Now taking Commission Pre-orders for New York & Grand Rapids Comic Cons

I finally have a gap in my comics schedule and for a limited time am taking commissions for custom sketches. I get lots of requests outside of conventions, but am usually dealing with comic book deadlines that are too tight for me to consider additional work, so now’s your chance!

I am taking advance orders for New York Comic Con and Grand Rapids Comic Con, as well as orders to be sent by mail.

New York Comic Con (Pre-Order Deadline September 25)
October 5-8, 2017 – New York City, NY
http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/

Grand Rapids Comic Con (Pre-Order Deadline October 10)
October 20-22, 2017 – Grand Rapids, MI
http://www.grcomiccon.com/

I will appearing at all three of those conventions and will be taking orders and commission sketches there, but my sketch list fills up FAST, so even if you’re hoping to see me there ordering your sketch in advance is the best way to make sure you can get the original art you want. Plus, for ordering and paying in advance, I’m offering a FREE PRINT with any order of $100 or more. My full selection of prints can be seen in my Etsy store. Let me know which print you’d like to get for free with your commission when ordering.

All of my convention sketches are black ink on 9×12″ bristol. I will also draw on sketch covers and in sketchbooks by request. I have a supply of the Doctor Who: The Third Doctor sketch cover variants available for $5 each.

Sketch Rates

Here’s my sketch rates right now. Samples of different varieties of sketches are below!

• Full Figure: $100 for the first character + $80 for each additional character
• Head Sketch or Head-and-Shoulder: $60
• + $5 for Doctor Who Sketch Cover Book:
  The same rate structure applies to artwork done on a sketch cover. I can provide the Doctor Who: The Third Doctor sketch variant, but anything else you would have to provide.

I expect demand to exceed my available time, so I will commit to commissions on a first-come, first-served basis. Place your order early so you don’t miss out!

Headshot or Head-and-Shoulder Sketches

Single-Character Sketches

Two-Character Sketches

Three-Character or Negotiated Flat-Rate Sketches

More Sketch Covers

  >      

If you want to place a commission order, send me an email at chris@christopherjonesart.com. I will need the following information:

Your Name:

Contact Email:

Means of Delivery: (Pick up at NYCC, Pick up at GRCC, or Send by Mail)

At-Con contact (Cell # for text messages, if applicable):

Shipping Address (If applicable):

Choose one option per commission ordered:

A) Head & Shoulders $60
B) Single Figure $100
C) Two Figures $180
D) Three or More Figures (Cost will be negotiated based on description)

Sketch Type:

A) 9″x12″ Bristol (Standard)
B) Doctor Who Sketch Cover (+$5)
C) Other

What would you like me to draw?
Please specify character(s) and VERSION of character(s) (version of costume, in style of specific series, etc.).

Additional Comments/Questions:

For orders of $100 or more, specify which of my prints you would like as a free bonus!
You can see the range of selections in my Etsy store.

Upon receipt of your email I will write you back to confirm the details of the order and ask any necessary follow up questions. I’ll instruct you on how to make payment via PayPal (including a postage & handling charge if the artwork is to be shipped). Once I have the payment I will complete your sketch it will be available for pick-up or shipped as per our arrangements.

Christopher Jones Art Prints – 30% OFF sale!

Forget “March Madness,” this is APRIL MADNESS!

For those of you who don’t have the opportunity to see me at a comic convention or signing but want to pick up one or more of my art prints, my art prints are also available for purchase in my Etsy store. From now until the end of April, I’m holding an online art sale! This is your chance to pick up that Young Justice, Doctor Who, or other sci-fi/superhero print of mine you’ve been eyeing at a bit of a discount.

April Madness 2017 Art Sale will run until April 30, and is good on combination of purchases of my 11″x17″ or 8.5″x11″ prints totaling $50 or more before the discount. This special discount does NOT apply to the original artwork available in my Etsy store, ONLY to my prints.

