Comic Book Buddies

Today they had this hilarious toy photo on Cartoon Brew:

It's unbelievable the kind of things that can slip by an editor. I imagine this must be from some cheap knockoff toy from another country- could this possibly fly here?

The post actually reminded me of another unintentionally dirty image I had seen in one of my old comic books a few years ago. Through the amazing magic of Google, I was able to actually find it again! I'll just let the picture speak for itself for now:

Wow, right? This passed muster with the Comics Code Authority?

Summeritis and Sketches of Chicks

Hi folks!


Yeah, I've been horrible about posting this summer. Maybe I've been preoccupied since my wife and I have a baby on the way... not to mention our week's vacation down the shore, bathroom renovations, moving in new furniture, a hectic work schedule...


...or maybe these are all just excuses.


Anyway, time to move forward. I've got a backlog of topics to talk about, but for now here are a couple of sketches of women I did a while back.

This one reminds me of that young rising starlet, Amanda Seyfried (couldn't remember her name, thanks Google)

It's no secret that women are harder to draw than men, particularly when you are cartooning. It's harder to make them look pretty... with men, you can make them lumpy, ugly, angular, whatever and it's usually acceptable. Feminine characters require a bit more subtlty and restraint, but not too much- you don't want to hold back on the caricaturization, and end up with a drawing that is too weak or soft.

Hmmm.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I didn't get accepted into that art show. Erica did, though! Guess that means I have to show my face at the gallery opening.

Man In The Park

My old alma mater, The College of New Jersey, is holding an alumni art exhibition in September, to which my wife submitted a fantastic piece of art, a re-working of her graduate school thesis project actually. She kept pestering me to actually complete and submit something, but for whatever reason – lack of inspiration, I would suspect, but that isn't really an excuse when it comes to doing work – I never got around to it until the very last possible moment, which happened to be this past Friday.


I stayed up late and put together this piece, which represents the illustration/cartooning style I like to use, and I think tells enough of a story to justify its existence.

Here is the original drawing I had in the bank- this one was low-res and semi-pointless, so I felt I should elaborate on the idea and put the character in a basic setting.

I also submitted this one, just for good measure. Hope I get in – actually, that we both do!!! Good luck, Erica (though she doesn't need it, her work is amazing).

Lousy Album Covers by Artists Who Should Know Better

Just for fun, let's continue on the same topic as my last post. This may become a recurring feature, because let's face it, there's a lot of questionable album art out there.

It's a shame, but today album art is pretty unappreciated. The glorious 12x12" record sleeves from my dad's collection have been reduced to less than 5" square in my CD rack. For today's kids, it now exists as a 300x300 pixel JPG that pops up on their iPod (or, more likely, doesn't appear at all). Imagine trying to pick out all the faces on Sgt. Pepper's on something like that.

Still, if you're an artist who cares about the quality of the product you're putting out, the cover art should really be regarded as a part of that. If nothing else, it reflects the image of the music and the artist whether you like it or not.

This post is not about unknowns or no-name bands who couldn't afford a good designer or have questionable taste to begin with. These are established artists who really ought to give a little thought to how they are coming across. I love all these guys but just can't understand how they let stuff that looked like this out on the market.

Bruce Springsteen- Plugged (1997)

First of all, I don't agree with his decision to "plug in" on the unplugged show. Bruce has enough great songs that he should have been able to pull this one off. Then, he loads it almost entirely with songs from his two contemporary albums, Human Touch and Lucky Town, the least memorable work from his "adult contemporary" period.

Now onto the artwork. To me, this looks like the work of a student in Graphic Design 101, who just learned Photoshop and Illustrator and is using every trick in his arsenal to really "wow" you. The stretched-out text, the clipping path around the Bruce photo so we get not one but two Bruces on top of each other, one apparently clapping politely at the other. The big red X over the "Un" is the perfect visual pun to complete the picture.

I definitely produced work like this my freshman year of college, and nobody ever gave me a job because of it. Nor should they.

