Draw Stanley

2012 February

2012-02-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

Isn't it nice when blogs have recent updates?

So, what have I been working on lately (or since June!) well…

Top Secrety Storyboard Stuff: Shhh…trust me it looks cool!

Mogo Charms: Two waves, (a wave being a group of charms.) The charms are for pre-teen/tween-age girls and boys. I did about 12 sets of three. Including a commemorative set for the Royal Wedding. It's the smallest art I've ever done, one quarter inch in diameter! Most people would not know I've done quite a bit of work for the tween-age girl market!

Morty G. Filtercat for Filter Talent: I was brought in to do ideation, character design and assets for Filter's Holiday website, I wound up doing the animations as well. There were nine animations each about 12 seconds long, one for each cat life, and a resurrection animation as well. Plus the cool cat skullz icon. This is the kind of stuff people think I do. Blowin' up cats, tons o'fun!!

Friendly Neighborhood DrawVatar: Worked two events drawing live for Filter! Geekwire Launch Party and the Seattle Interactive Conference. I designed and illustrated the DrawVatar logo, which got me a free lab coat! "Don't forget to tip your illustrator."

Masque of the Red Death: Added color to the black and white version of the story I adapted for Graphic Classics. Also illustrated the back cover. This adaptation was originally in black and white, so I made the black work as red and all the compositions are based on positive and negative space. It was quite a challenge to come back to it and add color, without screwing it up.

The Negro: Two page adaptation of the famous Langston Hughes poem for African American Classics. This was and experiment in completing the art as vector, textures and all. Developed this as an in-class demonstration while I was teaching Design at Pierce College. The challenge was in using this to show off various tools in Illustrator and not have it look all "vectory". I wanted to show my students how to make subtle use of some of the more overlooked and powerful vector tools. I created patterns, imported textures, and adjusted attributes to give the pages a natural African art look and feel.

Fart Proudly: Another adaptation/experiment (!) this time of Benjamin Franklins letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels. Taking into account Franklins wit and sarcasm, this was done as if he had his own daily political comedy show. Again, I was making use of some under appreciated tools in Illustrator. Also showing how carefully setting up a file at the start can make working quick and give the art a cohesive and distinct look. This is to be published in "The Graphic Canon" from Seven Stories Press.

Also started and completed (yeah!) a little experiment, "Trapdoors and Whores" on my Facebook page. It was quite a fun experiment using the methods from my storyboard work. Many thanks to the people who liked it. More on TDAW soon in my next post…really!

On-Model, a philosophy of line

2011-06-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

I had a good start for this post but, well… Anyway there are few challenges more exacting for a cartoonist than staying on-model. Sure it's one thing to draw your own character consistently. That's more like getting your own signature right. But staying on-model, whole different thing. It's more than just imitating a style. Often you are tasked with creating art with the character in a new pose or setting, that doesn't yet exist.

I've had the great fortune to work on at least there cool on-model projects. (These illustrations being one.) Cartoony characters are the toughest. You can't hide differences in a field of lines (or "hay" as the old times used to call "hatching".) like you can with comic book characters like Batman, Superman or Hay-Bale Man. There are fewer lines so each misstep is apparently out of line.

There is lots of information on breaking down characters to their basic shapes so you can get a better understanding of them and how they work in 3 dimensional space. But, I think it also helps to understand where the character comes from, it's ancestors, what the original cartoonists were trying to do, and how they worked.

Some things that help keep you on-model are mistakes made early on, short-cuts taken by previous cartoonists and just plain effects from they way they are drawn. Like the character said, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."

For me staying on model is more about getting into the head of who (years of other cartoonists, a current cartoonist, or a model sheet) and trying to let it flow from there. Like a cartoonist profiler! This goes beyond shapes and form because you want the art to have some life.

When the drawing is done, it's fun to look at and see a favorite cartoon character, in a new pose or setting that you created and realize you made it from scratch. And it looks like the real thing. At least that's my philosophy.

Illustration Robot

2011-06-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

Illustration Robot's Arron Petz asked me to do a little show and tell. Sometimes talking about my illustration work is like living a re-run. I like it, remember I liked it the first time around, and so this time I might seem a bit bored, but I'm actually thinking about other things that might be out of the obvious in regards to the illustration. Like a robot with two heads.
Here are seven illustrations I think will show an arc from conventional airbrush to digital airbrush. No matter what I do or what application I work in (Painter, Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, or Sketchbook Pro) I try to make the concept/idea most important and not the technique.

Nora Jones: This was for No Depression magazine. A lot of my editorial work was black and white airbrush, which I really love doing. Well, monochromatic to be really honest. So this is typical of that. I work at a low pressure setting on cold pressed board so there is a nice organic texture to the work in the sprayed areas and in the line work. While working for The Villiage Voice (printed on not that great newsprint) I learned to keep the work to three values, basically. This prevented the image from becoming muddy when printed. I love the graphic nature of working this way.

Holiday Art: Full page newspaper illustration for a Holiday Arts section. This was sprayed as black and white, then I added the colors digitally in Photoshop. Just basic layers set to multiply, nothing fancy, yet. Still playing with how hue affected values, shifting the compositional focus.

Brandy (w/ Timbaland): Florian Bachleda at Vibe gave me a pretty nice playground for doing my conventional airbrush stuff in color. Interesting subject matter and he gave me a lot of freedom, but also pushed a bit to make sure the concept and execution were spot on. I have a so-so color sense. Airbrush required a lot of planning and sometimes working almost blind because of the frisket. But it was like Christmas when it came time to remove all the frisket and see what I got. This is one of my better color airbrush illustrations. Again, mostly one color and the value/shape range is low. I always set it up by shape/areas. Like, "skin", "dress" and background". Each area basically one value with slight variation within. Timbo's face was sprayed in originally, but Florian and I thought he looked to fat. So I sprayed another face and added it digitally, along with the color.

Beth Orton: Grant Alden at No Depression is another wonderful art director. Plenty of great assignments and room to experiment under a helpful/watchful eye. I'm really pleased with the concept on this, which extends into the execution. Her transparent fingers sort of shy and not quite covering her mouth, suggesting how she veils her meanings in her song lyrics. Again this was sprayed with black ink and colored digitally. I made a few adjustments to the values after scanning so the color would show in the darker areas.

India Arie: Vibe magazine. This is again, sprayed conventionally, but there is an equal amount of digital work done. Tweaking the value areas, adjustments to the face and line work. And a lot of layer manipulation to get the color right and allow the texture to show through. Actually did this illustration over from scratch! Got very comfortable manipulating the texture in photoshop.

Ray LaMontagne: So I loved the Beth Orton piece so much I copied myself for another No Depression illustration. If you look you can tell. The difference is that this one is all digital. If you look close you can see tell tale signs, but this is a big leap for where I was heading!

Tracy Morgan: And we arrive back at the start, sort of. Some of my first black and white editorial airbrush pieces were for The Village Voice, and here is a recent one, but this time digital. I created my own texture, and worked in Illustrator, Photoshop and Painter. My goal was to provide my client with art in the style they wanted, but with the speed that a digital work-flow allowed. Ta-da! Some of my oldest art director friends couldn't tell the difference. "The android had successfully replaced the human!"

On editorial work like this, I try to come up with a strong concept, that doesn't rely on style, but takes advantage of it. Like Norah Jones's body being a piano shape. That concept could work in another style, but I like to think that is shows up well in the style I used. Same goes for the depiction of Brandy as a sort of Egyptian Queen/diva, or the happy, glowy, pop feel to the way India Arie is rendered. Even the Renaissance approach to a simple portrait of Ray LaMontagne. Style is subservient to the concept. Or at least that's what I'm aiming for. I welcome any and all comments from blog readers and other Illustration Robots!

HIDDEN: Full Color Storyboard Process: Built for speed

2011-02-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

Working fast can have it's advantages. It's great practice and a good way to get familiar with streamlining work-flow and working methods. It frees you from getting bogged down with application tricks and techniques, forcing you to rely solely on basic illustration skills.

These images are part of a project I worked on in December. All secret and copyright protected, so forgive the lack of details, but, there were over 30 images total. Backgrounds and characters were done separately. I was able to devote attention to each. Most anyone who's done backgrounds will tell you its best to think of them as characters. What you put into the backgrounds, how you light, draw and color them, defines their personality. I've found that a well considered background helps define the other characters in the scene. Sort of like saying where they come from.

When it gets to the characters you can really go, they have a rich setting to react to, crammed, stinky cabin, hot dry desert, calm blue stratosphere. And if you've developed the characters fully from the start it's that much easier and fun.

Technically speaking there were all done this-a-way…
I did a rough breakdown for all 30 plus images in InDesign. Set up a page format containing the frame outline and written notes/script. Then drew the rough concept with the pencil tool. This way I could easily rearrange the frames and add or remove frames and notes. Once that document was approved, each frame pasted into Sketchbook Pro and did a detailed rough for client approval. Finished line art was done in Sketch book Pro and I spit me out a psd file to color in Photoshop.

In P-Shop I set up two brushes, with opacity overrides in the toolbar, and one eraser. I worked with as few layers as possible for speed. I remember a friend saying, " layers are for pussies." I had a separate layer acting as a palette, so I could use the eye dropper (accessible by quick key) to swiftly change color. It also allowed me to see how the colors would look in the composition which was useful.

I had a plug-in I installed that allowed me to email directly from P-Shop. So I did that for quickly sending art to client for approval. This again was all part of my putting in place every step of the way things that smoothed out the work-flow without compromising the quality…too much…hopefully. In the end the client was happy and I was happy with the look of the art.

Treading the boards

2010-11-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

For a while now I've been doing a lot of presentation and proprietary storyboard work. Odd stuff, interesting stuff, speculative in nature, and not always finished. These are bits of the second of a two part project. The nature of the assignment called for finished vector work in three distinct styles. This is the one I had the most fun with. It is reminiscent of old Reader's Digest illustrations in it's rough line and single tone color treatment. I created a few special brushes to work with in Illustrator CS4. (I've since moved on to CS5!) I wanted the style to look rough and coarse as if done on oatmeal paper. We all remember paper, right?

The other snippets are from the other set of storyboards. The style was to be more tech, clear line, and cartoony. We wanted a contrast between the rougher line and the cleaner line. Also contrast in how the overall feel, mood and flow of the boards.

They both were fun to do and took advantage of different features in Illustrator. I wish there would have been time to add color to these, in the vein of "Near Art". We had a bit more time at the start, but the schedule got cramped and one of the designers left half way through the project, so in the end we only completed two of the three.

Anyway the dust has settled on these boards, so it safe to tread.

"Live fast, draw hard."

Sunglasses After Dark cover

2010-08-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

Gettin' funky with the warp mesh.

Hey kids comics! Or at least the cover for one.

Vampires never die. The adaptation of "Sunglasses After Dark" that Nancy Collins (the original author) and I did about 15 years ago will finally be collected and reprinted by IDW in 2011. An exact date has not been set, but the cover is done!

The wheels are in motion, the page art has to be scanned, lettered and colored. I didn't do any of the original series covers, but I did the collection cover.

Not only has it been 15 years since I drew the character, but for most comic book characters, I'm used to playing off existing art. This time I only had myself to riff on.
My first take on the cover was much more designy, book cover-ish, and minimalist. I wasn't happy with the lack of excitement or interest this cover had.

like some ol' make-up ad!

After that, I went back over my original drawings of Sonja Blue, seeing why I drew her the way I did. I figured I would make some changes, sort of update her a bit, and did a lot of sketches along that line. But the more I drew, the more I realized that over the course of the original mini series Sonja had become fully developed. I didn't need to rethink the character at all. At one point I was even going to change her sunglasses and drew several different pair, but I wound up using the original (soldering) glasses she had.

"When will you make and end!?!"

"Sunglasses After Dark" has a strong pulp noir feel so I wanted that to come across in the cover.
Once I got on track I did several roughs with a sort of pulp noir paperback look using the exaggerated figure, and low angle, and classic femme fatale stance. As with a lot of my stuff lately it was a complete digital work flow. The pencils were done in Sketchbook Pro, inks in Painter and colors were completed in Photoshop. I added a basic texture background and did my local color over that. My goal was to have an image that was dark but not murky and hard to see. While at the same time had some eye-candy appeal. In the original series Nancy and I wanted Sonja to have Engineer's Boots, this time I made them high-heeled Engineer's boots.

only a few of the roughs done for the illustration!

When the art was finished IDW wanted my input on type treatment, which I was happy to give. I have always had a fondness for the Doc Savage logo type done by Len Leone, which is a classic paperback type treatment that is echoed in tons of covers. So I went with that. I had to restrain myself and keep the warping to a minimum. In the image here colors are roughly chosen, subject to change, but I'm mostly happy with the way it looks. However it still has to pass few eyeballs before being final. Not sure when that will be, but stay tuned.

Casual Game User Interface

2010-07-26T17:16:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a casual game UI piece. I've posted it here temporarily for feedback. Let me know what you think. My usual notes and notes about animation in Flash, with movements done in blue.

All in a day's work.

2010-07-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

So, the top image is some of what I'm doing currently. Pretty normal, but along the way I get to experiment in Painter and I've made a nice "felt tip marker" that could yield some nice results, given more time. As it is I'm cranking on these with more of an eye to showing off the product/setting (basic information) than anything else, plus I have lot more to do by tomorrow. It's interesting, I know some illustrators have an aversion to working digitally and I definitely can see their point. But there are some pluses. One un-obvious thing, I put a piece of Bristol board over my Wacom so it feels like I'm drawing on paper rather than a piece of plastic. It even sounds like drawing on paper, which I love, "scritch, scritch, scritch." Any drawing is good practice. Doing this sort of stuff allows me to turn around things like the Sunglasses cover in short time (about three hours for inks and colors, more on the creation of that cover in my next post ). I don't always want to work at that pace, but it's all in a day's work, and sometimes it's like driving a really nice, fast car.

Bob Harper Fitness Illustrations on MSN

2010-04-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I worked on a project doing fitness/exercise illustrations, 21 episodes with at least three images per episode, for, "Help Yourself in 5 with Bob Harper, sponsored by Planters Nutrition", a site Bob Harper (The Biggest Loser) has on MSN. I was called in at the start of the development phase because of my visual problem solving skills. This was exciting because both my wife and I are gym rats so I would have no problem understanding any of the exercises or finding models! Well that and I was getting paid!

Microsoft's Branded Entertainment Experience Team had sent me a lot of art with the flavor they wanted. They had a rough look for the site and wanted to add illustrations that were subtle, tasteful with a little flair. In the beginning we were thinking of bright colors and textures. We wanted an almost retro, 50's look to it. Think Jack Lalanne!

