Another Haunting Tribute!

Some time ago, a young lady I know, who relates very much to my character Iris from The Inquiring Minds, approached me with an idea.  She was proud that she had faced her fears, and finally went on the Haunted Mansion ride in Disney World, and loved it!  She then had her mom take a photo of her in front of The Mansion, posing as a hitchhiker.  What a cool idea, and she deserves all the credit for it!

Now, she's been adamant that Iris is based on her, and has requested that I put her in a comic strip.  After seeing the photo of her in front of the Haunted Mansion, and letting it simmer in my mind a bit, I decided to draw Iris in the same pose.  After all, I'm in the midst of writing and drawing the Knight and Day Family Vacation, in which the Knights go to Disney World. So, the illustration works for me, and at the same gives this young lady the proof she required that her and Iris are twin souls.

I am very happy to present the original art to her, to reward her inspiration, and very cool idea.

The illustration was based on her photograph, and then turned into a postcard, which I then made into a Knight and Day panel.  This is, quite fittingly, my 13th Knight and Day panel! Don't you just love coincidences like that?
All the best,    JOHN :0)

PS On my iPod?  Hugh Laurie, Let Them Talk
PSS How fitting that Iris appear in a tribute to the Haunted Mansion, since her fellow Inquiring Minds, Bobby and Albert, appeared in a haunting tribute last year! (Available as a fine print in our shop)

September 11, 2001

I was taking a break from cartooning when the events of September 11, 2001 occured.  Those events brought me back, and reintroduced The Inquiring Minds.  It's hard for an artist to watch the world around him change, without responding in some way.  This was my response.

I lived close enough to the city to see the smoke rising from the horizon, and the army helicopters flying overhead on alert.  Everything changed, and so I tried to capture that feeling through the eyes of my young characters.

Re-creating

A great mouse once expounded upon the idea of 'recreation' being a re-creating of one's self... a chance to take a break from the usual and to explore other venues just for fun, and hopefully in the process reinvent oneself or expand one's creativity. Taking a vacation is a good example, or just getting out of a rut by doing something different. That laboratory mouse named Brain knew what he was talking about!

With this in mind, I have taken a break from The Inquiring Minds in The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake. Yes, it is very risky to take a break in the middle of an adventure because readers may not have the patience to wait. On the other hand, since I have not found a publisher yet for the project, taking some recreation time can help me to assure that the story is the best it can be.

Facebook is having a comic con next month, and I am planning on attending a convention in physical space this year, so my thoughts turned to creating some fun promotional pieces. The first is the drawing above, of The Inquiring Minds as my favorite superhero group, the Fantastic Four.

The second is a piece I drew of The Inquiring Minds to celebrate this year being the 40th anniversary of Disney's Haunted Mansion ride... an amazing achievement of creativity and engineering. This piece should be appearing soon at the Fan Gallery page of DoomBuggies.com, a fantastic site created by Jeff Baham in tribute to the Haunted Mansion ride. I'm very happy with it.



If you are on Facebook, you can join our group at the facebook comic con, or check out the special things I have set up for the convention, such as the video in my last post. At Facebook I currently have two videos of me sketching, and plan more. The second video shows how I came up with the idea for the above-mentioned Haunted Mansion illustration, and it's a talkie! Yes, you can hear me laugh nervously and tell bad jokes while I draw in blair witch quality graphics. :0)

There is a lot going on right now, including an entire overhaul of our website, and how we do business. The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake will return soon, though, so stay tooned!

Cheers, JOHN :0)