Zombie In The Box

New York Comic Con was amazing! As great as the show was, the highlight was this box waiting for me back at my hotel.

I knew this box was coming. See, my great pal Roger over at Hey!Roger was working on a new project with a promotional coloring book for the amazing Graphic Solutions Group Inc., which featured some of my monster artwork.

I saw the file before it went to print and was blown away! As I cracked this box open...

...my mind was blown away even further! Staring at me right out of the grave was my zombie!!! That Halloween orange!!! WOW!!!

I was taken back to when I was a kid and how much I loved my dinosaur and Star Wars coloring books!
THIS was my artwork! The quality was beyond my expectations and I honestly got a little choked up.

I sat there and stared at this book flipping the pages with complete amazement. Roger is an amazing talent bringing this all together. Graphic Solutions Group Inc. knocked this so far out of the park with the printing. So far it's like an old cartoon where the ball flies around the world and smacks you in the back of the head! The texture of the pages and the print quality was astounding! Such a quality product it is truly beyond any words I can write here.

I was able to give out a bunch of these at the NYC Comic Con and people loved them! I'm still giving them out and people love them! There is this stunned pause right after I hand the coloring book to them. They stare at the front cover, flip the pages and BOOM! First thing they say to me is what a top notch print it is and how great my artwork looks!

I can't thank Roger at Hey!Roger and everyone over at Graphic Solutions Group Inc. for including my artwork in this promo. Having this coloring book in hand at the show made this a really special experience.

You need design work Hey!Roger http://www.heyroger.com/ is who you need. You got a print job Graphic Solutions Group Inc. http://www.gsghome.com/ will take care of you. Check them both out!

Have a safe and horrific Halloween!

ZIGGED WHEN IT ZAGGED

I've mentioned before in previous blogs I used to do a lot of watercolors back in the day. Since most of the color did the work, in a sense, I kept my drawings pretty simple. Then there was also a huge influence from Batman: The Animated Series and Mike Allred's Madman comics.

The line work in my images and how it defines my style seems to be a topic lately and I've been discussing how this has come to be such a prominent element for my art.

This latest image of Nosferatu got me thinking. Once I start inking what I see in my head really begins to take a life of it's own. I didn't plan on having the angular shapes in the background. Once I did the big black jacket I realized I had to balance it out with all the white in the image. I couldn't go with a solid black background or half and half. Just would have been too much one way or the other. So I broke it up.

I guess maybe I just see the images on two totally different levels now. Really a third if I go to the next stage to color. That's really all new to me because I used to envision a rough idea of a final image and now I wind up with different versions.

Still, I think somehow the line sticks out even with all the positive and negative B&W going on.

So here you go. Here are two pics and each with the original pencil line drawing and the inked version.

Nosferatu Ink

Nosferatu Pencil

Hyde Ink

Hyde Pencil

MONSTER MASH

I had this book when I was really little with pictures of all these classic movie monsters, From King Kong and Godzilla, to Frankenstein and Dracula, Wolfman and you name it. Nosferatu was in there and the images from this early picture always seemed to me like they somehow captured someone’s nightmare on camera.  Dude was seriously creepy. Even by today’s standards for make up and special effects he looks terrifyingly real. A vampire to scare you. Not some pale faced kid running through a forest.

NOSFERATU

 I had this View-Master with Frankenstein reels when I was little. Maybe I was three or four years old. Yeah, no back seat DVD players in mom and dad’s car back then as it was the late70’s early 80’s. Yeah and they were in 3-D!!! So the images had these puppets set up in various scenes telling the story of Frankenstein. Today, when I look at those same images, they look more like action figures and the scenes are something like from Robot Chicken. This along with watching countless hours of  The Munsters was how I learned about Frank. Really the funny version of Herman Munster was who I connected with. At any rate, this Frank is probably a little closer to the Munsters version and far from the De Niro version. (Remember that one?) Ultimately I think I’d like to do this image in chalk. Throw in some crazy green and blues. So here’s Frank for now, in B&W.

FRANK

Where I live there is a super old theater downtown called The Tampa Theater. It’s was built in the 1920’s and has this incredibly haunted Mediterranean feel. The architecture is amazing and spooky at the same time. Years ago I was fortunate enough to see the Phantom of the Opera (with Lon Chaney) here accompanied by the Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Organ with the guy playing the music when it originally premiered in 1925. Was truly amazing! Here, I’m not sure the Phantom was my original intent but that’s who took shape. It’s one of my favorites.

PHANTOM

Back in the 80’s one of the local TV stations here in Tampa had a Saturday afternoon monster show called Creature Feature. They aired all the classic horror and Sci-fi movies you can imagine. Same station also aired a 3-D version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They made a big deal out of it and you could go to a local convenient store and get a pair of 3-D glasses to watch it when it finally aired a few weeks later. Maybe I should give this one another try but it was always kinda boring to me. Just didn't seem to have enough of the Monster. Again, I’m not sure that is the creature I was aiming for here. Just wanted to draw a water monster with spines and stuff like a lobster or crab. Maybe he even turned out a bit like Merman from He-man.

SEA MONSTER

Sure I have posted a lot of mummies here before, but this was really the first one. Wow, were these bandages fun to draw! So, I kept going and a hundred drawings later I'm doing more mummies. Reminds me a little of Mumra from Thundercats. Not sure I like the bloodshot eyes.  I have thought about reworking the eyes but it kinda works somehow. So I left it alone.

MUMMY