I started in on stye tests, working in Illustrator CS because vector art was needed since this was to be used online and on mobile applications. The first style tests were too light in line weight and to detailed to really work online and definitely on mobile apps. So, we went to a thicker line with simpler filled areas. See, I have this thing for actually naming illustrations so we had Betty, Veronica, Kate and Lucy to chose from. In the third real style test (I did a ton before sending any to BEET) we felt "Veronica" was the best. However to use color in the arrow and spot that shows what area is benefitting, (sometime overlapping the figure and working in 3-D,) I made the figure only black and white. Real old school! The spot and arrow colors would be equally old school, faded colors. I felt that an arrow that moved in and around the figure would better show the movement called for in the exercise.

The art director, project manager and head writer felt we had nailed the style so I got the scripts and started on the final illustrations.

I created a brush and set up a format in Illustrator so that all the line weights and scaling would be the same for all roughly 63 drawings. I pulled together my reference, took photos and made changes. Somethings were not safe and some postures weren't straight so I corrected them, just like yer old gym teacher! My sketches were done in Sketchbook Pro and fired off to BEET for approval. From there I finished each one "inking" them in Illustrator, saving out two versions for web and mobile.

"Ironing Man" (using a clothes iron to do bicep curls) made sneaky appearances before the project went live.

I don't spend ALL of my life in front of a computer and I just got word that the site is live on MSN a couple of days ago. Stop by take a look at all the workouts, and let me know what you think. Do an exercise or two and waste five minutes getting fit, and remember it was drawn by some guys sitting on his butt.

Tracy Morgan for the Village Voice, Liz Lemon!

2010-03-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

This is a different conventional/digital mix than normal for me. Being that the conventional part was done digitally and the digital part was done conventionally.

Jesus Diaz of the Village Voice asked me to do a straight illustration of Tracy Morgan for the Choices section. Specifically he wanted my airbrush style, which I perfected (or whatever) years ago working for The Voice, and went on to use it for a lot of other clients (Pierce Transit, Vibe, No Depression, BIBR, Dark Horse Comics,)

Originally I was doing this airbrush style in black and white, later I added color by spraying with Rortring Inks (Arguably the best inks that were on the market. Rumor is, they closed a plant rather than change the formula.)

When I started using a computer, I developed a way to color the black and white airbrush so I had the best of both. Nice B&W art for me, and controlled color art for my clients!

I like this style best in black and white, it just looks cool to me. My last sprayed color piece was an illustration of author Zadie Smith for Black Issues Book Review. After that I only did B&W, mostly for No Depression.

Then recently Jesus Diaz asked for that ol' airbrush magic. Time was tight, as usual, and I had only done one successful digital airbrush piece, (my jazz Blue Note Santa!) The sketch was drawn conventionally by hand (as opposed to by foot?) on paper over my light table. I scanned the drawing and completed the illustration in Photoshop CS4, making paths the same way I would cut frisket, okay maybe a bit more anally 'cause I'm like that! The new rotate feature is very handy. The texture is my own special recipe, actually sprayed by hand! Layers were sandwiched and the illo was sent off. In the rush, I forgot to add color but Jesus did that and it looks great.

And now for something completely different…Batman Action Figures

2010-02-04T16:41:00.000-08:00

I used to do a monthly or twice monthly single panel comic for the DC Comics employee newsletter. That's pretty fun stuff when I think about it. It was my second chance to work with the talented Dean Motter. I got to poke fun at whatever hero from the DC pantheon was in the spotlight at the time. I remember doing Superman, Shade (the Changing Man!) Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter gags. They're all somewhere in a pile of bristol board. Recently I heard (yet to be confirmed) that this Batman strip is in the "Batman Vault: Museum in a Box"!
So, I thought I'd drag it out for show and tell to kick of a few posts that present a completely different side of what I do.

Alpha Stanta

2010-01-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

From the depths of my hard drive, the original Stanta.

The Stanta Claus, 2009!

2009-12-24T00:02:00.000-08:00

Last year because of a typo I made I did a drawing I used as an email signature, "Stanta". Which I can't find. Over the years I have done relatively few Santas. This year I decided to have some fun and do a few more. The first one, above, was a quick run at another email signature image. I had in mind a photo my old studio partner had of a a New York City cop, dressed as Santa, loading his revolver.

I was not going to do a comic book version, I had done that for the local paper some years ago.

The first Stanta for 2009. Just a quick drawing in Sketchbook pro, that turned into a Sean Connery. The main goal with the Stanta's was to have fun. I wanted to do each in a different style or technique and play around with the look of Santa.

There is Hillbilly Stanta,

Snoop Stanta,

and Jazz Stanta

Only got four done. Not bad, each is somewhat of an experiment. I had fun and learned a bit. Hope people got to enjoy them. I think I have a new Holiday tradition.

Stanta 1 : Stanta Connery

2009-12-23T13:04:00.000-08:00

This didn't start out to look like Sean Connery, but hey, none the worse. I stopped here because I accidentally screwed up the Sketchbook Pro file.

This is just a test: March of The Stantas

2009-12-23T09:29:00.001-08:00

This is a sort of live test, but I will be posting all my 2009 Stantas!
Stay tuned!

It takes a Village…

2009-12-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

It takes a Village to get me back to my blog! I find myself going to the blogs I frequent and seeing no new posts, then I say, "Man, why no new posts!?" Then I realize that I have a few followers who might be saying the same thing. So here we are! I have been working. Most of it has been on secret or proprietary stuff that I can't show, yet.
One project I did, again, Top Secret storyboards. (not in the film sense, more in the business meeting sense.) It was so secret that I didn't know where I was going until the morning of the meeting, no topic, no names until I was on the road. The pay was good and so was the food, as was the location. I drew for 8 hours, with a lunch break, uploaded my files and was done.
Another job was toy presentation art, that's anew one. The toys do not exist and there were no real drawings of them, just sort of "napkin" quality doodles from which I had to create "almost 3-D" drawings.
Then there's training comic book for medical professionals/technicians. I'm inking that in Illustrator. At some point in the project I should post about how I'm inking digitally. I love a real brush, but I have inked several illustrations in Painter, Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro and Illustrator. Each app has it's good and bad points. Which brings me around to The Village…Voice that is. I'm still doing the Robbin's column, so let's roll on the one from last week.
I start in Sketchbook Pro doing a few roughs for concept. I can email from the app or call the Art Director to discuss concepts. The topic for this was a fund scandal involving the city comptroller and Peggy Lipton, "Julie" in the original Mod Squad!
There are/were three major players in the scandal, but they only wanted to focus on two, and I HAD to draw the pose "Link" (Link, Pete and Julie! get up on your Mod Squad!) was in! So…After the rough I move to Painter, where I "ink" the art. I still do love inking conventionally, but I have a thing for what I call "The Impossible Brush." The ink never runs out and you get to Command Z any messed up strokes.
Then, over to Photoshop for the colors. I could color them in Painter, but Photoshop is better and faster at total image manipulation, and I'm used to the interface.
Colors and textures are added and for this an additional mod background and type.
The type was done by "The In-House Art Director" and is in the same style as the Mod Squad opening credits. A soft drop shadow helps it separate from the illustration. The blue-ish color is kind of 2000-ish, and not fitting with the TV show, but I used it to differentiate from the previous weeks illustration.
It's not as "hip" as I wanted. Looking at it now, some oranges and yellows would have been nice. Perhaps a solarized or posterized look. This concept was a straight ahead mash up of what is and what was. (Now that sounds Mod.)
For the NYC Tugboat Strike the concept was more metaphorical. My original idea was to use a version of Tommy the Tugboat, or more like his New York cousin, who's on strike. The AD didn't think there was anything funny in the article so we were going to go with a straight shot of a tug with a strike banner. I though the banner would be too small to read and then had the Eisner-esque idea of putting it in the water.
Whompped it up in Painter with "The Impossible Brush"……and then colorfied in Photoshop.

I'm trying to break myself of the horrible tendency to work zoomed in. You wind up putting in to much detail, making "hay" and wasting time. I like to look at the finish as the file icon in my finder window. I use a reducing glass when I work conventionally.
Just finished this coming week Village Voice illustration, another Bloomberg. I'll eventually post them all here I think. The next project to finish is the comic book inked in Illustrator, that and yet another secret project!

Village Voice Illustrations, It's New York time.

2009-10-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

One of my first real gigs I got excited about was illustrating for the Village Voice. I was just little ol' me in Tacoma, doing section covers, spots and feature illustration for one of the hippest, toughest, newsweeklies in the country. I learned to work on New York time. It helped that I was fast and worked well in the morning. I did a lot of stuff, airbrush, line art, all really nice black and white. People moved on, design regimes came and went. I stopped illustrating for them but kept in contact. I like to think I got better and faster (and stronger, like the Six Million Dollar Man) Three weeks ago one of the Voice art directors contacted me. It was Thursday afternoon, they had a column (written by long time political reporter Tom Robbins) that needed an illustration. Sketch by Friday, finish by Monday, end of day… New York time. Well, yeah, I did it!
The first illo was of Mayor Bloomberg, "King Mike". The column was about term limits and a possible meeting with Rupert Murdoch. The Voice liked the way I handled the art on The Flitcraft Parable, and wanted the same look. I took the same file and added the new line work. We went with the image of "King Mike" in repose with a NY Post cover urging him to run.

Next illustration was of New York Congressman Nadler, a big, big fella. He was to look friendly, but imposing, not cartoonish or caricatured. There's not much about ACORN in the illustration but they are an important part of the article. We thought subtlety was best.
In contrast to the pre -email days of my first Voice work, these are all done digitally. Sketches and roughs are done in Sketchbook Pro and emailed directly from the app. A very cool feature! The roughs are imported to Painter and inked with brushes I created, then the line art is colored and texture added in Photoshop. Save the whole thing as a jpeg and it's small enough to email!
Man that's fun!

Back to Bloomberg. What took the longest in this image was designing a bag of chips! The design is based on Bloomberg campaign graphics. When I had added the color I thought it was all too much. My "In-House-Art-Director" suggested changing the bag color to white and shifting the type color. Then I knocked back all the other colors and things came into focus. The Illustration had a clear visual priority.
Working on the same Thursday-Monday Schedule (yet to work the weekend on these.) I still did two versions by Monday end of day… New York time.

More Storyboards

2009-09-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

Finished yet another storyboard project. Similar to the last, all top secret. I did make good use of Sketchbook Pro. All the line art and roughs were don in Sketchbook Pro, the color was done in Photoshop. I could have done the color in SBP, but the look I wanted was easier to do in P-Shop. At least as far as I know. Sketchbook Pro has some cool features, including a rotate feature that you can do thru the interface or in set increments with a key command. The brushes have been expanded and are customizable. This may all be held over from the previous version but it's all new to me. It's not as fast with straight cutting and pasting and I have yet to find a way to really transform objects. But for basic drawing, it's faster and more responsive (at a speed) than P-Shop or Painter. Now Autodesk can send me a check.

Storyboards End

2009-08-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

The illustrator and teacher Cherry Brown, who along with her husband Dick Brown founded The School of Visual Concepts, once told me to draw something every day.

Storyboards are the wind sprints of illustration. Short, quick, you do a lot and they can be very tiring. However at the end you definitely on. Even though they might not be the best drawing you'll ever do, a little bit of careful attention to each one can have great results for your skills in the end.

Hey Kids, Comics!: The BTS Master

2009-08-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

Well now, where I…
This comic was done as a direct mail advertising piece. I've done ad comics in the past (at least two for Microsoft!) and most often they are on the safe side, given what they have to do and the toes that must be avoided. This was born of an ad, the art for which was also used as the cover (shown above). At the time of doing the ad the heroes had no specific relationship, one was just telling the other something about the product, the BTS Master, a device that tests and analyzes cell phone tower transmissions. The characters were done with more attention to the expressions that anything else.
Later it was decided to do more with the comic theme. Originally, the project was a four panel newspaper format comic strip. I was pushing for a two-tiered "Star Hawks" format. That would have been fun. I had convinced the marketing/creative director to let me write it since it was short and I know the format so well. Just then, the project changed. For a reason I can't remember, they decided to make it a five page mailer, and the four panel strip became a five page story! I convinced them to let me flesh out the story without adding to it. I was writing, lettering, coloring and drawing a four panel story in five pages of space!
The cover art was essentially done (see my roughs above, done for the ad illustration). I added title lettering under the helpful eye of The In House Art Director. Then I began the pages.
The story was pretty simple, monster/villain wrecks tower, female lead calls in heroes, they show up and save the day using product X,( hilarity ensues, roll credits). But with the extra space I could really set a nice pace, and have it not feel like an ad.

In page one, top panel we see the monster, Irk, because he's irksome, chomping on a cell tower. I did my research on cell towers believe me! In drawing Irk I kept thinking of the monster in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", part monster and part gremlin. A corner-of-the-eye thing, well not so much in the end! He has cooling rods in his back (ouch!) a hammer, which shows he does damage, and feet that allow him to grip and scamper up towers. At the bottom we see Vicki, the female lead. I wanted to have a character that would interest the readers (mostly male, tech, engineer types) and act as a counter to the main hero. I based Vicki on Tina Fey, Geek sex symbol. In the bottom panels she observes Irk and calmly calls in our heroes. A color note; the action starts at night and ends at sunrise. As we all know, monsters and gremlins (and freaks) come out at night. The change in light sets a definite time period and pace for the action. Also, this allowed me to do some subtle color stuff.

Page two introduces our heroes, Doc and his sidekick Volt, and sets up their characters. This would not have been possible without the extra pages/space. This page is a complete luxury. The only essential panel is panel one, which shows the heroes flying in. About the dialog; I read up a bit on the actual technical jargon and from there created super-jargon and tech-speak for Doc and Volt. So, somehow, what they are saying should really make sense. Vicki's dialog reflects the real problems the product is designed to test and solve. In panel two I show Doc as being the cool thoughtful hero while Volt, my favorite, is the hot head, giving off electricity. His dialog is more aggressive. Their costumes riff on the difference between Silver Age heroes and Image era heroes. Doc echos Space Ghost if you look hard. Panel four has more reality than it appears. Volts dialog, the machines in his hands and the rack unit behind him were heavily referenced, and reflect what may really be done and used in a similar situation. Well I mean not if you had a monster on a a tower but just a problem with the tower. The color palette is pretty limited and I feel I did a decent job of restraining myself to a tasteful level. I tried to create a sense of light from a definite source and color.

