Eric Merced

Cartooned: The Art of Eric Merced in The iBooks Store!

2012-01-27T08:52:00.001-05:00

I'm happy to announce the availability of my art book, Cartooned, in the Apple iBooks Store!
Cartooned is basically a new version of my art book Break The Bat, which was released last year. What makes Cartooned different from Break The Bat is that it showcases my cartooned art and Children's illustrations. Like Break The Bat, Cartooned also carries all of my Ouch! web comic strips as well as new material.
While Break The Bat was available for $1.99, Cartooned is available now, for free!
All you need is an iPad or an iPhone/iPod with iBooks 2 installed to get your hands on it.
Follow the link bellow which will take you to iTunes where you can download the book for free.
Download Cartooned now!

Prints!

2012-01-23T12:26:00.000-05:00

Through my DeviantArt account, I've decided to make the following illustrations available for print. Prices start at $4.99 per print and you can grab them at my DeviantArt store here

Kids and Dog by ~ericmerced on deviantART
Blue Visitor by ~ericmerced on deviantART
Book Worm by ~ericmerced on deviantART
Cowboy Vs Snake by ~ericmerced on deviantART

Boy With The Hair

2012-01-20T10:36:00.000-05:00

Just a character idea I'm contemplating.

Gronk

2012-01-19T07:46:00.000-05:00

I've been a long time Fan of Katie Cook's art and an admirer of her cute web comic Gronk. One look at Gronk and you fall under the spell of cuteness. Katie's also posted tons of fan art which have been incredible. Looking for a subject to draw for fun, I decided to give Gronk a try. Here's my version.

Little Shop of Icons

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

I love the art of icons and I love making them. So much so that I've decided to open up a second blog with the intention of sharing my Icon art with like anyone out there who, like myself, also enjoy the art of icons. I've called the blog Little Shop of Icons.

Little Shop of Icons will showcase my icon art as I create them. I have a few I've already made which, in the coming days will post as well as links to download them, all for free!

Bookmark the blog and stay tuned for more to come.

Go to Little Shop of Icons

KING!

2012-01-13T08:13:00.000-05:00

KING! is a character created by Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford, published by Blacklist Studios, their indy imprint. Do yourself a favor and grab some copies of KING! as well as their other amazing title, Robot 13. You will not regret it.
Go to Blacklist Studios

DeviantArt Update

2012-01-12T09:06:00.001-05:00

Most of you who follow this blog are on DeviantArt and follow me there too. Although what gets posted here first eventually makes it's way there the same day or a few days later. However, despite the fact I've had my DeviantArt (DA) account for years and amassed a nice number of "Watchers", as well as a ton of page watches, I wanted to start over.

I had 2 choices.

1. Delete the deviations I no longer wanted or

2. Start fresh with a new account.

I chose 2 for various reasons. First, I had a lot, and I mean a lot of deviations in my DA account. It was going to take a while to delete them all. Second, my DA account was under the name "Stickfiguredancer". That was a joke and it was fun while it lasted (loved comments where my art pal's would call me "Stick" for short). I already had another DA account under my name, Eric Merced. So the logical thing was to go with the 2nd choice.

Now, if you're watching me on DA, you're going to want to go to my new account and watch me there. All of my new illo's will be posted there.

Peace

New DA Account: http://ericmerced.deviantart.com/

Link

2012-01-11T11:07:00.000-05:00

A part from Mario Bros. and Metroid, the next best game to come out of Nintendo was without a doubt, The Legend of Zelda. I just adored this game. I spent hours and hours trying to find clues so I could advance to the next castle and carefully inspected rocks and bushes for hidden passages. I'd especially love it when I would find one of these hidden caves by moving a bush or blowing a hole somewhere. Ah, fun times.
Head on over to my Dribbble account to see a few Work In Process (WIP) pictures of this image!

Mario

2012-01-06T11:25:00.000-05:00

Not sure if I'm on a Nintendo kick at the moment, but after working on Metroid's Samus yesterday, I felt a strong urge to illustrate Mario. Maybe this will become a Nintendo series? Maybe there's a Link in the future? Hmm… We'll see. No promise though.

Also I've added a bonus in the form if a free Mac and Windows icon you can download here.

Enjoy!

