What the...? Another post?

Yeah, I know it isn't expected, but I've actually done more art things lately. I have more on my plate still, but I'll get to posting them as soon as I can.

This image is for the book Stories and Shows from Pinocchio's Marionette Theater. You may be wondering how I could be doing new art for a book that not only was published three years ago, but was also taken out of print almost immediately due to a lawsuit involving copyrights. Well, I am happy to say that the suit was settled and the author, Dave Eaton, is legally allowed to print his book again. Rather than simply starting up the presses again, Dave decided to spruce up the book a little by adding one of the few scripts he left out of the first edition, Peter & Wendy. Dave nearly used some public domain image to accompany his story, but fortunately came to his senses and dropped me an email. And that is the story behind this fun little doodle.

No Foolin'.

CMYK

Okay, I'll continue discussing the leprechaun illustration a little more. As I've mentioned, I want to start getting shirts printed by some of the online one-a-day t-shirt shops, like RIPT, Woot, or Threadless. While some of them are capable of elaborate direct-to-garment printing, others employ traditional screens, limiting the number of colors that can be used. Of course, if one understands how to utilize CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black), a fairly wide range of colors can be produced. It looks like the classic comic book color. All I did was separate the art into four separate channels and then transform each channel into a half-tone bitmap. Once they were realigned, I brought back the original ink art because the image looked too vague. A couple of tweaks later and voila! A new shirt design. One thing to note: if this is printed, it needs to be on a white shirt or have a white base to print over as any color will greatly affect the look of the image. Some companies can manage 5 screens, others cannot.

I do hope you enjoy the design and I will surely let everyone know if and when the shirt is made available.

RIPT submissions!

Hello. Those of you who can scroll down an inch or two may recognize these two images and wonder why I'm posting them again. It's because I made a couple of adjustments to incorporate halftone dots in order to make the screen printing process a little easier and wanted to show them to you. The Devil Girl was pretty simple; just convert image into a bit map and choose the halftone option. I did have to bring back my black lines, which made it more complicated, but manageable. With the Dinosaur, I had to apply the halftone, then select the dots themselves and paint them in. If there is an easier way to do that, I'd be happy to hear it, but this worked well enough. I submitted both images to RIPTapparel.com today. I'll let you know if they are accepted and when you can make a purchase.

Just a tad more refined...

Hiya. I really liked my sketch of Frankenstein's monster and his bride so I thought I'd take it further and see what I could do. I lost some of the energy of the original pencils, but I think I got some nice painterly effects. I also like the bride's hair.

Thanks for visiting. Have a great Halloween!

Same picture? No, wait...

About a week ago, I watched a video demo from an artist named Bao Pham. The demo was on a dvd-rom that came with a British magazine, ImagineFX, which I bought a couple of years ago but never got around to looking at the disc. My mistake, because Bao is an amazing digital painter. I spent nearly eight hours watching his computer monitor. If I looked quickly, I could see which brush he used and what lighting effect, but there was no sound in the files, no explanation for why he made the choices he made nor what he was doing with different colors. Still, I learned a great deal from the experience and wanted to show the latest look of my Jack and the Beanstalk to all of you. Despite appearances, I did not use the Dodge or Burn tool for any of this image, a statement that will not be understood by many visitors, but fellow Ringling students and alumni may remember teachers frowning on such Photoshop tools. Anyway, I hope it meets everyone's approval.

Hansel and Gretel

As most schoolkids know, Hansel and Gretel were two German siblings who got lost in the woods and stumbled upon a remote cottage built entirely from edible gingerbread. However, the cottage was owned by a particularly nasty witch who, in response to the children's consumption of her home, wished to eat the children. Good clean family fun.

At Pinocchio's, "Hansel and Gretel" was one of the first marionette shows presented. The character design was a little stiff and awkward, without the wonderfully caricatured proportions that developed over the years. Rather than using the original designs to illustrate the story, I adapted the Witch design from Pinocchio's version of the Wizard of OZ. Hansel was modified from the lead of Jack and the Beanstalk and Gretel was pulled from my imagination. I did try to keep the children's wardrobe as accurate from the original puppets as possible.

As a technical note, I drew the Witch on one page, the children on another, and the background on yet one more, scanned them in separately, then merged and rendered them in Photoshop.