I made a skirt!

Awhile ago I went to a vintage/thrift/second hand store in Columbia and saw a skirt made from old t-shirts. "Now," says I, "I have a lot of huge tshirts that I will never ever wear just sitting in my closet because I don't have the heart to throw them away. I need to make me a skirt."

My mother is a wonderful seamstress and I set out a set of old t-shirts I would never wear but still liked and a couple pairs of pants that no longer fit me and scuttled off back to college for a few months. When I returned my mother had made me a skirt from the tshirts, but it just wasn't quite right. I told her more of what I wanted and sat on my bed coloring the character sheet from the previous post and listening to the London Symphony Orchestra perform the Who's Tommy while she farted around on the sewing machine next to me. "How about this?" she said as she presented me with my new skirt.

The moral of the story is my mother can make just about anything, including figure out what I want from a jumbled mess of words thrown at her.

Speaking of which, she has an Etsy site now!. You should check it out. sherrybingaman.etsy.com.

Anthony Gillis Turnaround

This is the last 'just for fun' thing I've allowed myself before I really buckle down and work hardcore on Skin Deep issue II. I guess it's not a totally useless drawing, since Anthony is the psuedo-main character of the comic after Orientation. Anthony was created by Sophia Morley, and I just think he's awesome. Perhaps because he's based off a frigate bird. Perhaps because he has feather muttonchops. The world may never know.

Alec Hyde Turnaround

So I was going to do a bunch of these kinds of drawings for the current characters of Skin Deep, but instead I got sidetracked and started doing secondary characters that show up later because that's how I roll. This is Alec Hyde, a character created for Skin Deep by Sheana Molloy (she's populated like half of the Skin Deep world I swear to god). So this is a taste of the kind of people who show up in the comic book later. Bugbears are like my favorite obscure mythical creatures because they're these gigantic freakin' spooky bears but the only thing they do is frighten runaway children into going back home. Totally harmless yet 100% creepy. Leave it to the English to think of something like that.

School's Out!

Winter break has officially started here in good old Missouri, so I'll be spending a lot of time working and drawing! My goal is to get the next issue of Skin Deep drawn out. That will be fun. I hope I can stick to my guns.

I posted this over at my deviantart account, but I'm doing dirt cheap sketch commissions for somewhere near 5 bucks a character. That's dirt cheap, ladies and gents. And especially since paypal takes money for every transaction I won't even be getting that whole 5 bucks. AND YET I AM STILL DOING THIS SPECIAL HOLIDAY DEAL. That's Christmas for you. I give and I give because I care.

I usually put pictures up of what I've been drawing lately but I haven't drawn or scanned anything for awhile since it's been finals week and what I have drawn has been pretty lousey, but here's a photograph of my roommate and I in our respective fudd-duddy hats. Hers keeps showing mine up. Jerk.

edit: I went trolling through Webcomics Nation, where my comic is hosted, and discovered that there is a "supernatural/magic" category. That might fit Skin Deep more appropriately (it was originally categorized as 'Fantasy', but it was up with a bunch of Lord of the Rings-esque comics and I don't really think it belongs there), so I moved it there. Plus there's only one other series floating around that category, so who knows, I might get more noticed. Or maybe it really does belong in fantasy. How do you classify a comic about modern day mythical creatures? It's kind of Harry Potter-y. Maybe there should be a Harry Potter-y category.

Jim Finn Turnaround Sheet

So this is kind of a spoiler to Skin Deep, and I apologize if you're actually one of the few people reading the comic who doesn't actually know anything about the comic.

Today's update is the first appearance of Jim Finn, one of the weirder characters in the comic. Completely unrelated to this fact I've just finished a character turnaround sheet for him, so I thought I upload it for fun. Like extra content or something. It's a ball everyday over here on kory bingaman dot com, folks. I could have added more ages for him like 'angsty teen' and 'high school', but that would be a tad more spoilery than I'm already making this. Also it would make this thing even more ungainly looking. Check out how long that is! Dang!

B is for Bestiary!

I've decided to start uploading the Bestiary Alphabet to Webcomics Nation along with Skin Deep. I know I'm already up to V with this thing on my DeviantART account, but I thought this would be a fun place to put it as well!

Printmaking Extravaganza Closeups!

All my final prints from my Printmaking class! And I love each and every one. Fun times, printmaking.

Printmaking Extravaganza!

I worked for 13 hours straight yesterday finishing up my portfolio for my printmaking class and this is the end result: 5 different prints printed a billion times. I wish I had more time to take more printmaking classes; I think it's great.

H is for Harpy

Not to be confused with Sirens.

G is for Gryphon

I've been slacking off on updates. It's Finals week!

Machine Man Fanart!

Aaron Stack AKA Machine Man is the best Marvel Superhero ever. Only because he's written a lot like Bender from Futurama in the Nextwave comic. I have a fondness for really lame characters being remade into interesting funny characters. If you don't like him you can bite his valve because he is the hero.

F is for Faun

Fauns are some of my favorite mythical creatures. Maybe because deer are really fun to draw.

E is for Echidna

Nobody ever knows who this gal is supposed to be. She's always overshadowed by her children.

Off and rolling!

So it looks like the good folks over at Webcomics Nation are keeping Skin Deep up and rolling like it's supposed to, and that's good news for me! I'll be updating the comic at my deviantART account as well, at least for the first issue. Then it will be exclusively at WCN. Fun stuff.

Max Riffner plugged the comic on his site recently. Don't tell me I wasn't excited about that.

D is for Dragon

Movin' right along with D is for Dragon, ya'll!

C is for Chimera

C is for Chimera.

B is for Bugbear!

B is for Bugbear! One of my favorite obscure mythical creatures. My friend Sheana brought them to my attention and we've expanded their mythology a bit for Skin Deep.

Bestiary Alphabet: A is for Ammut

A recent assignment in my Illustration class was to make an illustrated alphabet. I did one I call 'Bestiary', and I liked it so much I'm expanding it in individual mythical factoids. I'll upload one a day for 26 days! Learn and Enjoy!

Skin Deep goes live on Turkey Day!

Stay tuned to www.skindeepcomic.com, because this Thanksgiving my comic project of over 6 years is finally realized with regular updates on Tuesday and Thursday!

I created the premise for Skin Deep back in High School. Before then most of my time was taken up by doodling characters I created over and over and over again. I needed something to do with them, but what? Create a story for them, of course. These weren't normal people, though, they were mythical creatures. How do I explain that? I created a premise and built upon that premise and worked out the logistics of the world I was creating. Questions would come up and I would answer them, expanding the world, creating rules and expanding the characters and their families until I came up with years worth of story and 60 plus developed characters. In 2002 when I was a Junior in High School I made my first attempt at creating a comic involving these characters. I was never happy with the script or confident enough in my drawing or comic-making skills to ever finally start it, however. When I started college in 2003 I decided to try again, but I again hit a wall because I didn't know what I was doing and I was too afraid to step outside my comfort zone. This starting and stopping and working and reworking went on until Christmas of 2005 when I finally decided 'To Hell With It!" and just started it. So what if I don't know what I'm doing! I'll learn!

And the first issue finally goes live on Thanksgiving. It's as much of a learning experience as anything, and I hope all the work and love I've put into it shows through.

I hope you all have as much fun reading it as I had making it!

The first post?

This is the official blog for kory bingaman dot com! I'm Kory Bingaman, and you'll see news and updates for both my portfolio site and my comic book project, Skin Deep. Stay tuned for updates!