Obey the Bear!

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Mark

Okay, I probably need to explain about this one. To do that, I need to get into a little of the “behind the scenes” workings of WordPress.

A few months back, I decided it would be a good thing to have some kind of a hit counter for my site, running in the background. The beauty of WordPress is that there’s likely a Plugin you can install for just about any purpose. I wanted a Plugin that would give me an idea of how many hits my site was getting, where people were coming from, what they were looking at, etc. It’s been fascinating to watch this info accumulate as time goes by. In some cases, it’s been surprising to see what posts and images get more hits than others. And one thing that’s turned up is that the Care Bears images on my site have been pretty popular.

So, I’m no dummy; it made sense to perhaps generate one more. I revisited a Post-it drawing I did as a goof back when I was working on “Care Bears,” polishing it up in Adobe Illustrator. Some of you will recognize this as a play on Shepard Fairey’s OBEY Giant image, featuring the late wrestler André the Giant done up propaganda poster style. Perhaps it’s a bit of an oblique gag to play off that iconic imagery with a Care Bear, but have you ever had one of those visual ideas that get stuck in your head and won’t go away unless you get them out on paper? You other artists out there know what I’m talking about.

So here you are, for whatever it’s worth. And for those who wonder which Bear this is, I figure it’s probably Grumpy. Because he’s cool like that.

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“I Shall Become a BAT!”

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Mark

The clock is counting down to DC Comics’ big reboot, and it’s still got me thinking back on the originals. I thought I should get at least one more post in here, before it happens. Superman was looking a little lonely.

Like I said in my previous post, I’ve always had an attraction to the early golden age versions of some of these characters, despite the occasional ruggedness in execution. There was a primal kind of energy there that perhaps got lost a little bit along the way, as the artists and writers got better at their craft, and began to formulate the rules for how you were supposed to do this sort of thing.

Last time, I copped to having an affection for the golden age Superman. But if pushed, I’d have to admit that I probably liked the golden age Batman just a little bit more. Those early strips just dripped with mood: dark shadows, misty nights with almost always an enormous full moon, and plenty of strange characters for the Batman to go up against. When I first began to encounter this stuff in those DC 100-Page Super-Spectaculars as a kid, I had no problem at all understanding why kids encountering these stories for the first time on newsstands back in the golden age were attracted to it. This stuff captured your imagination.

In the same vein as the Superman poster, here’s one featuring Batman in that early 20th Century Poster Style. This time out, I did my version of a classic pose that Kane used a number of times in those early issues. A very big “Thank You” to Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, George Roussos, and all the rest of Kane’s “ghosts” over the years who made Batman what he was!

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“Look! Up in the Sky!”

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Mark

If you follow comics news at all, you’ve probably heard there’s this big reboot that DC Comics is doing in September. They’re starting all their books over from #1, redesigning all the characters and redoing their origins. You can’t assume now that you know anything for sure about who they are, their motivations or the overall scenario.

I’m not going to get into commentary on that here (there’s been plenty of that already in other places online). But I’ll admit the idea of the retirement of the original characters has me thinking back on them a bit wistfully. Though technically a child of comics’ silver and bronze ages, I’ve always had a fascination with the golden age era too. Despite the fact that work was often a bit crude in comparison to what came later, there was a certain life and raw energy to those early incarnations of the characters.

It’s a lot easier to lay hands on golden age comics stories now. Back when I was a kid, mostly you just got to read about them (in books like Steranko’s History of Comics, or All in Color for a Dime). If you could lay hands on one of DC’s 100-Page Super-Spectaculars though, you knew you were in for a rare treat.

Like I say, I’ve long had a soft spot for these early, primal versions of characters like Superman (the proof is at left; a scan of a fake golden age cover I did when I was about 12 or 13). And with the DC reboot coming, I thought I’d revisit the original Superman once again. The new image up top could’ve gone in several different directions, but what I wound up honing in on is a Shuster-esque version, posed more formally. It’s been taken in the direction of vintage poster art from an even earlier era. Because that seemed like a fun idea at the time.

Just my salute to the golden age in general, and the original Superman in particular. Thanks very much, Mr. Siegel and Mr. Shuster!

UPDATE: I recently discovered online these neat Superman pages, drawn by Stewart Immonen some years back. Done in the style of Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo,” they’re not entirely unrelated to what I’m trying to do here with this poster. I thought these were really neat, and worth sharing. It’s funny how well Superman works in a style like this!

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Missile Mouse

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Mark

I mentioned earlier that from time to time, I intend to do posts of “inspirational stuff.” Basically, we’re talking comics I’ve come across that I think are really good, and kind of inspire you to draw. So here’s another.

If you’ve ever checked out the list of artists over in my sidebar, perhaps you’ve looked at the work of Jake Parker. He’s one of those artists that seem to straddle multiple media, including comics and animation. His stuff is very imaginative, appealing and a lot of fun to look at.

One of Jake’s creations, Missile Mouse, has now been featured in two books: The Star Crusher and Rescue on Tankium 3 (Actually, Missile Mouse has appeared in three books, if you want to count Flight Explorer Vol. 1) . You can buy them here. Missile Mouse is a tough little character who usually has to face down characters and situations that are much bigger than him, but he never backs down. He always does what he has to do.

In my opinion, one of the best aspects of these books is the way everything’s so clearly been thought out in great detail. Jake is a “world-builder.” He plainly puts a lot of thought into designing even the tiniest prop. In the back of Rescue on Tankium 3 is a section where among other things, he goes into great detail about all of Missile Mouse’s gear, how it’s assembled, what principles it works on. The level of back detail and thought put into these books makes for a fun and rich reading experience. They’re good all-ages reads, and worth checking out.

