I came across this old work that I hadn’t thought about in forever. These are illustrations from 2008 that I was hired to do for a role playing game book. First work-for-hire work, first attempt at coloring my own stuff, first time using a brush even. Instead of being all OH GOD I’M EMBARRASSED, I’m looking at these and feeling good about where I’m at now. Buckling down, doing the work. Besides, I can see small parts of them that I still like, especially the last one.

It’s nice to be reminded of one’s progress sometimes, ya know?

I made this card for my mom. for Mother’s Day. She really likes Billy Joel. That first image is the front, the second is the inside. Gushy “I love you, mom“‘s on the back.

P.S. Whoa I’m terrible at likenesses! Also I have this weird thing where I never, ever remember to ink ears, so I did that after I scanned it.

Couple of wind-down sketches.

Goodnight, tumblr.

harveyjames:

SPRINGFIELD IS ABOUT TO E•X•P•L•O•D•E

Whew. Just assigned pages to over 300+ artists. Feel a bit like I just ran a marathon. Anyway, here’s the final cast for the Bartkira project. Some aspects of the cast list might be surprising,  but I’m confident that you’ll see the logic and consideration that went into the choices I ended up making when you read the book. Believe me, I went through nearly every reasonable combination of characters and this roster works the best, in terms of character motivation and interaction. 

Lisa is Lady Miyako. I don’t mind if the artists draw lisa as an old lady, a woman, a teen, or a little girl. Since she’s a powerful psychic, it’s reasonable to imagine that she’s capable of changing her appearance. 

As for minor/background characters, that’ll be up to the artist to decide who they’re gonna slot in there. There’ll be no co-ordination on this aspect of it, so it should lead to some interesting results. I don’t mind if you put in generic background cast or known characters we’ll recognise. 

If you want to see the artist roster as it stands right now, it’s here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvXKD7Va1OYedFJDeTJRSk41RDVhQ2NSNERSV3NkVnc#gid=0

Here’s the rules and guidelines for the project. This is going to be in the email I’m about to send out to all the contributors, but in the eventuality that you’re a contributor and you see this before I have a chance to send out the email, I may as well stick ‘em here too. 

RULES AND GUIDELINES

I want to keep this as free-wheeling as possible, but I came up with a couple of rules to make sure the book reads nicely as a whole.

-Please put the page number bottom-centre of each page you work on. Be sure to write your name discreetly on the bottom right of the last page you do, too, so people will know it’s you. 

-ALWAYS always change character names in the dialogue to their Simpsons equivalent. So Tetsuo is always ‘Milhouse’, ‘Akira’ is always ‘Ralph’. Mr. Nezu is always Mayor Quimby.

-When spoken in dialogue or narration, ALWAYS change the words “Neo-Tokyo” to ‘Springfield’. ‘Japan’ to ‘America’. ‘America’ is now ‘China’. 

-however, DON’T change inner-city location names when they’re referred to in the dialogue. if you want to change the council chambers to look like Burnsie’s power plant, though, that’s up to you. 

- it’s up to you whether a character wears their outfit from The Simpsons or their equivalent’s outfit in Akira. Sometimes costume changes are worked into the plot, though… so if Tetsuo puts on a cape or a fur coat, then you should probably give Milhouse a cape/fur coat too.  

-in the few occasions where I’ve cast against gender, you should swap the gendered pronouns- so ‘Kiyoko is in her room’  becomes ‘Todd is in HIS room’.

-Make it awesome

SUBMITTING YOUR WORK

 

Eventually, I’m going to put this all together in one torrent file available for everyone to download. To make things easier on me, when you’re finished, send your work to the bartkiracommittee@gmail.com inbox in the following format:

Subject header: SUBMISSION

attach your files as one .zip file

JPEG format- highest quality compression

dimensions: 1020 x 1492

filename : Bartkira_X_pYYY.jpg (where X is the volume number and Y is the page number.)

DEADLINE IS MAY 24th!

Feel free to put your work on social media as soon as you’ve done it, too! There’s no moratorium on breaking ‘street date’, or anything like that. tag it with #bartkira, of course. and if you want to help out, include a link to my tumblr at harveyjames.tumblr.com, since we’re still in need of artists. I’m also @jamesharveytm on twitter.

GETTING THE BOOK

If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can get it from your local library- or pirate it via torrent software, so long as you buy it for real later. I’m sure it’s readable online in a bunch of different places. Don’t ask me for pages! 

I could probably say a whole bunch more, but I feel like the less guidelines I give you, the more surprised we’re all going to be at the end.

Good luck! 

“Embrace Nothingness” - Lisa Simpson

If you still want to apply, email bartkiracommittee@gmail.com.

So this is awesome, as I’m sure you’ve all seen by now. But I just noticed that Harvey James used my drawing of Lady Miyako for the character list! JEEEEZ, now I’m thinking of signing up to do it.

Couple more of this guy