Ninja Mountain 34 - Triple shot!!

It's a huge episode this week, with three utterly AWSOME segments! First, Andy, Socar, Patrick and Jeremy take lots and lots of questions from listeners and answer them with the laser-sharp focus and on-topic concentration for which we are justifiably famous. Then Ralph joins in to talk about making your art dynamic - what are the elements that art directors are looking for in a visually exciting picture? Then Anne joins in to to talk about preparations for a new picture (spoiler alert: we ALL agree!) Audio fun-time nuclear happy starts... NOW!

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain034.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free, because we all want to be your special friend.

Show Notes:
In a couple of days we'll put up all the twitter names here for the folks who wrote in with questions!

Ninja Mountain 33 - Life and Other Disasters

Welcome to the much-anticipated 33rd episode of Ninja Mountain! This week Andy, Patrick, Jeremy and Socar talk about artistic distractions, disasters, and other fun stuff that may or may not make any sense at all. But they are on their best behavior as they invite a guest artist to join in the chat: Drew Baker!

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain033.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free, then sit back and enjoy the Awesome!

Show Notes:
Drew Baker

Ninja Mountain 32 - contractually obligated

Not just an episode! A contractually mandated obligation to you, our listeners. Andy, Patrick and Jeremy discuss working with new clients, some thoughts about contracts, working on new Intellectual Properties and the dreaded OTHER STUFF. Then, like a sweet zephyr of beauty, Socar joins the testosterone-laden group to add the fresh air of sanity to the male-dominated conversation. Or something.

Listen to it, there really might be some sentences which can be parsed into the English language... somewhere.

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain032.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free!
A message wouldn't hurt much, either.

Thank you for listening, please drive through.

Some GenCon pics!

My wife very dutifully took some pictures of our time at GenCon 2009 for you to enjoy.
I divided my time between showing my portfolio around on the convention floor and performing interviews with occasional opportunities to work at my booth.
I am glad you all enjoyed the audio segments I collected while at the show. I wish to extend special thanks to all that had a moment to share with us.
GenCon has a special place in my heart as you can probably tell from these past two episodes. Far from making this into a two episode commercial for the Indianapolis convention, I chose to corner creatives with whom we might not otherwise have an opportunity to speak with on the show.
Much praise must be heaped upon Patrick and Jon for their herculean efforts in wrangling these special episodes with their superior audio-fu!
Many thanks to folks who approached me at the con to offer their compliments to our team. It has been very heartening to learn that our show is making a difference and entertaining you at the same time. :)
Enjoy the pics and we look forward to bringing you more Ninja goodness as we return to our regular recording schedule this week with episode 32!
---Jeremy

Look wot my friend, Paul "Prof" Herbert got for me! A little Ninja of me very own! I wore it the whole show. It's all about accessorizing, baby. :)


Diesel LaForce recounts the early days of the GenCon Art Show in a late night interview.


My friend and art hero, Steve Prescott


My buddy, Heather Kreiter!


Drew Baker and Beth Trott


Hanging out with the Norse God of Lighting. That's how I roll...


Everyday con-goers in their finery.


The lovely and talented couple, Tony and Kay Steele!


Don Higgins-- good friend and creator of the "Dark Magic and Donuts" web comic


A few random everyday con-goers doing random every day con-goer things.


Matt Stawicki interview!

Ninja Mountain 31 Moar GenCon!

Welcome to the second part of our Gencon coverage, featuring an interview with art show organiser Diesel, and a report from the artshow awards themselves.

This show is shorter than normal due to the annual editors holiday. Once they have recaptured, suitably punished and humiliated, normal service will be resumed.

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain031.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free!
And please do leave a message there too.



Show notes to follow!

Ninja Mountain 30: GenCon 2009 Special

Hold on to your bandwidth, its a monster! Part one of our GenCon 2009 coverage is out, and its a biggie! Jeremy and his pin stripe vest deliver a stunning array of interviews with the biggest names in the gaming art world.

YOU the listeners gave us a digital recorder, and by golly we used it!

This special super extended episode features interviews with Omar Rayyan, Jon Schindehette, Wayne Reynolds, Steve Prescott, Randy Galagos, Chris Seaman and more!

And there's more to come over the following weeks!

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain030.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free!
And please do leave a message there too.

Copious enormo-show notes:

Omar Rayyan
Wayne Reynolds
Steve Prescott
Chris Seaman
Randy Gallegos
Jon Schindehette's blog
Chris Pritchard
Aaron Miller
Amy Ashbaugh
Arkady Roytman
Joe Slucher
Andy Hopp
Matt Stawicki
Tyler Walpole

The crew of WIP was there to enjoy the show as well.
The WIP Podcast!
Jeff Himmelman
Caroline Himmelman's "The Art Of Business" blog
Peter Morhbacher
Anna Mohrbacher

More GenCon footage is on the way, folks. We recorded 3.5 hours of interviews so be sure to listen up for future GenCon goodies!

