Casper Pham

The Luminary Lark-Mirror is OUT!

Hey everyone,

The Luminary Lark-Mirror, my 52-page full color comic about pinball crimes in ‘60s America is now available for purchase on the Shortbox Comica Fair website for the entirety of October.

You can buy it here!

I will be posting ...

The Luminary Lark-Mirror: Notes on Character Design

Hi all,

Just wanted to compile some of the art exploration and thoughts that lead up to the final designs of the key characters in The Luminary Lark-Mirror (my soon-to-be-released comic, coming this October). Madge was the only design I felt I nailed on my first try, the others flipped-flopped relentlessly in my mind until the very last moment they had to go on the page (poor Frank, he pr...

Coming soon to Shortbox Comics Fair... THE LUMINARY LARK-MIRROR!

Hello everyone,

A big milestone for me, I've just finished and submitted my first every full-length comic, The Luminary Lark-Mirror for Shortbox Comics Fair 2025. I will be waiting until October 1st when the fair launches to present the comic for free here for my $5+ patrons, who have access to all my PDFs. It will be 52 pages of full-color craziness, 9 GPB on the website, and I'...

Cez of Drăculești (process)

Hello all,

To my surprise, I actually hadn't done up a post for this piece yet detailing its process, so here it is now (better late than never)!

This was an illustration commissioned by the studio Fine Feathered Friends for their vampire-themed visual novel Drăculești, centered around one of their dateable characters, "Cez". Cez, as described to me, was ...

The Luminary Lark-Mirror (the first 10 pages!)

Hello all,

This is a work-in-progress! Please view at your own discretion. I will likely go back and clean/edit as I go along, but I just wanted to update everyone on the progress on my 52-page comic so far. The full comic in all its glory will be available at around October for purchase Shortbox Comics Fair, but those on my PDF tier will get the whole thing in advance. Likely th...

The Luminary Lark Mirror: Mock Cover, Thumbs, Script, and Character Art

I don't quite remember if I've announced it here yet, but in case you weren't in the know: I am participating in the 2025 Shortbox Online Comics Fair with a fully realized take on my prior comic idea: The Luminary Lark Mirror. Much of the story has been changed since then, but I'm so glad I've gotten the opportunity to make something substantial out of all my twisted ideas about pinball and sel...

Poltergeist Post #5: Tier Updates!

Hello everyone,

As of today, I will be consolidating my two request tiers (Civet Sojourner and Oud Upholder) into one tier. It will cost 25 USD to subscribe to that tier, the same price as Oud Upholder, but this only applies to new members so current members inhabiting that tier will need not worry about the price increase. I decided to make this change to better reflect my time investmen...

Movie Nite #3: Conspirators of Pleasure & Belle de Jour

I’ve been slacking a bit on these since Tết came around, but I still plan on doing these sketch pages weekly and posting them in full here. This week’s selection was Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) dir. Jan Švankmajer, and Belle de Jour (1976). I enjoyed both these films greatly, had no idea that one of my all-time favorite music videos (Scissor Sisters’ Invisible Light) heavily refere...

Movie Nite Studies #1 + #2

I’ve challenged myself this year, as an attempt to whack away at my ever-growing film watchlist, to watch two films a week. Doodling characters and scenes as they appear help me to stay focused and kill two birds in one stone - I especially like to observe the faces of extras and side characters from older, low-budget films. It helps to keep my mental libraries fresh.

Attached are my st...

Ache Eternal - a TF fanbook - is now out!

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I've finally finished this little book in time for the holiday season, just a 48-page love letter to the Transformers filled with illustrations and poetry by me. Patrons in the $15+ tiers will have access to this PDF booklet (along with all my other PDFs, past and future) for free. Above also is a bit of an extra preview of what you can expect to see inside.

Baffling Issue #19 Cover

This was a commissioned cover for Baffling, an online speculative flash fiction magazine, based off of one of the stories in that month's issue (April 2025). The story is about a man who forms a strange, metaphysical, questionably romantic relationship with his new pet goldfish. Keep an eye out when it's released, I enjo...

Salome's Last Dance (1988) poster process

I really do hope I get to see a Salome production live one day, it's always been a very high item on my bucket list. For now I have to settle for watching nearly every available adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play set to Strauss, or rather adaptations based off his revolutionary reimagining...

Neon Requiem Book Cover Art (process)

This was my recent client-commissioned cover illustration for the yet unpublished Asian-centered cyberpunk anthology Neon Requiem. Quite proud of how this turned out! It's quite a busy piece with a lot of elements, so I pushed myself to fall back on detail in some key places (the shadowed area at the top with the police officers). I was very eager to provide a very Vietnamese take on a genre ty...

MARGINALIA (my 94-page sketchbook) is now out!

Hello everyone!

Thanks so much for your patience, it is with all your guys' support I am able to present to you my 94-page sketchbook documenting lesser-seen work from 2021-2024. Everything from chicken-scratch Tijuana bible fare to fully colored character designs and style studies. Plus some of my commentary! I hope you find it enlightening or at the very least entertaining.

