Facebook Fridayz - 2

THE CLASSIC MOVIE MONSTER SERIES-ELSA LANCHESTER as THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

Facebook Fridayz - 1

A friend from my last long-time freelance gig began a group on Facebook, the aim being a new drawing every Friday. Here's my entry for this week.

THE CLASSIC MOVIE MONSTER SERIES-LON CHANEY as THE PHANTOM

THE CLASSIC MOVIE MONSTER SERIES-BELA LUGOSI as DRACULA

Floating

A Monsterous Mind

Some recent and not so recent things from my sketchbook. A few were done some months back, but just inked the other night.

Ornamental Creature Head Designs

These drawings developed from an unusual and cool job request. I was asked to help sketch out some ideas for gargoyle/creature heads that would be used on a frame housing a portrait of The Addams Family, for a poster advertising the Addams Family Chicago and Broadway Musical, which opens next year.

The sketches were to resemble a creature, but be done in such a way that you'd have to look twice to fully see the face, in an ornamental style. From my pencil sketches, my collaborator and client on the project developed rendered ornamental motifs for the four 'clock positions' on the frame. My drawings tended to steer more to the tribal sort of angluar style, rather than a floral, flowery kind of approach, but they still worked out all right. When the final project is done, I'll post a link. The ad is scheduled to run in the New York Times in November, and then be a billboard in Times Square.

The 12:00 and 6:00 positions on the frame were to have frontal views and at 9:00 and 3:00, profiles. For the frontal ones, I drew a line on my paper and drew only on the left side. I scanned that in and in Photoshop, copied that and flipped it, creating the mirror image. I did a little over forty designs in total.

Some Sketches

It's been over a month since my last post - too long. Not too much new to provide, so here's a few thigs that have slipped by the wayside in recent months.

Robot ND-23

This was another fun project I got to work on recently. Target asked for some comic styled prints (for toddler boys swim trunks) and I was given free rein to do as I liked. Here's one of the designs, which they wrote back they loved! They only asked for the skulls to be less scary, but for this post, I left them as they were. The final design is also a two-way repeat, wheras here, it's just a one-way. I based the design off of a print I did for the Faded Glory line of girls intimates for Wal-mart last year. I used a few of the same elements, but more the style and layout, changing it to a sci-fi boys look. Hopefully you'll see this in Target stores next Summer.
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UPDATE!

Got word that Target bought this and another comic styled print!

DARTH VADER

Here's my pretty-much-close-to-final version of Darth Vader for Josh Frost's book '100 Ways To The Dark Side'. I might do some final tweaks before I call it done.

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Well, a month has gone by and I've done more than just some final tweaks. I wound up redoing certain parts, most noticeably his jawline and grill. I still see things I'd want to work on, but I need to call this one finished. While working on it, I also did a version based on a sketch posted earlier. At the bottom of this post is my original pencil sketch for the final design, that included more of Vader's body, before I decided to just concentrate on the helmet. Has it improved with all these changes? Looking at them side by side now, I see things in the first attempt that I like but also things I see have improved. A special shout out to my buddy, Bill, who spent much time helping out with feedback and ideas about the piece. Carlos and Rob deserve some props, as well, for their feedback along the way. Well, at any rate, that's enough Darth Vader for awhile!

Darth Vader sketches

I was recently asked to participate in a new book, being put together by Josh Frost, called '100 Ways To The Dark Side', a collection of interpretations of Darth Vader. These are some sketches and studies I did while working on my submission, which I'll post soon. While these drawings (except for the top sketch) are more realistic, I went with an exaggerated cartoon style for my final piece.

Sketchbook Stuff

Here we have some sketches of:

Edward G. Robinson in ...?
Rondo Hatton in 'House of Horrors'
Lon Chaney in 'London After Midnight'
and Gojira.

In space no one can hear you sketch...

Some sketches of the creature from the first Alien movie, designed by H.R. Giger and brought to reality by Carlo Rambaldi (who is probably most famous for designing E.T.).

Nine Of Nine-the Monster Sketch Card Series Ends!

The first three auctions of these Monster sketch cards that I put up on Ebay a week ago have just ended, with no bids. I had two watchers on one of the cards and one watcher on two others. Oh well. I have the second set up currently, and those will be ending soon, also 99.9% sure without bids, either. Ok, 100% sure. I'm not gonna put these last few up, but if I do some more mainstream characters, I'll give it another shot. I've got two blank sketch cards left, so we'll see. Still, these were a lot of fun to do. Top to bottom we have:

7 of 9 - Revelation

8 of 9 - Not In His Right Mind

9 of 9 - Where His Fate Led Him