Map or no Map? Can't decide.

Map:

No Map:

Merry Christmas everyone... but mostly Mike.

It's taken more than a year (sorry about that, Michael) but the shoe is finally done. It began here and continued a bit here and the last update on it was here. I've been picking away at it in between projects and whenever I needed a breather. It was done using acrylic based inks and a series of small brushes. The ink wouldn't initially cover well so quite a few layers had to be applied to get the colors you see on the finished piece. So it was draw a bit. Wait for it to dry. Re-coat. Wait. Re-coat. Wait.Re-coat. Wait. Draw a bit more. Wait. Re-coat. Wait. You get the idea. Fixing mistakes consisted of a similar process.

The inside is my favorite part. Something about Mike, in his Freddie Mercury jacket, singing karaoke that causes others to vomit made it special and heartwarming. Especially since some of the bits of semi-digested detritus become the musical notes.

Hope you all enjoy it and this lovely holiday season.

The election may be over...

but the classroom project continues. Last week was the start of an Intro to Illustrator course I'm teaching and the course long project is doing pieces inspired by the campaign of Jimmy McMillan. Today we started using the pathfinder and text tools so my students are creating possible logos for the candidate. In between questions I made one as well.

Bugs.

Finished a page of story while at Chicago Comic Con.

Spirit 2010 Is Go for Chicago!

I'll run it past a good set of eyes tomorrow to double check skin tones and such, but it feels good to me right now and the test prints look pretty sweet. One step closer to Con-preparedness!

*** Spotted a few off-kilter items that I tweaked this morning and have swapped out the image from last night with the final. ***

Color check

The Spirit is nearing completion with the woman as the only thing left that needs finishing. Now is a good time to test out the work so far. An easy way to do this is to go in and turn off the visibility of the line art layer. Now all that can be seen is all the layers of color. If the figures, elements, clothing, environment, etc all read as what they are we're sitting pretty good. Time to sleep, but I'll tackle the rest of this tomorrow night after work and then hopefully start making some prints.

Panting and making prints

Convention prep continues and so does the color work on this piece which will be ready for Chicago in about a week. Femme Fatale still needs work as does the Spirit's clothing. Should be done within the next couple days barring disaster. If you're in Chicago from the 19th until the 22nd swing by the convention and say "hi."

Getting ready for Chicago

One more print to finish. I started this Spirit piece a while back and just haven't had much time to work on it. With the Chicago Comic Convention mere weeks away there's no time like the present. Coming back to it after so long felt enough like starting over that I reworked a lot of the flats and felt like keeping it closer to a monochromatic color scheme with just a few spots of warm tones to give it some pop and depth. Thus the random femme fatale has changed from blonde to a red head. There's still a ways to go with this in terms of dropping in shading, highlights, and surface textures as well as tweaking some of the colors. My biggest concern though is keeping the skin tones natural, and with the blue shift I've added they may be a bit out of the acceptable range. Once they've gotten to where it all feels right I'll call in a second pair of eyes to confirm.

Nixon finished? Maybe?

I'll look at it again later, but this kinda feels ok to me.

maybe this is better?

Unable to sleep

So I started coloring the Nixon v. Pokemon piece. Still a ways to go before it's done, but at least a big chunk of the flats are done. I guess it's time to take another stab at getting a couple of hours of sleep before work tomorrow.

Gotta Catch'em All!

So when a room of young'uns asks you to draw Richard Nixon, it seems important to spruce it up a bit for the sake of fun. So throw in a couple pokemon-reporters and you have established the president's motivation for catching them all. Woodward and Bernstein, I choose you!

Ready to Rock?

New poster for the band Four on the Floor.

Can't decide if it looks like Nixon

Feel free to weigh in, but I need to know soon.

Fish Bites Cop

An illustration for the short story by James David Keaton.

I guess it was fate.

This started out as a quick brush sketch of Dr Fate but I felt like dropping in some quick colors in the interest of getting myself back on track.

Pinned down in a thankless job?

Perhaps you could have an organized group work stoppage with your fellow employees in order to leverage the entire work force for the purpose of collectively bargaining better wages and benefits. That is... if you have the balls.

Client opted for the darker shirt. Can't wait to see them.

Bowling shirts.