Check out my Etsy Store at http://www.etsy.com/shop/ChrisJonesArt to see the full selection of art prints I have available. Use the discount code “AprilMadness2017” at checkout!

Also, prints now ship inside the United States at just $5 for any size order, and there’s a combined shipping discount on international orders.

Art prints all feature an original signature by the artist (yours truly) and can be personalized upon request.

The (Not Exactly Canon) Gargoyles / Spider-man / Young Justice Radio Show at CONvergence 2016

Performed live at CONvergence 2016, here is the (not exactly canon) Gargoyles meets The Spectacular Spider-man meets Young Justice Radio Show featuring Black Manta’s Celebrity Hot Tub.

…perhaps I should explain.

In 2014, CONvergence (the convention I co-founded many moons ago) was lucky enough to get to host a 20th Anniversary Celebration of Disney’s Gargoyles. Our Guests of Honor that year included four people with ties to that series: Gargoyles creator Greg Weisman, the voice of Demona Marina Sirtis, Supervising Producer Frank Paur, and Lead Character Designer Greg Guler.

At previous Gargoyles “Gatherings”, Greg had written Gargoyles radio plays to be performed by a mix of voice actors from the show who were on-hand to play their roles and fans from the convention to fill out the rest of the cast. These were tongue-in-cheek stories that frequently broke the fourth wall and became increasingly more convoluted and absurd as they carried forward their continuity from year-to-year and eventually included mash-ups with other Greg Weisman projects including The Spectacular Spider-man animated series.

Greg generously decided to continue this tradition at CONvergence 2014, expanding this madness to include characters from Young Justice. So with only Marina Sirtis on hand to play both Demona from Gargoyles and her character Queen Bee from Young Justice, a large cast of fan actors were auditioned and cast from the fans at CONvergence. The play was called “Recruits” and you can watch the video of the event below.

When Greg Weisman returned to CONvergence in 2016, he was joined by Khary Payton (the voice of Aqualad on Young Justice and Cyborg on Teen Titans). From the moment we knew these two were coming to CONvergence I was hoping we could get Greg to not only bring us another radio play, but that we could incorporate an unproduced gem of an idea called Black Manta’s Celebrity Hot Tub.

OK, more explaining. Back when Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series were airing back-to-back on Cartoon Network as part of a programming block called “DC Nation,” Greg and Khary pitched Black Manta’s Celebrity Hot Tub for the series of comedy shorts that aired between the two shows. In one of history’s great tragedies, these shorts went unmade.

However these shorts were repurposed into segments in the CONvergence 2016 radio show, so now you can get a taste of the glory that might have been.

We had two separate sessions of auditions at CONvergence to fill out the sprawling cast, followed by Greg, Khary and myself hiding away in secret corner of the hotel and sneaking lunch while casting the whole show. The day after the final cast list was posted we had an hour to run through and rehearse before the live performance!

Many thanks to Greg Weisman for somehow finding the time in his busy schedule to write this crazy thing and to everyone who helped make the show happen, and thanks to the CONvergence Video Team for getting the video put together. The video isn’t fancy (single camera from the back of the panel room), but the audio is reasonably clear and we even have subtitles you can enable in the YouTube video!

So without further ado, here’s Greg Weisman, Khary Payton, and a cast of dozens (including me!) in Gargoyles meets The Spectacular Spider-man meets Young Justice: “The Cosmos.”

Why I want Greg Weisman at CONvergence 2016 (And You Should Too!)

I wanted to show you all the art print I recently colored. I created a black-and-white line art version of this print for CONvergence 2014, to commemorate the radio play that Greg Weisman wrote then produced entirely at the convention. But I just colored it this month. This is the very first time it’s been colored.

And here’s a recording of the radio play, “Recruits”. It is a mashup of Young Justice, Gargoyles, and The Spectacular Spider-Man. and it features CONvergence 2014 Guest of Honor Marina Sirtis.