Ninja Mountain 29: Rise of the Replicants

A hell of hot metal and hate powered circuitry breaks loose like an avalanche of mixed metaphors this week on the Mountain. With Jeremy away at Gencon gathering the audio-fruits of the season the remaining Mountaineers do their best to cope with the robot apocalypse sans congenial host, and welcome in our new robot overlords with answers to the following questions:

Via email, Aaron Anderson (afaceart.blogspot.com) asks how we keep as busy with work as we all seem to do.

And for once we come up with some of our own content, and ruthlessly interrogate ourselves like souless killing machines sent from the future about how we learn new skills, programs and techniques whilst juggling all the other activities we're forced to enact by our cold silicon masters.

On the show this week are Patrick, Andy, Socar and Jon, with guest soundbites from Ralph and Anne

Plus a special guest two line appearance from the mighty Kiwi deathmecha Ben Wootten!

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain029.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free!
And leave a message there too. It's compulsory!

Show notes:
coming soon!

Ninja Mountain Episode #28 - 1)talk 2)??? 3)PROFIT!!

OK, the episode is a tiny bit late, but after the earth is swallowed whole by giant space lampreys, who's really going to care?

What the horrible space eels WILL remember is that this episode features a great conversation between Ralph Horsley and special guest Steven Belledin, questions from listeners, and lots of conversation with Jon, Socar, Jeremy, Ralph and Patrick. And they will regret having swallowed our planet so callously and destroyed such entertaining artists, and perhaps... Just maybe... They'll think twice before doing it again to another beautiful blue planet somewhere else in the cosmos.

Though, frankly, we doubt it.

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain028.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free!
And leave a message there too - it's fun!


Show notes:

Steven Belledin

Spyder pro calibration device

August competition time at Scotch Corner

You there! Yes you! You'd like to win a poster print wouldn't you? Of course you would. So get over to Scottish art blog Scotch Corner, where you can win a 60cm x 30cm Jon Hodgson print for just posting a comment in the month of August.

http://scotchcorner.blogspot.com/2009/08/august-competition-dragon-rein-by-jon.html

Ninja Mountain Episode #27 - Return of the King

This week sees Patrick return the conquering hero from San Diego Comic-Con (or SDCC or CCI or whatever the search engines prefer to find), with his blood stained booty sack crammed full of audio goodness! Jeremy and Socar take some time to tackle a question from a prospective client and... Patrick is back from ComicCon!

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain027.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free... It's FREE!!

The Show Notes

Todd Lockwood

Steranko - comics & book covers

Chandra Free
Chan at the Archaia panel with Zachary Quinto (she starts about 4:40)

Chris Burdett
(Who blogged extensively about the con, and even has pics of Patrick's seminar!)

Mu Young Kim

Nicole Cardiff (Thanks for the cookies!)

Alex Eckman-Lawn
(His Graphic Novel Awakening is on Amazon now!)

David Rodriguez - Starkweather: Immortal Graphic Novel is in Previews NOW!!
Pre-order it at your local comic book store asap!! Art by your friendly Ninja Patrick McEvoy.

Mark Smylie

Marv Mann
(Some New Kind of Slaughter is on Amazon now!)

Ninja Mountain Episode #26 - Love Hate Sleepy Time

It's that time of the week again. Set your ears to stun and tune in to the latest slice of happytime sugartaste goodness from Ninja Mountain!

We're back to a compact and bijou hour long show this week as the whole team were frankly exhausted.  In spite of their advanced state of fatigue another wonderful* show was wrung out of them drop by drop until the sonic cup verily flowethed over!  This week we take listeners calls once again, with two questions from the wonderful Christopher Burdett, and the fantastic Caroline Himmelman.  And in fact we even come close to answering some those questions!  The love runs free and its hug time for everyone.  

This week's questions:

Why are fantasy artists apparently so nice to each other when we're all in competition?

How do you cope with falling short of teh awesome?

Would you talk about a bad experience with an art director? On line? With friends? (We might not get round to answering the friends part in much detail since we got motoring on the online topic...)

Between the actual content there's a gold mine of actual singing, dancing and all the other things four freelancer artists do when they are too tired to know any better! This week's show is presented by Andy, Jeremy, Jon and Socar.  

We mention it in the show, but it seems appropriate to give a shout out to our other caller of this week, the mighty ATOM, who's call will feature on next week's show when we have our resident monitor expert back on hand to give some real information.  Thanks ATOM, we love you.   As ever you can call the show on Skype via jon.hodgson.

