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Blueprint Magazine is out! Click on the link to read the online version is a cool flash flip-book viewer!

The first installment of what I hope will be a monthly series guided by the magazine’s theme is printed at the end of the magazine. World of Hellmouth: Beholder Series will be a window into the world of the Hellmouth and it’s people, places, monsters and events. I’m really excited about this opportunity to be able to explore small one-shots with Emmanuel Xerx Javier, the series artist.

Great thanks goes out to editor Erin Epp for this amazing opportunity!

It’s official! Blueprint Magazine will be running half-page strips in their periodical. This month’s issue focuses on the theme of death. This in turn led to Raven Nevermore coming up in conversation one night at a dinner event between my partner, Nikki McCallum, and Editor-in-Chief Erin Epp; both of whom work together in an organization called LSPIRG (Laurier Students’ Public Interest Research Group). Upon hearing Raven Nevermore’s premise, Erin asked Nikki to get in contact with me about the possibility of running a short strip in this month’s magazine.

One little catch: I had 4 days to do it!

I immediately contacted artist Emmanuel Xerx Javier, the art machine behind Raven Nevermore, and since he’s nearly as crazy as I am (nearly I said!) he was immediately on board as well. It was midnight for me and morning for him on the opposite side of the world. Emmanuel was preparing to take a weekend trip in a few hours. I eventually needed to sleep. Between a collaborative back and forth on the spot, the entire thing was done by the time I woke up and then re-written and lettered the next day.

Blueprint Magazine is a local publication centered in the Waterloo Region. It is the official student magazine of Wilfred Laurier University and part of the Wilfred Laurier University Student Publications group. The publication aims to provide an independent outlet for student discourse, creative thought and expression between the university masses and the Waterloo community as a whole. Each issue is composed entirely of content submitted by students and members of the greater community.

Once it gets published and released around Sept 25th, I will put the strip up here as well! Each strip will be a window into the World of Hellmouth and will be directed by Blueprint’s monthly theme. Here’s to looking forward to other great opportunities!

I hit some road blocks along the way and had to change cover artists last minute as a business choice. So two covers where done, but this one wins out in the end. It was done by Emmanuel Xerx Javier and myself as a collaboration. Emmanuel created the concept, layout, design framework and finally the art itself. I took that and did the digital work around the art. I’ve always loved collaborative processes but have lost some of my own confidence over the years. I hope to be able to do these collabs for the rest of this series.

Below is are the components that took me in this final direction. The first is Emmanuels art, with the background concepts stripped out. The second is a free texture I found online of paint splattered on a wall.

I immediately saw a raven shape–and I took that as a sign from a great power to roll with it and drop my previous concepts asap. I regret loosing the dog, but sometimes the art controls you. I spent 5 hours last night doing concepts with the dog in it that I ended up trashing… all but one. Maybe it’ll be for the trade some day .

The time has come to finally show some examples to a comic series I’ve written entitled “Raven Nevermore”. I hope to get a 6-issue run written and completely produced over the next year. I’ll be pitching this series to a couple comic companies and crossing my fingers for ANY feedback even if it doesn’t get picked up. I may independently print up a limited run for kicks because, hell, I wanna hold SOMEthing in my hand!

The comic’s artist is an amazingly talented artist whom I couldn’t be prouder to work with. His name is Emmanuel Xerx Javier and you can see more of his work on DeviantArt or his on his blog (I also got him to do a Darkhawk commission for me of course!). I’ll be meeting him this summer in July at San Diego Comic Con! It’ll be some good good times!

Without further ado, here is page 6 and page 11; two of my favorite pages in the 22 page issue. Page 6 captures the feel and energy of the sketchy gambling house as well as the confident and frenzy nature of the table jumper (name withheld for now). Page 11 captures a moment of peace in the comic (one of the only times things calm down) and the sensitivity of the main character and his worried wife. Just plain captivating.

From here the pages have been sent to the letter and editor for this issue, Thomas Mauer (letter/editor for Killer of Demons, letterer for Bad Dog). I am currently hunting down a cover artist that will capture what is in my head and this part is without a doubt the HARDEST part of putting this together–I’m extremely picky about what it needs to look and feel like. I don’t want something traditional, I want something that takes a different approach. I’m not one for following “the norm” and that’s going to have to come across in the cover somehow.

