MODOK - March MODOK Madness 2013!

M.O.D.O.K.

(MENTAL ORGANISM DESIGNED ONLY for KILLING)

Greetings!  Here's a submission I did for the March MODOK Madness Blog.  It is a great blog with many artists doing an interpretation of M.O.D.O.K. which runs for one month out of the year.  Y'know, March.  And, every year, I would intend to submit to the site and then remember it about 2 weeks after submissions had closed.  Sigh...  Well, not this year!  This year, the MEDIOCRE ORGANISM DESIGNED for KVETCHING remember to do up a submission BEFORE April Fool's Day deadline!

M.O.D.O.K. has always been a favorite of mine.  The super-creepy Jack Kirby design of a giant floating head with vestigial arms and legs, along with his super-mutated brain sending out psychic blasts, captured the young John's imagination... What's not to love?

On with the Step-By-Step for those who are interested...

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STEP ONE:  I did the original painting with acrylic on gessoed 9" x 12" matboard  (I forgot to include the pencils, alas.)  I generally work with very thin layers of paint--almost like a series of built up washes.  When that was finished, I scanned it into the computer and set about colorizing it.

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STEP TWO:  Here are the color flats.  I created a MULTIPLY LAYER and did a circular gradient as the background, and then put in solid colors for M.O.D.O.K.  Just to save myself some cleanup time, I create SAVED SELECTIONS for each color.  Although, the background gradient should probably have gone from bluish outside to reddish inside, rather than the other way around as I did, since the bluish color matched a little too closely to the purple color I was using for M.O.D.O.K.'s arms and legs.  Live and learn, I guess.

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STEP THREE:  I select each SAVED SELECTION color one-at-a-time, and start adding highlights and shading--sort of like a makeshift mask layer.  I kept layering colors and trying to build up some color depth.  I used some blue/purple for the shadows on his ginormous face, as it really seems to complement flesh colors nicely, without making it look too muddy.  I also colorized the semi-Kirby dots as part of the exhaust.  Once I was semi-happy with it, I sent it off and called it good enough!

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This was done with black and white acrylic on 9" x 12" gessoed matboard and digitally colored.

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Unwanted Valentines: Alien Face-Hugger

Unwanted Valentines:

Alien Face-Hugger

Happy Valentine's Day!  Well, here's the last of my series of Unwanted/Vaguely Inappropriate Valentine's Day Cards for this year.  I may return to it again when February rolls around next year... :-)  This one features the Face-Hugger from the Alien movies.

And, yes, that is my face being hugged, sans glasses. :-)

Here is the pen-and-brush original, which was scanned in and digitally colored in PhotoShop.  I used a No. 1 size scripting brush and Speedball Super Black ink.

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Done with brush and ink on 8-1/2" x 11" paper and colored digitally.

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Unwanted Valentines: The Thing: Split-Face

UNWANTED VALENTINES

The Thing: Split-Face

This Unwanted Valentine features Split-Face from John Carpenter's "The Thing" (1982), where Split-Face was a charred mess on a dissection table when MacReady and crew were trying to figure out what happened at the Norwegian camp.  Split-Face's origin was explained in the 2011 prequel.

Here's the brush and ink original, which I scanned in and colored in PhotoShop.

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Done with brush and ink on 8-1/2" x 11" paper, colored in PhotoShop.

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Unwanted Valentines: The Thing: Crab-Head

UNWANTED VALENTINES

The Thing: Crab-Head

This Valentine Card uses the Crab-Head creature from John Carpenter's "The Thing".

I first saw John Carpenter's "The Thing" when I was a teenager and thought it was awesome!  I always loved monster movies--and the monsters in this one were ultra-creepy, almost mangaesque in their horrific body distortions--and this version was an exercise in tension and paranoia.  While I saw the 2011 prequel to "The Thing" and thought it was pretty good, the John Carpenter version will remain the canonical version to my mind.  Most of the practical effects hold up pretty well, although, with that said, I wished they had gone through and digitally "sweetened" some of the effects when they released "The Thing" on Blu-Ray.

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STEP ONE:  I did some rough pencils using a blue-lead on 8-1/2" x 11" paper, then inked it with a No. 1 size script/round brush.

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STEP TWO:  After I scanned it into PhotoShop and cleaned it up, I created a Duplicate Layer, set it to MULTIPLY under Properties and colorized it, then added the lettering and called it DONE!

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Done with brush and ink on 8-1/2" x 11" paper and digitally colored in PhotoShop. 

