ZOE by Mellanie "Luniara" Nicklo



This is the FIRST piece of guest art of anything related to "The Wellkeeper" and I LOVE it!!! It's by a wonderful artist I met at the recent Florida SuperCon in Miami named Mellanie Nicklo. She also goes by the handle of "Luniara" and has some beautiful work up on Deviant Art that you should all check out.

These pages are the first three of a 8 to 10 page shortt story I'm working on designed to be used as a preview story that will introduce potential readers into the world of the Wellkeeper.

This is written to actually run between the third and fourth issues when the story is in full swing and will be about Zoe's Grandmother, Luludja telling her the story of the FIRST Wellkeeper. It's been a lot of fun to draw so far and will be premiering on this space in it's entirety once I've got the new website design finished.

Let me know what you think and as always, I hope you enjoy. :)

I'm still not feeling very confident with my colors regarding the Wellkeeper. I'm experimenting with less direct colors and going with more abstract and emotional palates, but I'm still somewhat unsure as to how I feel about the results. Any feedback from you all out there in internet land is much appreciated. :)

The road to the Wellkeeper premiering late this year is a long one, but filled with unique and fun opportunities like THIS one. The art above was produced for the FX INTERNATIONAL comics and toy show here in Orlando, Florida for an upcoming poker tournament.

What makes this tournament different is that the deck of cards will feature over 52 original pieces of art made by the artists in attendance myself included. The card I was assigned is the 7 of hearts, so once I finish coloring this illustration of Zoe & Sebastian it will be in a beck with dozens of masterpieces by some of comics' best talent. It's a fun opportunity and the original art is going to be auctioned off for charity, so it's win/win.

I'm pretty darned happy with how this came out, so I may end up making a print of this to sell at the show too.

The FX International comic and toy show is April 17th thru April 19th at the Orange County Convention center. See you there!

Keep it simple, stupid!



While at the Orlando Megacon, I received a lot of praise for the pages on display for The Wellkeeper and it really felt great to hear that folks are looking forward to the first issue. I also worked up the nerve to drop off copies of the sketchbook with a few PROS who I respect TREMENDOUSLY! Among them are the brilliant comic artists, Phil Noto, Brandon Peterson and Amanda Conner.

While they all had nice things to say about the book, it was Amanda Conner that offered up the constructive criticism that has inspired this post. To summarize her lesson to me: "Keep it simple, stupid!"

Now, I'VE added the "Stupid" here. Amanda was totally classy and very constructive in her critique, but the message was that I was obscuring good structure drawing with excessive crosshatching on Zoe's face and that I should pull back on the over-rendering for her. Now, this isn't the FIRST time that I've heard this, but t was the time when It finally sunk in.

I've attached an example above of the simplified detail on Zoe's face, and I couldn't believe how right Amanda Conner was. WOW, did her expressions and acting just pop off the page without the clutter of a zillion lines criss crossing her worried brow.(Thanks to the magic of Photoshop for allowing me to easily clean up her face) I have to admit that I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to really deliver with "The Wellkeeper", and I think that under that self-imposed pressure, I have overdone some things in the early stages of production, such as the rendering on character faces.

I DO think that this change has greatly improved the opening few pages and I hope to take this lesson to heart on the successive pages from here on out.

Thanks, Amanda!

MEGACON 2009

I premiered the all new "WELLKEEPER" sketch book this past weekend at the Orlando Megacon Comic Convention and I'm pleased to say that it went over VERY well. Folks really stopped and seemed to enjoy this VERY early sneak peak at the new comic and are looking forward to it's premier. I'll have a few more pics from the show soon, but for now here are two shots. One of me at the table, and another of a sketch of the Thrall... the possessed dog creature controlled by the book's nemesis, The Oddman.

To 'toon or not to 'toon...

When developing "The Wellkeeper", I had a lot of very basice questions that needed to be answered before pen ever hit page. I knew from the beginning that one of the lead characters was going to be a somewhat cartoony raccoon by design, but the real question was how cartoony would the entirety of this world be.

Now, let me just say that I'm a VERY cartoony artist by nature. It's just how I draw and by this point, it's kinda in my DNA I think. I've always leaned towards the more cartoony artists even as a fan and no matter how hard I try as an artist, my stuff just always has a certain amount of cartooniness to it.

Now, for the last 7+ years working on my webcomic, "Dandy & Company", cartoony has been just fine. They're cartoon characters doing cartoon things in a cartoon world. But as an artist, I've always had more stories that I've wanted to tell in more genres than just humor. And while there certainly IS humor in "The Wellkeeper", there's also a lot of drama and even a little horror in the pages to come. This ISN'T taking place in toon town and I needed to decide early on how realistic I wanted to take this.

The early designs for Zoe, our female lead and the titular Wellkeeper herself ranged from semi-realistic to outright cartoonish. (Really, how many times can I type "Cartoony" without changing it up a bit.)


A page from the upcoming "Wellkeeper Sketchbook" showing the earliest drawings of the then-unnamed Zoe.

But in designing the characters, I knew that many of them would have to carry a lot of broad emotions and I had a very specific image in y mind of what Zoe looked like and a realistically designed character wasn't it. With "The Wellkeeper", I decided to embrace a more animated design style to the characters, but balance it with very detailed, realistic rendering and environments. I refrenced a LOT of artists such as the ever-incredible Art Adams and Bernie Wrightson's classic illustrated Frankenstein to solve some of the issues of rendering lush forests and detailed environments in black and white, and Adams in particular was of great assistance in balancing the animated character design with a richly detailed world.

In the end, I suppose all of you reading this will decide if my approach is working or not, but either way, i hope you enjoy the journey.