DRIVE back on track!

Yes! Finally after almost a month, DRIVE makes it through customs! That means the bulk shipment is now on its way to our warehouse back east and books will start to ship very soon off of our website and to our normal retailers.

Sorry for the slight delay.

DRIVE stalled!

I was enthusiastic to report that DRIVE had arrived early, which it did, but now I'm sad to report that customs has placed the warehouse shipment on examination hold, where it has been for the past 3 weeks on the east coast!

At this time, you may only purchase a limited number of copies at the following west coast locations: Hennessey and Ingalls, Swain’s, Autobooks-Aerobooks, Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Nucleus, Art Center College of Design Bookstore and Stuart Ng.

I look forward to updating you with a post that the books are available to order/purchase everywhere soon...

DRIVE arrives early!

Part of the bulk shipment of DRIVE arrived this week to Design Studio Press a couple of weeks early. Nice to get one in ahead of schedule! The rest of the bulk shipment going to our east coast warehouse is currently going through customs. We hope to still beat our official release date of November 10th. When the bulk clears customs we will start to fill our website orders. If you want a copy of the book before that, Stuart Ng just left here with a box of softcovers http://www.stuartngbooks.com/ and a box of each soft and hard will be delivered to the Art Center student store later today.

I was to be on my way to Lucca, Italy last night for the great Lucca Comics and Games festival. Unfortunately I've been under the weather this month and my doctor has grounded me so I will not be at the DSP booth this year. In my place I have flown Chirs Ayers, author/artist of "The Daily Zoo 1 & 2" to Italy to take my place at the booth.

DRIVE will be sold there starting this Friday. We had the text translated into Italian and printed as a black and white document to be given away with each book. So, if you happen to be going to Lucca this weekend for the show, I'm sorry I will not see you this year. I plan to be there again next year with another new book or two.

Oh yeah, almost forgot the collectible slipcased version of DRIVE, limited to 250 signed and numbered copies, each personalized with a sketch will be available only through our website starting this Friday.

DRIVE advance copy #1

The first advance copy of DRIVE just arrived and it looks great. Nice to see it in book form. Always a little nervous opening the package for the first time, but all's well and I'm happy to announce that it looks like 4 boxes of advance soft covers were delivered to CCS in Detroit this morning, meaning that there should be 48 soft covers for sale at 4:30pm tomorrow afternoon outside the auditorium where I will also be signing them before my presentation of the book at 6pm. These will be the only books sold publicly before the release date of November 10th. Hope to see you there. Off to the airport!

5 more ship sketches

Off to CCS tomorrow to present DRIVE and do a two day workshop for the Trans Grad students so probably no new posts after this one until the weekend. Looks like 40 or so books are currently on the way to Detroit! Fingers crossed they make it. Should know tomorrow for sure. Oh yeah, these sketches are 10% grey marker first followed up by the black brush pen again.

quick flight to abstractville

Had to get something a bit more original on my blog today other than a photograph, so here's a quick abstracted ship sketch.

Not much time for sketching and rendering today, as I'm off to visit with the students at Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, aka HITAL. Sounds like a good name for a sci-fi bot manufacturing outfit!

early morning

Since my next bot is not quite ready for posting yet.

Here's an image from this last weekend's photo trip.

Any guesses as to the location?

single seater

A late night post to finish the week!

ship warm up sketches

Starting to get back into sketching ships again, revisiting some past ideas. Same technique as previous post.

red button rocket

Here is today's post, a quick thumbnail sketch done with a 10% grey marker first followed by a black brush pen and then into Photoshop for some quick color.

2 more final DRIVE spreads

My arm is beat today, so no new bots...yet.

In the meantime as the release date for DRIVE draws near I thought I would share two more final spreads from the book which I will be showing in its entirety via a Powerpoint presentation at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit next Thursday night the 3oth at 6pm.

If and it is a big "IF" all goes well I may have a very limited number of air-shipped advance copies of the book for sale just before my lecture. I'll post it here first if this is going to happen or not.

still on bot break...

bot break enviro

Took a little break from the bots to do a sketch of this imaginary place.

"Rock Bot T-400"

Did a quick clean up of this ranger alien on a "Rock Bot T-400" this morning.

Time for a lunch break.

bot motion notion

Here is one of the many quick color sketches I did today.

Still needs a serious design pass.

Maybe in the future, not tonight.

biped bot

This might have to count as my weekend post.

Other activities at hand.

It's almost Saturday morning where I am anyway.

Cheers.

morning bot sketches

Switched back to the sketchbook this morning and started to get familiar again with some biped bots....mostly.

today's WIP bot rendo

Plenty left to do with this one, thought I would park it here for awhile while I think about it.

another bot sketch WIP

Here's another color sketch WIP.

It's painted over the quick brush pen sketch on the middle page of the previous post.

bot sketches

Here are some warm-up bot sketches from my sketch book.

Media: marker, ballpoint and brush pens.

another bot

Rendered over a little brush pen sketch for an upcoming book project with John Park, his brother Daniel and Ben Mauro. You guessed it....it's all bots. The color version is a WIP and might get a little more refinement if it makes the cut.

bot charge

Here's a little running bot for today's update.

full reverse

I did this sketch to get warmed up to paint space ships again. I'm starting in on a new book with lots of sci-fi ships in the mix. This one might make the cut and get finished up if I still like it a few months from now.

dirt bike thumbnails

I found these thumbnail pen sketches in my sketchbook.

As they did not find their way into DRIVE I thought I would share them here.

sci-fi armored suit 1

Now that DRIVE is at press and I'm enjoying a bit of down time it's time to catch up on my blog posts, so here is something without wheels!

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Sunday at the big race!

This is the last image in the book.

Thought it worked well for today.

4 more DRIVE spreads complete!

Just finished the text yesterday and now we are in the home stretch!

Since there are only 4 more days left before I share a look at the entire book at Comic Con next Wed. night at the DSP booth, I thought I would post a few more spreads here now. There was some nice Photoshop work done by Danny and Annis on these renderings.

DRIVE artwork complete!

We have been working hard and today we reached a milestone for the completion of DRIVE, all of the art is complete! Here are few spreads and the final cover of the book. The first 65 pages of text are done as well and I will have the rest done by the end of this week. We will be showing an HP designjet proof of the entire book at Comic Con next week. You can find us at the same location as in year's past, booth 1701. If you are at the show please swing by and have a peek at our latest books.

back from 17 days in Italy

I hope to have some new work to show soon now that I'm back in the studio after spending 17 days traveling through Italy with my wife, Melissa, we visited Florence, Lucca, Pisa and Venice with a few quick trips into the stunning Tuscan countryside. In the meantime here are a few images from the trip.

BTW Annis and Danny are doing some great finished renderings for DRIVE.

I'll post a couple at the beginning of next week.