Happy Birthday Dana Terrace!

| Peter Ahola

I honestly have no idea if she’ll ever see this but I wanted to to put out a major shout out wishing a happy birthday to Dana Terrace, animator on Gravity Falls but best known as the creator of the Owl House.

Those who follow my work know I do a lot of Owl House artwork, I first discovered the show back in October of last year and since then my history with it has opened some major flood gates. Upon discovering the show, I was truly astonished by what I saw with show’s unique writing. Luz herself even reminded me so much of Kalwa, with her desire for adventure and wish to escape her current life. The Owl House was a full on crafted story that really gave me a much need kick in the boot as I saw epic story telling was possible.

But it wasn’t just the show itself that really inspired me, but Dana’s backstory. Reading up on her bio, I could tell that Dana had a similar love for cartoons and storytelling that I do and he long journey through life to make her ambitions into a reality. Going from show to show until she could finally make one of her own the way she wanted. More ironically her birthday is just five days before my own in the same month of Decemeber and she’s actually one year younger than me.

As such I have both an admiration and desire to work my to her level, and make my own ideas into a reality. And whenever I feel down or lost, I look back on her backstory as a way to pick myself up. Once again happy birthday Dana.

Kalwa chapter 28 page 9

| Peter Ahola

A new page for Kalwa chapter 28 is live right now on the Kalwa website for you’re viewing pleasure, as Toshiro makes a major request of Zack. What will that request be? Find out right now by click the thumbnail down below to read the latest page right now!

CLICK THE THUMBNAIL TO READ THE LATEST PAGE RIGHT NOW!

IDW Grimlock

| Peter Ahola

Another Grimlock coming at you for the year. This is based off the characters design from the 2005 IDW Transformer comics, which is actually my favorite Grimlock design. While IDW’s 2005 series has some rather “questionable” quality in writing, Grimlock’s story is a new take on the character. This version of the character is a actually an Autobot war criminal, whose team of “Dynobots” have committed a number of war crimes that violate Autobot law as they feel they are only Autobots capbable of doing “what needs to be done” to win the war.

Grimlock himself is even put at odds with his own team when he sets off a trap against Shockwave that buries his own team. Despite his rather cruel tatics, Grimlock cares very much for his team even when he considers abandoning them. He even turns himself over for his crimes and agrees to take the full blame for the teams’ actions in exchange for his teammates freedom!

Shockwave

| Peter Ahola

I’m continuing my study of mechs with more Transformer drawings, and now it’s on to my second favorite Transformer, Shockwave. For that matter Shockwave also ranks with my top five favorite fictional villains of all time. The portrayal of the character is practically exclusive between media. Within cartoons Shockwave is presented as a loyal follower of Megatron and the Decepticons, while the comic version of the character is a treacherous, amoral scientist driven only by a cold sense of logic. This means Shockwave will backstab anyone and do whatever it takes to accomplish his goals, even stooping as low as to commit mad cold experiments on anyone if it seems to be the “logical” course of action. To this extent, Shockwave is pretty much the most terrifying character in a franchise meant to sell toys.

Kalwa Chapter 28 Starts Today

| Peter Ahola

Today is the official day everyone. We’ve had a long break due to con prep and other project, but finally today Kalwa has a NEW chapter starting up. Chapter 28 is officially launching, the final chapter in the current story arch. Today we’re kicking off with THREE pages of this chapter. We got some more done as well, and will upload them in a timely fashion.

CLICK THE THUMBNAIL BELOW TO START READING THE LATEST CHAPTER!

Grimlock (G1)

| Peter Ahola

Yes first time drawing a Transformer, and my favorite one for that. The truth is as long as I’ve been drawing, I’ve always struggled with drawing mechs and mechanical characters. It’s always just been hard getting poses and proportions when you gotta draw straight edges and details.

So I’ve been attempting to overcome this weakness by consistently drawing favorite mech characters like Grimlock and Shockwave from Transformers, now I’m finally trying me hand at an official drawing of Grimlock himself. I’m starting off with the more simple G1 design for right now, but I do want to do some drawing of my more preferred design from IDW.

Halloween Draw off: Ghost Rider

| Peter Ahola

Happy Halloween everyone, it’s been really wild this year for me. Watched ALL the Simpsons Halloween specials, Halloween themed movies, horror movies and of course this years draw off.

Speaking of, here’s our FINALE for this years Halloween Draw off, and it’s Ghost Rider. That’s right, Blackout earlier this month was a prelude to our final subject matter, it was always planned to be Ghost Rider from the start. Aside from Spider-Man, Ghost Rider is my favorite Marvel character. However unlike Spider-Man who I got into initially through cartoons and other media, Ghost Rider was purely a self driven quest through only the comics, and as such I’ve always taken personal pride in my fandom of the character.

Though I was mostly brought up on the 90’s series featuring Daniel Ketch as the rider’s host, I actually much prefer Johnny Blaze as the rider. I feel Johnny is a much more rich character as he’s a man trying to fix his mistakes. Further more the idea of having a raging demon inside him and keeping him on the run was much more suspenseful than the 90’s series where Danny simply played second fiddle to his demon, which was an avenging spirit in search of his memories.

However the very early stories featuring Blaze were really quite terrible, in fact I’m left to question how on earth Ghost Rider even lasted as long as he did based on those stories, only when we got to stories talking about the the demon inside Blaze, Zarathos, did the story get REALLY good, even though it was the last story arch. The 90’s series with Ketch was what really cemented the character’s place as the spirit of vengence and really made the character an icon.

Anyway, this concludes this years Halloween Draw Off, and I’ll be back to do it all over again next year!!!!

Halloween Draw off: The Fog

| Peter Ahola

Down now to our second to last illustration of this year’s Halloween draw off, it’s the Fog. The Fog has always been one of my favorite horror movies of all, it’s my favorite John Carpenter film and within my top ten of most rewatched movies. I’m actually very happy that in recent years it’s started to get more attention and grow in fandom.

That being said, I’ve wanted to draw the Fog and it’s “inhabitants” in the draw off for years. I’ve just held back because I haven’t really known how to make it visual interesting. THIS right here is my idea of the Fog, shadowed ghosts with virtually nothing but the glowing red eyes. The less detail you see on them the better, it just makes them scarier. So how do you make “shadowed” creatures visually interesting. Hopefully this will do the job.

Stay tuned, our draw off FINALE is coming right up.

Halloween Draw Off: Zombie Kalwa

| Peter Ahola

We now come to the Kalwa piece of this years Halloween draw off. Our three protagonists have been zombified. I think it was last year I drew headshots of them as zombies and posted it to the Kalwa website, except they had pupils and were a little more lively. These designs were more inspired by the zombies from Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, as they looked much scarier. And for this draw off I’m not looking to do anything cute, I want scary all the way.

Check out more of Kalwa on her own website, link can found up above on our main menu.

More Halloween art to come.