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: