Tumblr

Hey everyone. I know I haven't updated this in a while (much to the distress of the two of you reading it, I'm sure). My tumblr has kind of taken the place of this blog. I've been posting the usual sketchbook stuff over there, plus some diary comics. I'm not ready to shut this down completely just yet, but anyone with an interest in following my work should definitely be following me over there. Thanks.

Scaly Swordsman

I don't remember drawing it, but when I woke up this morning, I found this in my sketchbook. I guess the next Trackrabbit will have quite a bit of this sort of thing.

Website

It took just about every ounce of patience I have, and all the meager skills at my disposal, but Geoffvasile.com is now up and running. Finally, there is a place on the internet where you can go to look at and buy things. How no one has met this need before is beyond me.

Coming soon! Honest!

Here we have a illustration I completed recently for the Asian Art Museum's teen membership program. I'm trying to get more commercial work in between comics, so if any of you out there would like to hand me huge sums of money for meisterwerks like this, please email me at geoffvasileisreal@gmail.com. Soon there will be a shiny new website where you can see other examples of the kind of skill and creativity you'll be buying when you hire Geoff Vasile. With such plans in place, my success is assured.

Trackrabbit #5 has been revised, partially redrawn, and reprinted and is now officially done and behind me. It's 42 pages of pure magic, and can be yours for the low price of $5. If you want one for yourself, or a few hundred for the retail outlet where you are employed, please contact me at the above address.

I'm torn as to my next project. I've got an idea for a story that could tie in nicely to the last two Trackrabbits. It features our friends Guy and Beanie, together again and working on a top secret project at Foreklaw. It also has Pirates, Time Travel, and Reptoids. It's pretty ridiculous. I like the idea of making these books a trilogy that wraps up in a grand, gonzo, over-the-top finale.

I'm also considering the idea of doing another issue of my auto-bio comic, The History of Increasing Humiliation. It would consist of all-new stories, mostly about when my Father was first diagnosed with cancer. I know, I know... Who needs another cloying comics memoir about familial tragedy? I can only apologize, dear reader, and say that I am not without the need for occasional catharsis. This book would be a clearing house of sorts for the emotions that have welled up in the years since my father's passing. I promise, tacky and sentimental though the subject matter may seem, that I will invest it with all the antics and mean-spirited humor that you've come to expect form my work. Hopefully this book will sell as well as all the other NPR-baiting comics memoirs out there. Then I can use all that sweet dead dad money to bankroll more stories about robots and dinosaurs and shit.

I will be at the Mocca comics festival all weekend with Becki Kozel and the Brothers Decarlo. We'll be at J17, selling comics, prints, and sundry art objects, and handing out dirty looks and harsh judgements for free. My new comic about the Dinosaurs and such (of which you see a teaser montage above) will be available, as well as the complete library of back issues. Time to replace that water-logged copy of Geoff Vasile is Real that's been sitting on the back of your toilet since Interpol was popular.

Well, here it is folks. It's taken me over a year, had an immeasurable negative effect on my posture, and cost me a fortune to print, but it's done. Trackrabbit #5 will be debuting this weekend at the Mocca Festival in New York, where I'll be sharing a table with Becki Kozel and the Decarlo Brothers. See you there, unless you don't live in the Tri-State area, or you're a jerk.

Better close that window

Trackrabbit #5 continues apace. I guess I could post full pages, or use the domain I pay for to serialize it as a "webcomic" (a term that, for me, has become synonymous with a very special kind of hackneyed, lazily executed crap). Yes, I could do all these things and more. Who knows, such a course of action could even bring me financial success. We both know, however, that I'd be betraying myself and, more importantly, you, dear reader. Any asshole can put a website together, shit out some pat witticisms about their cat or what happened at the local coffee shop, and get themselves a book deal. It takes a special kind of iconoclast to look 2012 in the face and say, "I could give a fuck about how easy the internet makes it to get the work I slave over out to my potential audience, I'm just gonna complain about my obscurity while drinking entirely too much." Valued patrons, I am just such an iconoclast, and I do it all for you. Here is a drawing of a tiny pterodactyl scaring the hell out of a couple hoodlums.

Tricera-hug

Here is the moment you have all been waiting for (both of you [my mom and my therapist]): After 19 pages of setup, I finally got to draw a developmentally disabled man hugging a miniature dinosaur. Now the laughs can begin in earnest!

Dino Distress

Oh my! What could've happened to that poor stegosaurus that has our heroes so distraught? You'll just have to read Trackrabbit #5 whenever the hell I finish it to find out!

Jurassic Office Park

Here's a teaser panel from the next Trackrabbit. I thought about writing a few words to put this image in context, but now that I see it on the screen, I realize it speaks for itself.