Page three starts with an unusual beauty shot of the product and our heroes, and goes into a harder ad pitch. All this followed by Volt blasting off to take care of things the old fashioned way! Which is what the product offers a streamlined alternative to. Panels three and four are just a little humor that I thought alleviated the hard sell of the piece and added a bit to the characterization while keeping the story moving right along. Doc is drawn an bit more cartoonish and breaks the panel border to add to the effect. It also lets the reader in by breaking the Fourth Wall.
Page Four takes two panels to develop Irk. He's just a simple, hungry monster with a desire to be his best. Even though Volt took off first in Page Three, Doc is first up and everyone takes note of how well Doc handles the situation using the product. I'm not all that happy with the color on this page. I think the light coming from Irk being zapped should have been the main/stronger light source for everything on the page. I remember struggling with the colors in Irk. In hindsight it seems pretty clear what to do. The grass and concrete texture are made from using a scan of one of my airbrushed illustrations.
Page Five has Doc take a little credit, basking in his superior intellect and promoting the BTS Master even more. You can tell now the sun is rising by the colors in the background. Irk is now more of a cute lil' gremlin. pointing to the happy light-hearted ending. The last panel has dialog the explains what would actually happen, the limits of the product, after it's use. Vicki's dialog shows her relationship with Doc, and Volt's is a double entendré. Both of which I thought would get cut, but didn't.
Clients who use comics often get excited about having a comic book created for them, and about their product. Issues arise when the story and art wind up being less than what is hoped for. This is usually solved when objectives for the comic are made clear up front, and competent, experienced creatives are left to come up with a solid comic book. This client needed a comic that introduced the BTS Master in a fun, quick non technical way, to a comic savvy audience.
In the end everyone was happy.

Awards and work.

2009-07-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

I just found out today that in addition to winning the SPJ First Place award for Cartoons/Illustration in a magazine, Washington Law and Politics to be exact…
that I also won third place in the same category! I think the above illustration won Third and the one below was First. I'm not sure because I often give the illustrations different names than the article for various reasons, the chief being the articles don't always have names or titles when I get the assignments.

This doesn't explain why I have not posted the reminding parts of "Hey Kids Comics". I have been working for McSoft doing a bazillion presentation storyboards. All top secrety and hush hush stuff! I also completed a Flash animation test for a local game studio. All this has left me wanting to do something different. Single image illos or comics. However I have a gazillion more storyboards to do. So it's back to the drawing board. After July 4th, I'll have a better handle on getting back to "Hey Kids Comics"!

Hey Kids, Comics :That Gum You Like

2009-06-16T19:11:00.001-07:00

In 2004 Camper Van Beethoven reformed and released "New Roman Times", a key track was "That Gum You Like is Back in Style." One of my first editorial illustrations was for an article in The Rocket, on Camper Van Beethoven. I was assigned that illustration by Grant Alden. Years later, in 2004 to be exact, Grant asked me to do this extended editorial illustration in No Depression for the new CVB release. How could I resist! Grant is one of my favorite, and best art directors working. The trick to this comic piece is how little I wrote! As I recall, I used the CD track titles and notes only, in order! A tribute to how well CVB did in creating a story. We wanted to to do a comic that had a bit of flavor from the old men's magazines of the 40s and 50s. You know, the ones where badgers are ripping the flesh of a guy.

So, a healthy dose of dry brush, aggressive brush work and garish lighting were called for.
The first panel is a movie like double-truck (I love that old term!) From left to right there is; the cabal of evil old Texas Oil-men, our young GI Joe-ish/ Texas Ranger hero, and finally the warring hordes raising their guns to a Hellion in a red dress. All that's missing is the badger! While the colors are my normal garish, (red and yellow) they are muted somewhat. I think that helps the colors to work better when I pull out the more stylized monochromatic palette for effect, as in panels four, five and seven. The brush work is slashy, bold and rough, I was aiming for movement even in the static panels. All the characters are definite types. My favorite in the spread are the Old Texas Men, which I did have reference for!

Panels two and three work as one, a moment in time, divided, our attention split on two characters. In two, the old spy (who's gum that he likes, is back in style) and in three, the jittery bar keeper/informant/contact. I like drawing old men and junkies. This was actually the first image that came to mind when I got this assignment, and of course contains the comic title. It also mimics the top tier of page four, good circular storytelling.

Panel 4 is another dose of Men's pulp art. The monochromatic panels are the most obvious nod to Men's magazine pulp illustrations. The colors and the line-work. I wanted the ink brush lines to sort of have the same feel as the brush strokes in the old illustrations. At times like this I think less of what I'm doing as line-work and more like painting with one color. After that, the color goes on, with the same sort of treatment, with a cohesive textural effect. I hope.

Panel five, the background references riots in I believe LA during the 60s. While I'm working on these I am very particular about what my references are and where they come from. There can and usually are a lot of subtle and hidden connections between the reference and what I'm working towards. In fact I tend to have a large file of reference or scrap while I compose the art. Small subtle details, in my opinion create a richness and connection wit the viewer. It's not always noticed but, I like it, and when it is noticed, well, it's that much better. When the piece is done, there is the somewhat ceremonial trashing of the reference folder. Some of the scrap goes into my file cabinet/morgue, and the rest into the trash. All of it tends to go out of my memory, sadly.

Panel six. I think in this panel the two guys, (spies no doubt!) really look the part of Eastern Bloc spies! I can just see them in some 60's new cinema cold war spy movie. I know I used reference for both of these guys, they were the focus of my attention. And what says R-n-R better than a Eastern Bloc blond in a red dress? Or is she Octobriana in disguise?

Panel seven is another sort of Men's mag spin. If you look close you can see how little there is to the drawing most of the lines radiate to the point of light. That sort of restrained drawing is not something I normally do. It's akin to Dennis the Menace's one line neck.

Panel eight starts to slow things down a bit as we move from the album/discs main characters wild youth to his gradual enlightenment, via drugs! I thought the cactus was a nice mirroring of the characters lost limbs and loneliness. I wanted the spare composition to sort of slow things down and signal a change of pace. Lucky me that it fell just right so that this spread was a very masculine and boxy thing.

Panel nine, like all good last panels is intriguing. I used the same loose brush work but here to give it a more fly away, dreamy feeling. As much of a fly away dreamy feeling as I can create with my stuff! The color in this borrows from panel eight and ads some pink for effect, because they're POPPIES!! You might also see a little Kirby in this panel.

PAGE THREE
Panel one and two, more double spread goodness! This time I work both side to show the split and growth of the character, from soldier to hippie. This is another time when I so loosely use reference it looks like I just made it up, at least to me it does.

Panel three I can remember listening to Eric Clapton as I drew my famous smoke clouds. I should have gotten them out of my system before then! But no, for some reason I always think they're a good idea when I start but later, like now…ugh, not so much!

Panel four worked out well because I get bored sometimes and this was a perfect opportunity to switch up the styles. Notice the Native American influenced sun symbol, and yes, diamonds in the sky!

Panel five actually gave me a hard time. For some reason It was tough getting the image I wanted/needed into the space and having it read visually. It turned out okay enough. I think the best part is the color, which went very quick. It's amazing what I remember after all this time.

Panel six is my shame! This one falls like a clunker! There is not one thing I like about this panel. Most of the time as in panel five there is something I like, something I feel went well. But this one lacks any sort of merit. I'm not sure why it exists the way it does, other than due to my own laziness. Note to clients, avoid lazy artists!
Now that I think of it, I must have been at a low ebb as I was winding this page up. Both the last panels are not that inspiring to me.

However, PAGE FOUR starts with a good panel! Another spread, (Mmmm, gotta love those) Plenty of fun stuff to draw. Crazy old men, a craggy ex-spy and an Invaders type flying saucer! Topped of with better clouds than in panel three on the previous page. I think I obviously had a clear vision of what I was aiming for on this page. It seems to skip the herky jerky creative mess of page three and pick up where the double truck left off. I mean look, I even pick up the hippie theme and gradually disintegrate the figure over the remaining four panels. The lines going dead, images overlapping, breaking panel borders. Going from Captain America to a suicide bomber, all the while keeping it light and happy.

I do like my little graphic, the Peace symbol with "The end is near have fun" written around it. Of course without punctuation it could as well be read "Have fun the end is near." Is the glass half empty or half full.

NEXT WEEK in "Hey Kids, Comics!"…advertising comics, the amazing BTS Master, or how I got away with one long inside joke!

Hey Kids, Comics; 9/11 Page

2009-06-08T11:29:00.001-07:00

Shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center, a call went out to cartoonists for art to be used in a benefit/memorial anthology. This was done for Dark Horse Comics' anthology. However, in the rush to secure content, not all the art received saw print. This is one that didn't make the cut. Never found out why.
I sometimes look at things I did and wonder "what was I thinking," and "how did I do that." In this case I remember.
My first attempt/idea was sort of a piece about a guy who gets mistaken for a terrorist. That seemed kind of knee jerk-ish to me and was later pulled off better in an issue of Captain America. Patriotic fervor, now there was something. At the time pride in our country was very high, and things were a bit confusing. So what would be more appropriate than to put that into a page. I have always had the sneaking suspicion that a lot of Americans get the Start Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Alligiance mixed up. I can remember mumbling the archaic terms myself in school and in military Post theaters before the movies started! Very patriotic and at the same time confusing. So, like the former DJ I am, I did a remix.

O' say can you see
I pledge allegiance
to what so proudly we hailed,
from sea to shining sea.

By the republics gleaming,
and over the rockets red glare,
one nation
gave proof,
under God,
and spacious skies,
that the flag ,indivisible,
was still there.

O say does that star spangled banner yet wave,
with brotherhood,
liberty and justice,
o're the land of the free
and home for the brave.

As for the art, the airbrush, black and white is my weapon of choice! I wanted the art to have some emotional weight and gravity, so I used my illustrative style instead of a comic book style.
Each panel is like a stripe on a waving flag, the values alternate like the red and white. Each panel focuses on a segment of American history, a part of history, good or bad, that helps define what America is.
Panel one, like the beginning of the universe, just stars. Also there are 13 stars, one for each colony. They sort of come out of darkness, groping and moving. This was a good set up for me, I feltl it was sufficiently evocative as opposed to being literal.
Panel two is sort of Francis Scott Key, a nod to the influence off the page and the role of creativity in the birth of our nation. Plus it's got bombs bursting in air! I always wondered what that would look like and why they would burst in air. I worked to have the focus of the panels move from left to right, alternating down the page.
Panel three is breaking the chains of slavery, and uniting our country. An important step for a lot of reasons. In this panel I tip my hat to some of the great artists of The Harlem Renaissance, including Aaron Douglass, one of my favorites.
Panel four, a break in the pace and a chance to show how precarious the growth of a nation can be. I placed the flag small in a black field, the same size as the narrative blocks. The remixed copy reflects a turning point. Okay, I know that all this is not in any kind of correct order, but that's part of my point and the fun. America is a real mash-up of people, cultures, races, times and eras.
Panel five sort of brings us to current (at the time!) time frame. Does that banner still wave? Is Uncle Sam there? Yes after 911 he is there, still the superhero/mythical figure he's been since James Montgomery Flagg cemented him in our visual memory. In this shot he appears as he has in tons of comics, sleeves rolled up and ready for action, moving out of the clouds, actually to stage left. This allows me to have sort of static action with Lady Liberty in panel six. Even though there is no motion the composition moves to the right, forward. this allowed me to take some, well, liberties with the figure. My interpretation of Lady Liberty is of her more as a mythical figure than an actual statue.
This was a quick piece. A simple page that reads very very fast. More than most of my other comic book work, this is the closest to an editorial illustration. Looking at it now I still think it holds up. Although I did think of redoing the lettering for this post. But, that would be cheating.
NEXT WEEK on Hey Kids, Comics…Camper Van Beethoven comics! and That Gum You Like!

Hey Kids, Comics: The Flitcraft Parable!

2009-05-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

Well it's comic book time kids! We'll start with a project I was incredibly happy to do and proud to say it's not too shabby. There are things I'd do differently, but that's hindsight for ya! "The Flitcraft Parable" starts on the cover. I always consider the cover part of the story. It works to set a mood and generate the first spark of storytelling magic for the reader.
The cover portrait illustration of Hammett was done twice. Like any good Op, Hammett had more than one face. The first likeness I did had much more personal influence on it. I was calling heavily on the fact that Hammett was a private detective. It was a moody, stern-jawed likeness, that evoked him, but didn't look like him. Since the lead article was about Hammett, and more revealing, I thought it would work better to see him how he was. His face had a softness to it that was hidden amongst smooth flat planes that denied detail. The classic photo of him getting of a train shows that, his face is a group of stark black and white planes beneath a wide hat brim. The map came late from the article's writer, Michael Sullivan. It's a map of Tacoma, made during the time that Hammett lived here, showing some of his favorite places. I think it was drawn by Hammett. My initial likeness lived on as the face of Flitcraft himself in my adaption, adding another subtext.
A bit about the layout. I may go into this more with the other posts. But, for Flitcraft I kept it simple. My reason being the audience was not made up of comic book fans, but of non comic book readers. I think the difference is that regular readers have a small set of expectations about comics that they are willing to have broken and expanded upon. Most often it's because a regular reader doesn't expect much from a comic book, the bar is set pretty low. Interestingly enough they seem quite open to different styles of art. Comic Book readers are more sophisticated about comics and what they can do. They expect more, but also seem to hold the comic book to, at times, a more rigid standard of what constitutes a "comic book". I remember a quote from an illustration text book ("Illustration Today" by Robert Ross) that goes something like, " A successful illustrator is one who thinks his way into the minds of individuals." Blah, blah blah. So to illustrate for the regular reader, think like the regular reader. I used an old paper texture to evoke the period. The same with the coloring, which springs from old Readers Digest illustrations. They were often black line work with a couple of process colors roughly cut or drawn. Not quite the same time period, but cheap printing plus cheap paper equals 100% Pulp!

Page one, and right from the start I get to draw Spade and Brigid! Even though there's not a lot of movement, I spent a lot of time on the characters, poses and type to set the mood quickly since I didn't have very many pages. Brigid is based on a photo of a secretary that Hammett was supposed to have had an affair with, and may have based the novel version of Brigid on. The clothes are authentic, from a vintage Sear's catalog. In the first panel I had a lot to establish quickly. I did a few passes at this page, but it was the wonderfully freeing advice of the editor to change things if I had to, that put me on the right path! In the novel Spade and Brigid are not staged this way. I made the leap to position them in a sexually playful way, that's a bit antagonistic. It also made a nice pyramid structure that helped the type. The type is a modern font that echos an older style, the way I hope the art does. I had the help of a wonderful designer Colleen Gray (the "In House Art Director") and the input of my good friend designer Jesse Reyes.
I gave the word balloons a squared off tail to make them different from American comics and something a bit special. The tails are like some of my favorite European comics. I figured the audience would be open to that. The last two panels immediately take us into the first level of flashback.

More authenticity on the second page with housewife style dress and the Davenport Hotel in Spokane. The hotel had been remodeled recently and their website is full of great images of the lobby and front desk. Here I used my original take on Hammett as the character design for Flitcraft. The second panel shot of Flitcraft is based on a photo of Hammett. The visual theme of the "beam" starts in the last two panels. First, I used the beam shape to focus light on Flitcraft's eyes, like in old films. Then I used it to set the light and shadow in the background of the same panel. Again, the beam appears in the last panel as a silhouette, like Flitcraft himself. I was hoping the silhouetting would tie the two together, like fate had. Get the hip waders 'cause it's gettin' deep!