It is ...

Casper's Sketchbook Poll

Alright guys, I'm at a bit of a crossroads here. I'm currently putting together a 2021-2024 sketchbook (that will be free for you guys at the $5+ tier), but I'm wondering if it would be smarter to separate my TFormers doodles from the rest into its own sketchbook because how it's looking, that content takes up about 30% of the general sketchbook's volume. I know not all of you are TF fans and s...

Poltergeist Post #4: Goal Posts!

Hi everyone,

I'm starting to take my financing a little more seriously and have decided I want to devote more attention and time to feeding this Patreon while also introducing a milestone rewards system. Since Patreon decided to remove its Goals features, I'll be keeping track of the progress here.

Currently we are sitting at $175/mo.

🍀Goal Posts🍀

VBros After-work Genderbends

Some doodles I did after work.

Thoughts:

The Painted Lady / Malcolmina (The Monarch): Based on Queen Taramis’ costume design from the Conan the Destroyer movie (and other 80s She-Ra type sci-fantasy villainesses). High drama, like you can already imagine that she’s descending upon a stage rigged up to harnesses and strings. The cords that form her antennae is her real, braided h...

The Chariot: Crashing into Stained Glass

Hello everyone,

Recently I was honored to work on a large, collaborative tarot card deck with more than 60 other artists, all revolving around a Stained Glass theming. The conceit was that we were all to design one unique card to contribute to the deck, either adhering fully to replicating a stained-glass panel or to include stained glass elements into the piece. It was a challenge to sim...

Cops n’ Robbers! (sketches and progress)

I was recently tapped to participate in a Gaza relief charity zine with a “detectives and thieves” theme, titled Catch Me If You Can. At first, I wanted to go all out on an original concept but ended up turning to fanart of Beatrice and Battler from Umineko instead (I somewhat came to regret this). I thought it would be fun to share some of my discarded ideas here.

2024-02-28 03:10:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Poltergeist Post #3

Hi all! It's Casper. 

I know it's been quite some time since my last newsletter, a lot has happened since then. I got a part-time job at a furniture design company. I adopted two beautiful kitties, Dagmar and Brutus. I sort of halfway-made a comic, but then I got caught up doing donation sketches for Cartoonist Cooperative in their E-Sims for Gaza initiative (which you should definit...

A Passionate Critique of Baldur's Gate III (with personal redesigns!)

I love roleplaying games. The promise of a roleplaying game is simple: no matter what you are or who you choose to be in this story, you have a right to participate. Obviously, a video game cannot account for the full breadth of player creativity like a GM could in a pen and paper campaign, but within its set parameters it should seek to embolden it, encourage the player to see past the limits ...

The Luminary Lark Mirror: Development Art #1

Welcome to the very first development art log of a personal comic project I've been slowly chipping away at since late last year. This is practically the first time I've spoken about it to anyone in depth, so to be frank, writing this post has been a little nerve-wracking!

Inspired by the mythically surreal pinball raids of the 1940s in America, in which pinball was outlawed in a couple s...

Musings on: Hờn Anh Giận Em (Jealousy)

I love Vietnamese surf rock from the '70s, produced mostly in the South while atrocity after atrocity was being enacted on home soil. It's a peek into the lives of the Vietnamese middle class privileged enough to seek distraction from senseless violence, a perspective distinctly missing from international portrayals of the war. I (should) welcome any new perspectives on principle. When all your...

Patreon Request: IMPACTOR! (with Curves and color talk)

This month marks the first month of Patreon requests for patrons on my $15+ tiers, so I thought I'd add something extra and use it as a opportunity to demonstrate a bit about how I typically go through my color process. It's really quite simple, and practically the only part of art-making at this point in my life that I've gotten down to a formula.

Images shown above:
1) Drawing of Imp...

The Poltergeist Post #2

Hi, everyone. Happy New Year! Let’s start off this issue with a resolution.

My resolution this year is to make significant progress on a comic script I’ve been writing in my free time called The Luminary Lark Mirror. I plan to share process work as I go along to this Patreon, and I’m hoping it will help me hold myself accountable while also keeping the whole project fairly ...

Musings on: Masters of Mind Chess

Oh, what a fun project this was. I mean, when a client comes to you and asks you: "would you like to illustrate the booklet for a tabletop game about beating the mental snot out of an opponent with all manner of trickery and fantastical rug-pulling"? That's how I know I've built up a great reputation.

All the characters I designed for these tiny illustrations (the booklet is A5 sized) wer...

The Poltergeist Post #1

Hello, all.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and faced the music of what all freelancers must at some part of their careers: the dire, pressing need for a consistent solution to paying the bills. As much as I've loved sharing my work and process freely in the past, reality has come storming through my castle gates with its riotous demands: I MUST EAT! I MUST LIVE!

Melodrama a...