Illustration Friday Night

Superhero: Batgirl in Trouble

2007-08-17T19:21:00.001-04:00

Tech Talk

Original art "pencilled" in Adobe Photoshop, "inked" in Corel Painter, then brought back into Photoshop for coloring and collage. Pages were lettered in Adobe Illustrator.

Freshness Dating

Refurbished, from a work-in-progress.

DVD Extra

This satirical work recreates the real world of 1968, as seen by characters from the Batman television show (IMDb | Wiki). In order to make the satire work, I did an obsessive amount of visual research. The likenesses of my drawings are based on Yvonne Craig -- as well as Adam West, Burt Ward, Caesar Romero. The sound effects are vector recreations of those used in the show. Artistically, I was aiming for drawings of the show actors as inked by Dan DeCarlo (Wiki | Pinup Art | Amazon: The Art of Dan DeCarlo ), colored with the hand-separated, large line-screen technology that was standard of the era.

iFridaynista

Real life got in the way of IF this week. As part of my new job/freelance search, a major IE6 CSS bug on my website got "discovered" during an interview! The good news is that my site is finally optimized for IE6 without trashing in the CSS-compliant browsers ... just in time for Vista/IE7. Nice to see hard work pay off in the end.

Clear: X-Ray Specs

2007-08-17T19:18:00.000-04:00

Tech Talk

Adobe Illustrator and Corel Painter combo. Some reference elements for collage

DVD Extra

Interior of 1369 coffee house.

iFridaynista

The curse of doing new work for iFriday: Sometimes it's tough. This week's was a struggle every step of the way. Concept, materials, you name it. After way too many hours, I finally settled on the sketch I thought was funniest. Keeping within my prime directives, I used this assignment to learn Corel Painter's Acrylic tool. I responded to last week's input on using the "glaze" technique, but still couldn't get the modeling done well enough to lose the outlines -- if I wanted to finish during the weekend. So here it is ... imperfect, but at least it exists. Rip away!

Every week I promise myself to work faster and smarter. So far, haven't done it. Is this the best I can do?

Smitten: High School Crush

2007-08-17T19:11:00.000-04:00

Tech Talk

Adobe Illustrator and Corel Painter combo. Some reference elements for collage

iFridaynista

Believe it or not, I was insane enough to post this on wholesome iFriday. My first attempt at illustrating the assignment -- as opposed to repurposing old art that I never got paid for.

Dead Smurf

2007-07-08T08:59:00.000-04:00

Art Speak

This was for my Massachusetts College of Art Spring semester sophomore illustration class. The assignment was to draw a cute animal. Our instructor, Mister Floyd Covert (MassArt), felt we were only drawing stuff we liked. His long-term plan was to have us show the cute stuff to potential clients in the summer, then have real-world stories to tell the next Fall.

I wasn't in a cute mood that semester. This probably had more to do with living in a Dostoevsky-like flophouse.

Part of the assignment was to use photo reference. This came from a then-current issue of Scientific Monthly, covering Rhino Rats. Naturally I chose the most disgusting photo in the story. The skin was pale and looked like intestines.

The drawing technique is mostly crosshatch pen-and-ink with technical pen, a very time-consuming way to cover a 20" x 30" illustration board. It must've looked like time-lapse photography to see a little bit more inking done to it every week. When the top third inked, I found out about the Smurfs Saturday morning cartoon. Trying to pass this off as a social statement, I quickly penciled the Smurf.

You'd think this was right up my teacher's alley, but he was surprisingly appalled. The exact word he used was "sophomoric". One of the biggest laughs I ever got was reminding him "this is a sophomore class. If I can't do this now, then when?" Eager to move the class along, he eventually relented (were any of his classes longer than 30 minutes?). He even suggested the Smurf blue and bloodstains.

The drawing earned an A-, and currently lives in Paris.

Tech Talk

Technical pen and graphite, colored pencil, gouache on illustration board

Freshness Dating

Repurposed. It was tough enough to get anything out this week.