Since it’s my artblog, of course I’ve got to put up some art. So up top is my Missile Mouse fan art piece. As usual, my animation training seems to have compelled me to try to get as close to on-model as I can.  I did some experimenting with the color methods, because if I can’t do that here, where can I? It struck me that mostly we’ve seen Missile Mouse interacting with beings who are a good deal bigger than he is (playing the “David and Goliath” card very well), so I thought it might be fun to see him interact with something much smaller than himself.

Missile Mouse is ™ and © Jake Parker.

UPDATE: If you look in the Comments below, you’ll see that Jake has seen this post. He apparently liked my drawing well enough to post it on his own site here. I’m very flattered! Thanks, Jake!

Posted in Comics, Personal | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Five Color Comics

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Mark

So my local comic shop, House of Secrets (Hi Paul, Erik and Amy!) also occasionally publishes special projects of their own, under the name Art of Fiction. One of them is a title they call Five Color Comics. The interesting thing about it is that they have each panel of the stories drawn by a different artist. Bit of an exercise in herding cats for them sometimes, I’m sure, but the results are interesting.

I contributed to volume one, and they recently published volume two. Which I was also invited to contribute to. You can see my panel contribution here, sans captions. No “Photoshoppery” going on; it was done the old-school way, directly on paper with pen, ink and colored pencils. In context with the other panels, it’s interesting to see how there still manages to be a certain overall cohesiveness to the story, despite the fact we all have such different styles.

Posted in Comics, Illustration | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Rasputin

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Mark

Courtesy of Turner Classic Movies and my DVR (what a great invention!), I had the chance not long ago to check out a couple of old movies I’d never seen before, both dealing with the infamous Rasputin. TCM played both films back to back when they aired. First on the agenda was Rasputin and the Empress from 1932, with Lionel Barrymore playing Rasputin (and doing a good and creepy job of it, too!). They followed that up with Christopher Lee playing the role in the 1966 Hammer Studios film Rasputin: The Mad Monk. Lee, as usual, did a great job. He’s always a lot of fun to watch.

I don’t pretend to be any kind of an expert on the historical Rasputin, so I can’t comment on the accuracy of either of these films. But they were fascinating to watch. And obviously I’m not the only one who finds the character intriguing; looking on IMDB, the first time someone played Rasputin on film was back in 1917, only one year after his death. And he keeps cropping up as a character in films, to this day!

Without trying for a likeness of either Barrymore or Lee (or the real Rasputin), I thought it might be fun to take a shot at a character drawing. I only meant to do one drawing, but then I wasn’t entirely sure about how it was coming out, so I kept going, envisioning different approaches. There’s a whole bunch of experimentation going on here, with styles, tools, coloring etc. Instead of making myself crazy trying to decide which way to go, I thought I’d just go ahead and run them all up the flagpole, let the chips fall where they may. And that’s probably more than enough Rasputin for anybody in one dose!

I was a one-man meme!

Posted in Illustration, Personal | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Tunes!

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Mark

Okay, I know this is supposed to be my portfolio/artblog. But here’s the thing: anyone who knows me knows that I also love music. If you come up to my desk while I’m working at some studio, odds are I’ve got tunes playing in the background. My iTunes is loaded with almost 70 GB of music. In addition to my art, it’s another big part of who I am.

So to that end, I thought I’d add some music links over in the sidebar. These are far from being the only bands and artists I like! They’re only a small handful of musicians who would leave a noticeable absence for me if they were removed from my iTunes and CD libraries. If you haven’t heard some of these performers, do yourself a favor and put something new in your ears! Maybe I’ll add to the list from time to time.

And of course, since this is supposed to be an artblog, I oughta post some art to go with this announcement, right? The illustration up top was part of an assignment I did for one of my classes back when I was attending Art Center, to illustrate and design a CD package. I had no Photoshop skills back then, so it’s all pen & ink with watercolors. Today, I’d probably still draw something like this conventionally, but I’d use Photoshop for the color.

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Animation Insider

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Mark

"Pontification"

I did an interview with the site Animation Insider.com, which they just posted. You can check it out here, if you like. The site has interviews with a number of us who toil in the animation trenches, if you have any curiosity about what that’s like, what different kinds of things we all do, or how we got there. We’re a pretty varied bunch.

And, of course, I gotta post some art to go with this announcement. I had an idea of an image, and thought it might work to do it in Illustrator as an experiment. Guess the “no containment lines” look of the project I teased in my previous post was still in the back of my mind. And that’s all for this one, before I get accused of living up to this illustration!

Bloobee blee blah!

Posted in Animation, Personal | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Just Another Tease

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Mark

So I haven’t posted in awhile. The last few weeks have been crazy busy with coloring and lettering a comic book project. I can’t give details or post the pages just yet, but will in a few months, once I get the clearance to do so. In the meantime, the image at right is non-specific enough to work as a tease for what the thing looks like.

Pencils for this project were by the lovely and talented Jim Stenstrum. Jim is best known in comics as a writer, but in animation he’s better known as a character designer. I’ve worked with Jim on many projects over the years, and it is always a pleasure.

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More Randomness

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Mark

Like I said last time, I feel the need to occasionally post some things to at least remind people of the fact that storyboard revision is one of the jobs I do. Even if all I have to show for it are some random, scattered panels that I happened to have kept copies of.

Here’s another one from a Care Bears board. The overall story is forgotten now, but in this scene, Cheer Bear (in the foreground, speaking) was in an awkward situation where she felt she had to fib to Harmony Bear (in the background). I kind of liked the way Cheer’s facial expression worked out, which is why I hung onto a copy of this panel.

Posted in Animation | Tagged , | 2 Comments