Page three goes into the flashback within a flashback! I took the liberty of having Flitcraft tell his own story. That's the reason for the wonky structure. I stepped into a different color scheme and the art is a much more symbolic and illustrative. Panel one is a bank building (The Washington Building) that was being constructed around the time Hammett was living in Tacoma. If memory serves me, it had the dubious distinction of being part of some big swindle that halted construction and caused a national scandal. It was in the right place at the right time to drop a beam near Flitcraft. Panel two, I thought the beam acted like a bolt of lightning (from God?) so my beam hits the ground bending and crumpling, transforming to a lightning bolt like shape. I gave the bolt and Flit the "jitters" like Horror type. Panels four to eight we see as well as read how his life and thought begin to crowd him, forcing a new direction. Relief come in the expanded ninth panel, his face a clear, blank slate.
Panel ten, all the other possible lives, chances and changes represented by beams. The scar is prominent on this page as a marker for the character, like Johnny Quests hair, a good strong visual cue.

Page four ends the flashback and works to get us back to the story proper. In panel one I wanted to show how Flitcraft was shaken and separate from his fellows on the street. I showed this with a thick rough key line around his figure. Somewhat like the blank slate he think he could become, his face is basic and stripped bare. In panel two he talks about ordering his life. Somehow that made me think that all he had done and accomplished was by the hard work of his hands, in a metaphorical way. So I separated him (his face) from his hands. The narrative box also is the middle in the three panel descent, so that in panel three, when things are calmer, the narrative box is at the bottom of the panel, creating a nice progression that really connects all three. Panels 4 and 5 work to bring us back to the first level by a shift in color, and the change of Flitcraft and the identifying scar. Panel 6 we see Flitcraft/Hammett talking to Spade. The angle is on Spade so as to make a smooth transition to…

Page five, panel one. A close up of Spade similar to Page one panel three that took us into the flashback. The "photo" of Flitcraft is again taken from the photo of Hammett same as page two, panel two was. About Spade, he is described as looking "rather like a pleasant blonde Satan". I work to get the characters set and stay on model but this last page is the better Spade.
The bottom panel is a nice half page that mirrors the start of the adaptation.
I try to make (at least for now) circular stories, where the beginning and the end echo each other. Here we have Spade and Brigid in a pyramidal composition similar to the first panel of page one. The body language is less aggressive, and adversarial but more playful and cozy. He did tell her a nice story after all.
I like the adaptation. I think of it as "Noir", and as such, I felt for a while I should have used more black shapes and areas to create a darker feel. But now I'm happier with tone that comes across emotionally without the trope of a lot of inky blackness.
NEXT WEEK in Hey Kids, Comics!…911 single page comic for Dark Horse Comics!

Hey kids Comics! Intro

2009-05-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

Like a ton of other comic book artists, I put a lot into my work. Some noticed, some not so much. Seldom do I, or any other comic book artist, get to explain in detail what they do. So, over the next three weeks I'll be posting three comic book projects explaining what and why I did things, panel by panel. That is what this blog is about after all, the what and the why.

The projects are;

A five page adaptation of the famous parable of the falling beam from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, "The Flitcraft Parable" for City Arts magazine,

A four page visual liner note for Camper Van Beethoven reunion album, "That Gum You Like" done for No Depression magazine,

A 9-11 page done for Dark Horse Comics. I haven't looked at this in years myself!

An advertising five pager,"BTS Master" for Pullen Advertising, the client was Anritsu.

And a special surprise, the job I got because Mike Richardson, me and my editor at Dark Horse got mixed up, my eight page Western Fairy Tale, "Out in the West"!

Tell all your friends (and a few enemies)

I have been fortunate enough to be able to experiment on just about every comic book project I've done. Maybe posting about these dissimilar experiments will help me better understand what I'm doing and point to some creative experiments for my next comic book work.
Live fast, draw hard.

Flash ads

2009-03-20T01:08:00.000-07:00

This is a sample banner ad done in Flash.
The movement is not as smooth as in Flash player.

This is a another sample banner ad done in Flash.
The movement is not as smooth as in Flash player.

Octavia Butler

2009-03-15T23:15:00.000-07:00

This illustration of author Octavia Butler was done for Black Issues Book Review a while back. I'm posting this and sending out positive vibes in hope that it results in something…really good.

Reinvent Your Commute

2009-01-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

I love illustration, and the research as part of my job. I dig the behind the scenes stuff that sometimes matters more to me than the client or project. I like to think that all the "stuff" adds up to some rich images. Regardless, the entire process is fun-work. This assignmnet is a good example. Scott, an art and marketing director that I have worked with off and on over the years, contacted me with this project. My job was to create visuals for the WSDOT "Reinvent Your Commute" campaign. The illustrations will be used by Pierce Transit and other Washington State transit companies for advertising and promotion, in whatever media, print, transit, billboard, or web, to promote commuting alternatives. The visual concept was open ended. All Scott asked was I work in a style I used for game backgrounds. That was great, the style was vector and if the illustrations were to be as versatile as needed, vector was the way to go. Also, I was to do a type treatment for "Reinvent Your Commute".
What struck me was how sort of D.I.Y. and "home inventor" the thought of reinventing your commute was. I ran with that idea. My first sketch was of a geeky science type dude standing next to a diagram for a jet pack. Scott liked the idea and we though that each of the illustrations (four that expanded to five) would feature an inventor/commuter and a mode of commuting that would fit their personality. Cool beans! I get to create characters! I always base characters on people I know or know a fair amount about. I helps to get a handle on who I'm drawing (and pinpoint the audience.) It eaier to build a character that rings true with all the little fun touches that make, well, a "Character". How they stand, what they wear, hairstyles, accessories. Even things as small as rings and facial tics, they all ad up. Viewers take it in at a glance and get to "know" the character right away. That's my theory anyway.
So I started with a mode and a general person, then I though of someone I knew who would fit the bill, and fleshed out the character. For instance in the case of the guy with the jet pack, he actually looks like that, he stands that way and used to have a beard like that. Plus, he's the kind of guy that just might build a jet pack. I think he even has a leather Flight Jacket. To my knowledge most character designers will work this way.
Next was the transport modes! They needed to be wild, fun and easy to read. The original jet pack had way to much detail on it. It started out as just about a full blown antique espresso machine! Most of the first attempts suffered from too much detail. The other problem was coming up with outlandish transports. You have no idea what crazy contraptions some people use to get around! I thought, "robot powered rickshaw, that's unusual." Nope, there is one! There are also several kinds of jet packs. Two of the wildest are a full body roller blade suit (you really have to see it in action!) and a Volkswagen Bug with a Jet engine Booster. It's street legal! I was going to do a solid fuel booster unicycle, but, after those two, how far could I go? So we shifted a bit and made them funny visually.
A really big espresso cup, the battery for the pogo stick is a 9 volt battery on steroids. Extra large fries (because they do make bio diesel scooters.) Go figure! The green wings are the only mode that doesn't have an corresponding real life mode of transportation. Maybe Icarus?
So reinventing your commute is much easier in real life than in illustration, but not near as much fun.

Off to work we go!

The Badlands Covers

2008-12-03T15:13:00.001-08:00

I have forgotten most of the story around the top illustration with the vultures, something about Nike. I do remember it being somewhat of a big deal with Willamette Week (or was that just me?). The art director, Katherine Topaz, threw all her trust in me for an illustration that would be both cover and a two page interior illustration. Later, this was the piece that High Country News saw and liked enough to have Kat get me to do a cover for them. One of the few times my work has been a reference for itself. Kind of fun though, sister illustrations.

With the cover for High Country News I again worked with with Katherine Topaz. She's one of my very favorite art directors and a swell designer. I was fortunate enough to work with her through-out most of her art directorial tenure at Willamette Week. Kat is a blast to work with, lots of fun and a risk taker willing to experiment. She also allows illustrators to have input into the overall design and end use of the illustration, taking advantage of the interplay between AD and Illustrator to great effect. This cover was a last attempt Hail Mary Pass for a tough, dry concept (tax revenue from oil drilling used for government services). The client had seen and liked the vulture cover I'd done for Willamette Week. After doing a butt load of thumbnails with way different concepts, in the end we went with something really close, to the vultures cover, that shared style and composition.

Near Art 3 to 6: End of the run

2008-12-02T13:01:00.000-08:00

What was planned to be a 12 strip run made it to 6. Enjoy 3 thru 6 here and 1 and 2 in a previous post, then read below for details.

City Arts recently changed editors. When they did, the decision was made to make changes to my strip, Near Art. They cut the pay by two thirds, cut the size by at least half, and let me know that they were not to confident that the continuity was enough for a monthly audience who may, or may not have been, regular readers. But they did like the art! I'm trying to make the best of it. I will continue with the name Near Art (which I did not come up with) doing something else, for less money that takes less time and is not a continuity.

What saddens me most is that the strip was a 12 part romance, a little valentine for my wife, and we only got to part 6. I had thought I was going to rant here about editors making visual decisions and in-decisions, magazines dumbing down, and the devaluation of visual content, but that all reads like whining. (Oddly, a fitting tie to NA #6.) The best thing to do is to complete the strip myself, on my own.
And then sell it!

Live fast, draw hard.

Cool World covers

2008-12-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

I like this cover the best. It was fun to draw the characters in my own style.

No she's not holding up a building. I think I put something in the street names but I don't remember.
After hounding my contacts at DC comics, I finally wound up with some work from them. If I remember correctly I had been doing a strip in the DC Comics employee newsletter and had sent off the obligatory second round of inking samples. The Ralph Bakshi film "Cool World" was being released and DC was doing the film adaptation. Film adaptations get a bad rap and rightly so. They are kin to license work and come with a ton of restrictions that are piled on by committee and client, at times making no sense. In this case I was told that I had to avoid likenesses of the actors (Brad Pitt, Gabriel Byrne, Kim Bassinger). I was tasked with inking the film adaptation and doing covers 2 thru 4 of the mini series. Bakshi was doing the first cover. I dutifully inked the adaptation. I was really happy and excited when the editor kicked back my initial cover sketches as not being wild enough. They wanted me to really cut loose and have fun with the covers. So I did. Looking back, I think I went a little too wild but I did do just what I wanted on three covers for a major comic publisher. Weeks later I got my share of the inked pages, finished art is divided between the creative team. All the faces that I inked so the did not look like the actors (as we had been told) had been carefully pasted over and redrawn to look like the actors. It's funny that the method used to patch the art involved cutting a slit in the page art at the throat of each character and sliding in a new piece of paper on which the new head was drawn. They had all been be-headed.

I don't think I have any of the pages I inked but I do have the pre digital covers stashed away somewhere. Every once in a while I come across the covers on line. Small, cool world huh?

John Waters

2008-11-21T12:02:00.001-08:00

After I had completed this illustration and sent the original to the client, a newsweekly on the East coast, the art director called to let me know he got it. We got to talking about Waters and how much we both enjoyed his films and what a wild aberrant creative force he is. Then the art director said the Waters was coming into the office for an interview and asked me if I wanted his autograph. I said sure. Well week passed and the illustration was returned to me in the mail. When I opened the package I saw that someone had scribbled across the illustration. Furious, I stormed into my studio picked up the phone. I was ready to assert myself when I noticed the scribble read "John Waters", just in time to thank the art director for getting me that autograph. Isn't that well…Devine?

Dolly Parton

2008-11-20T21:27:00.000-08:00

This illustration of Dolly Parton is one of my favorites. I like it when my work is clean and relatively simple. Which is hard for me to do. I tend to want to junk things up, lots of shapes and lines and tangents. Plus it's not often that clients let you work in black and white for no good reason. For this the concept was simple Dolly and her voice, nothing else. She had been thought of as having an angelic sound early on, and I wanted to point that up, the blond hair helped. Nothing like black ink for drawing white shapes.
Again working with No Depression editor/art director Grant Alden was a pleasant challenge. Hs faith in any illustrator he hired spurred you on to some of your best work.

Sign of the Times

2008-11-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

This illustration received a nice post on the blog of Jürgen Mantzke, the art director of Lore magazine. This illustration was not used. Rarely do I have an illustration "killed". Of those killed only one other have I liked as much as the second go 'round. More often the two attempts are extremely close in concept. This time however I liked the second attempt which was way different from the first. As you can see.

Both concepts were sound, the second coming on recommendation from the publisher. It created some interesting creative hurdles. Both illustrations were done in black and white airbrush with color added digitally. It's wild to think that both illustrations were based on the same article, about the same man. That says something about the power and life of an illustration despite the words that it's tied to. A good lesson about something we sometimes think of as conversely subservient or self serving. That, or they could just be pretty pictures.

Near Art Part 1

2008-10-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

I have decided to post the Near Art comics on my blog. If anyone feels like commenting on then please do. I will also be annotating them a bit. I will however refrain from posting the most current strip until after it has run in City Arts magazine. So this will be sort of like the directors cut! So, "Shall we play a game?"
In NA 1 we meet the main players all three in fact. Amanda, Stan and our Protagonist.
Some of the events in the strip are real, no lie. I do remember a panel discussion hosted by Fantagraphics that featured Robert Crumb, Burne Hogarth, and Jamie Hernandez and possibly Gilbert also. There was a party afterword somewhere. Crumb and Hogarth had very opposing views on dealing with editors and what goes into a comic. It was a lively night.
When I use the term Pop Comic, I use it in the same sense as Pop Music. Light frothy, nothing serious. Clean and well produced. I have a lot of influences in this strip but most obvious may be the Rock Hudson/Doris Day kind of romantic comedies I used to watch on afternoon TV. Man, I hope this strip is funny! Another is Serge Clerc. The colors are at this point very clean and bright, but as I get into the strip I find I want to push the limits I have set for myself in service of the story.
I felt the first strip went by to fast, to condensed. So in the next strip I expanded somewhat, to good effect I hope.
Anyway, read, enjoy and let me know what you think.

A rose is a rose.

2008-10-21T10:42:00.001-07:00

We name everything, from our genitals to our gods. A name helps us deal with the hidden, minor or otherwise hard to explain traits of what we name. Over time I have gotten into the habit of naming illustrations. Particularly any work that requires Character Design. I tend to name them after people I know, have met, or know something about. The name helps me fill in the small bits that flesh out a character, make it fun and give it the undefinable details that, I hope make it a bit special. The characters, once named, seem to me to take on life. Ideas for hairstyles, accessories, poses and colors seem to come faster and make more sense. Oddly, even clients react to the names, responding to them like they were real people. In high school people would just stare at characters I drew without names. Now, with names, clients comment, make requests, the floodgates open up.
Rarely do I pick a person first, then base the character on them. (the exception being when I "cast" a comic book.) However, I do make exceptions, for me very rarely, and sometimes if the client has a special request.
It's always fun to create a character no matter what the use. These characters were for a McSoft project that I think never saw the light of day. Little avatars that you would be able to dress up like paper dolls and take shopping. Cute huh?

The named characters may reflect a part or perceived part of their namesake, but, as far as making a good illustration goes… "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Work product

2008-09-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

There is no real overarching theme to this post other than the question I get at times, "What have you been working on?" A lot of things. I used to worry that everything I did needed to have a distinct style. This has always been at odds with my love of illustration and all it's styles and opportunities and that I love to tailor each illustration to reflect a certain style, motif or vernacular. Hell, it can be fun just to switch tools! So, I stopped thinking in that limited way and it is very freeing.Others may still see my/a "style" in all this. If so that's fine. Two of my favorite artist's are Al Parker and Bernie Kriegstein, both know for a mean style switch up. So, hey that's fine company by me!

This is a page from a 30 page comic. All the art was done in Painter 9 at my record pace of 3 pages per day.
A web icon with active and inactive states.

Cartoony illustratioons for Washington State D.O.T. All vector.

This is a game card illustration. Straight up ink on Bristol board.

Big Boy Drawing!

2008-09-11T18:29:00.001-07:00

I should be here…as in the above pictures, of my relatively new drawing table. It's the Alvin:Ensign or Workcenter, I can't remember which. If you need to know email me. It's a really good table, and thanks to all the illustrators I asked about what table they had. Alvin has been a nice company to deal with. There is one bolt on the left leg/foot that won't thread completely, but DIZZAMN, the table is so heavy that it doesn't matter! The top moves with a hydraulic assist (suh-weeet!). It came to me all the way from Italy. I get romantic about that because I spent three weeks there hanging out in a castle in central Italy, driving an Alfa Romeo. These shots are of my cockpit after we remodeled earlier this Spring. I still get sentimental about my old oka table, sniff. But now I have a big boy drawing table!
By the way, one of my current crushing deadline is another story for Graphic Classics. A 30 page story and I'm turning around three pages per day. That sloshing sound is ME MIGHTY INKING BRUSH!!! Actually, I'm inking it in Painter. Another story I did the same way received a favorable mention from sequart.org
And I proudly quote,
"Moxon's Master", about a robotics experiment gone wrong, is one of the best-looking stories in the book. Stan Shaw's scribbly-yet-elegant line serves the darkness of this story well, but it's not difficult to predict what's coming
Yeah! scribbly yet elegant! That's how me roll! Now it's back to work.

Near Art #2

2008-08-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

Near Art part 2 is out now and I just delivered part 3 to City Arts!

Top Secret Illustration

2008-08-04T23:18:00.001-07:00

Well, this is not a secret illustration, just one of two editorial pieces this week. However this is what it looks like saved as a pdf, with Illy Editing capabilities turned off, out of Illustrator CS3, then selected. Kind cool! Okay back to work.
Live fast, draw hard.

VROOM!!

2008-07-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

Today was a good day. I got to sit at my Big Boy drawing table and draw these! Theses are sketches for a web icon, actually more like an animated widget, that I will complete as vector art. Three versions here, with all my little scribbly notes to the designer. Rough work has it's own appeal that the final doesn't.
"live fast, draw hard."

Makin' bank

2008-07-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Things have been busy here. Two houses to work on and one to paint, playing with my new 3000 psi pressure washer!
Meanwhile over at my blog… Right now I'm working on a series of bank illustrations.
Yes me doing illustrations for a financial institution. There are six total. Originally the client wanted to match a painted style with something they would initially use on their new website and possibly later for print/collateral uses. I knew that vector art would work well for web use, and allow for scalability, but how to match, or get close to a painted look/feel for print? Texture and lots of it! I have been slowly building a folder of custom patterns and textures to use in P-shop and Sillly-strator. The one I'm using in this series is something worked up from a scan of one of my airbrush illustrations. I used it like an old stacked screen. (Anyone out there remember those? Buller, Buller…?) the texture is on two layers, one set to normal at about 40 opacity and the other set to multiply at about 20 opacity. And like a stacked screen they're angled to offset. This way the texture builds up a more random look and works over the entire value scale. The shapes are very simple, that's more in keeping with what the client wanted stylistically, but each shape may have the fill and stroke set to different opacities. All in all, the Transparency palette and I are quite friendly now.

The illustrations will be used very small and have the potential to be very big, so I wanted to give the client art that would work at both ends of the scale. Conceptually it's a cake walk, but technically?… there's where the work is.

I also decided to have a common background and cloud motif for all the illustrations. Their previous set did not have much in common at all. I was going to have the background be the same color in all, but the designer thought that might be too repetitive. We'll see how the shape up on the website. Even though I have a Wacom all this was mostly mouse work. Parlor tricks!The"In-House-Art Director" really likes these illustrations and says so whenever she passes by my computer, and the client is happy. Well, and so am I. More so with all the technical stuff I was able to do and how I played with texture and transparency.

Near Art Part One

2008-05-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

Whew, the first part of my comic novella is out the door! What a long process it's been. A lot of tweaking, fine tuning, editing, course changing and grumbling from me as I had to be smart and give up on some inside jokes and plot elements that would only make any kind of sense to me. What remains is a better story with a clear plot that gets up and running in no time at all! Twelve pages is not that much to tell a long form story and to keep interest over a month between each is a lot to ask. I've done short comic stories ranging from 5 to 11 pages, and read at once it's a good read.
Page count and time aside my goal from the start was to do something different, hence a pop love story, confection, eye candy.

Of course I can never leave thing alone so I had to keep dumping in a lot of stuff and the whole thing took on a love story ala Philip K. Dick tone. Which would be nice if, again, I had the space and pages to set things up. We, the editor and I, had hoped to do a strip within a strip, a twist on reality, a mobius strip. See, it even takes a while to set up a bad pun about it!

I started by coming up with my (half baked) idea, then doing thumbnails. Visually driven, I wound up falling in love (no, no pun intended) with some ideas.
Bad cartoonist, no credit line!

Since this is the launch, I don't want to spoil it by giving too much away. The magazine described it as semi-autobiographical. I like to think of what the writer Denny Eichorn once told me. I had been illustration a few of his auto-bio comic stories and I asked him if they were true, he replied, "Well, they're true enough."

New City Arts comic novella

2008-05-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

My new comic is under way! City Arts magazine was so happy with the response to "The Flitcraft Parable" and the way it turned out that they asked me shortly after it was finished if I'd be interested in doing a 12 part story. They are increasing publication to go monthly and cover Seattle and Bellevue/Eastside as well as Tacoma. Who could resist. Cartoonist accepts offer, comedy ensues!
My first idea was to do another detective strip like Flitcraft, but a good friend of mine said,"You've done two, people know you for tat. You do another and you'll be BRANDED!" So I went the other way, and after months of working on ideas I finally came up with a romance story. Ahh, sweet love!
Of course that was just the start. Initially it was to be a sort of romance ala Philip K. Dick story, with a somewhat circular plot mimicking song structure (say wha!?)
Yeah, well, that was a thought. So over the course of developing the story characters disappeared, merged, split,grew and shrunk. I also fell into the trap of desperately holding onto bits of dialog. So back and forth with the editor, me, and my "In-House-Art Director", till me likkle head was in a whirl! But now the characters are set, all 12 parts outlined, the first strip is written and on the drawing board.
The title is "Near Art", which oddly enough is part of a line of dialog that was pried from my cold dead hands (how to really mangle a metaphor!). It was used as sort of a joke placeholder and has really taken on a greater value and added more meaning to the strip.
So this is the first bit. I plan to post more "Near Art" art in the future.

Granted

2008-04-30T18:25:00.001-07:00

Well, after two remodeled houses, a rough Holiday season, a much needed vacation and a glut of work I'm back to posting.
This is an illustration of Alejandro Escavedo. It's my final piece for No Depression magazine. They closed up shop this month, the last issue. I've known the editor, Grant Alden for years. Just about since the beginning of my career. This illustration is, in many ways, much or more about him and the magazine we met on, The Rocket.
The textures of the illo for me hark back to our Rocket days and the over all treatment, I hope, evokes some of the Seattle punk rock era. Pre-Grunge, mind you.
The overall treatment speaks to what I was doing then, not only for Grant at the Rocket, but alongside him. He started type setting then moved to writing and editing. Whenever I stopped by "The Rocket Towers", I would hang with him and whomever was art director or assistant art director. Later, Grant, as Managing Editor, would ask me to create a comic strip ("Alan Bland, Guerrilla Artist")for the Rocket.
If memory serves, he also had me do one of my first illustrations for the Rocket of Camper Van Beethoven. Years later, as editor/art director of No Depression, he asked me to create a six page comic for Camper Van Beethoven's reunion album. Grant is also an illustrator of no small skill. (He's an all-a-rounder, a triple threat!) His eye for illustration, design and type (whew!) made working with him, or just being asked to work with him a joy and an honor. I have done some of my best work for No Depression. I will always look forward to working with him.

"Thor" Energy Biz Magazine

2008-01-11T16:33:00.000-08:00

Yawn, sleepy me.
Since I have noticed a lack of updates on my favorite blogs, I knew it was time for me to post something. This was part of the very merry month of December's screamin honkin' stinkin' busy workload. The assignment was a cover, later the A.D. asked for
a full page illus to go with the cover. So being the page hog that I am I came up with a two page spread. The concept springs from the idea of Danish wind power. Thor being the mythological god of storms and wind. The A.D. wanted a bold comic booky feel. I would have airbrushed it to get a moody textural black and white image that I would then color digitally. However due to time limitations I did the base art in Illustrator and added some effects and color in Photoshop, then taking to the Wacom and adding a few lines by hand. THE OLD FASHIONED WAY! Anyway the texture is one I created from scanned airbrush art. A trick I will use on an upcoming series of illustrations for a bank. I'm not overly fond of the windmill in place of Mjolnir. I wanted the hammer itself, but, to paraphrase, "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets." Is that paraphrasing? In the end I would have liked even more texture and moodiness, however I had to leave space for type to appear over the illustration.
If all goes well I will post the bank illustrations as the adjunct textural experiment to Thor, and by the way the "Flitcraft Parable", for which I used a rough newsprint texture.

Live fast, draw hard.

Flitcraft Comes Alive!

2008-01-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

Okay slight pun with the title. But, "The Flitcrfat Parable" is out in the Jan/Feb issue of City Arts Magazine. Check it out if you can and let me know what you think. A blog like mine is like mine is like a message in a bottle. Oooh, another bad musical reference.

The Flitcrfat Parable: Sam Spade, a rather pleasant blond Satan.

2007-11-28T00:44:00.000-08:00

The Flitcraft Parable is done, completed! My wife (a designer by trade, the "In House Art Director")made a few last minute lettering changes, corrections, and gave me some art direction. So in a few working hours the finished five pages plus cover illustration will be in the clients hands, or server. Since I've posted a fair amount of the stuff I'll wait and let City Arts magazine publish the story before I post anymore of the final art. It should pub sometime in January. In the meantime here is a rough color test I did over the final inks of a close up of Sam Spade. I tried to stay as close to Hammett's description of him.

"Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose,...He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan"

Live Fast, draw hard.

The Flitcraft Parable: Layouts

2007-11-10T13:08:00.000-08:00

TFP is coming along great. Here is the first page with the title in place. Spade is based on the description in the novel, and Brigid is based on Louise Brooks, NOT what's her name in "Chicago"!

This is how I'm working the tight pencils in place of the roughs. I'll print these out onto bristol board after placing the type in Illustrator, and ink on the prints.
Well that's what happens today…
Back to work.
Live fast, draw hard.

The Flitcraft Parable title lettering

2007-11-05T20:56:00.000-08:00

Here it is. The main titling that will open the story. I wanted it to evoke the era but be a bit modern. I have changed most of the narrative to dialog and stayed close to the original era of the late 1920s into the 1930s. Layouts are done but I have to have the "In-House-Art Director" take a look at them before they go any further. Meanwhile, I'm chugging away on three other assignments. Live fast, draw hard!

The Flitcraft Prable!

2007-10-21T13:29:00.000-07:00

Lets start at the beginning, sort of. The Flicraft Parable is the tale that Sam Spade tells Brigid O'Shaugnessey in "The Maltese falcon" written By Dashiell Hammett. The parable appears in the first part of the Chapter "G on the air" just before Joel Ciaro, Brigid and Spade all meet in Spade's apartment. It's an interesting little tale that appears to have nothing to do with anything, that involves a Charles Fltcraft from Tacoma WA, who vanishes one day on his way to lunch. I won't go into too much about the story other than the more you know about it, Spade and Hammett, the more layers it seems to have. Although the simplest answer is most likely the best.
So, flash forward to a few weeks ago, I was contacted by City Arts magazine to illustrate the parable! Okay, I'll cop (no pun intended) to being a huge Hammett fan, and the fact that we both live/lived in Tacoma is another huge plus. The editor, Jefferey, was more than kind to pay my normal rate and let me expand the tale from 4 pages to 5, plus a cover illustration of Hammett.
So we were of to the races, kind of. My first instinct was to do a slavish adaptation, word for word taking every detail that Hammett put down and drawing that and only that.
Jeffrey, calmly let me know that I may want to really adapt the story. After three wimpy attempts at layouts for the pages, I finally took his advice. Some of the best adaptations are just that, adaptations, taking advantage of what the new medium has to offer and working the story so that you get the basics, the and best. Now I was free! Narration became dialog, Flitcraft became a speaking character, and the sexual…tension between Spade and Brigid became a visual, physical thing. Also the art moved from my wanting it to look old to being new, and having the same tough, noir feel that the book and film have.
My initial layouts sucked!. They gave me a good feel for how the story should break down, but they struck me as uninspired, dull and less than worthy of the story. By un-tethering myself from slavish adaptation, I found ways to express (in the layouts) the tension between the characters and the somewhat surreal nature of a story within a story within a story!
the images above are my tests for art style, inks adjusted and colored in Painter and Photoshop,and my first sucky attempt layouts. Right now I'm changing more narration to dialog and doing more layouts.It's happening fast, I'll do my best to keep the posts coming.

Three Months at McSoft with images!

2007-10-18T14:52:00.001-07:00

Finally I can show what I did while at Microsoft. I consider these "Image design" and not so much illustration because there were things to consider and, approaches to, the visual that were outside the normal realm of illustration and somewhat in the realm of design. There was even a little consideration to user interface.

The first two are images for Prom. One shows the main art stripped and the other with most of the type and modules in place. We also worked the modules, some more elaborate than others, active and inactive, selected and various states of the links and type. Yee ha!

Next is Superbowl Party. I like the theme, but anyone that knows me, knows I am not a sports fan.