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Unwanted Valentines: Flex Mentallo

UNWANTED VALENTINES

Flex Mentallo

As it just so happened, iFanboy is having a contest to create comic book related Valentines.  Luckily, I had the Man-Thing Valentine chambered and ready to go and sent that one off right away.  I thought I would send along a second one featuring one of my FAVORITE characters in comics: Flex Mentallo, the Man of Muscle Mystery!  I've been a fan of Flex since he first showed up in Grant Morrison's run in Doom Patrol as a parody/satire of the classic Charles Atlas ads, and his 4 Issue Limited-Series by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely is in my Top 10 Favorite Comics of all time. 

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STEP ONE:  I penciled the image using a blue leaded pencil (the scan above is in gray-scale).  I was originally going to ink it with a brush and ink--that way, when I scanned it in, the inked lines would show up, but the blue lines would drop out.  But, then I got the idea to digitally ink half of the picture and then mirror the other half, which would work perfectly for this pose.  Also, as time was of the essence, I thought this would help me get it done quicker.  I'm sure it turned out the be the same amount of time either way.

So, I drew a divider line down the center of the page and penciled half of the pose.  I also included a three-quarter turned head just in case I wanted to make a slight change to the pose, figuring I could ink that separately and paste it over top if need be.  However, I think the original pose worked just fine... and I ran out of time for that, anyways.  Sigh...

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STEP TWO:  Here is the digitally inked layer.  I drew the left half of the image, copied it, and flipped it around so it mirrored the other half.  I had to rotate the halves of the picture a little bit to get them together properly, and there is a little something about the face which looks a bit like it was mirrored, but it generally worked pretty well.

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STEP THREE:  I created a new layer, digitally colored the drawing, and added the lettering.  I also changed his "Hero Halo" into a heart for the holiday.  Why not?  :-)  

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Blue line pencil on 8-1/2" x 11" paper, digitally inked and colored.

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Unwanted Valentines: Man-Thing

UNWANTED VALENTINES

MAN-THING

Over the next week, I hope to have a few more Unwanted Valentine's Day cards.  Stay tuned!

OK, this joke is just really obvious and I'm quite sure it's probably been done a kajillion times already...  Not that it has EVER stopped me before (nor will it in the future, alas).

Yes, there **REALLY** was a series published by Marvel Comics titled Giant-Size Man-Thing, which starred the titular character, Man-Thing, and had about three times as many pages as normal comics of the time (hence the term "Giant-Size").  This spawned many an obvious joke to those of us with the mentality of a 13-year-old (like myself).  The tagline for the comic was "Whoever Knows Fear Burns at the Touch of Man-Thing!"  So, of course, I had to work that into the card, as well...

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Here's the original pen-and-ink drawing which I scanned in and colorized.  I appropriated the logo from the "Giant-Size Man-Thing" comic, and did the lettering in PhotoShop, as well:

This was done with pen-and-ink on 8-1/2" x 11" paper and digitally colored in PhotoShop.

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Lobo

LOBO

Hey, look--THREE posts within 2 weeks!  So far, so good on that New Year's Resolution...  :-)

This was done as a bit of a joke for a pal at work who wanted me to do something with Lobo a few months ago.  I told him I wouldn't be able to get to it until after Christmas, so here it is...

And, for those interested, here's the process...

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STEP ONE:  Here's the sketch I did for layout.  It's about 2" x 3" on the back of a scrap piece of paper on pencil.  As is typical, I think I like the quick, warm-up sketch better than the finished painting.  Sigh...

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STEP TWO:  I penciled it out on a 9" x 12" piece of gessoed matboard.  

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STEP THREE:  Here I am starting to paint the figure, modelling the form and such and working on the undertones.

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STEP FOUR:  Here's the painting a bit further along...

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STEP FIVE:  Almost done...

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STEP SIX:  Here's the finished painting.  Now that I look at it, there are a few things here and there I would like to fix with the painting--the face got a little wide while I was painting over it; the anatomy of the arm is a bit mushy; while trying to exaggerate the anatomy ala Simon Bisley, the muscles of the arm are too separated from each other--they look like they are just stacked on top of each other, rather than an integrated arm...  Some other things here and there.  But, I suppose I could easily spend another day or two just noodling around with the paints and still not quite have it done to my satisfaction.  Ah, well.  Good enough for Todd!  (And, yes, Todd, that was an insult!)  :-P

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This was done with acrylic paint on 9" x 12" gessoed matboard.

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Happy (Belated) New Year!

HAPPY (Belated) NEW YEAR TO ALL!

Well, I'm a little late with this specific New Year's Day themed cover, but I still wanted to finish it up and post it.  For some reason, the New Year's Jim Steranko Hulk I posted last year seemed mildly popular, so I thought I'd continue with this one, as well.  Maybe I should have the Hulk ring in the New Year EVERY year?  :-)

I currently have a lot of irons in the fire, but I am hoping to post a little more often than last year (I averaged about one post ever week-and-a-half).  I hope everyone has a fantastic New Year!

