This is what you must do.

Deviant Art

I've been hesitant for years to be active on Deviant Art, an online "Facebook for Artists", but after some hand-wringing I decided to give in.

At the top of my blog, you can see a slideshow with images that I currently have in my gallery on DA. It's a quick way to see some of my work without the need to fistfight through navigation here.


Hope you check me out.

JAMAR FEATURED IN COFFEE TABLE BOOK

image: John Jennings

I've had the good fortune of being featured in the new amazing coffee table book, 

BLACK COMIX: AFRICAN AMERICAN INDEPENDENT COMICS, ART AND CULTURE.

That's a mouthful, but what you see here is a snapshot of what authors John Jennings and Damian Duffy saw as a missing piece in the comic book puzzle: where the voices of African American cartoonists were and if they're being heard. 

Maybe you've never thought about where the black indy comics folk are, but now you can. I'm honored to be in such company. 

The book is on sale and available at Amazon, so scoop it up!
Also, check out some of the other fine work John and Damian are responsible for.

COMIC BOOK DINER

My good pals Rich Faber, John Gallagher and I have started a new podcast called the COMIC BOOK DINER. Find out from three guys who've been around the comics industry in different avenues for years and listen to us talk shop and go over the ins and outs of being in the comic book industry.

This isn't a "Who's stronger? Hulk or Thing?" podcast - there's none of that stuff here. No Comic Book Reviews - this is news you can use if you are trying to get into the comics industry, or already exist in it.

New episode of COMIC BOOK DINER is up live! Listen at the site or on iTunes. Let me know what you think.

Take Charge: Changing a Community One Block at a Time - Geoff Canada

JAMAR IS BACK! FSKG News and More

FIST STICK KNIFE GUN: Pre-Order it now on Amazon.com

Been away for some time and I'm slowly making my way back onto the information superhighway - I'm taking my time to merge, and checking the GPS frequently so I don't get lost this time.

My publisher, Beacon Press has released the cover for my book! It's already listed on Amazon, as well as some other places. Pre-Order a copy now! The book hits the streets in October, but I have to bang pots in the street now. No time like the present.

Check in frequently, as I update you to the progress my book is taking, and also events I'll be at. Since I've posted last, I've created a Facebook Page, since it seems that most of civilization is hanging around there - you can follow me on that thing, and I'm going to try and keep the content different from here. I honestly don't want MORE places to have to try and keep track of - that's a huge part of the reason I took the internet vacation in the first place, but I have this new book to promote, so I don't mind as much right now.

I will be appearing on the First Person Arts' WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT panel on March 9, 2010. Tickets are on sale so go see me live and on stage! I will be talking about the process of adapting a memoir into a sequential narrative format and will be using big words.

I've also had a handful of interviews in the past week, so I'll update you to those as I see them.

It's good to see you again!

AWAY NOTIFICATION

I will be away from this blog and other personal internet endeavors such as my Twitter, etc. until January, 2010. If you would like to keep up to date on what I'm doing, or follow my projects, please sign up for my newsletter, which I will keep updated during this time. I may pop up in other places, but you'll know all about that if you sign up for the newsletter.

Thanks for your support! See you in January!

Jamar

Come see Jamar on stage!

Why Am I Not Famous?!?
Come see Philadelphia’s only live comedy talk show, hosted by 2008 Philly’s Phunniest winner Kent Haines. This month, Onion writer Mike Drucker and comic book creator Jamar Nicholas join Kent for an evening of hilarity and mirth. BYOB!

Why Am I Not Famous?!?
8pm, Wednesday, March 25th
The Shubin Theatre – 407 Bainbridge Street
Tickets $5 – BYOB!

HVD!

Jamar Gets a Book Deal!

The big story of the past season is that I am proud to announce that I will be illustrating a 150+ page graphic adaption of Geoffrey Canada's FIST STICK KNIFE GUN: A Personal History of Violence in America.

You can read more about the acquisition as my publisher, Beacon Press gives some quick PR treatment.

Also here is my first blog post on the Beacon Broadside, Beacon's blog.

I will be posting there during my time creating the book and updating the readers with illustration progress reports. I'm real happy about this, and hope that while you're waiting for me to finish drawing, you snatch up the original memoirs.

I'm very proud to be attached to this project, and hope you check out what Geoff Canada is talking about. If you live in NYC, you probably already know who he is. Peep the Youtoobs. Even the president knows what's up.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Geoffrey Canada

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

T.O.N.Y.: Tapped Out on New York?

Look for my interview with my new pal Bryan Lee O'Malley in the next issue of DRAW!
You can't miss it - it's on the cover!