Working on a shirt due this week and because of the specific nature and quantity of pins, balls and architecture I'm constructing all the elements in Illustrator instead of hand drawing them. This allows for me to only have to make one ball and then make as many duplicates as needed and then tweak them for individuality. Also, the shirt will be a one color print so drawing it this way will keep me from over inking it to fit the full blazing color version (in my mind).

The bowling alley still needs some work but most of the components are there so hopefully I can wrap this up tonight and move on to 4 on the Floor's next poster.

All the world is a stage...

And moving it all around can be a right pain in the proscenium.

A New Shirt

I've been fighting this friggin' thing for awhile now and it finally snapped into place tonight. For something that felt to be fated for failure it seems to have turned out well. Maybe I'll try to get it through Threadless or some such. But only after some sleep is had.

Poster finishes.

Inked this bad boy up this evening and then scanned it in and used photoshop to drop in color and text. Fight!

More Four.

Working on a new poster for Four on the Floor. This time they take on the Palomino. Not sure if that's a bar or another band. Initially drew it way too big for the paper so scanned it, reduced it by about 25% or so and then reprinted it on a new sheet of paper so I'd have enough room for the rest of the horse. I'll ink it up, add some tones and text tonight.

A Tale of Two Posters

Happy Easter, everybody! They're not eggs and you didn't have to hunt for them, but here are two posters that just got finished. Enjoy.

Brute 2010 ReeeeeeeeeeeMIX!

Bigger, meaner, and ready to... um... rock.

CocoShopping.

Facebook's "I'm with Coco" Conan O'Brien group has been having contests in which people submit photoshopped images of the beloved and missed late night personality, and since I'm currently teaching a photoshop / illustrator class it just seemed like a good homework assignment. A couple of the student submissions were downright inspiring so it seemed only fair to do one as well.

It took a while to composite the three separate images and put some little touches like building the sideburns, but the giggling made the time go by quickly enough.

This one turned out way better than my initial test run...

Viva Conan!

Annnnnd... Done.

Some adjustments, a splash of color, a ton of screen tone, and voila! Though I just realized I never signed it. Oh well. Pretty happy with it.

Finished poster inks

The Rock Show

Working on a poster for an upcoming four band show at the Kitty Cat Klub. The process started over on Finger Twitchings with some layout sketches and one still earlier of a drum playing octopus. You see, a pal of mine Gabe is in a group called Four on the Floor who rock it with four bass drums. So when asked to do the poster an octopus made all the sense in the world. It can play four bass drums at once. An elephant, for instance, could not.

So the question became "what animals would the other bands be?" The Alarmists clearly would be screaming monkeys, and Evening Rig seemed to be best expressed by a suit wearing giraffe. The suit being the evening rig. Koo Koo Kanga Roo took the longest to figure out.

Eventually it started to come together but there was the question of how to fit in the text and the initial placements were less than satisfying. So some quick crappy prints of the roughs and some pens made it possible to test out some other options.

Discussed it with Gabe and moved forward from there. The little tags won out for their continuity. and then having thought of using building signs for the Alarmists led to using them instead for the location, date and time.

So now all that's left is to ink, tone, and prep the file to get off to the folks making the prints. I'd give them a link but have no idea who they are. So enjoy this glimpse of the early inking stages and stay tuned for the final piece soon to come.

Spirit Update

Ran out of time for inking as it's time to move on to some paid projects. Not to worry. The inks should be complete in a few days and then it may even see color.

The show is over

Illo Minn: Vol 2 came to a close yesterday so it seems like a good time to show the finished Fishing piece for those who couldn't make it to the gallery.

Happy Will Eisner Week!

Last year I celebrated with daily sketches of Spirit characters. This year felt like it needed something a bit bigger. Something a bit more polished. Here is step 1:

Some storyboards / meeting slides

Can't say much about the why of these but I can post them and since they make me chuckle decided I would.

Munny, Munny, Munny, MUNNY!

***you can now see them all at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cva_edu/sets/72157623322123881/

Illo Minn: Vol Two is right around the corner and today was the drop off day for artwork. Dropped off were my three pieces and the Munny I decorated for the charity auction. So in the hopes of encouraging potential bidders to start saving the 84 cents necessary to walk away with a Vollmer original, here are some photos of my entry.

His name? El Fuego Diablo! Details include the fiery demon back tattoo, and the love / hate knuckle tattoos. LUCHA!!!!