Here's the cover I based this on, The Incredible Hulk #135 by Herb Timpe.  I always liked this cover and really wanted to re-do this for the late, great Covered Blog but, alas, I guess it wasn't meant to be.  So, I just did it as a more "cartoony" post for here.  

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Here is the original inked page after I cleaned it up a little bit in PhotoShop.  It was done with a brush pen on 8-1/2" x 11" cardstock--nothing too fancy.  I then imported it into PhotoShop and created a MULTIPLY Layer to colorize the drawing.  I also did the lettering in PhotoShop, too.

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This was done with ink and brush on 8-1/2" x 11" cardstock and then digitally colored in PhotoShop.

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Handbook of the Marvel Universe: High Evolutionary

High Evolutionary

Here is the original entry for the High Evolutionary to the "Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe".

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And here is my entry to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Redux.  

The portrayal of Evolutionary Theory in comics (well, almost all of pop culture, really) is generally painful in its ignorance, but there is still something about the High Evolutionary that appeals to me.  I thought the character had a cool look, and he tinkered with genetics, creating a Dr. Moreau type menagerie of half-human/half-animal hybrids.  And, once again, it was the power of Jack Kirby's design and artwork that really made the High Evolutionary so compelling to me when I first read about him in a back issue or Thor.

Also, I like science a lot and always had an interest in Evolutionary Theory.  Back in the day, I used to spend hours upon hours debating with Creationists on various bulletin boards under the name "John Boy" (you can still probably find some of my posts, I'm sure).  About the only good thing about it was it forced me to learn about Evolutionary Theory more fully and shed my own pop-cultural-based ignorance about it.

Below, how the process (ahem) evolved... for the High Evolutionary submission.

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STEP ONE:  I did a very quick digital sketch in PhotoShop, laying out the pose and the beginning of the lighting for the High Evolutionary.  

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STEP TWO:  Over top of the sketch, I used a chalk brush in PhotoShop to begin modeling the figure in black-and-white, to establish the form and work on getting the lighting correct.

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STEP THREE:  Here's the finished black-and-white drawing.  I changed the position of his right hand a little bit and exaggerated the pose a bit more.  The High Evolutionary also turned out a bit more muscular than I intended, now that I look at it.

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STEP FOUR:  I created a MULTIPLY LAYER and colored over top the black-and-white drawing.

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This was done digitally in PhotoShop.

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Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Aquarian

Aquarian

Here is the original entry for the Aquarian to the "Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe".  

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And here is my entry to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Redux.  

This one was a bit of a cheat for me.  I actually submitted a story idea to Marvel Comics for an Aquarian One-Shot about 15 years ago using pretty much this redesign of the character.  Sad, but true--with the sad part being that of all the characters in the Marvel Universe, I picked the Aquarian, of course.  :-D

I don't know why, but the character somehow captured my imagination.  The story involved Wundarr/Aquarian getting a Cosmic Cube and deciding to give humanity enlightenment--whether it wanted it or not.  It was going to be part action-adventure/part deep, philosophical treatise about the nature humanity...  Well, stuff that strikes you as philosophically deep when you're in your mid-twenties (but, probably isn't).  It had references to Wundarr/Aquarian selling his life-story to a comic book company, involved Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four, and the death of Disco music.  

Needless to say, it was rejected.  :-)

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Here's the part where I usually say "Here's the process of those who are interested"... but, this time there really isn't much involved in the process.  This is the first picture I did as digital from start-to-finish and forgot to do screen shots of the steps along the way until it was mostly done.  

But, just so I'm not leaving anyone empty-handed, I created a new document in PhotoShop that was 1,500 x 2,500 pixels, and then started working in black-and-white to lay down values, first.  I used a chalk-based brush which I found left an interesting texture.  (I have no idea if I got it from one of the DVD's from the many issues of "ImagineFX Magazine" I have, or if it was a free one I found on the internet.  Sorry!)  

When I was finished with the black-and-white digital drawing, I created a new MULTIPLY LAYER and set to colorizing the work.  Lastly, I added a glow to the Cosmic Cube and called it DONE!

Now that I look at it, though, I think I like the black-and-white version of the picture more than the colorized version. Sigh...

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This was done digitally in PhotoShop.

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DC Special #29 - Cover Replica

DC Special #29

Here is the original cover by Neal Adams.

