A Few of my Favorite Themes: The Intruder

The Intruder

Here's where you can see the influence of classic suspense thrillers growing up, especially the works of Alfred Hitchcock.

You may also be able to detect my introverted personality in these illustrations of someone who just bursts onto the scene to spoil the tranquility of solitude. 

Sometimes its a foreboding omen of things to come.

Or maybe someone just doesn't understand personal boundaries

But it can also be an unexpected source of seasonal comfort and charity

I even made a whole Pinterest board of this theme for inspiration:

Now I want to hear from you! 

What's your favorite example of "The Intruder" be it in my work or other art?

What other themes would you like to see in this series?

"Doc Wizard" Development

Rough Pencils to Rough Digitals in Ninety Minutes!

Back in January I talked developing an original character. 

Since then I’ve been working on a few ideas.    

Here we have a rough for an illustration focused on a young wizard battling monsters and masked miscreants in a mid century metropolis.

I was inspired by a number of things I enjoy; A young magician establishing themselves in a modern city comes from Kiki's Delivery Service. The pulp hero in the big city with a flare for the fantastic is taken from cartoons like Batman The Animated Series and The Legend of Korra with the big monster being battled by super psudeo-science is borrowed from Lee and Kirby's run on the Fantastic Four. I also want to give a shout out to Michael May's Adventureblog for his recent King Kong posts that helped fuel the fire.

Still working out were I can go with this and how I might be able to involve mechanical men, femme fatales and other colorful characters!

Creating a Character (featuring Inspirational Illustrations)

Its a few weeks late to be talking about New Year's resolutions, but I'm going to give it a 
shot.

For 2015 I'd like to create a reoccurring character to help develop consistency in my illustrations rather than continuing to create entirely new and unrelated ideas from scratch. I figure this could help to better define my own brand of work.

I've brought a few examples to demonstrate what I'm after.

Norman Rockwell's Willie Gillis appeared throughout the war.

Des Taylor's secret agent Scarlett Couture started as the star of several stand alone illustrations before she eventually scored her own comic book series.

 

Brandy and company are practically the mascots for comic artist Frank Cho.

The Spirit is immediately identifiable with Will Eisner.

 

This woman in white appears frequently in Chris Reccardi's work before finally manifesting as Agent Xero in his short film "The Modifyers".

As for myself, I'm working to identify some common denominators in what I like to draw, sifting through various genres and archetypes.

Now I want to hear from you. What kinds of elements in my work would you like to see more of? Also, is there a reoccurring character you admire in the arts?
 

The Making of Christmas Cards 2014

Plenty of people have sent me e-mails letting me know that they received their copy of my Christmas card so I guess I can sure it with the rest of the world now!

Two years worth of experience have taught me to start earlier each year so it was a bit hard to come up with something Christmas-y when I had only just caught the Halloween bug. So sadly I wasn't able to continue my unintended them from previous years of a seasonal messenger coming to your home, be it by angels or an animal.

Instead I opted for a self portrait, to make it more personal.

This Christmas, surround yourself with colorful characters!

My original plan involved a picture of myself at my desk interacting with a variety of fantasy characters. It was fun to construct this set up, but it ended up being too ambitious to be fully completed in just a month.

Its an idea I'd seen in other places and wanted to give my own take on it as a way of showing people the more fantastical elements that I like to draw.

Ed Catmull, John Lasseter and friends

Walt Kelly

Jack Kirby

To try and give it a fun twist, I added the finished card at my desk to create this weird recursion illusion. Yet another case of time limitations and necessity being the mother of invention!

Now I want to hear from you! What do you think of this year's Christmas card and how do you think I can improve for next year?

Merry Christmas!

Ceiling Fan Fight

The other day I was watching the classic western film "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre". 
I hadn't seen it since high school, but I'll never forget that scene were the three men fight in the bar. 

During the brawl the camera cuts to a high angle shot just above the ceiling fan's rotating blades, serving as a metronome to set the pace of the action.

Except... that scene isn't in the movie. 

Seizing on this idea, I started developing some rough sketches looking down from above on a fight taking place in a private detective's office in the style of a pulp magazine or film noir. 

It seems I'm either remembering the scene from somewhere else or the past ten years of memory has started to fade and gradually be replaced with my own interpretive imagination. You might say, its the stuff that dreams are made of.

