Tiger Tiger

So I finally finished the colors for the lil tiger banner I started back in December. I had to ruminate quite a bit on the colors for this one as I am color blind; I knew what direction I wanted to go but it took some experimenting to get there.

Anyway, there it is...

Space

Done for the sheer joy of it. I'm gonna have it printed into a poster - perhaps with different copy...

For Moebius

French artist and all around icon Jean Giraud, better know by many as Moebius, passed away last Sunday, March 10th in Paris. He was 73.

For those not familiar with his singular style I highly recommend looking him up. He was a stud among studs and his contribution will be sorely missed.

Today I did up this little tribute to the man and his life. I chose to depict a character from his seminal work Arzach, a story with no words about a warrior who flies relentlessly around his almost post-apocalyptic world. Only now the warrior flies off into the sunset...

We'll miss you...
1938 - 2012

Moonraker (State 3)

A little mucking with some of the scale in the design and I finally got off my butt and finished the flats. Now all that is left is a little rendering and some texturing and I'm alllllll done.

Moonraker (State 2)

Further along in my progress on the James Bond/Moonraker poster. I need to add color to the figures inside the shuttle shape (Drax, Goodhead and Jaws), render them a bit and add a little texture and desaturate some bits and I should be done.

Moonraker

A work in progress...

I know - Moonraker was a pretty lame Bond flick overall. However I always felt that under all the silly bullshit they threw in, there was a pretty rad idea trying to get out. Because of that it'll always have a special lil place in my heart of media hearts.

Anyway, I have to draw the main villain, the Bond girl and Jaws for this, complete the rendering, add some textures, probably a little ben-day dot action and muck with the copy and it'll be all purdy like...

Hopefully.

Big Cat Diary

Just a piece I'm working on as an homage to a really cool BBC nature documentary I've been watching lately. Set in the Maasai Mara in Kenya, the narrators expertly cover the progressing lives of two groups of lions, a couple different groups of cheetahs and a generational progression of leopards all living (and occasionally interacting) in this Kenyan National Preserve.

I have to draw the leopard and ink in the cheetah for the piece as well as prepare a little background landscape to go in front of the setting sun.

Revolution Calling Redux

I'm re-doing this one from some time back. I wanted to change the focal point of the piece and re-work the color scheme - the one it has is pretty atrocious. Poor color choices and a poor use of texture just make the original look half-assed, so I'm gonna fix 'er up real nice-like.

Anarchy X

More in the ongoing series of images I'm doing for the Queensryche album Operation: mindcrime - this one for the opening instrumental entitled Anarchy X.
I need to draw the tattered background draped flag, the nazi-esqe "X" logo that will go inside the outline of the foreground figures and digitally color it all in. I'm happier with it (to this point) then I thought I would be, so that's a plus.

Completed Inks - Zodiac Movie Poster

There are my finished inks on the rough pencils posted below. I've got a ton of color and texturing to do for this one but I already have the background Phillips 66 map mostly done, so that's one bright spot...

The space at the bottom is open for all the movie poster copy. Typical stuff like "Directed by...", "Staring...", "Written by..." and all that rot.

This was drawn on 14 x 17 100 LB Bristol Board. Pencils only took about 3 and a half hours, but the inks took quite a bit longer at close to 10 hours.

Let Them Eat War, Redux

This one is a total color makeover of one I posted quite some time ago over at my Deviant Art page [Click me! I'm a LINK]. It's based on a Bad Religion tune and as I dig them quite a bit I wanted to rework the colors to try and make the previous crappy version of the image/colors a little better.

I changed all the copy as well as some of the drawn elements and I dramatically lightened the background to help the figure pop a little better. I also textured it up to give it some grit.

All in all I like this version quite a bit more.

Total rework time, aprox. 4 hours.

Background Imagery

This is the background piece for the Zodiac post below. It's my recreation (minus some detail) of the Phillips 66 map Zodiac sent to the press. I have some textures to add and a little text detail, both hand written and stylized font.

I though it was going to take me forever to recreate the map to this point, but it really didn't take too long. Light tables are a wonderful thing when wanting to recreate a real element in a comic style.