Well, I **FINALLY** finished this GIANT cover re-creation for my pal, Jim, from Jimmy Jams.  I've been working on this thing for far too long--it's been yet another albatross around my neck for the past few months.  Mostly, I'm just glad to have this off my easel.  Now I can FINALLY get around to finishing up a few other projects I've had to set aside to get this thing done.  :-)

One reason this cover (which was one of Jim's favorites from his childhood) took so long is that it is just crazy: You've got Hitler, Nazi atom bombs, Valkyrie mounted on flying horses, the Atom punching out one of the horses, and just so much more.  To me, this cover is just a crowded mess.  But, oh, well.  Sometimes, there's no accounting for taste.  :-)

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STEP ONE:  I glued a sheet of (140#) Stonehenge paper, which is 100% cotton, to a 20" x 30" (that's 50.8cm x 76.2cm to those of you who use the Metric System) sheet of hard board/medium density fiberboard.  I then used a mixture of gesso and size (glue) to serve as a ground to the painting.  I then gridded out the drawing and drew in the larger parts of the picture.

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STEP TWO:  Using acrylic paint, I began to lay in large swaths of color.  Trying to match all the various gradients in the background is also a real pain in the butt.

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STEP THREE:  After adding a bit more paint, I began lettering.  Bleh, I **HATE** lettering... it always takes me so long to get it done and it still only looks half-assed.

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STEP FOUR:  Well, after countless hours, here is the finished, ginormous re-creation of the cover.  After I finished all the under-coloring for figures and lettering, I did all the linework over top.  Once done, I sprayed it with a varnish and UV protectant and took it in to Jim.  

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This was done with acrylic paint on 20" x 30" gessoed Stonehenge paper glued to hardboard.

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Repaneled Blog - RIP

First, it was COVERED, and now REPANELED.  It is sad to see a second blog I regularly visited (and submitted to) go away.

But, I want to take a few moments to personally thank Anthony Vukojevich for the opportunity to show my work on his REPANELED Blog.  It was the first blog I ever posted to (other than my own, of course) and really helped launch my own, modest blog--it brought my first significant bump in traffic, so you all know who to blame, now.  Also, I cannot read a comic book any longer without thinking somewhere in the back of my mind "Hey, that panel would be a GREAT submission to REPANELED" (and will continue to do so, even now that it is gone).  Granted, that list of comic book panels under consideration was astronomically long--and continually growing--and I was just getting ready to work on my next couple submissions when Anthony announced it was the end of his blog.

I am sure I will continue to redo/update panels as the muse strikes me, but it just won't be the same without REPANELED, alas.  I mean, what good is showing off if no one is there to see you, right?  :-)

Again, queue the sad Hulk music as we walk down memory lane...  Below are all my submissions to REPANELED, and a link to the process for those who are interested.

Batman: Year One #1

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Detective Comics #32

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Tales to Astonish #63

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Animal Man #19

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Eternal #18

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Fantastic Four #5

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ROM #1

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Action Comics #544

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Thanks and best of luck, Anthony!  I owe you a LOT!  REPANELED will be greatly missed!  :-)

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Happy Halloween! - Zombie Dark Phoenix (Redux)

Happy Halloween!

OK, this one probably looks familiar to those who have visited the blog before.  It is pretty much the same as the drawing I did last year for Halloween of ZOMBIE DARK PHOENIX... but, this time, I flipped the pose around, did it in black and white acrylic paint, and got around to digitally coloring it.

For those interested in the process... well, you know the drill and keep readin'...  :-)

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STEP ONE:  Here is a real quick pencil layout on 9" x 12" sized and gessoed 1/8" masonite.  I wasn't completely happy with the pose and modified it a bit while I was painting it...

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STEP TWO:  Here is the black-and-white acrylic painting.  I took a digital photo of the painting and imported it into Photoshop to clean it up and to do some digital coloring.

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STEP THREE:  I added a MULTIPLY Layer and then put in a gradient.  I then added some flat color so I could create and Save some Selection Areas, which is why some of the coloring on the sash and Phoenix symbols are colored a little off-key--it is easier to select each part separately, and then recolor it once I save it as a Selection area.  I saved selections for the HEAD, BODY, GLOVES/BOOTS, SASH, and PHOENIX SYMBOLS.  I could then select them and add highlights without having to worry about the colors running over into something else I just colorized--I use the Saved Selections as a quick-and-dirty masked areas.

For fun, here is both MULTIPLY Layer with flat color over top the painting, and the colored MULTIPLY Layer by itself for comparison.

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STEP FOUR:  After looking at it a little bit, I thought it looked a little muddy and dark, so I decided to lighten and black-and-white painting a bit more.  I also digitally extended the top a little bit more, as the (undead) Phoenix Force was cropped a little close to the top-edge of the board.  

Here are the finished black-and-white layer, as well as the color plate.

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STEP FIVE:  And here is everything all put together.  I added another one or two layers for highlights and a few other odds and ends, then lightened the picture just a little bit more and Saved it.

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Done with acrylic paint on 9" x 12" sized and gessoed masonite panel, and digital coloring in Photoshop.

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