I had originally wanted to run this idea when we saw our first robin of Spring on the 10th in the snow. It just looked so weird all puffed up posing like that. (Yes, it was alive and flew away after we drove past. lol)
But I got sick last week and didn't get around to drawing it until now, and with TODAY being the same crazy, snowy weather here, it seemed SUPER appropriate to tweak the script to acknowledge today being the first day of spring.
64 notes
·
View notes
So, I had been wanting to do a strip homaging the amazing work of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed and his comic, Bloom County, for a while now. I had done a character piece attempting the style, but needed an idea for a gag that worked.
Later on, I began playing with an idea about my mounting anxiety in the face of a renewed legal assault against the transgender community that comes hand in hand with the Orange Cheeto and his ilk. The more I thought about it, the more anxious I got, and the lightbulb went off. The two ideas could be connected, considering how Drumph had been used in the original end of Bloom County back in the day.
As such, here's another parody gag. Hope you enjoy. :)
90 notes
·
View notes
On the weekend of April 26th, I'll be in Chicago for the annual C2E2 convention setting up at the NATIONAL CARTOONISTS SOCIETY booth! This will be my first time in Chicago, and I am super excited!
I will, of course, have copies of the Finding Dee trade paperbacks and more with me, but I wanted to do something... special for the show. And I wanted to have something with a sketch cover, as I love those.
As such, I came up with THIS!!! It's a new, 40-page, FULL COLOR comic collecting all of the homages and parodies I've done over the last few years such as this strip homaging Jim Davis' GARFIELD! (Seen here in COLOR for the book for the first time! Woot!)
And for the cover, I wanted it to be an homage onto itself, and so did it goofing on the old "Marvel Masterworks" covers that I used to love back in the late 80s. They had covers similar to this, with a really cool, embossed, gold-foil border around images of the classic covers of the comics collected within. For THIS, it seemed like the PERFECT way to frame a blank area for custom sketches!
For NOW, this book will be exclusive to my convention and/or in-store appearances, but if there's a demand, it may pop up in other stuff later.
I'm really happy with how it came out, and if you're gonna be in Chicago this April, I hope to see you at the show!
47 notes
·
View notes
An Abandoned Homage...
So, it’s no secret that I LOVE making homages to my favorite cartoonists and comic artists for “Finding Dee”. I’ve done a bunch for strips that inspired me such as “Garfield”, “Peanuts”, “Calvin & Hobbes” and more.
I’ve also done a few for different styles of comics, like the work of Mike Mignola, Walter Simonson and even Al Williamson. Those, however, are a little different. In those, the “model” for my cartoon avatar is basically still the way I draw it, with the rendering style of the artists I admire pasted over them. Those are kinda more… style OVERLAYS as opposed to direct style homages. And, it turns out, there’s a very good REASON for this. A reason that became abundantly clear with a strip idea that has since been abandoned.
See the above piece…
That was to be an homage to Frank Miller’s classic “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns”. It was a massively influential book on me and one I had a script for a strip that I wanted to homage. This was… to put it mildly… as far as I got. This was the 3rd attempt, with the first two having proportions MUCH closer to Miller's famous cover of issue #2 of DKR. Those I outright loathed seeing, so I altered the proportions more to my own model sheet, trying instead to just overlay the rough, craggly line style Miller used on the comic. This was coming out fine, but was causing me some AGRESSIVELY uncomfortable gender dysphoria drawing.
I couldn't look at it without seeing the image I really try to NOT see when I look in the mirror, and not in a good way. It was making me hear every jerk and transphobe snickering in the back of my mind, and that is NOT a good or healthy thing.
I poured over Miller’s work, and found a remarkably thin selection of women that weren’t his specific brand of hyper-sexualized cartooning or… well… women that looked like bloated tree trunks. There was not a lot of middle ground.
I did not want to draw an entire comic strip where, in order to homage the Dark Knight Returns, I had to draw myself like a gnarled, knotted rhino-mutation. That would NOT do well with my sense of self-esteem. I mean, I’m not always kind to myself in cartoon form, but I’m not this:
Curse you, TCRI!!
Now, and I say this KNOWING it will be more controversial, this is the same reason I’ve yet to pull off a Jack Kirby homage. I could homage his stylistic quirks and rendering style, but to try and draw MYSELF like a Kirby woman would be… unsettling. The King drew a LOT of lovely ladies, but anyone that wasn’t a pin-up model started looking a smidge on the... rough side, too.
So, if you’re wondering why I almost EXCLUSIVELY homage comic STRIP and cartoony artists when I do homages, this is a BIG part of why. I don’t mind drawing myself like a potato. I just don’t want that potato to look like it was grown in Chernobyl.
26 notes
·
View notes
"Dee", you may ask. "Didn't you JUST finish a 2-week guest stint as the artist on the syndicated DICK TRACY comic? Why are you having an anxiety attack!?"
"Well..." I would say, reader from the future as I'm writing this on February 13th, "It is BECAUSE I just had a fairly big creative career success that I am fairly certain that I will be DEEEEEP in the pit of anxiety and self-loathing by the time this strip runs. My brain cannot allow me to have a win without giving me an equal amount of stress to compensate."
"That's sad, and seriously unhealthy, Dee." You might say.
To which I might respond, "Yes. Welcome to 'Finding Dee'." ;)
73 notes
·
View notes
I've been wanting to try another ARCHIE COMICS homage for a while, and had a lot of fun with this. It was NOT easy, as most of the main characters are pretty darn thin, and most of the fatter characters are designed to LOOK funny. That, and my OWN style is fairly close to the classic ARCHIE look. I think my linework is a bit too busy in the hair here, but It feels pretty close. I'll have to ask Fernando Ruiz what HE thinks. lol
69 notes
·
View notes