Trying to mix elements like the actual map with an illustrative comic style just never look good. It's the same with trying to mix illustrative styles and actual photographs. They just tend to clash when you try and go that route.

That's why the only choice was to take a little time and draw out a facsimile of the road map. It'll just look better in the end.

New Project

A shot of the pencils for a poster on which I am working. It's about the Zodiac serial killer case from the late 60's early 70's from the San Francisco Bay area. The poster itself, when it's all done, will be set up like a movie poster based on the David Fincher film Zodiac staring Robert Downey Jr., Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards, among others.

The movie itself was actually not bad from an entertainment stand point but it was sorely lacking in the factual department.

Anyway, there is a little more material I need to add/refine in this image as well as drawing a recreation of a Phillips 66 road map of Norther California I need to add into the large bank area up at the top, but I should have it finished (minus color) in a couple days...

The Incredible Joe Fixit

Oh, the halcyon days of the grey Hulk living in Las Vegas and working as hired muscle for a casino owner named Berengetti... Those were the days; always wrecking nice suits and white gloves. Peter David and Jeff Purves were a great writing and drawing team.

I loved that era, both in the story telling and in the art. I'd love to see a grey, mouthy, smaller but decidedly more aggressive Hulk make a comeback...

Anyway, this is the finished version of the one found here [linkey]. That or you can just scroll two posts down to see it.

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright...

...In the forests of the night. I was inspired to do this one not because of William Blake but because my super-duper pal Erin Clark did a bitchin' tiger a short while back. That and she sent me a picture of her kitty cat a few months ago and he was making a little face like the one I drew here (minus the little snarly nose).
Anyway I definitely wanna add color to this one. It'll probably be my first priority.
Drawn on 9 x 12 100 LB. Vellum Bristol Board, pencils and inks took about 3 hours (there is actually quite a bit more to the original image).

Joe Fixit

Joe Fixit was what the Hulk went by when he was smaller and gray and living (and fighting) in Las Vegas. It was an era for the character I really liked because it was full of action and adventure, but was free of the convoluted nonsense Marvel Comics has become known for in the last decade or so.
I'll color this one soon, when I get a little free time. I've been wanting to experiment with a color scheme style that I have seen guys like Dave Johnson use in the last year or two.
By the way, Dave Johnson is pretty rad, so you should look him up.

Psych

Shawn Spencer (James Roday) and Burton Guster (Dule Hill) from the USA Network T.V. show Psych. The show really is a lot of fun - they take nothing seriously and you tend to get one 80's reference after another.
The pineapple is a bit of an inside joke of sorts. Pineapples make regular appearances in the show, in fact it's become a bit of a game to "spot the pineapple" from week to week.

Anyway, I'd like to color this one sometime soon. When I do I'll post the results.

Indiana Jones

And the Secret of the Sphinx, by Max McCoy.
In my humble opinion it's not the greatest book ever, but it had a lot of cool-type imagery in it that made me wanna do a little somethin' somethin'.
14 x 21 on 100 LB. Vellum Bristol Board...

Hitman

Part of a series I wanna do (the Certified Deadly images based on story ideas) - this chap is a circa 1930's/40's hitman. While I don't know if a silencer is era appropriate or not I don't really care. It looks cool, so I went with it. Also I really dug the idea of the spot light beam terminating on the ground as a skull; I've been looking at a lot of Dave Johnson's work lately [LINKEY] and his sense of layout and design is in my opinion second to none. Definitely inspirational for me when I peep his work. I wanna do this one up in an era appropriate setting like an alley way with an old junker jalopy, street lamps and a body...

Aaaaaanyway, this was drawn on 9 x 12 100 LB. vellum Bristol Board pencils and inks took about 2 and a half hours.

The Wolf

A piece I did for the blog Just Saying I Love You. The version that will eventually appear over there will be a little different and will have colors by artist Erin Clark.

Drawn on 9 x 12 100 LB. Vellum Bristol Board, pencils and inks took about 6 to 6 and a half hours...