Moving along to Valentine theme. This stripped main art was a fun trick. My starting point was the title graphic for "I love Lucy", which I think was a heart on satin. I created a satin background. This is not a photo. All the work we did had to be free of all rights restrictions. No stock art or illustration. (also no words or language, international market you know.) And I never did anything in my own style(s).
The velvet was total CGI. So for all you lovers out there if you need that satin feeling, give me a call. I'll post more themes later. You can go to Windows Live Events create an event, and see all the themes.

"Out in the West"

2007-08-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

These are four pages from a comic book short,"Out in the West" I did for Dark Horse Comics. The art is all black and white airbrush. I wanted it to have a Howard Hawks/John Houston feel to it. There are references to a lot of Western stories, some fiction and some fact in it, which prompted one critic to refer to it as a "Western fairy tale". However the title is a tip of the Stetson to "ElPaso" by Marty Robbins. The other four pages include a page that mirrors the one here of the Sherrif that features a outlaw who is more in the spaghetti western mode. If anyone would like to see the entire story, I'll scan the other four pages and post them. When he saw the rough sketches I was doing for this Chris Warner wanted to title it, "Slap leather!"

Flaming Summer Nights!

2007-06-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

I did this illustration a while ago for Seattle Magazine. The story was about a writers memories of summer camp in the islands of Puget Sound. In the good ol' days you could do whatever you wanted in an editorial piece. In this one I have kid running with flaming sugar torches! More commomnly reffered to as roasted marshmallows. Is it just me or does anyone else kind of see the similarity between a marshmallow on fire and napalm? Both kinda sticky and hard to put out. Great thingfor kids to have while running around I thought. I hope this sort of captured that fun(?) Lord of the Flies vibe.
Live fast, draw hard.

Playing the hand delt.

2007-06-14T00:19:00.000-07:00

Needed to post and needed to sketch, something! Came up with this idea while doing yoga. It's for the words "Suit" and "Pencil" as part of my first posts to Illustration Friday, and Sugar Frosted Goodness.

Gene Autry finish

2007-05-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm posting this even though I'm not completely happy with it. I think it turned out fine, just not what I had in mind. Sometimes, if I don't have a clear vision of what I want to see, the illustration gets away from me. In this case it looked best as a piece of line art, it's first incarnation. I was thinking of finishing it in airbrush then adding color digitally, but second guessed myself into trying to complete it all digitally. Top it off with some unseen drawing boo- boos and there you have it. A lot of hustle on the back end to make it work. It does get across the message/felling I wanted, that of a more wolfish Autry, but what I see is all the correcting I had to do and the illustration it could have been.
I think any creative goes through this. We see not what we have created, but what we didn't create. A wonderful illustrator by the name of Fred Pfiffer went through this at the end of his life. Not to worry, I plan to be around to make many more boo boos like this.
Live Fast, draw hard.

Flash up

2007-05-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

This is my first Animation.

Das Boot Illustrations

2007-03-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

These are the rest of the samples that I did for a boot company. Not a real gig, but I liked them enough to want to show them. Not quite portfolio ready, but in this informal blogosphere they fit.

I looked at a lot of different boot designs to get an idea of what was being done, and then let myself play. Most of these ideas started out as visual puns. Water, fire, running and flying… I tried to be playful and have fun. I know I had fun, so I wanted to share.

Mavis Staples: The Gospel Finish

2007-03-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

Here it is, the finished Mavis Staples Illustration. I had some problems wit the values, I'm a bit rusty with the airbrush. So by way of practice, I will be doing the Gene Autry illo with airbrush. I think this is close to the feel I wanted, the power seeming to both come from and to the figure. The faint glow around the figure ads a touch of the Divine in an old poster sort of way. The glow, colors and texture, I hope, have somewhat of an old Southern feel. Not too old I think but, I hope it takes you back to the 60s, and the A men corner.

Mavis Staples: Cutting frisket

2007-03-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

At this point, cutting frisket, I try to keep in mind not to clutter things up with cutting a lot of shapes that will need to be sprayed. Keeping it simple and value areas few so the piece holds together instead of looking like a jumble of cut outs. Also it really focuses the concept. I want the illustration to be strong, simple and poster-like. Also I think about texture while I'm cutting, should I use pressure or spray-thrus, and what that will add or distract.
Live fast, draw hard.

Draw Fast!

2007-03-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

Ha! Here is a boot I designed for a well, boot company as a sample pitch. I was asked o submit samples for their kids boots and I did this. My thinking was, what kind of boot would I want to wear if I was a kid, in the rain, running and splashing, and jumping not quite over big deep puddles. Man, if they ever make this boot I will get a pair. Once the idea was there it took me about 30 minutes to do the vector art. With a neat work-around to get the thick key line, for the extra cool big water repellent look.
I'll post the rest of the samples later today.
Live fast, draw hard.

Gene Autry Editorial Illustration: Back in the saddle again.

2007-03-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, as part of teaching by example, I kept every rough thumbnail and every sketch I did for every assignment for an entire year. It's bound into a nice 2 inch book that was a great teaching tool, and part of an exhibit of my work. Keeping my roughs made me more aware of what I was putting down and what I did at that early stage. Not to mention, force me into coming up with more than one good, usable idea. The notion that I would be keeping them lead me to take more time and care in drawing them, so they even look nicer.
I'm keeping this in mi ind with Gene Autry. I have heard two schools of thought on the number of concepts. A) After years of experience, you usually get it right the first time, so one is enough and you refine that along way.
B) The more the better. Anyone can come up with one good idea, a true pro can come up with more.
Well, sad me, I always get a bit rusty if I haven't done an editorial piece in a while and it's been a while. Seems like I have one idea. I like it, but it's only one. A tight close up of bad boy Autry in a dramatic composition that throws attention to his face. His face that has a cock-eyed grin. The article talks about the early, rougher, bluer side of Autry, different from the singing cowboy we all know and love. I had hoped to come up with more concepts. I have some flexible time coming up this weekend, so I may sit down again and give it a whirl.

Mavis Staples: The Gospel Illustration

2007-03-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Much time has been spent, lately, doing illustrations that I can't show because of NDA or corporate stuff. What I can show is this, an in progress of Mavis Staples for No Depression Magazine. This is fun, after many months I'm back to the black and white airbrush. Simple and clean, well okay not clean.
The big thing about this piece is that I have given in to the impulse to not do a close up of a singer. The idea I had was more about Mavis in context of what she's singing on her new cd (Gospel and Civil Rights era songs), and how she sings, with much power and emotion. So my idea shows her as a singer and as a conduit of a higher power. A bolt of lightin' from the Lord, or is she exploding with power herself? That's what I wanted to get to. Power, but from which direction, or both? Also, I'm still working through my love of Aaron Douglas.
At this stage (sketched, scanned, and value study done, I'm about to cut frisket today!)the illustration is free of cluttering detail, I'd like to keep it that way. My temptation is to ad bits of line swirling through describing stuff that may be clear enough anyway.

Also today will be concept work on an illustration of Gene Autry. After reading the article there is good reason to not show/refer to him in the Gentleman Cowboy manner.

A blog is a dog

2007-02-26T13:12:00.000-08:00

Most of the work I've done lately has been for big companies, Microsoft, Hasbro, Wizards… not that I'm complaining! The work has been been fun, financially rewarding and in various ways a creative or artistic challenge. The down side is that I have to wait for approval or until the project is "live" before I can post anything on my blog.
So what can I post? How about this. This is a small spot illustration done for Washington law and Politics for an article about a bill that would allow pets into bars. I inadvertently made this screen shot. The concept owes a lot to cartoons of the 50s and 60s and the fact that I was wanting to play in Illustrator for a bit. The concept isn't very strong but it's a bit of an exercises for me as far as color goes. (see my previous post about using every
color!)

Three months at McSoft Part One

2007-02-16T16:36:00.001-08:00

So, where did I go for those few months late last year? It's all a bit TOP SECRET. After a dreadfully slow period that followed my annual Spring teaching stint, I wound up with a contract position at Microsoft. What I was working on should be released soon, so I think I can talk a bit about my experience, which was pretty good. This post hopefully will reappear once the project is launched and I can show the art completed.

HOME AWAY FROM HOME
The first thing I encountered at Microsoft was that the department I worked in wasn't set up the same as my home studio. Go figure. At home I have my iMac, Wacom, scanner, printer, and second monitor, a drawing table, light table, big ol’ work table. Plenty of sloppy conventional art/illustration materials. Things such as ink, paint, pencils pens and brushes. Not too mention my library. (I have way too many books to just say "books".) No such thing there in the Customer Design Center, CDC for short (or Center for Disease Control as my wife called it). They had a scanner, (in another area) and they sprung for Wacom tablets for myself and the other Illustrator/designer working on the project. As one would guess I had to work on a PC. So, most of the day I sat at my desk with just a couple of sketch books, the Wacom and “Dell the Funky PC" (my pet name for the Dell computer).

DRAWING IN THIN AIR
I was aware that some illustrators sketch directly with the tablet. I had never done that because I thought it would be much more difficult to actually start art on the tablet. There's a big difference between sketching on paper and on a tablet. I quickly had to overcome that, or face lugging the scanner across the department every time I wanted to scan something. I made a special Photoshop brush with eraser settings that looked and acted like a nice soft pencil. WOW, it’s fun. Forced to use the Graphire tablet exclusively, I came to really love, and appreciate it. I realised that I had yet to touch on all the things I could do with the Graphire more so even with my Intuos at home. I used layers like tracing paper. Revising a sketch, making alterations and such until I was happy. You can’t really turn the tablet like paper (Okay not in P-Shop, but you can in Painter and that makes inking, say a "Daredevil" comic page, a blast! But that's another post!) but you get over that once you get into what you’re drawing and focus on making a picture. The hypnotic lure of drawing!

PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE
Freelancers work alone, very alone. At Microsoft, I worked with a lot of people. Oddly enough, because of where my desk was, my back was to most of them. After years of not interacting with people I felt like an oddity. It was hard for me to start talking and just as hard to stop once I got started! I tend to put my head down and work like a hamster in a ball, pushing through to the deadline, which was 4PM, when my vanpool came to get me for the hour long commute home. (Tacoma to Redmond and back again). I confess to not being the most socially adept person and I have long thought it a failing of mine not to be a sparkling conversationalist. I admit to erring on the side of "stoic worker bee" mentality. But being in that context, talking with people, listening to people and making idle chit chat around the "water cooler" and trying to take lunch it was a very good thing for me as a person.
When I first entered the CDC, I noticed it was very quite, and a lot of people had headphones. I thought they were listening to something having to do with work. Silly me, they were playing music. I quickly logged on to Pandora and set up my SnoopDogg, Propellerheads Big Audio Dynamite, Prez Prado and Louis Prima stations.

GO TEAM
There were two other illustrators on the project. One was moved onto another assignment and the other illustrator, Karen Kirchhoff, and I finished the bulk of the themes. We had weekly meetings with the UI designer, Cinthya, (who is Japanese but has a heavy Spanish accent, 'cause she's from Peru. It threw me a bit, but in my case most people don't expect to see a "pro basketball player" when they look for an illustrator, or one that sounds like Kermit the Frog for that matter. Whatever…)
Karen has a different approach than I do and it was eye opening to see her solutions to some of the same assignments I was doing. I learned a lot about my work and what I needed to do, from the meetings with Karen and Cinthya. For one thing I didn't need to use every color! Karen's work is more thoughtful and, gulp, more "artistic" than mine, which tends to be like a hammer on china. There was one person I had known previously who was in the department, Marty. He's great and was invaluable in making me feel like part of the department and answering technical questions and questions about "campus life" at McSoft. Others around me were Greg; who is uncannily like my good friend Jesse Reyes, Jennifer; who has a keen eye for illustration and some really cool ideas about UI, Francie; the only other person as quite as me, Chris; who is a sarcastic hoot and half and got there almost as early as me, 7AM! And lastly, the guy who showed me how to refill the coffee maker. Ah the coffee machine, it was an old Farmer's Brother machine that was later replaced by a spankin' new Starbuck's one-touch-instant-robo-brew-by-the-cup-thing, that made all manner of hot drinks. All the drinks were free, and one day there was an ice cream truck, well more like a motorcycle with a side car, that came around with free ice cream. Another day when I arrived at 7AM, they had placed a espresso stand in the lobby and all the espressos were free, all morning! After years running upstairs at home to reheat my coffee, I felt I had died and gone to double mocha heaven!

I SENSE A THEME HERE…
When they hired me they wanted an illustrator to make pictures. What I actually did bordered more on design. We (Karen, J.D. and myself) built themes. For a lot of reasons we had to be original but not obtuse, not create all the art in any one style. Since I was working for the MAN, I certainly didn't want to use/give away my own style. Not everything was strictly illustration. I did a lot of illustration but also a lot of design and iconography. None of it with type. All of the work is unrecognizable as mine even the illustrations I did complete. As I learned more about patterns and the technical limits we had for cutting assets, I began to experiment more and had a great time pushing the boundaries of what we could do. Also got deep into working with both Photoshop and Illustrator side by side, back and forth.

I would start my day with about two or three themes that I wanted to get done to stay on schedule. In my sketchbook I would do a few very rough thumbnail ideas and make notes as to what I wanted to see and any stylistic riffing I could do. Then it was onto the web to find reference.

We kept in our minds that anything we did had to be very clear of any sort of copyright infringement. I would even go with something I though wasn't as good if it was at least original. After that, about 8AM, I would start sketching with the Wacom for the main image or pattern tile to be used in the background or header bar (go to spaces.com to see what I'm talking about.) By the time Greg got in I'd normally have the image about half done, or at least looking good. Once the main image was done I could use that to set my color palette. Before lunch I would start sketching for the second theme of the day, being warmed up, full of coffee and all. After Lunch I would begin the modules and create any tillable images or single image if needed. Most of these were better in the idea stage than in reality. We had severe size limits and that with resolution made small images almost a waste. Near the end of the day I would be developing color ways for the type, selected and unselected, apply those and double check for legibility. Legibility was a big issue for me since my color sense was so, um…freakin' aggressive! Sometimes they were too harsh and other times all a bucket of mud. Karen's work was a beacon of tastefulness and Cinthya was good at pointing out what needed to be changed, nice art direction. At the end of the day I would save the file and pick two more for the next day. Given time, both Karen and I got into the habit of creating several different versions of each theme for client approval. Sometimes we had four versions for a single theme. Once I had two solutions with a couple of versions on each! Got to be kind of fun. Most often they picked the first versions anyway, such is life…

DO WHATCH LIKE
Creatively we were left alone. At first we were given a list, with some partially completed by the previous illustrator, J.D. Then Karen added to the list and the I added to the list! Shortly after I arrived J.D. was pulled of the themes and onto something else. For a week I worked just to streamline the template we had and get a handle on the technical constraints since the process had not been fully tested. Once I had the template file cleaned up and stripped down, it was time to get busy. Being the illustration fool that I am and given that they didn't want any particular style it was a blessing to go romping through the history of design and illustration. I love to do research and so I allowed myself the luxury of going deep. It might not be readily apparent to the casual viewer, but I like to think good research is what makes the image rich and appealing and supports all the creative decisions along the way to a successful graphic.