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain026.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free... It's LOVELY!!

The Show Notes

Christopher Burdett: http://www.christopherburdett.com/

Caroline Himmelman: http://www.carolinehimmelman.com/

(Caroline is also on the WIP Podcast (Good interview this month guys! I was cheering! Jon):  http://www.wippodcast.com/

*c'mon this is ad copy, what do you want?

A WIP/Tutorial from McHugh.

Hey All,

As many of you know, Art Order ( www.artorder.blogspot.com) is featuring a cover contest right now and, after deciding to give it a go, I figured it would be a great opportunity to put together a WIP/Tutorial.

The joys of not being locked into a Non-Disclosure Agreement. :)

This is a more detailed description of how I go about generating a finished illustration and it builds off of previous discussions on the show.
The article is in 4 parts---

Part 1: Rough sketch
Part 2: Detailed drawing
Part 3: Grayscale underpainting
Part 4: Painting

I hope some of you find it useful.
Thanks for reading!
---Jeremy McHugh

Ninja Mountain Episode #25 - Three Way Split.

Its a big one this week as three seperate Ninja Teams assemble to deliver a triple whammy in a joyously confused magazine format. First up we have Anne Stokes and Socar Myles discussing the topic of being an awesome female fantasy artist in what can appear at a glance to be a male dominated world.

Next up its convention talk with Patrick McEvoy, Ralph Horsley and Jeremy McHugh - get the fat ole skinny on what to do at your next convention attendance! Whether selling prints or selling your soul to every art director you can lay hands on, this crack team discuss it all.

Lastly Andy Hepworth, Ralph Horsley and Jon Hodgson discuss the work and influence of truly awesome historical and fantasy artist Angus MacBride.



http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain025.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free!


Show Notes:

Angus McBride: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_McBride
Moar McBride: http://www.lookandlearn.com/blog/?p=77
McBride's work in Look and Learn: http://www.lookandlearn.com/cgi-bin/if.cgi?img=0&search=Angus+McBride&cat=all&bool=phrase
Characters of Middle Earth on Scribd.com (which we only recommend when a book is waaaaaaay out of print): http://www.scribd.com/doc/12510173/Angus-McBrides-Characters-of-MiddleEarth


NB:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that since this is the first time I've been let loose in the itunes/feedburner control room on NM I probably did something wrong in making the show work. So bear with us if the magic doesn't happen first time. --Jon

Update - Holy cow, it would appear to have worked! Who would have thought it possible?

Equipment drive

Hi loyal Ninja audience! We have a fun idea - Patrick and Jeremy would like to record some interviews with artists at San Diego Comic-con and GenCon this summer. But to do this, we'd need to buy a digital recorder, and we were wondering: is there any chance we could get you to pitch in? Sort of an "Equipment drive". If you're interested, just click the "donate" button on the left side of the page and send whatever you can afford; no amount is too small!

(Except negative numbers - I guess that would be too small. So technically I lied, but hopefully you know what I meant in spirit..)

Thanks a lot! We'll let you know the results of the drive soon. As always, we really appreciate your support whether monetary or words of encouragement or simply downloading the podcast. We're glad you're there.

** UPDATE: We're doing GREAT on donations on this. I've already gone ahead and ordered a spiffy little recording device that will be here in time for San Diego, and a couple of other ancillary items. Thanks very much for all your generous contributions. Feel free to keep donating (as always!), but we just wanted you to know that this drive has been a rousing success!

PS - Keep an eye out for Patrick at SDCC and Jeremy at GenCon, with recorder in hand... They'll both be on the lookout for people to record for the show!


** UPDATE 2!: It occurred to us that perhaps we should give some much-deserved credit to those great folks who have donated - both to this drive and in general. However, we were also concerned that perhaps anonymity would be valued by some of you as well. So, if you would like to have your name trumpeted to other Ninja-watchers, (or if you wouldn't, either way!) please send an email to Patrick - contact @ megaflowgraphics.com Thanks!!

Summer Convention Funtime GO!

Hey there Ninja Mountain listeners!

Well, summer is here, and with it comes conventions. And the biggest in the US is the San Diego Comic-Con. Patrick will be attending, mostly hanging out at the Archaia booth promoting the upcoming Starkweather: Immortal hardback, but also giving a Digital Painting Seminar!

The seminar is now officially up on the SDCC Friday Programming page. Here's the text:

6:30-7:30 Digital Painting Seminar: Patrick McEvoy (Starkweather: Immortal) demonstrates the art of digital painting with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Using examples from his work on the Marvel Style guide, a panel from Archaia's Starkweather, and a cover from BOOM! Studios' Fall of Cthulhu, Patrick will step through various techniques, starting from pencils and working up to a final rendering. Learn how to bring a fully painted look to your digital artwork! Room 30CDE

So, if you're attending the con, be sure to be at room 30CDE at 6:30 Friday the 24th, and give Patrick a little love.