 

 

LOEB: Shelf Expression

Originally I was going to show off my movie collection, as film is especially inspirational to me as a means of storytelling, evidenced by my catalog of at least one hundred titles. However I only have original boxes for less than half of them, so it might not be that impressive of a showcase.

Instead I'll turn to my other second-hand store weakness; books!

Yes its so tall it reaches the Enterprise in orbit!

This is nothing, you should have seen how it used to look!

Starting at the top left I have some of my earliest inspirations for drawing; newspaper comic strips. Highlights include the complete run of Calvin & Hobbes and the first ten years of Zits.

Business of art stuff on this side. My organization is based on weight distribution, so theres some other subjects in the mix like The Making of Casablanca or The Making of The African Queen. 

Comic book trade paperbacks. The Marvel flag waves high.

Illustrated children's books. 

More business of art books, mostly related to comics. 

Hulk Gray was too tall for the comics shelf

Coffee table books about influential illustrators

Vintage pocket sized paperbacks guarded by Garfield.

(Classic Dennis the Menace is my personal favorite, but don't let him know!)

Bigger collections of comics.
Lee and Kirby's Fantastic Four got me into comics as a kid. 

Will Eisner kept me going on them through high school.

The green number on the end is a collection of Pogo reprints.

More newspaper comics from my childhood. 

Camp Foxtrot may be the book I've owned the longest.

The Heavy Stuff. Literally.

See the rest of the League's stuff:

* Goodwill Geek has a toy army that puts The Nutcracker to shame.
* Brain goes ape! 
* Miss M has a collection inspection
* Nerdy Life has a workspace wonderland
* Revenge of Toy Box gets dolled up
* Midnight Monster's shelf is Universal

What I learned from Fish Farts

After spending two months working on my previously mentioned but undisclosed "Spongebob Squarepants" project, I wanted to get back on the horse with something more personal which eventually became "Party of Two". However that also took about two months to complete.

I just had this feeling that if no one was going to tell me what to do then I had to start turning out projects faster in order to "earn my keep" in the world. 

Immediately I jumped into this idea I came up with of a cute little kitten hiding under the bed blankets, just letting a big one rip. 

 

"I haz the Tuna Toots."

It didn't take long to realize that I was rushing into this without thinking it through. This idea was simply that, an idea, and it had very little story to it. Plus something like this isn't really "me".

This gave me pause to reflect on my planning process and take to breath and be patient, wait on inspiration and how to develop and nurture ideas into fruition rather than force them to the finish. 

Heres what I've done since then.

Here's an artist at his desk, with time hanging over him and all his inspiration behind him with do idea how to make it all work. 

A Jack Davis inspired monster sketch that I did for a friend.

Now I want to hear from you. Where do you go when you're looking for inspiration or ideas? 

Foreign Frozen: Why France got better posters than us

Even a month after its release during of the busiest times of year, especially for movies, Disney's "Frozen" still continues to put its competition on ice.  

This past weekend however, a friend of mine asked why Europe got better posters for this film than we did here in the states. 

Heres what they used to advertise to cinemas in France:

And here are the posters primarily used in America:

These foreign posters reminded me of the teaser posters made by the late great John Alvin, who became synonymous with the Disney Renaissance of the1990s. His work was simply alluring, using silhouettes and negative space to build these stories in your imagination long before you ever saw them come to life on screen.

Heres just a small sample of the kinds of images he produced for Disney. (Click to enlarge)

Even when Alvin wasn't directly involved with creating the poster, the people in charge of making them were likely told to mimic his style.

This trend left an impact on a generation of movie goers, so it was no surprise that it made a comeback when the company was looking to return to the fairy tale features with big musical numbers for the big screen again. Just compare this poster for Mermaid based on a sketch by John Alvin, to the poster used as the primary promotional piece for Princess.

  

However, times have changed, and so has how movies are marketed. Now domestic posters showcase their characters in full view, looking directly at the audience, often with a raised eyebrow to emphasis "Hey you". Playing up the comedy angle to let you know this is going to be a feel good kind of movie. There are no secrets or surprises in this campaign. What you see is what you get.

This formula has been very successful thus far, as you can see in these examples:

 

Marketing has sort of a Pavlovian effect and since lots of people saw these movies and recognized them for their quality, it makes sense that the marketing team made an effort to bring audiences back again with the same kind of format from something that they liked before.

 Both styles of posters have their place, and I'm glad to see that the tradition is alive and well elsewhere.