Recently I looked back over my 13 sketchbooks that cover more that 13 years. I was struck by the swing from style to style, medium to medium that is there, and not in my paid/published/commissioned work. Each page was a small experiment, a small adventure that lasts anywhere from a few minute to s few days depending on how long it takes to complete the page. In a way, each theme was the same. My range is something that few art directors have seen or expect from me.

For three months I didn't have the usual freelancer concerns of looking for work! That and free coffee!
Before I end this I'll answer the one question I get asked most. Yes, I did see Bill Gates, up close! I was getting into the Vanpool van there was a car next to it. Two guys got out of the front and walked past me, a third got out of the back and started to put his jacket on. I was about 10 feet away from him. I was going to say hi because I thought," He looks familiar, I think I know him." It was Bill. We nodded and I got into the van. As we were leaving, the traffic was bad, and one of the other riders, Beth, said it was all Bill's fault (Bill was also the name of the van driver) I said ," Yeah I just passed him."
"Bill's driving." she replied, "what do you mean?"
"No, Bill Gates." I said.
"Where?"
"He was going into the building."
And I was on my way home.

Well, that's about all I can say for now, the rest is TOP SECRET, so you'll have to wait until Part Two. Next post will be about something I can show!

Live fast, draw hard.

Three months at McSoft Part Zero

2007-02-01T14:28:00.000-08:00

Sorry to say that I have been informed that since the work I did at McSoft has not yet gone "live" I can't post any of it. After some review I may post the written portion again.
Thanks.

"Blade of the Immortal Pin Up", Part whatever!

2006-06-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

Finally, the "Blade of the Immortal" pin up is done. This is a prime example of what I like to call being an Illustration hog. The back cover art of four consecutive issues of the Dark Horse manga this Summer starting with issue #117!

I had several goals with this piece, most of which were met. The leaves are close to what I wanted and each section has a slightly different feel to the coloring. My original intent was to stay loose and, if I had the chance, to work in Painter. Alas, I had to finish this in P-Shop. Looking at it now I wish the leaves had morphed into snowflakes so as to emphasize the seasonal part of the concept.

Illustration Class Final Assignment

2006-04-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Portrait of someone famous or yourself, no fictional characters. The size is 9 by 12 inches, horizontal or vertical. The illustration is full color, which as most of my students know means any color, in any combination or limitation.

So, to the meat of the matter …
I challenge you to create a portrait of this person without using a likeness. Can you show me who this person is without a likeness? So, you may or may not use their face. In any event the viewer, me, should learn something about the subject that is not common knowledge, or learn something new about the person more than the obvious. No singers with microphones! I further challenge you to use symbols and objects to create or suggest an essence of the subject and add to the understanding of the illustration.
The final presentation must include, the name of the subject, pertinent and relevant facts.
Along with the final art include your roughs and sketches. There is no deadline for roughs or sketches this time, but I encourage you to submit them for critique, as you would for an art director to review.
Finished art is due by the last day of class during finals week, or anytime before.
Live fast, draw hard.

Petite experiments.

2006-04-06T17:26:00.000-07:00

I've been looking back over a lot of my work lately. Sometimes depressing sometimes invigorating.

Looking over work, you notice the little changes that mark tuning points in your illustration. Sometimes visible only to the artist or a tuned in art director. These petite experiments can appear small but may have large repercussions.

My experiments have been with collage. An effect that I have incorporated, using what I have learned in Photoshop. Also not being a bull headed neo-Luddite. Just kidding.

My in-house Art Director has been after me to experiment with collage for a while now, and recently suggested that I do so to bring in more texture. I admit I was reluctant, since to MY eyes, the airbrush work had plenty of nice texture as it was. But I thought better, and decided to experiment.

The first experiment was in the illustration of Bluegrass singer, Alicia Nugent. I brought in a texture, the embossed leather pattern, that was added specifically to focus and enhance the concept. The color was a "happy accident".

In the illustration of singer Cassandra Wilson I wanted storm clouds and had planned to airbrush them. But I HATE my clouds, I'm never happy with them. So I decided to get good photo reference. The reference looked so good I thought, why not just place it over the tonal area. So I did. I had to actually use two masked layers to get the look I wanted.

Both uses of collage in each illustration were relatively small and insignificant…to most everyone but me, and my In-house Art Director. The petite experiments worked, I liked the results and the journey along the way. Definitely invigorating and fun.
I'm sure I'll do more petite experiments.

Live fast, draw hard.

The Rules of Art Direction

2006-02-10T11:24:00.000-08:00

A while ago, when I started teaching Illustration, I realized that while some of my students wanted to become illustrators, others were planning on going into design. I also realized how at times younger art directors, and a few older, seemed at a loss as to how to direct art and work with illustrators. In school you’re taught to be an illustrator or designer, but not how to work with one another. So, I asked a few art directors I knew, who worked well with Illustrators, if they had any rules for art direction. What follows are their answers.

I plan to expand on this and collect as many rules as I can from other art directors and illustrators. If you have any comments about this post, or rules of your own, feel free to chime in.

The relationship between the art director and illustrator can make or break both the design and the illustration. It’s a living thing that holds the potential to create great work. It’s a part of the business that seems to get little attention in schools and in real life. I think we can change that.

Live fast, draw hard.

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Florian Bachleda
Vibe Magazine

Well, a lot of it depends on who the illustrator is. In many ways I’ve always considered the AD/Illustrator relationship to be like that of the film director and actor. If you’re a good director, you tailor how you deal with the illustrator, depending on their talent, temperament and strengths. Overall the director should point where he or she wants to go and what solution needs to be solved, then leave the rest to the illustrator. Here’s point A and point B, take me there. If you don’t trust your Illustrator, you shouldn’t have picked them. This is assuming there is not an overbearing editor somewhere who can ruin the process entirely—no matter how good the AD and Illustrator are.

Half the battle is choosing the right Illustrator- and not always the most obvious- for the assignment. At New York Magazine, Bob always had us choose an illustrator that didn’t automatically come to mind. For example, we would have Steve Brodner do concept illos, and Sue Coe do likenesses. Again, The editor is the most important factor here—if they’re brave enough and trust their AD to work like this.

An illustrator should never, ever call up an art director and ask him or her for information such as the address of the magazine, the spelling of the art director’s name, who else is in the department, etc. Basically, any information the illustrator can get on their own from some basic research (picking up the magazine and looking at the masthead, address, etc,) It may sound snooty, but to me it says this illustrator is unprepared.

----------------------------------------
Katherine Topaz
Topaz Design

1. Don’t assume anything. Be clear. Use speciﬁc language, i.e. don’t say "Okay, you want it to look 'hip', " say, “Okay, when you say hip you mean like…”

2. Sometimes art directors have no clue what they want and they want you the illustrator to come up with something, but art directors usually have something in mind. Make sure you understand which is the case. If the art director wants you to come up with the concept, make sure that is clear what they are asking for, because obviously you are more vulnerable for the amount of alterations needed. If the art director knows what he wants, then, listen, ask questions, be clear and speciﬁc.

3. Art directors want to give criticism. Make them feel comfortable by not being defensive. The more the art director feels comfortable, the more the art director will give—which is good, because the more they talk, the more speciﬁc and clear they are, and the happier you are with the end result. The easier the process is, and the more comfortable the art directors are with the process the more they want to use you again—or recommend you.

4. Don’t assume art directors know all of your styles if you have multiple styles. Send samples. When art directors talk about “your style” make sure sure you know which “style” they are talking about. Many art directors think of illustrators as having one style, the one the art director is familiar with. Thusly they expect that style when they assign work. The art director might not assign other projects because he doesn't know the illustrator can do that style. On the other hand, the art director won’t assign a project because he knows the illustrator will try to “talk them into” their other style which the art director may not like.

5. Remember the art director is more aware than you of internal politics. For example: if the editor likes or hates illustrations. Sometimes this means the art director knows what types of illustrations can be used in order to get more in the future. Or what styles/elements/ colors set the owner/client off. See #1.

6. Don’t assume they don’t like your work because they haven’t used you. It might be a situation where they’re waiting and hoping, months (and yes, years) might go by. Make sure you continue to send samples and keep your contact number, email and address information current.

7. Do not bother them. Again, you have no clue what’s going on at their end. So contact them in non-threatening ways. E-mail is good. You can call, but be aware of their deadlines, press days, etc.

-------------------------------
Bob Newman,
Fortune

It’s funny, because my only philosophy is to call the right people, people I like and like working with, and give them as much freedom as possible. If there’s anything I can say that works best from my end is that an art director be as clear as possible about what’s wanted stylistically and content-wise. I try to give some direction in terms of the illustrator’s style, especially if they have multiple approaches (which many do). I also try to suggest they send a few sketches…I usually say, “Do your thing, send whatever you want for sketches, but also do something relatively straight-forward for the editor.” It’s great for me to get a few options, let the illustrator stretch out, but also have something safe. The other thing I try to do is let them know when the illustration really needs to ﬁt the design of the page: it needs a background, it should be a silhouette, the size and shape really matters. And on the flip side, when the page is more free-form, I like to tell them, let me know what shape works best for you. I always try to think out trouble spots ahead of time, and really work hard to ﬁnd an illustrator who is just perfect for the assignment.

I think it’s important to let illustrators know that they should be realistic about their talents and skills and who they approach for work. I see a lot of illustrator books that are sent to a magazine that would never publish work in their style. Also, a lot of illustrators rush out and show their book to people way too early, before they have skills and experience necessary to work for that magazine. The problem with this is that you may only get one chance to show or drop off your book somewhere, and it doesn’t help you if it’s not together. You’re better off hustling at smaller, less prestigious places where you might actually get work that can build up your book and your experience. Some tear sheets from The Village Voice or Guitar World are better than a rejection from Rolling Stone.

Art directors like to see illustrations with ideas, or style, or great caricatures. But most of all style. The most important thing for a young illustrator to work on are style, technique and ideas. The interesting thing is that all art directors have different approaches…some would rather see more style, others more ideas.

Nothing beats professionalism. Anyone who wants to get work as an illustrator needs the basics: email, message machine, fast reply to phone calls, fax, etc. From a practical point of view, it really helps to get gigs if you work digitally or can transmit your work digitally.

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Jesse Marinoff Reyes,
Penguin USA

1) What can I say? First off, I don’t mean to state the obvious (but I will anyway), is that art directors (ADs) and future ADs should always be clear with their illustrators. Too often, there is a lack of clarity which generally implies that the illustrator should “do their thing” but this lack of clarity may not mean this. It may merely mean that the AD is not a good communicator (despite egotistical leanings to the contrary). It could also mean that the AD is unsure of what’s expected by his superiors (and editor, or a publisher—or in my case—an author and the author’s agent). Because time is finite, clarity in instruction can prevent unnecessary delays and prevent misunderstanding.

ANECDOTE: I know this because I have been put in a position a number of times in the past to second-guess another AD when an illustrator pal gets confused at the 11th hour, when they can't contact their art director.

2) ADs need to have an air of authority in their presentation to the illustrator. If the illustrator doesn’t believe this, the deadline can become jeopardized by a careless illustrator and an AD who is too distracted to notice until it is too late. The criteria in #1 is helpful in this, but I would also add that the AD knows how much finite time exists between the submittal of art and the time it takes to design around it in time to make the press deadline. Sometimes illustrators have some leeway (as in formatted magazine pages) to turn in work closer to the printing deadline, but again, this discretion is up to the art director and no one else. The illustrator has to understand that part of their being contracted to work has to do with their ability to get the job done on time.

ANECDOTE: An illustrator I knew of became too comfortable with the amount of time allotted for revision, and came to believe that art directors gave “fake” deadlines. The deadlines were certainly not “fake,” but the illustrator made the mistake of arrogantly taking the time for himself without permission (turning in the artwork later than scheduled). The illustrator’s livelihood depends upon the level of trust that the AD has in him. Without that trust, there is no relationship—and no work.

3) The AD needs to know “what’s going on” in the art and design and illustration world. If an AD wants to work with certain illustrators, he needs to learn about them (if possible). Their style, their body of work, their reputation. The annuals are a good place to start, but only as a point of departure. Sometimes the best illustrators are not the folks you ﬁnd in award books. Does the AD’s body of work mean that to execute his particular vision at a particular workplace at a particular time mean that the AD needs to suss out his own brand of illustrator? Maybe he only wants to work with underground cartoonists, or classically-trained illustrator-painters. Maybe the one category was great for that AD's philosophy for the ﬁrst 5–8 years
of his career, but the next job demanded a different vision and he had to become familiar with the latter style and it’s adherents. Maybe it’s good to be AWARE period. Knowing what other art directors are doing is also helpful, but it can lead to “Flavor of the Month” syndrome—where everyone seems to be working with a particular guy all at the same time. Is this because that illustrator is “hot” ( I really hate that) or really because “everyone else is using him.” But does any of that mean the illustrator is any good or not? Gee whatever became of “so-and-so…”

ANECDOTE: This is especially useful in determining which illustrators are suited to a particular job. Or how illustrator “A” should be handled versus illustrator “B” on the same kind of job. For example, some illustrators are great conceptually. Some have superb design skills within an illustration context. Others have great style and technique, yet don’t want to have to think beyond a certain point whereas others thrive on the “stretching. Glenn Hilario is a good “stretcher.” He can place himself into a design context. Scott McDougall prefers to be told what he needs to do and what he’s being ﬁt into. It’s not that the one is superior to the other (sometimes you want somebody who just wants to take direction; sometimes you need all the help you can get), it’s just that knowing these differences can help in a particular context, solving a particular problem or set of problems.

4) It’s helped in my case that I’d spent time as an illustrator during my career. This is not an absolute requirement to be a good art director, but it helped in my case. I kinda knew if someone was begging for more time because he really needed it—or because he’d blown off the deadline until it was too late. At times former-sometime-illustrators can tend to impose their personal style preferences on an illustrator (I’ve seen this), in other words, use the illustrator as a “wrist.” I’d caution any future ADs with illustration backgrounds to have more respect for the actual talent doing the actual work. Let that background help the AD/illustrator relationship—not hinder it.

5) Be AWARE. Not as in criteria #3 per se with illustrators and their work, but culturally, socially, politically, historically. Read. Know about things. Being a cypher is ﬁne, but it can only take you so far in problem solving.