Metroid

2012-01-05T09:49:00.000-05:00

Today's generation is all about the XBox. My generation was all about Nintendo. And Nintendo had (and still has!) some of the greatest games EVER created. The Legend of Zelda. Mario Brothers. And who can forget my favorite, Metroid.

Cowboy

2012-01-04T16:08:00.000-05:00

Felt like taking a stab at another Cowboy pic'. This time around I gave it a more "chibi" look. Remember those? :P

Fright Night

2012-01-03T09:22:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the movie.

Pure Bred

2011-12-28T14:08:00.000-05:00

More Harry Potter

2011-12-26T17:35:00.001-05:00

I finally finished the entire Harry Potter movies. And they were awesome. I've drawn Harry a few times here and here, so I thought I'd draw a few more characters. My favorite character Severus Snape. Dobby and you know who.

A Waterhead Christmas

2011-12-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

This year I worked on 2 different Christmas cards. This was the actually the first one I did of the two featuring Waterhead as Santa.

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!

2011-12-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas to all and a happy New Year. Thanks to all my blog fans for returning post after post and inspiring me to keep plugging away. And to all the new followers I've gained this year, thank you too! It's been an interesting year full of challenges and blessings, as well as a couple of miss fires. But we keep moving forward, leaving the past behind us and moving towards the future. You are what makes this website possible. So thank you all!

Timeflyz Book 8

2011-12-14T07:47:00.000-05:00

Here's the cover to Timeflyz book 8 which along with book 7 is due in spring from Zondervan Graphic novels. This cover was colored by the very talented Keith Betancourt. When I saw the work Keith was doing and posting on his blog, I knew I had to get him to color this one for me. And it was more then worth it. Check out his work here.

Harry Potter

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

After seeing the first 3 Harry Potter movies, and greatly enjoying them, I decided to draw Harry for fun. Sketched in Sketchbook Pro.

Hellboy Icon

2011-12-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

A few years back I had worked on an icon based on Hellboy. Having recently drawn a better updated version of Hellboy, I decided to convert his head into another icon for fun. The result including the download link are bellow.

Download icon here.

Superman Icon Plus Wallpaper

2011-12-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

I've been designing new icons lately a part from working on my Kids Illustration portfolio and my Waterhead comic book. I love icon design. In fact, I'm cooking up something special I can't talk about now but will let everyone know as soon as I'm ready to reveal it.

In the meantime, here's a new icon I designed a few weeks ago. This time I took on the challenge of creating an icon out of The Man of Steel's iconic symbol. I also made some wallpaper for your desktop as a bonus.

This was entirely done in Photoshop.

Enjoy!

Download Icon and Wallpaper here

Cowboys Versus Snakes

2011-12-02T16:59:00.001-05:00

I really wanted to tackle a subject I've barely touched in the past for this new illustration for the portfolio, Cowboys. Growing up I remember my fascination with Westerns. I had my plastic cap guns and holsters and my very own personal Cowboy hat and badge. Fun times.

Manga Studio Replacement Icon

2011-12-01T08:30:00.000-05:00

I love drawing icons. That's a fact. I may not create as much icons as I would like to, but I do enjoy the process whenever I get the chance to do so. This past week I had the urge to design an icon, but I needed a subject. So I took a look at all the Apps installed on my computer, picking the ones I mostly use, and decided to design an icon for my favorite app, Manga Studio. I like the original app icon but felt I wanted to take the challenge of redesigning the icon.

My main motivation with the final piece has more to say about Manga Studio then the original icon. Manga Studio is much more then just an "inking app", like many call it. As a regular user of the App, I've come to realize that Manga Studio is more feature rich then I thought it to be in the beginning. Like many, I too fell under the assumption that Manga Studio was just an inking app. But it's so much more. You can create a comic, from start to finish with just Manga Studio alone. That includes writing the story (and by writing, I mean typing!), layout your pages, pencil them, ink them, color them and letter them and it's all print ready. No fuzzing and tweaking.

I've long since adopted the App to create illustration work. From start to finish (although I do use Sketchbook Pro to sketch my ideas out, yet it can easily be done in Manga Studio).