Hey you motor scooters!

So I have on my itinerary, a trip to the lush metropolis of NYC this weekend for the New York Comic Con, but it may not come to pass. If I do, it'll be on some secret-squirrel in/out type episode - where I exit a cab at the Javitz in slo-motion, my scarf flipping out behind me all Michael Bay style. There might even be doves. I can settle for white pigeons in a pinch.

In any rate, If you're there and you see me, then you saw me. Comic cons for me, besides work and pressing the flesh with the fans, are micro family reunions, where I see old friends for maybe the only time in a year. It's tough to not go.

One thing that's gonna be there is Bryan Lee O'Malley and his 5th Scott Pilgrim book, which I'd like to scoop up, as I love what he's doing right now in his career. I had the chance to interview him a while back for DRAW! magazine, which you may know by now, I put my thing down in from time to time. Mal was real cool and I can't wait for the issue to come out, which I think will be sometime this month. I'll let you know when it drops, but if you're at the con, go check out my pals at the Twomorrows booth, who publishes the magazine and have wonderful people working for them that love the medium of comics.

Are you following me on twitter? You need to be. That'll be the quickest way to see my moves these days - like if I'm on my way to NYC!

LEON: The Anti-Leon League

Click the image for Size Uppinmization!

Hey!

This is my latest LEON strip, for Delaware County Magazine. This one introduces a bunch of new villains, and ones you'll see a lot more of soon! I think I hit a few home runs in this strip, as I've gotten some great compliments on it.

LEON: Back to School

Click the image for biggimizing!

LEON: Protector of the Playground strip from the fall - nothing like new Back to School clothes!

This strip quickly introduces PRINCIPAL PRINCIPLE. He's got his own story that you'll see as we move ahead. Actually the first appearance of the Principal was in my first LEON story, an 8-pager that appeared in EVEN MORE FUND COMICS back in forever-ago. Try to scoop it up now for barter!

LEON from the holidays!

LEON for the holidays.

I'm a few behind, so I'll try to put a bigger drop of strips up soon...

Jamar E. Nicholas: HANDSOME GENIUS!

Hey yo!

Yours truly was a recent guest on my good friend Anthony Kingdom James' ill pod/blogcast called THE HANDSOME GENIUS CLUB. I am now a Handsome Genius, so you have to live with it. Please visit his site, and listen to Kingdom and I rant about the Eagles/Steelers meeting in the superbowl (NOT GONNA HAPPEN NOW - THANKS IGGLES!), the best cheesesteak in Philly, and my cartooning career so far. Also a great spoiler that I haven't put on the blog yet, so if you pay attention, you'll hear what it is.

Kingdom's interviews are filled with geekitry like comics, sports, videogames, professional wrestling and some light cussing, so be warned that I may drop a bomb or two.

So go listen to this week's podcast and tel me what you thought.

Boogaloo Under the Hood (REMIX)

From 2005:
>>
Happy Holidays.

So todays post, I thought would be good about giving thanks, and all that. I'm real thankful for a lotta stuff, like my good friends - civillian and comic book pals alike.

Another thing I'm thankful for, was the opportunity to work on DETECTIVE BOOGALOO over at superstar Kevin Smith's moviepoopshoot.com site. I have nothing but great things to say about the crew there, and I'm still friends with them. Editor Chris Ryall (The same Chris Ryall who is now head honcho at IDW) gave me free reign to do whatver I wanted and never had a bad word to say about me or my stuff. He's a saint. Now go buy IDW comics!

Going with that train of thought, I was cleaning out my files and found a row of tutorial files that I probably did for my old group, the Indy Cred All Stars. This was for the second strip from the Detective Boogaloo run on poopshoot, and back when I was putting a WHOLE lot of time into each strip. Not that I didn't put the time in - but I was still the virgin, and wanted to make sure I represented every week. I believe these used to take me around 10 hours to do. What killed was

a) I still didn't know the characters well, so I was still trying to find the right voices and look for them

b) I was still teaching myself how to color digitally

c) 'stuff just takes time to do'.

Also, that I went through a couple of stages each strip. Basically when you do your own stuff with no other hands in your cooking pot, you're essentially drawing the same thing 3-4 times. From roughs, to tighter roughs, to layouts, to penciling, to inking, to coloring, to lettering, there's a LOT of steps in there. Just pray that the computer demons don't decide to freeze your system at 3:00am. I LOVE when that would happen. SAVE EARLY SAVE OFTEN!

Anyway, what I have brought to the class today, is a little dialogue on how I approached the strips at the time. Look for new Boogaloo stuff at the begining of the year, as I'm planning on restarting the property.