Let the illustrator BE who they are. What does this mean? part of the AD process is picking certain talent to solve certain problems. For example, if a collage artist is selected, it should be because of that artist’s ability to create an arresting image through collage—but some bad AD’s or “others” in the food chain will use that as an excuse to force the collagist to ﬁnd
every element of the story and cram it into the image (I’ve been in this unfortunate situation as an illustrator). Understanding that certain illustrators and/or certain styles are desired to solve a problem, it’s in the best interests of everyone concerned that the AD be sure about this approach—and then let the talent thrive in the situation. Knowing that Steve Cerio is great with counterculture imagery helps in just turning over those kinds of assignments to him, and letting him “do his thing.” This, of course, has a lot to do with criteria #1 above (clarity), but when you are sure of this then the process can become sublime. Contrarily, if you hire a Gary Panter to render an assignment better suited to Bernie Fuchs, then the result (and the political fallout) will not be pleasant for anyone concerned—and because the AD should’ve known better (and didn’t act or think), the relationship is soured. Sometimes this is because the AD is too embarrassed to contact the illustrator again after a bad experience, even if it’s not the “fault” of the illustrator.

"Blade of the Immortal" pin-up part two

2006-01-31T16:38:00.000-08:00

I didn’t mention that the arrows make a connection between Manji and Saint Sebastian because after reading “Blade of the Immortal” I felt there was a lot of suffering and sacrifice that Manji does as penance for his earlier actions.
In any event, these are my quick ink sketches. I have yet to use any reference other that what I did to get the basic pose.
Next I will post the underdrawing which is much more referenced.

"Blade of the Immortal" pin-up illustration

2006-01-24T23:14:00.000-08:00

My wife thought I’d be drawing scantily clad ladies when I mentioned I was doing a pin-up. Previously, I did this one for “Super Real” a comic book by Jason Martin.

These are my first steps to a pin-up for the manga, “Blade of The Immortal” by Hiroaki Samura and published by Dark Horse. Philip Simone, the editor, said I could do whatever I wanted. Hmmm… After reading a stack of the manga reprints I chose to go with the main character, Manji. Snatched up some samurai and Toshiro Mifune images and was off to the drawing board.

I liked the idea of Manji with arrows sticking out of him, like Saint Sebastian. However my initial roughs lacked the intensity I wanted. So, an angle change, tighter cropping and three roughs later, I had what I wanted.

I tried redrawing (always tricky) the rough to scale in my sketchbook but it missed the flow of the rough.

So I used my scale-o-graph to crop the rough to the correct scale and traced over it. From here, I will get needed photo reference and do a tighhter pencil sketch. However as a side step, before I get reference, I’ll pencil and ink the new rough to get a clear idea of where I want this illustration to go. All the while seeing how fast I can do this.

My drawing table

2005-12-27T18:12:00.000-08:00

Since before the time of Rockwell the camera has been a tentative partner and tool to the illustrator. This Christmas my wife and I bought a digital camera. Not that we have never had a camera before, but film was to involved for us. Ho the digital camera! Shoot it, love it, keep it. Shoot it, hate it, delete it! This is my drawing table top, uncovered and set up for inking. I write most of what I need to do on half size yellow pads, yes I love the Rotring sketch pens and Ticonderoga pencils.
The blue line drawing in the right is a copy of what I was inking. I currently listen to my iPod while drawing since my radio done gone busted.
The batarang is from the Limited Edition Batman Action figure that stands next to it’s Superman counterpart and a Green Lantern action Figure (Hal Jordan) and a Bob’s Big Boy.
This is just a rough description of the area used for conventional art that I call the cockpit.

Illustration roads not taken: Beth Orton

2005-12-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of times that, when the illustration is finished, you look at it and think of the things you should have done, could have done and wonder, “Did I do the right thing?” Even when you feel you have, there can be a bit of second guessing. Most artists and illustrators that are, in my opinion, critical of their own work and REALLY take stock of what they are doing, go through these feelings.

This illustration of Beth Orton was for No Depression Magazine. After some research, the concept for the illustration , done in my favorite limited color airbrush style, sprang almost fully formed into my head. The only part I wasn’t sure about was the hands, so I sketched them as a quick overlay on tracing paper. When I saw the hands as outlines over the face, ghostlike, there but not there, I though that was a nice way to show how Orton is somewhat shy, but still opinionated, strong and putting her powerful music in front of a lot of people.

So there it was, the dark dress, the close crop, pale skin with dark eyes. Somewhat mysterious, sexy with wispy ghostlike hands! Cool.
I finished the illustration without a hitch, adding the delicate line work being very careful to not do what I normally do and get heavy.

When I was done, my wife commented that I had lost some ethereal elegant quality that was in the sketch. This is always a a worry in illustration. I That in planning and preparing each stage, some spontaneous, wonderful element will be lost going from one step to the next.
I did some slight reworking to the final after a long bought of soul searching.

Then on good advice, I made two copies of the sketch and finished each differently, keeping in mind the felling and concept that drove the illustration in the first place. The result? Some not bad work, two pages done in my sketchbook, possible alternatives in style, and a glimpse at illustration alternatives that may come fully to life in another illustration.

Star Sisterz card illustrations

2005-11-07T16:59:00.000-08:00

In the LeeAnn Womack post I talked about Star Sisterz so I thought I would show some of them.

Star Sisterz is a collectable charm/card game. Each card describes an activity or task the the player has to complete to receive points or a charm. I’ve worked on three card sets. A total of 54 illustrations targeted for tween-age girls. When I started, the ideal image was Lizzie McGuire.

Illustrators were carefully chosen so their skill set matched up with the card description. I was given some of the more difficult compositions based on the required image. Each card assignment came with a small brief outlining the activity/task to be shown, color scheme, and a general guideline to keep the racial mix balanced, and the clothing not too street. The legal department of Hasbro really did their job on these.

On the first set I did detailed thumbnails, then two increasingly detailed sets of sketches with color notes.
On the second set, after thumbnails, I did one round of sketches and printed them from my computer in a non-repro blue on Bristol board and went right to ink line. The third set was done the same way. All the coloring was done digitally. After getting a nice mix of characters on the first set, I gave all the characters names and reused them for the following two. So all of my card sets feature the same girls. My goal was to have recurring characters that the players would recognize and identify with.

What I enjoyed about this project was that after all the requirements were met for showing the activity , I could concentrate on the details of the characters. Clothes, hair, accessories, posture. I could get into developing the background characters also (mostly boys and adults) to flesh out the scene and ad some real life to the card. All that in a 2inch square space. It doesn’t seem like a big illustrative challenge. But the beauty of being an illustrator is that you can create your own challenge within the assignment. You don’t HAVE to do it, you GET to do it.

Illustration Flavor Mixing: Lee Ann Womack

2005-11-07T13:28:00.000-08:00

Most of the time, thematically, assignments alternate from serious to humorous, line to color, caricature to conceptual, back and forth, forth and back.

I had been mired in pink and purple for weeks, doing 22 card illustrations for Star Sisterz, a tween-age girls game. I was ready to switch things up, when No Depression Editor, Grant Alden, called with this assignment, an illustration of Lee Ann Womack. Her music is an easy listening style of almost retro 1970 Country that is light and kind of pop, but very well written and produced. Doing the necessary research, I found her to be friendly, courteous and girlish. Just the kind of traits that I had been putting into the illustrations for Star Sisterz. That’s how the peanut butter hit the chocolate.

Peanut butter flava’.
I did the initial concepts, sketches and airbrushed art just as I like to do, in black and white. I kept me eye on getting the right values and a strong composition with a good use of white space for a lighter feeling overall and a higher key value scale. I had just done a Dolly Parton illustration that was similar in feeling but way darker in value scale.

Chocolaty goodness.
Digitally, I stole the colors from my previous assignment, Star Sisterz, and began to build from there. I added a bit of noise in the background while keeping in mind that this had to have a light frothy bright happy pop, kind of 1970s feeling. By the way, whenever I think of 70’s pop image, I see things surrounded by the Mike Douglas Show set, that explains the flowers, which I did use on the tween-age girl game. It’s not pink and purple. I tried to make Lee Ann more of a butter-honey color, with the bright spot of color being her eyes, which are actually that blue!

Illustrators experiment during down time as a way of bringing new things to their next assignment. That’s is cool, but you don’t have to wait for down time. You can bring what you know or have learned from the previous illustration right along into the next, creating a great new tasty piece of eye candy.

Illustration out of context: Bennifer

2005-10-31T17:44:00.000-08:00

I did this while working on the Secret Central website. I was doing still art, animation backgrounds and Flash assets, then got into designing characters that were not part of the line of dolls. After getting the style down, the evil crept in and as a lark I did this piece to send the team.
Always, the style and context of an illustration play a large role in how we read/understand the illustration. Put in another context, a certain style brings a whole new meaning to the illustration.
By the way, the deal with the word balloons was a contest to see who could come up with the best lines for Ben and J-Lo. Feel free to post your own dialog…now that they are splitsville..

Illustrating Homage; Ghetto Pulp Fiction

2005-10-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

From time to time I have been asked to illustrate certain things, in certain style. Art director's ask because they know I love research, have an extensive library on the history of illustration, and do pretty good impersonations. However there are a few pitfalls with doing this. One, you can loose sense of your art and what you have to offer in the illustration. Two, the possibility of copyright infringement. Three, you may only get work as a "Wrist." Four, you run the risk of recreating mistakes and thus taking on the responsibility for them. And five, you may have big shoes to fill and not measure up.

Taking that all into account, it can still be fun, not to mention educational, to play in the styles of other illustrators from time to time. As part of a feature in Black Issues Book Review, art director Warren Bernard commissioned headline type illustrations for two articles. To start all he wanted was something like the old Blacksploitation movie poster type, our point of reference was "Super Fly", cue the Curtis Mayfield theme. I have a book, or two, in my library on Blacksploitation movies, that reproduce the "Super Fly" poster. After a quick letter count, I wanted to see just how close to the original type I could get.

I began with a lot of sketching on tracing paper, and some correcting of letterforms. I wanted to correct any mistakes that may have been in the original type, and avoid my type looking like it was traced. After I had a sketch I liked, I gave the concept some closer examination. I knew that I thought it was a good idea to use the "Super Fly" type verbatim, but did Warren and, most importantly, would the reader. Was this a strong, valid concept, or an inside joke that no one else would get. Warren loved it. We both thought the homage brought with it a feel for the period and put the reader in a mind set that was right for the article. I'm sure the original type was done by hand, and since I was doing this digitally, and suck at doing type by hand, the accuracy of the computer was a big asset. I was able to check and double check the letterforms, and match the colors exactly. Illustrator made doing the outline strokes and smooth curves a breeze.

The client was happy, and I think this worked out well. The concept was strong enough to support the homage. I was able to use my tools to avoid mistakes. Careful craftsmanship makes the work look fresh and considered, not rushed and traced. The strength of the illustration lies in the concept, something that I would be proud to show and claim “ I did this”, it’s not “Wrist” work. A solid editorial piece that makes it’s own statement, not just a rip-off. Lastly, I learned a little about illustrating type, and a lot about what I love in illustration.

Convetional to digital

2005-09-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

When I tell people what I do for a living, after the blank stares, and a brief explanation, they then ask me if I use a computer to do my art. "Is it all on computer?" Well, most everthing starts out on paper for me. I can draw faster, stay on concept and not get caught up in all the nifty things I can do with the computer/Wacom tablet. This is an example of the move from convetional to digital.

This is the sketch for the TRANSFOMERS skeleton, or chassis, done for the Robot Builder part of the toy's website. After spending a few hours scouring for the right scrap (photos of car chassis, engine bits, wheels struts and shock absorbers), I sat down at my drawing table and got busy! I was free to just kind of throw things down and create a really dynamic drawing with suggestions of things to be. I knew, after I scanned the image, it would be easy to clean up and fine tune, or machine things quite a bit, working from the same scrap photos. The red lines and the blue lines were done on separate sheets of tracing paper then overlayed. Why draw the lines in two colors, 'cause it looks cool! Then it's of to the clean, digital side of the basement.

This is the vector art. I used this Chassis as a register mark for all the TRANSFORMERS I created. The bits off to the side are robot parts that were used more than once. I just put them aside to grab when needed. (The most challeging bit to do was the Jeep tire). Somethng like this Chassis is much easier to finish on the computer, but the life and spark of it started on paper. I used a lot of neat tricks digitally to get the lines I wanted, creating brushes and expanding apperances. The Chassis wasn't used as intended, but the concept shows up as the selector icon on the left.
Yeah, super deal, I created 14 TRANSFORMERS from scatch! My art director, was great, backed me up and let me go. The parts are all at the website.click on Robot Builder. The sounds are a lot of fun also.

I normally don't like to draw cars, or machines. However working first loose on paper, playing with the pose, feeling, and concept makes the process fun and energetic. The computer makes keeping things even and machined, doing curves and angles much easier. The whole process can be enjoyable, using the right tool for the right job.

Feast of Love illustration

2005-09-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

This is a rough rundown of how I work through an airbrushed illustration. The first step is the rough thumbnail. Here it is with type and side bar pattern put in by Colleen, my designer/art director/wife. No shit, she does all that and garden! Since her type sense is way better that mine, and we work back to back, It's for the best that she does the type at this point. The thumbnail is rough here, in my previous post you can view the sketch. Sketches are done to scale, very tight, so the designer can use them for placement. Saves time for both of us.

After the sketch is approved I go to the other side of the basement, the convetional art side, (with all my books and scavanged oak drawing table) and airbrush the art. I've been airbrushing for years, but still seem to learn something once and a while, or maybe I just have a really bad memory. In and event, I try to make a nice clean piece of art. This one came out beautifully.

The last step is to come back over to the computer side of the basement, scan the art, and add color in Photoshop. This one went a bit further. I added the pattern from a shirt I scanned. I removed the side bar from the scan, and brought in more of the shirt pattern. It gaves the illo more depth, things don't look so stuck on.
Working for Black Issues Book Review is rewarding. I've worked with four art directors. Each one has given me room to really push what I want to do. One day I'll post the "Literary Blackface" project done for BIBR. Lots of sketches and research for a really fun series of illustrations.

More airbrushed illustration like this can be seen at this photo album.

Stan

He did what?

2005-09-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

This is what I do. This particular illustration is for Black Issues Book Review magazine. This is my final sketch. I'll try to post the next step soon. Right now I have to get back to work lettering a comic story adaptation.

Live fast, draw hard.

2005-09-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

I have yet to build a website, but one thing I wanted was some kind of forum, or format, that would allow me to talk about what I do (illustrate, yeah, I'm an illustrator). Several art directors have loved the stories about the illustrations in my portfolio. Others think I'm a walking Illustration encyclopedia, and I'd like to have an place for my students to read my lectures/thoughts/rants about illustration, instead of sitting/sleeping through them. Also, it might be fun, and a way to charge up my creative batteries.

In any event, welcome.
Stan Shaw