SchlockMercenary

Book 17 Teaser panel

Here is the inked-but-uncolored strip for December 5th, 2016, minus all but a slice of the last panel. It's the first strip of Book 17...

Schlock, Landon, Tenzy, and Tandersil

Here, for supporters and the public alike, is a larger version of the penultimate panel for October 2nd, 2016. It was fun to draw, and Travis Walton's colors made it awesome. 

From the Sketchbook - Brush Experiment

I still don't know how to use these brushes correctly, but I kind of like the way this piece turned out. 

I am not saying whether or not this picture illustrates an event from the current story. It's not a spoiler, it's just a thing I drew for practice.

Technical note: the brush I'm using is a brush-pen, but the "nib" is an actual brush, with camel-hair bristles. The biggest difference between this particular brush pen and a simple brush is that I'm far too irresponsible to ...

Draft eleventy-three-D of the Force Multiplication Cover

We really are going to send this book to print. Sandra and I spent all week grinding on this cover. 

The next batch of Schlock Mercenary books will have a new cover texture, moving away from the pipes-and-metal of books 6 through 11. The stone circuit pattern was designed by K.B. Spangler, who has discovered that I really can be the worst client ever.  

(UPDATED TO ADD: The story of how I told K.B. Spangler to stop drawing, and start throwing cooked spagetti on the floo...

Worried Petey, the profile picture

This one's free to the world. It's Petey, worried. You have permission to use it as a profile picture, or anywhere else an icon of a worried "not-actually-a-bear" might make sense. 

The image is a slightly modified crop from an upcoming strip. The line-art is mine. the colors are by Travis Walton, who has been coloring Schlock Mercenary for half a decade now.

Some Maxim Wallpaper is Coming

That panel I showed in December has been colored by Travis, and I have determined that it will work just fine as a meme-style wallpaper (centered picture w/ text underneath.) 

I'm not going to post it yet, because spoilers, but when that panel goes live at schlockmercenary.com next week, I'll post the wallpaper in here for the $2.50 patrons.

Wallpapery Fun With Metal Textures

I recently consumed a tutorial on quick-and-dirty text effects that do NOT look like the standard Photoshop layer effects, while still taking advantage of them. Here's one of the results. Available to the public. Patreon subscribers will get some cool exclusives later this month.

A new Planet Mercenary wallpaper

Here's a new wallpaper. We're announcing stuff that you fine patrons knew -- that the Schlock Mercenary RPG will be called PLANET MERCENARY. This wallpaper is free for everybody.

Avatar: Mouthful of Hammers

While messing around with the various layers of the chainsaw cavalry picture I was struck by a notion, so I moved Schlock's pupils a bit, and cropped an avatar. Available here, for free. No patronage necessary for this one. This is now the @schlock Twitter account avatar, so you might see it around a bit.

Stylized Earth from an Upcoming Strip

I'm pretty happy with the way this one came out. I laid a lot of black ink down, and then scribbled over some of it with a new white pen. Then Travis made it all colorful and awesome. You'll see it in context in about two weeks.

Have some wallpapers.

In order to create the suite of wallpapers for the 2015 calendar I first needed to create some mattes. Then I realized that these mattes, sans Schlock art, would make great wallpapers for mobile devices. Here are two. I'm using "CopperSteelPaper" on my new Android device, and "TealLimePaper" is the background on our "cash register" iPad. Enjoy!

Pre-Orders open on Monday

Sandra Writing: Greetings Patreon supporters. As promised, you get first access to the upcoming Schlock book pre-orders. Next Monday morning around 8am MST I will be posting direct links to the store items which will let you place your orders two days before those items are live to the public. This means you'll get first grab at sketched copies of Massively Parallel and sketched 2015 calendars. We're going to limit sketches on each of these items to 600 in order to save Howard's hand. We're a...

The System Works!

Our first Patreon payment has cleared, and is in our bank, and appears to be made of actual, real money! The system works! And more importantly, thank you! I'm off to GenCon Indy in 10 days. If you're there, come by and say hi!

In case you want a button

Should you feel the need to advertise your patronage for Schlock Mercenary on your own website somewhere, here's a tidy little button you can use. I'm not saying you SHOULD do this. Even though I began with the word "should." It's just that somebody asked, and so I got distracted and made this thing, and I had to put it somewhere. Anyway, now you have it!

Sandra promised me this wouldn't be distracting...

Sandra said this wouldn't be distracting, but it totally is. I'm flattered by all the interest, and grateful for all the support. Here's a goody for you just for checking out the Patreon page: This is the "antiqued" version of the Maxim 21 wallpaper released in 2013, and is a fairly representative example of the sorts of things I want to create to thank supporters. Links to all the 2013 wallpapers will be going out to the Schlock Troops in just a moment...

A public peek at the sneak peeks

Written by Sandra This is a cast sketch that Howard did when beginning the current Schlock storyline. Some of you may have already seen this image on Twitter or Facebook. It is an example of the sorts of things we'll be posting for our Patrons and Schlock Troops. They'll just be getting more and more frequently, along with early access to pre-ordering and the ability to buy convention exclusive merchandise without attending the convention. We hope you'll consider becoming a patron or joining the...