Figure A here, is what my general roughs 'version one's' turn out to look like. I have an idea of where I wanted the strip to go, so I'd set out to lay out the page/s and block in some notes I had to myself, so I wouldn't forget them later when I was inking. As you can see I had 2 pages here, which got turned into 1 page. I forget why now - probably because of time constraints. A lot of things get shaved down by not having enough time or energy to do something else. If you can look closely at that rough up top, I have a couple of gags on Ice Tre's 40 bottle, - like calling it 'Assed Out 800', a play off of Old English 800 - more effectionately known in the outer provinces as "Old Gold", "8-Ball" or "OH EE". Anyway, I cut it out because I just didn't think it was necessary. I cut out a lot of stuff, like I was gonna have Ice Tre' rapping in the strip, so I wrote out a couple of bars for him to spit in the recording booth, but again, Cut. There's a lot of cutting that comes into my strips when I did them every week - I had more ideas in my head than room to fit them all.

OH! Also in the balding reporters hand, he has a copy of 'The Sauce' - my riff on THE SOURCE magazine. In Bling City, Ice Tre is the Alpha Rapper, so he's always on covers to the big magazines.

Ice Tre' got defined in this strip, where I wanted him to be an amalgalm of every 'pretty thug' type that was in Hip Hop at the time. Tho he looks most like Nelly, he's not supposed to be Nelly - but he can be if you want him too. He's Fiddy, he's everybody. An ebodiment of where my head was at about the music at the time. Every rapper had some sort of gimmick, so instead of the band-aid like Nelly had, I gave him football eyeblack under his eyes, and ice cubes instead of diamonds on his ears. Also his gold medallion is a gold ice tray, with real ice cubes in it. Now in hindsight, I never showed him using it - maybe when I bring the strip back, we'll see him make himself a drink and crack ice in the glass from it. Now that's pretty funny.

I remember a while back reading some dood on a message board who tried to snap on me about Tre' and how it had been 'done before'. People take things so literally - I've always tried to avoid the obvious joke and go a little deeper. Sometimes I succeed - sometimes I don't, but Tre', cheesy name in all, I really dig. His name is SUPPOSED to be bad. DUH.

After I did the rough stage, what I normally did was go over the stuff I was gonna keep in a felt tip marker of some sort (I'm known for being a 'whatever's in front of me' type of inker - I don't care, if it makes a mark I'll use it) and tighten up the rough. After that, on 11x17 Strathmore Bristol, later on smaller stuff, I'd lightbox the tighter roughs in blue col-erase pencil, and then ink it. I think for this strip I used all microns, and maybe some other stuff for the thick outlines. I'm not a huge Micron mark - I use brush nowadays just as easily as a techpen - it really depends on what kinda line I'm going for. Then I ruled out the panels.

Another little tip - I HATE ruling stuff out. I'd rather just free-form it, because when I do use ruled lines, it seems like I have to now follow that ideal through the rest of the process. There were a lot of times where i'd rule out my panels, but not use a straight edge to ink it - just to keep it loose.

I also pulled out the old zipatone and laid in that pattern behind Tre's head just to break up the flow of the layout. I love mixing the oldschool with the new. Zipatone is almost impossible to find besides that manga stuff - but to me, the original zip and Chartpak is where it's at.


After the inking is done, I'd go into Photoshop (6 I think I had at the time) and drop all the colors in . When I felt up to it, I did my 'Disney Style' meaning I'd do color holds on the outlines of the characters. Later on - I'd stop doing this because it'd take me HOURS to finish a strip at the color stage. I'm no coloring genius, and I traditionally don't color like everybody else - like I don't do 'Flats' and all that stuff - I just go in there and attack the page until it's colored with the palette that comes with Photoshop - no tweaks or brushes. I still work like that.

As you can see at this stage, I'm just laying in the color - no words yet.The FINAL stage is doing the lettering, which I did as well in Photoshop. I know it's best to do the stuff in Illustrator, but doing a weekly strip for me was more about getting it done than how you did it. Photoshop is faster in this case. Now if this was for print and I was doing a book, then yeah I'd do the lettering in Illo, but this is just getting zapped to 72 DPI and it works good enough. BOOM.

And there it is - the quick and dirty Boogaloo strip. Hope you enjoyed the little look into the way I work(ed). I'm looking forward to starting up Boogaloo again, because I miss it - and somebody's gotta put a foot up hip-hop's ass.

Might as well be me.

2009 THE NUMBER ANOTHER SUMMER (winter)

SOUND of the funky drummer!

What's going on! Another year down, and I kept pretty much on the low-low the last couple of months of 2008, so what can you do?

