a couple of other tricks and showed me a book that would be a good primer before tackling the floating dollar bill.
He was in fact correct. The method behind the floating dollar bill frustrated many a grown, seasoned magician. It could easily have turned me off to the whole art. I, apparently, was quite stubborn and persisted. I would learn the floating dollar bill or quit magic. Begrudgingly, the magician agreed to sell it to me, so long as I promised to put in the work required and not quit. He told me I would get frustrated, even angry and would probably toss the whole mess into the trash.
Guess what? He was right. I did end up tossing the trick into the trash. And taking it out again. But I didn’t quit. Why? Simple, I wanted to float a dollar bill and was willing to spend the rest of my life achieving that goal. Well, it didn’t take the rest of my life. It took hours. Everyday. Two months later I performed it at Hank’s. It wasn’t a great performance. It was enough to impress them. And it was enough to convince them that I was committed to magic. And that builds trust between magicians. From then on they were willing to teach me anything I wanted to learn. More importantly, they were willing to share their own experience.
What if you don’t have a local magic shop? That brings me to my third tip. Magic Clubs. My Uncle enrolled me in S.A.M. (Society of American Magicians) when I was a kid. Meetings were far away so I didn’t go often. I read the newsletter religiously. So While I can’t speak to first hand knowledge of actively participating in a magical society, from the little I know and what I have garnered from other magicians, they are incredibly helpful.
I would say this goes for other groups like I.B.M. (International Brotherhood of Magicians) and magic conventions. It’s worth your time to look them up and see if they have a chapter near you. Also, in this lovely modern age, there are plenty of online forums to learn and discuss magic. I been on The Magic Cafe forums forever. You can check it out at themagiccafe.com. My username is “Bloodkin”. Drop me a line if you swing in. Almost everybody in the magic community hangs out there or pops by from time to time.
Basically, what it boils down to is, it’s extremely difficult to learn magic in a vacuum. As I mentioned before, doing tricks is the easy part. That only takes practice. The real art is creating a moment of astonishment that makes people believe, even if for a split second, that the laws of reality cease to exist. Kind of a cool pursuit, huh?
The Ups and Downs of writing Middle Grade Books and Webcomics
Read “The Conjurers” webcomic from the beginning here. Or click here for the latest episode.
The Conjurers Webcomic is back! Yep, I’m posting about it again. And I’ll be posting a lot more often. From the beginning, the webcomic was a simple, quick exercise while I was writing the books. It was a small break from plotting, writing and rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting…), and illustrating the novels. Over the years I’ve learned you need creative outlets on the side to keep your main work fresh. At the same time, that outlet can't eat up all your time.
So I compromised. I would do another comics project so long as I could do it quickly and it was related to “The Conjurers”. A webcomic was the perfect medium. I could take secondary characters from the book and send them on their own adventures. It was more beneficial than I could have ever imagined. It helped make two dimensional characters more 3D. I got to see how they behaved when they were the focus of the story. So while the comic was done in a rushed (and admittedly sloppy fashion), the characters became more real and those little details made their way into the books.
In this latest story arc, one such character became even more important. If you’re all caught up on the comics, you know a bit about Latif. She was created strictly for the comic. Cut to writing book three. My main antagonist (one of my favorite characters to date) had a complex backstory that was interwoven with other characters in the book. In order to pull it off, that meant there was a lot more story which meant a much bigger book. Too big. My editor suggested we had to cut her out of the story. That’s the kind of story note you want to ignore or fight or stomp your feet until you get your away. Except that she was right (as usual).
What does one do with a first draft of a book which has suddenly had the main bad guy ripped out? You could toss it. That of course is a bit drastic considering there are two books that come before it. Or you freak out for a few days until suddenly, yo remember that little side experiment you’ve been scratching away at once a week. And you realize your have the perfect antagonist ready to go: Latif.
Yep, the cold, mechanical Dr./Pharmaceutical billionaire that came out of nowhere in a webcomic story that was not related to the books was suddenly the star of book three. Her backstory was not as complex or intertwined with the previous plots of books one and two. Which meant she could fit perfectly into book three. On top of that, she’s my kind of villain, in that she does not see herself as a villain. Latif believes she is the hero.
Now I can’t go on too much more without giving away spoilers. I can say that my former antagonist, Mekinda, will have her story told one way or another. Maybe in the webcomic, or maybe, hopefully, in future books. In the end it’s another valuable lesson that telling stories is not always a clean, straightforward process. Sometimes the biggest hurdles become the sweetest moments of inspiration.
How to effectively remove the monster in your closet.
This one started as a scribble on a napkin. I’m certain it came from my own childhood experience of watching a shadow creature creep out of my closet every night. I had lots of such hallucinations as a kid, and I’m certain they will inspire more cartoons. Kind of worth the paralyzing terror in the long run.
Once I finish today’s inking, I’ll rummage through the notebook and see which random idea to work on for next week. Lots to chose from. Lots still need some work. The key, I’ve found, is to keep the pen moving. Applies to both cartooning and writing. No matter how ridiculous or unintelligible, keep the pen moving. And when you’re not thinking about ideas, your brain tends to have a small, dark factory, hidden away deep in the grey matter, that keeps on grinding. You won’t even know it’s happening. Then, when you open the notebook, that factory sends a fixed punchline, or scene from a chapter, straight up to the front office.