UPDATE: Patrick's also going to be on an Archaia comics panel on Thursday:

2:30-3:30 Archaia/Roddenberry Productions: Days Missing— Archaia Studios Press is now simply known as Archaia! Learn about the sci-fi titles the publisher has in store, such as Titanium Rain (with creators Josh Finney and Kat Rocha), Robotika (with creator Alex Sheikman), and Starkweather (with writer David Rodriguez and artist Patrick McEvoy). Then meet the creative dream team behind Days Missing, the new sci-fi comic miniseries from Archaia and Roddenberry Productions, the legendary company that brought you Star Trek. Get a sneak peek of exclusive covers and art, and learn more about storylines for upcoming issues. Panelists include Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth from Roddenberry Productions; Archaia’s Stephen Christy, Mark Smylie and Rob Levin; Chris Burnham (X-Men: Divided We Stand); Ian Edginton (Stormwatch); Phil Hester (The Darkness); David Hine (Batman: Battle for the Cowl); Frazer Irving (Batman and Robin); and Matz(The Killer). All attendees will receive a free copy of Days Missing#1! Room 3

----------

In other news, Jeremy will be at GenCon in August. I know he's looking forward to seeing you all there, I hope he writes a little more about it here... :)

Ninja Mountain Episode #24 - Teh Awesome!

What is the quality of "awesome" that is the only sure way of getting work as a freelancer? How do you get it? Do any of us have it? Well, the only thing you can count on is this: you will hear the word "awesome" more times in one podcast than you ever thought possible! Jon is back this week, along with Jeremy, Patrick and Socar. Also, questions from listeners, a book report from Jon, and the world premier of Jon's acid house mix of Socar's "Like a Boss" tribute. Yes, it's nonstop mayhem in the Mighty Ninja Manner! You can't afford not to miss it - AWESOME!!

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain024.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free... It's AWESOME!!


Awesome Show Notes:
SciFiFantasyHorrorSpace_ArtShows

PS - yes, it's ep. 24!! Misprint fixed...

Hey! I never post artwork over this way. Except for today!

Couple of recent pieces - A new cover for the Magnum Opus Press reissue of classic Brit rpg Dragon Warriors:

(C)2009 Magnum Opus Press and Jon Hodgson

A quickie cover for my friends over at d101 games:

(C) 2009 Jon Hodgson

Cheers!

Ninja Mountain Episode #23 - Keepin' it Real

This time out we talk about how we keep up the interest in our work as the years go by. And lots of other stuff too, as always: Kieran Yanner returns from a long hiatus with a terrifying story of tragedy and survival in the face of overwhelming adversity, Jeremy relates to us the harrowing experience of a rogue ceiling attacking his studio, and Patrick can't think of anything to complain about at all. Wanker. And of course, DJ Jazzy Socar lays it down strong, yo.

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain023.mp3

Subscribe on iTunes for free! If you do it, Socar will rap for you. If you DON'T do it, Socar will rap for you 20 times.

Show Notes:

The Daily Monster

Like a Boss!!!

That "water drawing" thing we mentioned - Emmanuel Guibert.

Ninja Mountain Episode #22 - Long and Drawn out

This week we welcome longtime ninja Eric Lofgren to the show! He joins Jeremy, Socar and Patrick, and everyone tries to stay on the subject of drawing: techniques, tips and philosophical meanderings. Plus a call from a listener, a write-in question, and some book and web site recommendations. It's a long, jam-packed episode, so what are you waiting for? Start listening now!

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain022.mp3

Subscribe for free on iTunes if you don't want a pie in your face, too!

** UPDATE: There was a sound problem at the end of the call-in section, which has now been fixed! **

Show notes...
http://www.ericlofgren.net/

http://www.waynebarlowe.com/

Roger Dean books:
Dragon's Dream: Roger Dean

Views

Magnetic Storm

Ninja Mountain Episode #21 - From Boom to Bust and Back

Has the economy affected the illustration business, and how? What are the Ninjas doing about it? And could the current downturn possibly put an end to a new Golden Age of Illustration that we didn't even realize we were in? Socar, Jon, Patrick and Jeremy talk it over. Also - more of your calls and questions! Join us, aren't you?

http://www.megaflowgraphics.com/NinjaMountain/NinjaMountain021.mp3

Subscribe for free on iTunes, or Socar will beat up a pimp!

Show Notes

Chandra Free

Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines

The (UK) Association of Illustrators Pricing Survey

Don't forget to call in with your thoughts, questions, comments and unbridled praise! Just call Jon.Hodgson on Skype and let us know what you're thinking.