So I wanted my new icon to reflect the versatility of Manga Studio. I wanted to keep the word balloon element because that is as good of a visual cue as you can get that screams out comics. To take that comics concept further, I wanted to add a comic page with panels in the background. But I wanted the panels to somehow reflect the capability of Manga Studio to create full color art. So instead of placing black and white images, I made the panels in color.

In comparison to the original icon, the final icon speaks more of an app that is not just for creating black and white comics, but full color comics.

Hope you like.

Manga Studio EX Original Icon

Manga Studio EX Replacement Icon

Download the Manga Studio EX Replacement Icon Here.

Remote Control

2011-11-30T08:30:00.000-05:00

Some how, somewhere along the road, I became "the Guy who draws Robots". I don't know how it happened really, but it did. Evidenced by the fact that through out the past few years, I've had more people approach me about drawing projects with robots then any other subject. I'm not complaining though. Robots are fun to draw.

This is one of those illustrations that began as an image in my head and basically turned out pretty much like I envisioned it. The robot's design was really fun to work out. I didn't want too much of a modern look to it. Like all of my recent illustration pieces, this too was started in Sketchbook Pro, inked and colored in Manga Studio EX and textures added in Photoshop.

The Waterhead Progress Report

2011-11-29T08:25:00.000-05:00

I've been posting a lot of illustration work lately because as you all know, I've been heavily working towards building a new illustration portfolio suitable for the Kids market. But in all of that work, I've not forgotten about Waterhead, my 1 shot all ages comic I introduced here.

The script for the comic is done. But I'm now in the editing stage and trimming it down a bit here and there. Once that is complete, I'll begin the penciling/Inking stage, and finally the coloring/lettering stage. It's a lot of hard work for a single person but well worth it. While I'm looking for illustration work, I'm not abandoning my first love of comics.

One thing I wanted for the comic was a nice art gallery at the end featuring work by some of my favorite Artists. One of those Artists is my pal and fellow Illustrator and Comic Artist Josh Alves. I was stoked when he agreed to supply a pin-up for the comic. I knew it would be worth it and he did not disappoint. He supplied this incredible Waterhead pin-up.

I've had a blast seeing Josh grow in skills through the past few years. He's come a long way. Josh created this awesome piece in Adobe Illustrator. And while I'm at it, I have to mention that Josh is available for freelance illustration work. So give his work a look!

Also, my website was recently hacked by some person with nothing better to do. I was using Wordpress to run my site and up till now, I've never had a problem with it despite the fact I've heard nightmare stories from other Users. The hacker somehow managed to upload some files into my Wordpress install which tried to redirect visitors to my website to some malware site. I removed the files and in the end, decided to uninstall Wordpress. That meant I would loose my tutorials section because I didn't have a back up.

But no, I'm not upset. And by no means do I blame Wordpress for this. The only person(s) to blame here is the hacker(s) who, again, really must have been bored the day he decided to mess with my site. I simply replaced my Wordpress website with another site and everything is almost back to normal.

I say almost because Google flagged my website as suspicious for the protection of anyone who tried to visit the site. That's understandable and I applaud Google for taking quick action. So all I'm waiting for is for Google to do a review of the site to make sure everything is clear. Once that's done, it will be back up and running again. Hopefully soon.

Thanks for reading.

Peace!

Blue Visitor

2011-11-28T08:30:00.000-05:00

Aliens are always a fun subject to draw. There's so much you can do with them visually. This one, like the others, was sketched in Sketchbook Pro on the Mac and inked and colored with Manga Studio EX 4. Textures were added in Photoshop. I've also included snapshots I took while working on the illo' in Sketchbook Pro on my Cintiq bellow.

Cats

2011-11-22T08:30:00.000-05:00

Who can resist cute cats? Who can resist cute cats at play? Who can resist cute lazy cats? Who can resist cute lazy cats at play with huge cat heads? I thought so.

Soprano

2011-11-21T08:30:00.000-05:00

Drawing Kids was not the only objective for my new illustration portfolio. On the list were animals too. So I decided to take a break from drawing playful kids to start working on animals. The only thing I had an urge to draw at the time was a Toucan. But not just any Toucan. A singing Toucan. I titled this one Soprano. Just go with it OK.

Like my previous illo's, this one was started in Sketchbook Pro, inked and colored in Manga Studio with textures added in Photoshop.