In the meantime, I’ll have more posts about the upcoming books and the return of “The Conjurers” webcomic. And feel free to share these cartoons around. Always looking for new readers, especially if they’re a wee bit on the strange side.
Return of "The Conjurers" Webcomic
Yep. Finally. Now that all three novels are written, I’m slicing off a smidge of time to bring back the webcomic. There’s still a lot of work to be done on books two and three. A ton of fine tune editing and all the illustrations. However, with book one coming out next July, I wanted the webcomic to revived and breathing well before the launch. Mostly because, even though it’s a rag-tag experiment, I love it. I love getting to visit the cast of “The Conjurers” books outside of prose filled pages.
Also, I know as a reader, it’s always cool when yo can visit a fantasy world in multiple mediums. And it’s super cool when you can visit that world while waiting for the next book to release. Besides, there are so many people and creatures and places in the Conjurian that I want to see. The best way to do that is an ongoing comic.
The next installment will launch on Halloween, which falls on a Thursday this year. There’ll be a new episode every Monday after that. If you have no idea what I’ve been rattling on about, you can read the comic from the beginning here: https://www.gocomics.com/the-conjurers
Coming soon: A new sequential fantasy series
For the Webcomic Readers
Had to share this one for all of you reading the speed drawing experiment that is the Conjurers webcomic. You can probably guess who the boy is falling out of the sky. Completely different style than in the comic, but I think his general essence comes through. Keep reading the webcomic to see how he gets here.
A new Conjurers Webcomic Page
Still trying to get two pages up a week. It would serve the story better to keep things moving instead of falling into the rhythm of a weekly cliffhanger. Mostly it comes down to spending spare moments scratching at the plot and scripting out a few pages at a time. The art side of things is getting faster. Hopefully not too fast that it comes off as sloppy. The Conjurers Comic Strip on GoComics.com
Hints of Houdini in this weeks Conjurers Comic
Head on over to gocomics.com to read the latest episode of the Conjurers comic. I'm trying to get another page up by Friday. There's a lot going on in this sequence and I'd rather not make everyone wait a week between scenes. So, I'll kick in a little over drive and pump out some pages. It'll help me get a better handle on this "quick" style. It's odd attempting to produce pages rapidly and still make them look cool. The Conjurers Comic Strip on GoComics.com
Working without panels
Quick peek at some art from page 40 of the webcomic. For this project I have to work fast and small. Usually on letter size paper. And fast. Did I mention fast?One draw back: after a time, I tend to suffocate my work under those constraints. Panels become flat, emotionless. So, to break out of that, I draw the shots and scenes on larger paper. Let my hand move further, wilder. That lets me work fast and punch in some emotion.After the shots are drawn, I'll composite them in photoshop in their letter sized pixel cell.
New Conjurers Comic
Well we might be gettin' all "Reservoir Dogs" up in here. Next week, we'll learn more about Steve. Is he on their side? Could be some screaming. You'll have to wait and see.
New Conjurers Comic
And a car chase! Yep, not as involved as I would have wanted, but still fun. There's going to be some odd alliances coming up.Also, this comic will launch on GoComic.com starting on October 28th. It'll still run here, along with all other Conjurers related stories, but GoComics will open it up to a larger audience. I'll be promoting that a lot more in the coming days.
New Conjurers Comic
What's not to love about a chase scene involving floating skull creatures. The style is a changin'. I'm focusing more on form and value and laying off the heavy atmospheres and textures.
Pencilling the next page.
Here we go on the start of the next page. Script is done, and you can see some of the thumbnails in the sketchbook. Thumb nailing from the script is always another rewrite.As you can see I'm going long form again with this page. In fact, I think, from here on out, all pages will be this size. Cuts down on speed but makes a lot more room for storytelling. And I'm continuing to evolve the style. On this page, my main focus will be form and value. Cutting waaaay back on the heavy atmospheres. Only when necessary. I'll post more steps along the way.
New Conjurers Comic
This one was brutish from an art perspective. Like I've mentioned before, this is a new style for me, so I'm constantly in search of new mistakes and hoping for happy accidents. And I was trying to push this one towards more of a painterly feel and it got away from me a bit. Still, learned a ton for the next page, which I am off to finalize the script for now.
The Inner Circle
Welcome to a meeting of the inner circle. This is the ruling body of the Conjurian. And while you won't see a lot of them in this episode, you'll see them all in different capacities in the novel.For now I have only mentioned a few names. You know Ray, Eugene, Aggler and now a mention of Xavier. They are key players in the overall arc for the comic and the novels. So much fun ahead.Next episode, you'll see what happens when Savachia tries to take charge. Also, an honest offer from an evil man.
New Conjurers Comic
Seems to me someone knows a lot more than they have let on. And who is this Christopher fellow? You will find out. He's a major player in the world of magicians. Can't give away too much. Suffice it to say, he has a large role in the novel. was happy he popped up in this comic series. Kind of a little meet and greet before the book.Now, what about Savachia's father? Oh my, there's lots. You'll see.
