RockStock & Making a Preview Comic

This Saturday, June 20th, I’ll be at the Eastern Surfing Association’s tent for RockStock! It’s one of the most fun and unique events I exhibit in, as it’s a surf, skate, and music fest! Serendipitous that their 20th anniversary falls on the 20th!

I’ll be at the tent from around 10a to around 4ish, but the fest starts earlier and ends later. Looks like beautiful sunny weather too with a high of 81 and low of 64. It’s always a nice chill day with the ESA at RockStock! It’s fun to check out how their surfing competition is going, talking with people on the boardwalk about AER HEAD, and listening to the bands later on.

This year, my new thing to show will be a preview comic of AER HEAD 3: SEND SURFERS TO MARS!

It takes a long time for me to make the art for AER HEAD, but quality over quantity! I wanted something fresh in anticipation of my Kickstarter launch later this year.

Pro tip: even if you’re not done with your next comic, people love teasers! It’s a positive way of showing that you have the next thing in the works, and will leave fans thirsty for more, bwahaha!

I already had some finished pages from my “Storyboard to Stars” exhibit, and have made progress on drawing other pages. I quickly lettered the preview, but my official letterer, Clay Adams, would do way better!

In 2019, I had made MULTIPLE preview comics of AER HEAD #1. As I progressed with the comic, and for different marketing purposes, I made slightly different versions.

This is the smaller of the two, which was a zine of all pencils, that I initially presented to my writer’s group. I was (and still am) the only cartoonist in various groups, so this visual was helpful for them to catch anything in the script.

This is the larger of the two: a full page printout with a Kickstarter menu on the back page that I used for my Kickstarter launch party!

I made a version of the same pages showing the progression of pencil to ink to various stages of color for a zine to sell at SPX when the Kickstarter was live. That year in 2019, I was honored to be exhibiting at SPX for the first time while they had a special Kickstarter sponsorship.

I’ll also be exhibiting in SPX again this year! I hope to do an encore with my 3rd Kickstarter running at the same time. Speaking of other events, I have another art opening next Thursday, but that deserves it’s own blog post. Stay tuned!