Another random contact sheet from Hi-Yah! These give you a pretty good idea of the wide variety of characters and illustrators I had working on this book.

Here is a contact sheet from Hi-Yah! Contact sheets are thumbnails of all the drawings to be used in the book. Hi-Yah has over 325 illustrations which makes it my most ambitious project to date.

Because you can never have too many ninjas...

Taekwondo (also spelled Tae Kwon Do, Taekwon-Do, or Taegwondo) is the most popular of the Korean martial arts and is the Korean national sport. It is also one of the world's most commonly practiced martial arts and an Olympic sport.

In Korean, derived from hanja, Tae means "to kick or destroy with the foot"; Kwon means "to punch with the fist"; and Do means "way" or "art". Hence, Taekwondo is loosely translated as "the art of hand and foot" or "the way of the foot and the fist." Taekwondo's popularity has resulted in the divergent evolution of the art. As with many other martial arts, Taekwondo is a combination of combat technique, self-defense, sport, exercise, entertainment, and philosophy.

I spend a lot of my day sketching and messing around with my 2 kids; sometimes a cool character emerges from our collaborations.

I'm gonna knock you out (HUUUH!!!)
Mama said knock you out (HUUUH!!!)
[REPEAT 4X]

Don't call it a comeback
I been here for years
Rockin my peers and puttin suckas in fear
Makin the tears rain down like a MON-soon
Listen to the bass go BOOM
Explosion, overpowerin
Over the competition, I'm towerin
Wreckin shop, when I drop these lyrics that'll make you call the cops
Don't you dare stare, you betta move
Don't ever compare
Me to the rest that'll all get sliced and diced
Competition's payin the price


I'm gonna knock you out (HUUUH!!!)
Mama said knock you out (HUUUH!!!)
[REPEAT 4X]

Don't u call this a regular jam
I'm gonna rock this land
I'm gonna take this itty bitty world by storm
And I'm just gettin warm

Sorry, the Easter Holidays got me pretty backed up on my work schedule. I'm working on some new stuff to put up later next week. For now here are some character designs from my martial arts book, or maybe they are drawings of me dancing around deadlines. You decide.

Don't think Hi-Yah! just features big brutes and muscular martial arts men; it also contains a fair share of women getting their Kung Fu! on.

Archery is one of the most challenging forms of the martial arts. The bow is a difficult weapon to master. It is thankfully not that difficult of a weapon to draw and with "Hiy-Yah!" How to Draw Fantastic Martial Arts Characters" you'll be hitting the bullseye.

More Kung Fu fun from Hi-Yah! This guy looks kind of familiar. Who could it be based off of?

Here is an open palm tiger strike to get your work week started with some animal level force. Attack that Monday and give it your all!

Here is a highly charged drawing by Brett Booth from Hi-Yah!: How to Draw Martial Arts Characters. I've included one of the how to draw steps if you want to try your hand at drawing a similar character.

Here is the character from yesterday's post with his mask pulled back. This is also a nice example of Brett Booth's pencils before and after my coloring.

Here is another example of an illustration with quite a bit of punch from the upcoming "Hi-Yah!" book.

"Gung Ho!: How to Draw Fantastic Military Comics" is on fire! This volume has turned out to be my fastest seller yet. It is rapidly climbing the Bookscan charts. Thanks to all you guys and gals out there who've made it a roaring success.

Today's illustration is what I drew for the frontispiece of "Hi-Yah!" Sometimes my editor will decide on using something else for space or design reasons, but I always try to sneak in one extra fun drawing that sums up the project for me.

Ninja (??) were said to be agents of espionage and assassination in feudal Japan in legend and popular fiction. Some modern practitioners of budo ninjutsu argue that ninja were used primarily as spies, not assassins; and this appears to be borne out by some historical records. It is popularly believed that the ancient ninja were peasants, forbidden under law from studying the samurai swordplay techniques because of feudal Japan's caste structure; but more likely they originated from a variety of castes.

Ninja are said to have made use of weapons that could be easily concealed or disguised as common tools. Weapons commonly attributed to them included shuriken and bo. In popular folklore, ninja also used special short swords called ninja-ken (or ninja-to see below for explanation). Ninja-ken are smaller than katana but larger than wakizashi. The ninja-to was more of a utilitarian tool than a weapon. Another version of the ninja sword was the shikoro ken (saw sword). The shikoro ken was said to be used to gain entry into fortresses. The shikoro ken supposedly could also be used to cut (or saw) through opponents.

When I was a kid on Saturday mornings I would watch cartoons all morning long, when they went off I would look for a monster movie to watch, if I couldn't find a monster movie then I would look for a kung fu flick. Perhaps nothing reminds me more of those old cheesey kung fu flicks than the old sword on sword sound effect they used, that ka-ching sound still makes me smile.

Here is another shot of my drawing space. One of the most important tools I have is a mirror. It is great for practicing expressions or flipping an image to see if it is skewed, plus you always have a smiling face to keep you company!

I sometimes get requests to see pictures of my studio. I imagine people have the idea they need a lot of space to draw for a living. My drawing table actually shares space with our washer and dryer in our laundry room. I guess I never totally learned the lesson to keep my room clean as you can tell from the toys, comics, and art supplies strewed about.