Anyways, I’ll post a full lettered preview once I have it. I’m really excited about Thomas’ work on this book because I was a huge fan of both Killer of Demons and Bad Dog before I even realized he was the guy I contacted and contracted for this gig.

This book is a testament to something I’ve come to the awareness of this year: The hardest part of getting an idea out of your head, is feeling confident to take the steps to making that idea a reality. This year is the year NunoXEI gets ideas out of his head!

I got the sketch for page three of the first World of Hellmouth comic I’m working on with artist Emmanuel Xerxes Javier, hopefully being released in July. The third page has a guy using a lighter (as per the script I wrote). Now, this story takes place in Cog Town, a metropolis city with strong steampunk influences.

After seeing Javier’s sketch of the zippo-like object my brain deconstructed it into the above concept almost immediately. I sent him this concept, chuckling all the while because he will NEVER need to know or show how it functions! I gave him about nine times more info than he needed to pull off the two panels… but at least I satisfied my creative urges for the night.

This took me about 30 minutes to do up and now I’m actually looking forward to building more steampunk do-hickeys as the comic progresses! You’ll see them here of course!

There’s been a project I’ve been working on for about five years now pretty steady in one form or another. If all other projects had to go for this one to exist–then so be it. I’ve finally gotten it to a point where I feel good talking about it publicly and showing some of the work done on it thus far. The project is called World of Hellmouth.

Now that the main logo is pretty much finalized, it’s with great enthusiasm that I drop a blog post to inform any fans to check it out as well. I may in the future highlight other aspects of this project on NunoXEI.com, for now all I’ll do is give you the lowdown on this project.

Firstly, I’d like to thank an artist that I respected greatly back a decade ago when his worked scattered the pages of gaming products from White Wolf to TSR (before becoming Wizard of the Coast). He’s worked extensibly on The Changling setting by White Wolf as well as the Birthright setting for TSR. His art entered into other TSR setting–such as Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Planescape–on the tail end of that company’s demise before being acquired by Wizards of the Coast (the company behind Magic: The Gathering at the time). My respect for him has never wanned.

I was given the pleasure of meeting him in person at GenCon 2005 in Indianapolis, as nothing more than a fanboy of his body of work. I was able to name off products works appeared in as well as the year they were published. Back in the mid-90s I was very much angling my studies to trying out the illustration market before life spun me in a different direction.

I studied works like his from books I enjoyed at that time and thus remembered images and names very profusely. That knowledge (and some say creepy memory retention) was one of the reasons John Dollar and I struck up a friendship that has lasted for the last three years.

This all, of course, led to The World of Hellmouth getting back up on its feet. I hope to collaborate with John Dollar on future projects but also look forward to meeting and collaborating with other artists and writers along the way as I’ve got plenty of directions this “property” can go and need more than just my writing and John’s art to move it along and turn it into a power house. One such project is already listed on The World of Hellmouth website called “Twisted Tales“, a collection of 13 short stories written by different authors.

The World of Hellmouth is an apocalyptic puzzle of timelines and possibilities. In this newly constructed world, half a century after the Great Cataclysm, those who survived are at ripe old ages and now have children and grandchildren growing up in a very different world than the one they remembered.

[Read more about the map of Hellmouth]

The World of Hellmouth entertains the idea of mixing components of literature from the Renaissance, such as books and plays like Dr. Faustus, Macbeth, Paradise Lost, Dante’s Inferno and even the Arthurian legends. It intertwines folk tales, mythology and lore that go back to the times of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Celts and Norse.

Furthermore, it draws on imagery from more modern references: from the height of the high action pulp fiction, to the bravado of silver age heroics; from the retro-futuristic genre of steampunk, to the ultra-futuristic dystopian cyberpunk genre. [Read More Here]

Heroes will have varied experiences. They may encounter overwhelming hordes of fiends from the Hellmouth itself, or reclusive celestials from the protective mega-city of Sanctuary; newly awakened protective dragons of Gaia, or mysterious adapting cultures of Fey from the world Behind the Veil. They may come across golems made of gears and metal running on magic and steam from Cog Town, or they may cross paths with a valiant knight in shining armor displaced from Avalon. They may look out across rocky landscapes at giants from Ragnarok as they roam the land, terrorizing civilized settlements, while mechas from the east fly overhead, piloted in union by five men. [Read More Here]

There are a handful of entries already on the site and literally hundred more offline to be added as time rolls on. I’d like to thank you all in advance for checking out the, until-now, “silent” project site for what I hope will become my greatest achievement.