Pete, Mike, And John In Space!

Mike, John and I go back a long way, and have had a lot of adventures over the years. This is just one of the many pickles we have gotten ourselves into!

As Mike pointed out to me, I can be seen in the cockpit with at least four sandwiches... clearly, more than enough if only I was inclined to share!

Draw Me a Picture and Maybe I'll Pay You Someday

This is a really interesting entry on SR Bissette's blog, consisting of a response to some requests he has received (at least every other month, he says, and I believe him) by people who  casually ask him to draw their graphic novel.


Here's a sample of the early part of the entry- he gets way more detailed:

Long answer: I am literally asked what you’ve asked me WEEKLY, seeking either me to engage or for me to steer some other cartoonist or CCS student (as if they’ve nothing better to do, like, oh, their own work plus the education they’ve paid for) to a similar task, and have been since about 2006.

What nobody (or precious few) seem to realize:

(1) It takes years to do a good graphic novel; Maus took over a decade to complete, as did From Hell; Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby was one of the faster ones at 5+ years, and all required multiple funding sources, grants, and/or multiple publishers to complete. It’s a bear.

Yes, many lesser graphic novels are done in months; most of those show it.

(2) Cartoonists have their own projects they’d dearly love to afford to do, many of those lengthy works.

We rarely get to them due to the eternal question: How do I eat/pay rent/mortgage while dedicating my life to this venture?

(3) Now, taking on adapted and/or collaborative graphic novels, sans a publisher footing the financing, complicates it all multifold. I now have to introduce letter sections into the outline answer:

(a) Who owns it? Co-ownership is sticky: if you are the source author (as in this case), you’re not going to want to give up ownership/proprietary rights; but if I’m not in for 50%, why pick up the pencil?

If we co-own, what’s the split of ownership (just ownership, mind you—we’ll get to payment and royalty sharing shortly)?

I've actually seen this sort of thing all over the place, mostly on Craigslist searches for freelance work. It will usually be somehting along the lines of "I am writing a children's book and need illustrations for 10-12 pages. If I sell to a publisher we can work out a payment deal." So, in other words, he wants a bunch of fully rendered, professional drawings to help him sell his crappy book, for free. This is nothing compared to the time and skill required for a complete graphic novel of any quality, but it reflects the same disregard for professionals in our community. As if creating the art is its own reward and we are just waiting around for the opportunity to have something to draw.


Beyond that, he goes into detail about the kinds of issues that need to be considered before entering into a writer-artist partnership: royalties, ownership, page rate, etc. He doesn't take sides, and defends the writer's rights as well, but explains in great detail, that it is just not as simple as saying "I have an idea- draw it for me?"


Very educational for someone in my position who is looking to get more compelling freelance work, but needs to understand the complexities behind it.

Something to Post

Has it really been a year since my last post? Oops. Well, I got busy... becoming a dad mostly.

Anyway, I have something to post, so I guess I'm back. This is part of a larger project I am working on for Christmas. Kind of liked the way it was coming out so I thought I'd share!

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?

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).

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.

Frazetta

Here's a cool illustration I came across a few days ago on the Illustration Art blog:

It's by Frank Frazetta, who is primarily a science fiction illustrator but must have done this for a book or magazine or something along the way. For me, it's a shining example of what makes illustration stand alone as remarkable, underappreciated art form. The forms are rendered so well, showing real weight, movement and power. Positive and negative shapes are clearly defined to create a complete composition. And despite the broad, heavy brushwork, the details are all there (click on the image for a closeup- in particular, look at all the muscles and bone structure in the horse's face).

If you were to see this same scene in a modern art museum today, it would be made in primary colors and intentionally made to look like a six-year-old did it. Personally, I am much more impressed with expert craft than any abstract statement about the artist's life. A picture like this speaks to me and really turns something on in my mind.

This is my attempt to copy Frazetta... I figure if I copy guys like this it can only help me improve in terms of composition and contrast.

Above is my drawing laid on top of Frazetta's, to see how accurate I was. The horse is ok, but I admittedly spent a lot more time on it. The guy is more off- his leg is too long and not high enough, the arm not thrown back enough. Looking at my version on its own, though, I do still think it works.

Here, I digitally went over it in Photoshop just for kicks. (I actually think it may be an improvement on the straight pencil version.)

Above: From MAD Magazine #90, 1964. More on Frank here!

Oh, Rush, You Old Blowhard!

I believe there is nothing this guy won't say to contradict the left. He literally has no limits.

I'm not going to get into any political discussion on this blog, though. I just wanted to show off some drawings of this clown.

Drug Facts Action Pack

A few months ago, I was asked to create a few new illustrations for an anti-drug workbook to be used in classrooms. It was really just a series of ink illustrations to accompany the text in the books. I had done work on a previous edition back in the 1900's, and they needed some new drawings to refresh the updated version.

There was a snag though- after I submitted the initial pencil sketches, I was asked to revise them slightly to better match the original batch of drawings I did.

I did this initial group of drawings when I was about 17. Now, twelve years later, I had to go back and try and draw more like I did back then. This wasn't too difficult but slightly humbling... imagine having to forget some of the stuff you learned in the past decade, and present that as your new work. I still think I gave the project the quality it deserved, though.

Here are some of the older images (1997), for reference:

Ugh.

Winter Fun!

Today I thought I'd go through the steps of how I created the illustration for our company Christmas card. My boss has a bit of a twisted sense of humor that he only occasionally makes known. Two years ago, we sent out a card that depicted a dog who had just marked his territory on a snowman. My boss LOVED it. So much that last year, he insisted we continue this theme with a cartoon illustration:

This year, I drew up a few designs for the new card. Since it is a corporate card and we can't make any references to religious holidays, Snowmen make good, reliable secular characters. Here, the snowman is using his carrot nose to get the dog to pull his sled:

Unfortunately, one of our biggest competitors uses the dangling carrot motif in all their marketing. I was asked to change the image:

As you can see, we completely lost the joke here. I decided to add some more flair to the illustration and eventually salvaged it by incorporating the whole scene (detail below):

Notice the mysterious yellow mark behind the snowman. The inside joke continues.

I made a few other images that remained unused, but I still felt had some merit.

Salt melts snow, you know.

I love this one... the look on the guy's face on top of the mountain kills me, I don't know why. He's so oblivious and satisfied with himself.