Book Worm

2011-11-18T07:59:00.000-05:00

I've had to face a lot of challenges in recreating images for my portfolio specifically targeted towards the Kids market. One of those challenges has been to produce non static images.
Up to this point, I've been comfortably creating "pin-ups" of famous comics characters. While those were fun, they were not suitable for a portfolio, especially a portfolio whose main goal is to attract work in the Kids market. So I had to come up with single images that told a story. And in doing so, I was challenged with creating images that contained more then one character.
The first of these illustrations I posted in my previous post yesterday. This is the second attempt at such an illustration. This has been done before, no doubt, but I still wanted to illustrate it in my style. Like my previous illustrations, this one was started in Sketchbook Pro on the Mac, inked and colored in Manga Studio EX, with subtle textures added in Photoshop.

Kids And Dog

2011-11-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

This is my first official portfolio ready illustration image. In the past weeks I've learned a lot about target markets, Art Directors and illustration in general. I have to say, I have not learned this stuff on my own. Rather, I've had the honor of being mentored by an amazing Illustrator and Friend, Rob McClurkan, who helped set me on the path I needed to get on in order to pursue illustration work. Before Rob came into the picture, I was lost and clueless to what I should be doing, changing and looking for in my work. The first challenge was to decide what my target market was. I decided to work in the Kid's market. It's always fun to see Kids react to my work. I love to see my Kid's reaction to some of my work. It let's me know if the image worked or not.
Moving forward, you're going to see more images like the one bellow. Whimsical, bright and fun. I have more illustrations I've created which I'm eagerly looking forward to posting on the blog.

Steve Jobs

2011-11-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit late on this, but I was really affected by the news of Steve Jobs' passing. While not a perfect Man (and really, who is perfect in this life?), he was nevertheless a legend and one of the greatest inventors of our generation. If there's one thing I will remember about Steve is the magic. Each keynote he gave was magical. I never thought I'd feel the way I did about computers, music players and cell phones. But that was just the magic he brought to the stage.
I got a glimpse of the many tribute illustrations that went up on the net at the time. It all happened during my "internet black-out". So as much as I wanted to join in, I held back till the right moment.
Steve, you will be missed, but never forgotten.
On a side note, and this is somewhat symbolical of the influence Steve and Apple have on my work, but after working on this illustration, I felt I had discovered the style I wanted to work in in illustration. I think rediscover is a better word really, since I had explored this inking/drawing style before. But there was something about this image that struck a chord with me. It had all of the elements I wanted my illustration work to have.
Like I said, magical.

Introducing Waterhead!

2011-09-29T12:21:00.000-04:00

Last night I announced my next Creator Owned project on Twitter only. So those who are following me got to see it before anyone else. But today I'm happy to publicly make the announcement to the rest of the World (wishful thinking, I know).

Introducing-

Waterhead is an All Ages 1 shot comic featuring the adventures of Agent Waterhead as he works for the U.S. Government to fight off other worldly threats from Invading Aliens, Dracula and all sorts of classical monsters, mad scientists bent on taking over the World and much, much more.

When things get odd, they call Agent Waterhead!

The comic will also feature some guest art from some amazing Artists to be announced soon and will be available in both print and digital format.

Stay tuned for more in the coming months.

Humpty Dumpty

2011-09-20T07:31:00.000-04:00

A pal suggested I draw an illustration of Humpty Dumpty for my portfolio. What turned out was an illustration of Humpty Dumpty... as a reporter...
Don't ask me why. And hey, I was drawing super heroes and villains all week last week so, I needed to draw something different for a change.

Lil Depressed Boy

2011-09-08T07:55:00.002-04:00

I began to read The L'il Depressed Boy a few days ago from Image comics and got hooked into the simplicity of the art style and story telling. This isn't a comic that's in your face trying desperately to show you how intelligent it is, rather, it shows you it's intelligence in it's simplicity, which makes it incredibly refreshing and fun to read. I found I wanted to read issue 2 after reading the first issue, and issue 3 after reading the 2nd issue, and so on. It's addictive. And so, when I stumble upon something I like, I tend to draw it. Here's my fan art of the main character.

Monster

2011-08-29T11:37:00.003-04:00

This was a try out for a gig to draw monsters. Lots of monsters. Fun!