Skull Gun Bunny Preview

All of our projects right now fall into the "work in progress" category. That happens to be the disadvantage to being obsessive compulsive creative people, we have a gazillion things going all at the same time. While we put the finishing touches on some of our story projects, I thought that I would share a short preview of "Skull Gun Bunny". The first issue is a 40 page comic that tells the strange story of Jeff and Otto, two college-bound bunnies who encounter mechanized zombies and the embodiment of Death while shopping at the local supermarket. I'm in the process of coloring and lettering the comic. The pages I'm sharing below are the first 6 pages with the base colors applied. The story begins with Jeff and Otto journeying to the supermarket. Meanwhile, across town, some mechanized zombies are preparing for a kidnapping mission at that same supermarket. 

Answers Magazine Illustrations

I just got a hard copy of the children's section of Answers magazine. I worked on this project during the month of May and it's awesome to finally have it in hand to show off. The magazine has some great design and illustration used throughout. The design staff is very talented; they did some great work on this thing. 

Cover artwork for The Memoirs of Ko Ko the Inappropriate Clown

Here's the cover for the first issue of a comic that Rachel and I have been working on for quite some time. Things are getting really exciting with our PrettyWeird business. In about a month, we'll have three different books out that the two of use have written, drawn, and colored ourselves. We've made such massive progress this year on our creative projects, I can't wait to see where we're at this time next year. 

Sketchbook Dump

Here are some sneak peeks at some more projects that are in the pipeline. I've been coloring the first issue of Skull Gun Bunny and I'm also working with Rachel Mongin on Pencilling and Inking the first issue of Ko Ko the Inappropriate Clown. 

Ko Ko and the Gang enjoying the wetlands of SC.

Ko Ko and the gang take a road trip.

A dino rider. 

A villain that will soon make life a lot stinkier for Ko Ko and the Gang.

Molly Steamer, Ko Ko's Parole Officer and part time harbor patrol Sgt.

Mr. Hustla', an enemy of KoKo's

Recent Work: Magazine Cover, Poster, & Spot Illustrations

I thought it might be helpful to other people studying illustration to see the working process that goes into a magazine illustration project. I recently had the great pleasure to create a cover, fold out poster, and several spot illustrations for a children's magazine. Below, I'm going to walk you through the creative process that went into the job.

The initial brief said that the project would have the theme of brain vs. technology. The project would include a cover, spot illustrations, and a fold out poster that included a mad scientist and his brain collection. My job was to work with the magazine's designer and come up with some illustrations for the cover and inside spreads that would feature some sort of face off between the brain and tech. My initial ideas for the cover and spots played off of the mad scientist theme for the poster. I envisioned illustrations that would be in the style of a z-grade 1950's horror flick, with a monster brain battling a monster robot. The editorial staff felt that approach might go over the target audience's heads, so I worked on some more ideas.

My second batch of thumbnails played around with several different versions of face offs--game shows, board games (featuring a sock'em robot game of course), boxing posters, video games, and wrestling rings.

The designers and editors really liked the direction of a game show, so I worked up a few layout ideas for the cover. 

We settled on a basic sketch, which I further developed through inks and color comps.

Ink sketch over the pencil thumbnail.

The initial color comp.

A further developed image incorporating a more detailed background.

The final drawing for the cover.

My initial thumbnail for the poster illustration.

There were multiple brain-related facts that the design team wanted to include on the poster. I drew up several different visuals to illustrate the brains in humorous ways.

The final poster illustration. I'd post the more refined pencils, but I seem to have misplaced them at the moment, and since it's getting close to my bed time, you'll just have to take my word for it that there were some tight pencils that came before this final, colored stage.

The final cover and spots.

The final poster.

Heroes Con 2013: Post Mortem

Heroes Con was just this last week. I was able to attend with my beautiful wife Rachel Mongin, an awesome writer friend of mine Mark Szaz, and with a bunch of other uber talented artists. We all had a blast.
I thought that I'd share some of the commission sketches and a few other pictures from the event.

A huge shootout to everyone who stopped by our Pretty Weird booth and spoke to us. It was great to talk to some many people who loved the comic medium. Thank you so much for your kind words and for your support of the arts.

For those of you who contributed to the "Idea Box", I'll be posting a tab on this website and our prettyweirdart.blogspot.com site with a status report on the project. I'll update the pages as the project continues to evolve. We had well over 80 people contribute their ideas to the project, and some of the ideas are incredibly entertaining. We even enjoyed the guy's who contributed drawings of large phallic symbols. We know your hearts were in the right place...

Anyways, you don't want to read me babbling, let's get on with the pics from the show!

Annihilator

Rachel Mongin's Black Widow

Darklon

Destro

Hulk

Rachel's drawing of someone's original character

Rachel's Scarlet Witch

An awesome lady who asked for a Catwoman sketch

Harry learns something he can't unlearn about the dementors...

This was an awesome commission! The guy who asked me to draw this Joe handed me his own sketchbook that held sketches by the original artists that worked on the Gijoe comics in the 80's!

Here's the artwork to prove it! My cartoon Joe is in the same book as Ron's version of the Joe! My artwork is just pages away from the guy who drew the Joe Comics in the 80's! Geekgasm!

Moon Knight Smack Down!

Rachel's Hedwig

A few of my mini prints

Rachel and Mark manning our booth like pros!

Our little set up of comics, sketches, original artwork, and mini prints.

The Pretty Weird Gang

Our loot pilfered from our fellow artists in artist alley.

Iron Grenadier

Metal Head

Rachel's Samurai

Targat

Voltar