Why am I sharing these things? Well…

Most of you know that way back in 1999 I helped start a science fiction convention here in Minnesota called CONvergence. (Yes I have a second career as a con runner in addition to my career as a comic book artist.) Many years later the convention is still going strong with 6-7,000 annual attendees. One of our favorite repeat guests at CONvergence is Greg Weisman, among other things, creator of Disney’s Gargoyles, producer and writer for The Spectacular Spider-man, Star Wars: Rebels, Young Justice, and, of course, my collaborator on DC’s Young Justice comic book. Beyond Greg’s impressive list of writing and producing credits, he always makes a great convention guest because he’s a great talker and great panelist – great both in terms of quality and quantity. No guest ever does more panels at our convention than Greg Weisman does. (Seriously, he’s broken records.)

This is how you’ll usually find Greg Weisman at CONvergence: on a panel

So, some of us are trying to bring Greg Weisman back to CONvergence this year. How, you ask? Well,  he’s been good enough to volunteer to be our guinea pig for a new program CONvergence is piloting called “Fan-Featured Guests” – guests brought in by an outside group with approval from and working directly with the CONvergence Guests of Honor Department.

That is SO CRASH!

The funding for bringing in a Fan-Featured Guest is provided entirely by the group bringing the guest and can be crowdfunded, fund raised, or privately donated. This means that the budget to have Greg as a guest at CONvergence 2016 isn’t coming from the convention budget, but rather from a third party – in this case, a crowd-funding campaign that Hal and I are running. As of right now, it’s 70% funded!

I’d particularly love to see Greg back as a guest at CONvergence this year because Khary Payton (the voice of Aqualad on Young Justice and Cyborg on Teen Titans) will be a Guest of Honor as well. (And strangely enough, so will I! After having been a guest at most of the other sci-fi and comics conventions here in Minnesota, I’m finally going to be a guest at the convention I helped start. It’s a little surreal. But I’d love to have TWO members of the Young Justice family there with me to join in the fun.)

The last time Greg was a guest at CONvergence in 2014 he wrote and produced the radio play at the beginning of this post – a mash-up of three of his TV shows: Gargoyles, The Spectacular Spider-man, and Young Justice. Marina Sirtis was also a Guest of Honor at CONvergence that year and she provided the voices of her characters Demona from Gargoyles and Queen Bee from Young Justice. The rest of the characters were cast from volunteer attendees of the convention, during the convention. I wasn’t kidding when I said Greg produced the play at the con. He held auditions and everything. I mean, this was a hell of a thing.

Greg has said that if he returns to CONvergence this year, he’ll write and produce another radio play, and this time we’ll have Khary Payton to lead another cast of fan volunteers. I would do a new art print to commemorate the new play as well.

Greg and me with Young Justice fans at CONvergence 2014

You can probably tell where I’m going with this. I’m inviting you to contribute to help bring Greg Weisman as a guest to CONvergence 2016. We have a number of rewards for various contribution amounts, including the new color version of the 2014 radio play print. I’ve also donated copies of prints I’ve done based on Young Justice and on Greg’s novel and audio play Rain of The Ghosts, which will be signed by both Greg and myself. Those prints can be picked up at the convention or mailed out if you are unable to attend.

Hold the phone. Why would you support the campaign if you are unable to attend?

Well… Some of the rewards are things like Khary Payton (Aqualad, Cyborg) recording a custom greeting for your voicemail. You could have Greg Weisman or me do one too, but if it was ME I’d want the Khary Payton option. Or you could have one of the art prints mailed to you. On top of that, the radio play will be recorded and made publicly available after the convention, so that’s a new, original production by Greg Weisman for everyone.

Also, if you don’t want “Black Manta’s Celebrity Hot Tub” to be a real thing, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Because it will definitely be a real thing if we can get Greg Weisman to CONvergence 2016.

Click here to view the crowdfund campaign.

And please share this with your friends. Together maybe we can all give this effort the last push it needs!