Legion of super horoes

(originally from January 09, 2012 but lost due to computer issue)

Oone of my new years resolution is to up the amount of art I produce. if my livejournal track record is any indicator, I haven't been doing as well as I could. so in that spirit I submitted a piece to the Challengers Assembled art blog, run by the folks over at Challengers Comics and Conversation (the finest comic shop in the world).



the theme for the inaugural week was legion of Super heroes, and I would be lying if I were to claim i was much of a fan. surprising because it focuses on a team of adventurers int he future surrounded by all sorts of Sci-fi goodness; and I will go so far as to say I was a fan of the animated series. the most I know of them are the handful appearances by the legion of substitute heroes, a group of LOSH rejects who at best awkward powers, beyond that my knowledge is pretty limited. the two members I would think of off the top of my head was Matter-Eater-Lad (a name that is very on the nose) and shrinking violet.

I went a bit "sassy pin-up girl" for shrinking violet. I chose to use her modern costume, while I prefer the cartoon costume I am confused by the fact that violet is in her name and yet she wears primarily green, well other then her jumpsuit from the 90s, but it;s had to do sassy with a jumpsuit, that's why you don't see to many burlesque performers utilizing the Star Trek TNG uniform in their performances.

this week the these is Captain America, which is honestly a bit daunting as the co-owner of Challangers and organizer of the art blog, Patrick, is one of the nations foremost authorities on Cap, but we shall see what I come up with.

In other news we are bringing back the Drunken Zombie Deadly double features, so with luck I will be posting the poster for February 4th's screening of Plan 9 from outer space and attack of the moon zombies, or more details look for it on Facebook.

So would the Red lantern corp recruit a Cyberman or a Sontarian?

I recently started a new sketchbook, and felt I should start it with something fun, thus Yellow Lantern Dalek. As Sinestro created his corps out of some of the most vile and fear inducing aliens threw out the galaxy, even recruiting the bat-villain Scarecrow at one point;  what Alien embodies fear more the the Dalek (well possibly the Borg... but I digress).



 I have an irrational nervousness about using practical color in my illustrations. the whole permanence of it which is why I am a prominently digital artist (gotta love the undo button). I have been gradually been trying to overcome this, in this case I finished up the sketch at work while rendering video(I'm in the middle of an HD graphics package upgrade thus I have a lot of rendering to wait threw). With only limited colored pens available I colored the dalek predominantly with two highlighters, the few accent colors I added was using a paper mate "flare" and a blue Bic "Mark-it" (which I have no idea why is in my desk) later I attempted to use some pale copec markers, sadly they were too pale to show up very well in the picture but I assure you they are there.



as a bonus pic since I have been gone from LJ so long, here is a quick head sketch of Captain Marvel I completed on my desk calendar while making phone calls. 

May the fifth be with you?

yesterday was May 4th, which the internet declared Star Wars day (May the Forth be with you... get it?). I thought this was incredibly fun, and I figured I would celebrate by sketching something Star-wars-ish; I figured this shouldn't be a problem as I have been drawing star wars characters since I was old enough to hold a writing utensil. well I started on a piece featuring Paploo the ewok, and next thing I knew it was 1:00 am, I had missed out on Star wars day... so instead I thought I would stretch the party into the fifth with a sketch of two hard partying ugnaughts. So happy post-star-wars-day and may the fifth be with you.

Sketchbook: Fish point

I have noticed my sketchbook becoming sillier and sillier; I blame this on the ladies over at Geektress. This is not a bad thing, the exact opposite in fact as my sketchbook is filling up faster than ever.

On their April 1^st (April fools day) they suggested Geoff Johns follow up to the upcoming Flashpoint would be “Fishpoint” focusing on Aquaman, in my head I envisioned a mini-series event the like of JLApe, but focusing on sea life rather than simians. The plot would revolve around a crazed atlantian geneticist who has been charged by the legion of doom (or the modern equivalent) to develop a device that unravels DNA reducing the victims to a protean sludge. When the JLA comes to stop him some sort of splicing-landmine goes off causing each member of the team to combine with various undersea creatures resulting in characters like “supershark”, “green angler-fish” and “bat-lobster and robin the prawn wonder”.  And thus was inspired this sketch of wonder woman. Rather than go cliche and turn her into a straight up-mermaid I felt it would be fun to give her a seahorse tail. Then I added some tattoos much like Aqualad in young justice, or Disney’s Atlantis the lost empire, which if I were to color would have a glow to them.  I may return to this theme sometime in the future because it is really fun.

The Geektress April fools day article may have been prophetic as I Just read that Geoff Johns will be taking over Aquaman after "Brightest Day". Perhaps I should forward this sketch on to him, Fish-point practically wrights itself

Vegetables: Eat them before they Eat you

As you may know I help co –host a monthly “Creature Feature” style double feature at our local indie-theater called the “Drunken Zombie Deadly Double Feature”. We don’t actually make much money from it, but it’s fun and it gives me the chance to put my editing/motion graphics skills to work.  One of the other things it gives me the chance to do is design posters, up until recently I kept them fairly generic, but for the last one I was in a rush and did an homage to the Grindhouse movie poster (which itself was an homage to a double-bill poster for “Dragstrip girl” and “Rock all night”. This was the first time I used stills from the movies in the poster and I really liked the aesthetic that it created, so I may experiment more with them in the future.

On February 26th 2011 the Drunken Zombie Deadly Double feature spotlit two "tentacle terrors", movies that involved tentacles, screening "Outpost Doom" and "The Giant Leeches"

Oddly enough this poster was infinitely more popular than the ones I had made previously even though it was completely derivative of something else.  So for the next double feature (coming up on  March 19) I put together something very similar, but at the same time different from the previous poster.

I didn't want the poster to be exactly like the grindhouse poster so I added this "sexy lady" element to the poster, hopefully it doesn't look too hentai. Bonus points to any one who knows why I used that particular color scheme for the tentacles "

One thing I had hoped to do in the “tentacle terror” poster  was to have extra tentacles curling around the posters, but I ran out of time; fortunately I was able to do that this time adding vines curling around the poster. 

on March 19th the Drunken Zombie Deadly Double feature will Screen the original "Little Shop of Horrors" and Attack of the Vegan Zombies"

This month we were featuring a lineup that I have been chomping at the bit to screen since the whole thing started, Plants that Kill. I am a fan of both the original Little shop and the contemporary musical. The original fascinates me due to its legacy as a movie that only took two days to shoot because that’s all the time Roger Corman had before the set (which was built for another movie entirely) was torn down. With this in mind, it’s a fantastic movie. The script is original and has tons of humor in it

I chose to use the look of "Audry II" from the musical rather then from the original due to it's iconic and recognizable look. I'm just waiting for the Scifi channel to do a remake replacing her with a pitcher plant

for some masochistic reason the director of "Attack of the Vegan Zombies" will be flying in for the screening, even after we explained the “participatory” nature of our screenings. Unfortunately I will be in Chicago during the screening so I won’t be able to enjoy the spectacle.

I added these roses to the encroching vines as a nod to the plant in the original and in the stage musical upon which the faces of the victims would bloom

For next month’s poster I am going to try something a bit different, still very “grind house”-esque, but going in a slightly different direction.

Coming soon!

Ok... now how does this whole blogging thing work again?