I have thought about doing a 2008 recap, on all the stuff I didn't blog about, so if I haven't done that before February, you may not see it.

I've started a pretty robust mailing list you can join (look up and to the right) to keep up on my breaking news that doesn't fit on the blog, so keep your eyes peeled.

If you look at my 2008 NY post, I had a lot of stuff to promise - this year is all about cutting the fat - streamlining my process, my deal, and what I spend my time on that's of most importance to me.

Hope you can join me on the journey - it's gonna be interesting!

ONE.

BRAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNS

Happy Halloween Ya'll!

Here's another run of my infamous Halloween sketches drawn on small paper treat bags. Enjoy the horror!

After the Phillies won the Series, watching all of those people in the street flipping over cars and looting, got me in a zombie apocolypse mood.

5000.

Moleskinin': RE-UP

Colored that piece from before a few days ago.

Daily Moleskinein'

Some warmup zombie loving for your cartooning oven.

OogalooBay IrbyKay OtsDay

LEON: Enter: Chalmers

In this strip, I introduce CHALMERS, A kid in Leon's grade who is the archetypical 'rich kid'. Well that's a stretch - he's more the Ralph Kramden template - the kid who's always scheming on how to make a buck. Here we see some of Chalmer's design chops.

I took this act on the road and brought a buncha Leon strips to a local school and the kids ate it up. I did a lotta Chalmers sketches. They liked the kid who loves money. How interesting is that?

Anyway, you're gonna have to click on that image - it's crazy small right now.

UPDATE: I realized that I put a newer strip first. It's cool to see how I'm getting used to drawing Leon and he looks a bit better in the strip below. Also Chalmers is the first classmate to make two appearances in the strip so far.


APPEARANCE ALERT!
I'll be appearing at the Baltimore Comic Con at the end of the month. Mark your calendars!

LEON: Enter my darling Clementine

One of my other fave LEON strips is where I introduce CLEMENTINE JUSTICE, the nosy overachiever one-upper, always-the-last-worder kid from Leon's school, Antonio Hardy Elementary. Clem is the captain of the Hall Monitors, a group you'll see more of as the strip progresses, and maybe more when it opens into new formats. One thing with the monthly strip, is that there's not much room to keep a daily setup since it's one strip a month, you need to keep it fairly open-and-shut, story-wise. That's a lotta hyphens!

As you can see, she also has an admirer, a kid I didn't name, but JUICEBOX sounds good right now.

LEON: Protector of the Playground

Yo yo.

So I've been doing my kids' comic, LEON: PROTECTOR OF THE PLAYGROUND in Delaware County Magazine for close to a year now, and never really got around to putting the strips on my blog. Here's the first one, and I'll post more as I get the second.

I really enjoy Leon, and it gets great reviews from kids and adults alike. I will be at the Baltimore Comic Con at the end of the month, (More info to come) and I will be on a LEON kick while I'm there. Come through and get art!

Here's the first strip. I enjoyed the colors on this one.

Warm-ups for the Fall

Here's a little Boogaloo to get back in the swing of things - done with a prisma marker and a hand-made brushpen.

More on LIVE LIVE LIVE!

I'm gonna keep hitting you over the head with this.

Here's the WHYY youtube clip that wouldn't load on the last post.



The last part with the squid? That's . . . that's not our show.

LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! Coming next week

Puppets like you've never seen them before!

Hey gang! Here's more press on the event I'm putting in on next week. There's a new poster that may be a little suggestive, but it's puppets, so Caveat Emptor.

>>

From this weeks CITY PAPER:

LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! Hoity Meets the 'Hood

LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! Hoity Meets the 'Hood teams the urban puppeteers at Little Bunny Voodoo and hip-hop cartoonist Jamar Nicholas. We know LBV's 2007 Fringe offering, Late Night at the Tiki Bar, was a visual delight. To quote CP's review: "We could watch these puppets watch paint dry," and we've been following Nicholas' street-smart hip-hop comix for years. The concept here is a "design mashup" with LBV's Alisa Sickora Kleckner and husband Chris Kleckner working with Nicholas to bring his creations to life. "They took my half of the project and really gave my ideas wings," says Nicholas. --Brian Howard

Read it:

read Puppets at the FRINGE: on WHYY

They interviewed me as well, but they TOTALLY LEFT MY WHOLE PART OUT. :pout:

Anyway, it's coming, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you're in Philly, come check it out. It NEEDS to be seen live.