The Solardillo

Here is the completed version of the illustration for Joshua Goldfond's novella.

Link Fights a Moblin

You'll have to forgive me; I know its a little juvenile to be drawing video game characters, but I've got Zelda on the brain right now. I'm playing through every game in the franchise in preparation for the release of Skyward Sword next month. That is so a valuable use of my time. Shut up.

Needless to say, these characters are owned by Nintendo or whoever.

The Judgement Badger

Here we have the finished inks for an illustration I'm working on to accompany a novella written by my old chum, the talented Joshua Goldfond. The story, entitled The Hunting of the Bubblenuff, concerns Fabian Vermeer, a "crypto-naturalist" tasked with exploring an ancient forest that may or may not be filled with hundreds of mythological creatures, each of a more hilarious and unlikely nature than the last. It's a fantastic piece of satirical fantasy, reminiscent of Douglas Adams and shot through with the sort of wordplay found in Woody Allen's books from the 70's. It's a great read, and I'll be pushing it in this space as soon as it becomes commercially available. In the meantime, I should point out that the above image and the characters mentioned here are the property of Mr. Goldfond (but I'm sure you already realized that).

Tiny Dinosaurs and Turtle Babies

Here we have some prints I've designed. The first two were intended to be produced in runs of 40 each, but I only got about 20. Screen-printing is kind of like laying sea turtle eggs; you never really know how many are going to make it. To carry on the reproductive metaphor, the third design was entirely stillborn, having never made it past the color separation stages (a tedious and inexact process when undertaken by hand).

I learned a lot about screen-printing while designing these. At times, I wanted to abandon the process completely, but the desire to recoup some of the small fortune I spent on supplies spurred me on. I guess I wanted to see what they looked like, too. Despite my frustrations, I'm looking forward to implementing what I've learned on future projects. In the meantime, you can buy these from me at the Alternative Press Expo tomorrow, if you're the sort of person who attends functions like that. If you're not in San Francisco, or you just have better things to do this weekend, you may purchase them from my etsy site when it's done in the next few weeks.

Guy and Kylie's Tiny Dinos, pages 1 & 2

Here are the first two pages from the next issue of Trackrabbit. Eventually, I'd like to redesign my website and serialize this story there, since it seems like that's the only way people read comics anymore. For now, however (because I'm a total luddite with no idea how to accomplish the afore-mentioned redesigning), you'll have to content yourselves with reading it here. I know it starts out slow, but bear with me: subsequent pages will feature not only the dinosaurs alluded to in the title, but at least one explosion as well.

Guy Palmfrond

Here we have a character study of one of the title characters from my next comic, "Guy and Kylie's Tiny Dinos." This title may be subject to change. I'm trying to loosen up, in an effort to incorporate some of my recent influences (Chris Samnee, Darwyn Cooke) and a lifelong love of the "cartoon modern" school, to a debatable degree of success. I mean, I love Mary Blair, but I'm 32 years old: this is probably how I'll draw until I'm dead. This image was inked using a brush and a nifty Rotring calligraphy pen purchased for me by my good friend and respected contemporary, Fred Noland.

Dino-designs

Here are some sketches of the dinosaurs that'll be starring in the next issue of Trackrabbit. I wanted them to look cute, but also a little vacant, so the idea of personifying them would seem utterly absurd. I inked these with technical pens of various sizes, which I'm thinking about using for the whole book. It feels a little like cheating, but eschewing regular trips to the inkwell would probably cut down a lot of production time.

Down on Mission Street

Here's a piece I did for an anthology of comics about my neighborhood, San Francisco's fashionable Mission District. In a move those familiar with my work will note as a drastic stylistic departure, I have stolen the title for this story from a Lloyd Cole song, instead of a Belle and Sebastian song.

New Comics and Such

Hey gang. I know it's been a while. Some of you have surely come to the conclusion that I must not care about my career at all, and you'd almost be right. I mean, who cares about comics? But at the end of the day, it's the only thing I'm good at, and I'm too much of a narcissist to let that go to waste. Here are the first page pencils for a piece that'll be in some anthology of comics about the neighborhood where I live, San Francisco's fashionable Mission District. My less than acute ear for Chola dialogue has already been pointed out, so please restrict your criticism to comments on perspective, anatomy and spelling. Thanks.

In other news, I'll be doing a reading at Mission Comics and Art this Saturday, as part of something called Litcrawl. If you wear expensive horn-rims and read Dave Eggers, you know what I'm talking about. The party starts at seven. The store is on 20th between Mission and Valencia. See you then, unless you're a jerk.