Bob Dylan- Saved (1980)

The born-again message on all the songs is already questionable, but this cover is just embarrassing. It looks like it came from one of those Seasonal Missalettes at church, or worse, like he hired one of his fellow parishioners to do it.

It just doesn't belong on the cover of an album by one of the coolest, most revered songwriters ever.

Bob Dylan- Knocked Out Loaded (1986)

Not to pick on ol' Bob, but this one is just awful. I would seriously hate to see this thing blown up on a full-size record sleeve.


The album title is pretty cool, though.

The Rolling Stones- Dirty Work (1986)

I realize that bright, neon colors were perceived as cool in 1986, but this was folly. The music on this album is generally considered to be the band's worst, and to me, the cover says, "yeah, this is us now." There is absolutely no attempt to be any kind of cool.


As an extra morsel of excruciating unpleasantness, take a look at the way Keith's bent knee is positioned in relation to Mick's wide-open crotch, like a big black arrow on the otherwise day-glo canvas. I guarantee you this was no accident.

Lousy Beatles Covers

It's funny to think, as protective as the Beatles are with the presentation of their catalog, that there was a time the record label would abuse their image as much as any cut-rate, has-been artist. This is one of the first albums EMI released after gaining control of the Beatles' music:

Think Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road... and eventually, this.

Ringo supposedly had this to say: "It made us look cheap and we never were cheap. All that Coca-Cola and cars with big fins was the Fifties!" It's a pretty lousy illustration... but not as bad as what was to come:

Can you believe this? It's got to be one of the lamest album covers of all time. Click on it to zoom in and take a look at Ringo. How many arms does he have?


The Beatles have a much tighter grip on the stuff that comes out with their names on it now. And for the most part, it's pretty high quality (the cover to "1" is iconic in its own right at this point). So hopefully, we can consider the cartoon painting era of Beatles album covers over.


Still don't quite get what happened with this one, though:

The Final 24

Well, tonight was the last episode of 24, and I must say it was a good one. This season started out slow but for the past few weeks has been just as violent, misogynistic and heart-pounding as I always want it to be. The very end was a little bit of a rehash of the way they've ended seasons before, but the goodbye to Chloe was nice, and it leaves the door open for future Jack Bauer adventures.

The drawing above was done about four or five years ago, in front of the TV when I couldn't sleep one night. I copied it from a photo in some magazine. Ah, here it is:

Looking at it now, there's a lot that doesn't match up exactly. But I think my Bauer looks more like he's about to pull the trigger. Just a little angrier.

Again, this was a great episode, but wasn't quite as good as the greatest series finale ever.

Frank Frazetta, 1928-2010

I only became really aware of Frank Frazetta recently... in fact I just did this post about him about a month ago. While he is most famous for his fantasy paintings like Conan the Barbarian, I was more struck by a painting of a cowboy falling off his horse... the composition and technique just inspired me.

To be honest, the fantasy-style stuff was never my favorite, in any context. But Frazetta was someone I could admire: a true craftsman, with a defined style and mastery of his craft.

Frank wasn't just skilled at his one area of specialization, either. He used to draw Li'l Abner comics for Al Capp, and worked with Ralph Bakshi on his film "Fire and Ice". Even if is style is nothing like mine there is still a lot I could take away form his compositions, harsh shadows and highlights and just the understanding of the human form in both realistic (above) and caricatured ways.

This gorilla is awesome.

The above painting of Ringo is from a MAD Magazine in the 60's, and was an early break in his career. He also did a number of album covers in the 70s and 80s, mostly by heavy metal acts (another genre I am largely uninterested in). But that's another thing I liked about Frazetta- his work was exciting and unique and people liked looking at it. This is just something that is much rarer in popular culture these days, this appreciation for imagination and craftsmanship.

Read his obituatry here. It says he was so popular, publishers would buy one of his paintings to use as a cover, then commission some writer to bang out a story to publish it with. Now that's talent.