SUPERIOR FLOOR SYSTEMS: Notes from the group show

Remember a few threads back I went on about the tile I was creating for the group show SUPERIOR FLOOR SYSTEMS, at Exclamation Gallery? Well I did, it was done, and it got lookeded at. My pals over at the gallery posted a neat look into the show along with plenty of pics and a great video. See if you can find mine.

Here's a link to the gallery Flickr site, as well! Thanks gang!

The Illest Collabo since that guy and the other dude. . .

My man TOOBZ cordially invites you to:

Please join me as I collaborate with puppet troupe LITTLE BUNNY VOODOO to bring forth the illest Fringe show ever! Would love to see you there if you find yourself in Philly (for you out-of-towners) next month.

Also, we were interviewed by WHYY Public Radio about the show, so once I find out when that airs, I'll pass the info on to you.

Click here for our Philly Fringe show info.

NOTE: Just to be clear, the show is at THE INSTITUTE, not the Walking Fish.

Thesaurus is Colored.

bad joke. I felt like giving that sketch some pigment.

WATCHING THE DETECTIVES: Dissecting Detective Boogaloo Pt I

Now that I've been streamlining my deal over here at the JN Studios, it's been easier to put things back in place, to put some stuff in order. Some things that have been in the works or have fallen to the wayside find their place again. One thing I wanted to focus on for the JHAAJ gawkers is my place in Hip Hop Culture, and all that stuff that comes with it.

One of my properties, DETECTIVE BOOGALOO: HIP HOP COP has always been my study on my life and love of Hip Hop, and what boils down is a dialogue on 'Old vs. New School' Hip Hop and all that goes with it. Some people who enjoed my webcomic just enjoyed the pretty colors, or 'like a breakdancing detective'. That's cool. Do You. The strip, at least in my mind, had a lot of layers, and one is the idea of Hip Hop broken down into sections of eras, and along with that, come fashion/lifestyle examinations. One character in the DB Universe is contact and Ill Intel Copper: THESAURUS JONES. (Click here for his first appearance) Thesaurus' look is of mid-late 80's fashion and ideals - like the 80's Rap Scene blew up in his closet. He also comes correct with the illest High-Top Fades, Flattops, Boxes and Trigonometry Haircuts.

figure 1: Black to the Future

What's really interesting to inspect, is that I came up with Thesaurus, probably in 2000 or somewhere around there. He used to rock a Theo Huxtable Shag, but when I intro'd him into the comic, I thought he Box would be a little more culturally and visually revelant. It's bugging me out that the 80's have finally come up on the fad/culture dial, and now I'm seeing young teens out in the streets rocking them again. Apologies to whomever this image got jacked from. Respect due, Internets:

Figure 2: What Comes Around Comes Back Around Again... Again

Now, That's great and all, and is amusing to see kids go nuts with this outlandishness, but the 20-year-later Jamar has to stow the 'fad' part of this and just see it for what it is. I think the olny difference was when it happened the first time, is that it was the first time. "You had to be there" really applies to what's rocking out there in the streets. Thesaurus' character is a keeper-of-culture, and has an important place in the DB universe. I wonder, when I bring Boogaloo's adventures back, if he'll be seen the same now that you can look out the window and see some kid looking just like him.

SHOOK ONES PT. III.I

Finished...

SHOOK ONES PT. III

Painting on a floor tile for a group show... SUPERIOR FLOOR SYSTEM for my pals at Exclamation Gallery.

mobile test.

ITS DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS.

Noodles before Bedtime

just some doodle-y stuff from the cabinets before I turn in. Have Have Have Fun!

You can get with this/You can't get with that

It's been a while between posts, so here's something to gnaw on:

I just deleted my Myspace account.

I just deleted my LiveJournal account.

More to follow. Soon, there will be only a few places on the intenerds to find my updates. Simplification is the New Black. Get up on that.

ONE.

DRRRRRRRRRROP!

Yo. I've been in radio silence for a while for a few good reasons, that I don't need to get into, since there's only 8 of you that come here. Just say that if you need to see whats' on my mental river on the daily, check the twitter to your right or sign up to follow the leader (chikka chikka).

I have some stuff to drop here in a few, because people keep asking me, 'where can i see your stuff!?'. I'm very easy to Google. It'll usually point you here, or to another of my 22 websites.

So I'll leave you off with some old Detective Boogaloo art, this was for a t-shirt design for a long-sold out ICE TRE' tee.

T'Challa!

Free Comic Book Day AGAIN!

Man, another year down!

Look for me along with my comic-drawing pals as we'll be holding it down this Saturday at Captain Blue Hen Comics, making dreams come true for FCBD!

You know the drill. Also feel free to use the labels on the right to read about FCBD's gone by.

See you there!