Jon Cairns posts

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs: Page 1

When writing the script for Wilfrith and Grwn, I wanted to use Wilfrith reminiscing about his past as a framing device, so I started with him waiting out the rain in a cave to give him time with his thoughts. Since I’ll be inking this one traditionally, I wanted to set up some fun inki...

2024-02-15 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and Grwn Character Art (Naked)

And here the guys are without their clothes on. I’ve gone through this character-design-to-pages cycle enough times already to know how essential it is to have a clear map of where their body hair is to refer back to later.

2024-02-14 01:15:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and Grwn Character Art

To introduce Wilfrith and Grwn, here’s some high resolution character art:

(Wilfrith, digital drawing for Wilfrith and Grwn)

Here I’ve made some minor changes to what I...

2024-02-14 01:06:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Housekeeping, 2024

I've been working behind the scenes for the past couple of months to align the work I've been doing with my Patreon goals—namely, to reduce the friction between myself and the platform so I can post for you guys more consistently. I'm deeply sorry for going silent for months on end, and I reall...

2024-02-14 00:15:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Announcing: Wilfrith and Grwn

Hey everyone! For the past couple of months I've been working on the next big thing, and I wanted to share it with you all first. The next comic I’m going to be working on is a 60+ page erotica short story, Wilfrith and Grwn:

2024-02-13 23:45:00 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - xii.1-2

I've been weighing the pros and cons of just how uh Utena I've wanted to make this scene since the original concept and I guess we'll find out if it swerves after this opening spread.

I w...

2022-05-25 20:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - xi.3-4

Continuing from the previous pages, this chapter of the comic-within-a-comic is read off of a shady scans site. I've got it so the pages will scroll up and down a little as the reader turns the pages. I'm hoping it's kind of annoying, but not overly annoying to convey the effect of reading comics...

2022-04-20 23:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - x.1-2

After some pandemic-exacerbated burnout for this project, I'm back with a bunch of progress. This page really deeply psyched me out--not entirely sure why in retrospect (the nature of burnout)--but after a dozen or so iterations of the concept I got something I was happy with.

2022-02-23 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - viii.01

Back with more pages and a new chapter! This chapter is kind of a big turning point in the story, so I was excited to make the images in my head more concrete. I've also been investing a lot of time behind the scenes in 3D modeling to build up a base for more ambitious drawing later in this...

2021-06-10 14:44:13 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - vii.8

The imagination takes over near the end.

This was a much harder page to compose than I expected it would be. It was originally, in my mind, a vertical figure. But then when the other elements made...

2021-04-16 19:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - vii.6

I kinda went on autopilot drawing the butt hair here. But... that was to be expected wasn't it?

I originally had this entire page full of Hugo pics, but I felt it flowed better with Will having a ...

2021-04-09 19:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - vii.1-2

The lads finally go on a date IRL! I guess all I really gotta say is that they're super cute and I wish them the best.

Before I drew this spread, I felt like I had to draw the entire street, which...

2021-03-23 20:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - vi.1-2

I love, but struggle to draw Will's sister. Getting to invent a fictional Eureka street corner (Eureka has no hills in reality) was a lot of fun. Of course then I covered it all in art and speech bubbles. Comics, am I right?

2021-02-23 01:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Alpha Flag - Hotel 18

6 of 6!

And that's (finally) the end of the Hotel chapter. Things are not looking great for our heroes!

2021-01-19 02:21:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Alpha Flag 10th Anniversary

On January 21st, 2011, Renee and I uploaded the first Alpha Flag cover to the internet. I spent a large portion of 2020 nervously eyeing my work calendar and stressing about not having enough time to tetris anything meaningful into it.

But! Due to some fortuitous timing, Renee and I have bo...

2021-01-12 18:28:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Making Enamel Pins - Ogre

So back in January, in my optimism, I thought it would be a great time to finally make some enamel pins again. Between a pandemic, economic downturns, and some highly justified civil unrest, it's been quite a journey to getting these things on my desk.

That said, I wanted to give an in dept...

2020-06-19 19:08:30 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - v.2

Another super difficult page for me to cram everything into. Lots of very specific ideas going here, drawingwise, compositional and diagrammatical. I'm about 80% happy with this. There'll definitely be some refinements in the next version, but this gets most of the beats I had written down on the...

2020-06-11 16:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - v.1

Back to Ferrochrome! Part 4! You can see that I still used the name Fried Earth here--homage to the original title. This cover will also ultimately be the only place where you see the mothership!

2020-06-08 01:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - iv.1

My writer self gave me the unenviable task of having to show both the exterior of this club as well as all sorts of texting between two characters. It makes for a good opening page of the chapter, but a difficult compositional task.

2020-05-21 01:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - iii.1

I've always loved spreads where you can see the entire interior of a space, so I decided to do one for where the protagonist of our book works to open the third chapter.

I remember getting obsesse...

2020-05-04 16:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - ii.1

So here we are at the first issue of Ferrochrome, the indie comic-within-a-comic that this graphic novel gets its placeholder name from. The original title of the graphic novel (named after this comic-within-a-comic) that I pitched was Fried Earth, but I was asked to change it s...

2020-04-16 16:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post

"Ferrochrome" - i.1

I'll be running through the drawing process of this graphic novel from start to finish as I draw it, starting now with the rough pages that I've already drawn so far.

The early few pages of the roughs were when I was working under the assumption that I'd be doing a "thumbnails only" run thr...

2020-03-31 17:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post