And the winner is...

Thank you for everyone who voted in our mug contest, including apparently, two members of the Toronto Maple Leafs :P

We apologize for the delay. Originally the contest was only supposed to take 1 week, but ended up taking a bit longer than that. Mostly I've been writing my PhD thesis while horribly sick with what people tell me is the flu. It actually felt like this:

A common problem with writing theses while sick.

The Prince mug giveaway, and Friends of the Prince

Hi everyone,

As Annie works hard to finish inking The Prince, I circulated an early draft of the illustrations among our friends and the response was overwhelmingly positive. A big thanks to everyone who proofread this early copy, especially while I took some stalker-like photos for our upcoming KickStarter videos:

Completing the inking phase!

This weekend, I officially finished inking and scanning in all 20 pages of The Prince. In celebration of this, Phu threw a small dinner party with friends. We feasted like princes and princesses.

I've already done a couple of pages in full colour, and in the coming weeks, I'll be working on finishing up the rest. Look for an upcoming post/tutorial on how to go from inks to digitally-coloured pages in Photoshop!

Too blurry to see what's going on?
Stay tuned for actual pages in glorious 1200dpi!

Tools of an amateur illustrator

First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone who came out to the auction last weekend to raise money for the Birmingham Free Clinic and Women's Center Clinic! We participated in the silent auction and had a number of bids on our print.

Before the bidding began

Phu plays this down, but I think it's worth sharing - when he started making and selling his photo and recipe books, he wanted to donate the profits to a local cause in the community. He got in touch with the director of the Birmingham Free Clinic, Mary Herbert, and for the past 3 years, he's been an enthusiastic supporter, forwarding proceeds from his book sales and donating items for their annual fundraising auction.

Print auction for Pittsburgh's Birmingham Clinic

Through my good friend Sara (the topic of a previous post) a few years ago I learned of the Birmingham Free Clinic in Pittsburgh and their great work with providing health care to underserved populations. I've donated a few small things in the past for their annual auction. This year, Annie wanted to donate a full-sized print of a page from The Prince for the auction.

If you're in Pittsburgh, the auction is in LR6 of Scaife Hall on the University of Pittsburgh campus, at 6:30PM on Saturday February 1st, 2013. Come bid on Penguins tickets, an iPad Mini, and other good stuff to support a good cause !