2015 SKETCHBOOK INFO!

howdy all! just thought i'd park all this information in one handy spot. my latest sketchbooks are in and ready to order/ship! all of these books are 80pp, b/w softcover, $15.

All domestic (US) orders: include $2.80 shipping for the first book, $.80 per additional book.

plus $.75 per book for  paypal purchases.

International orders: write me for shipping etc charges,

ben(at)daredetectives(dot)com.

PLEASE INCLUDE THE WORD "SKETCHBOOKS" IN ANY EMAILS/PAYPAL NOTES TO ME, AS I GET TONS OF JUNK MAIL.

SB11 the bigger book of the dare detectives 

SB12 heroes and fantasy 

SB14/15 dare detectives/wonder woman

SB16 animation toy and game design 

SB18 daily doodles 1 

SB19 daily doodles 2 

SB20 daily doodles 3 

SB21 daily doodles 4

SB22 comic cover and page art

SB23 daily doodles 5

there is also my first full-color sketchbook, the dare detectives' "misfits' manual"! hardcover, with 60pp of full-color art and notes on the world's most defective detectives, and the people who try to kill them!

misfits' manual, $25 + shipping

PREZIDENTIAL MATH

HEROES CON COMMISSION LIST ETC...

hi all! been crazy with pages but it occurs to men that ‪#‎heroescon‬ is coming mighty soon! so i'm opening up a commission list now. i'm not taking many commissions this year EXCEPT at conventions, and i won't be going to a lot of conventions this year. so let me know!

ps - my commission info is right here:

http://purgetheory.blogspot.com/…/summer-2014-commission-an…

pps - i'll also have all those sketchbooks plus at least one new ‪#‎dailydoodles‬ sketchbook, and hopefully, another general (and generally cartoonier) sketchbook.

THINKY STUFF

i don't have the time/energy to do a panel-by-panel recount of why i do everything i do, but these are the sorts of things comic artists (and hopefully writers) think about as they translate a string of words in a script into a river of images...

this page reminds me of a criticism "infinity inc" recently received. one reviewer was bothered by the fact that i didn't clearly show the infinitor's jet getting blown up, i only showed an energy blast being leveled at the jet, and then the wreckage of the jet afterward.

now it so happens that there is a specific, story-driven reason why i chose that solution. but i was more thrown off by their insistence that instead, there should have been a giant, perhaps even 2-page shot of the jet exploding.

NO.

that's the equivalent of having a michael bay explosion where everything suddenly goes slow-motion, while swelling operatic (or if you're peter jackson, faux-celtic) music erupts from the speakers. that is some premium, grade A, lazy trope shit there. there might be some extremely specific times when that works, but the idea that this is the obvious default solution for a certain sort of scene is just aesthetically, technically, and morally reprehensible.

(to be clear, i'm not really complaining about that reviewer, i just see a lot of that sort of thinking in comics and film, and it rarely improves anything.)

anyway, in this case there was also a reason why i framed the shoot down in this particular way. there's pretty much ALWAYS a reason why i do what i do, even if it's a stupid reason.

here, i wanted a non-sexy, matter-of-fact-news-footage feeling of distance and casualness. the plane shoot down isn't part of some epic battle, it's not the climax of anything and it shouldn't have that slo-mo-opera grandeur to it. the moment when a handful of people are consigned to death is, here, simply a programmed and impersonal act.

PREZ previe page pencils

day 178: sarah kincaid

from the dare detectives, of course! playing everybody's favorite imaginary game that they didn't know existed (because i made it up), ragball. one of the many many things i've cannibalized from my sithri project.

daring day 177: daredevil & maria dare!

 pencil, 8x11". $40*

 pencil, 8x11". SOLD

*there are no shipping etc costs for daily doodles 

day 176

going to try and be more consistent about putting all there #dailydoodles in one organized space...

SENSATIONAL!!!

catching up on posting daily doodles...

inks for practicing 2

from the harley quinn valentine's special:

inks for practicing 1

howdy all!
gabe from SCAD asked if i had any inked pages that he could use for coloring practice. ol' ben is nothing but love, so i thought i'd start posting some hi-res inks here for anyone who wants to do the same.

cheers!

round 1: pages from future's end--superboy (to make it easier for anyone who wants to play with some of the backgrounds, i've put them as grey)...

(EDIT: i guess blogspot compresses them, i may or may not have the energy to mask a dropbox-type thing for people to get hi-res copies...)

the case of the phantom cleavage

daily doodle 157, $40 etc

back in my toybiz days, we made the action figures for the first XMEN film, including jean grey. her figure, for reasons i never fully understood, was sculpted so that an awful lot of cleavage was exposed. they made the expensive die and produced the figure and, shortly afterward, realized all that decolletage might be a mistake.

recutting the die was expensive, so instead they opted to paint a bit of bra to suggest that her breasts were indeed fully covered, and put that on the shelves. which was worse.

so finally they gave up and had her die recut to more demure coverage, and produced the figure all over again.

i heard several people complain afterward about how toybiz had OBVIOUSLY made these multiple jeans as a way to "trick" collectors into getting three versions of the figure.

some of the reactions to the first PREZ promo image (which was, in fact, just a personal test sketch) remind me of the phantom cleavage.