Frazetta

I host Story Tellers, a book cover oriented bi-weekly art competition over on CGHub.com. The idea is to take existing, and sometimes non existing books and illustrate a cover for them. It's a lot of fun to see the different takes on the same theme.

Last week we started Story Tellers 9, Conan the Cimmerian.

Little did I know that when I chose the subject, Frank Frazetta, the man whose artistic style defined Conan visually for generations, would pass away a week later to the day.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/2010/05/10/frank-frazetta-rip/

Frazetta influenced me, and thousands of other artists - I have fond, fond memories of spending hours pouring over his art books marveling at the primal strength of images. NO ONE has ever done a Conan image that can compare as far as I am concerned.

So, I'm extending STS 9 an extra week, and invite anyone and everyone to take part. Spread the word, come and share with us.

Story Tellers 009 :: CONAN THE CIMMMERIAN / FRAZETTA TRIBUTE ROUND.

Let's make this something special.

Unfinished business

It's been a couple of days since my last update - still trying to catch up and get back on track.

Below are the Western Washington SCBWI Master Illustrator class assignments I did - both revisionings of current books. The class, taught by Tim Gillner and Peter Brown, was a blast and I learned a lot. A big thanks goes out to Jaime Temairik for coordinating the whole thing.

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Entry for Art Order's Mutation Nation, which I did not submit for a couple of reasons - mostly because I felt that even though my inspiration pieces were a gorrilla, an eagle, and a brightly colored green/red/blue/yellow frog, I thought it ended up looking like a gryphon instead of some genetically modified monstrosity. Both unexpected and annoying.

ImagineFX Cover Contest

Playing around with ideas for ImagineFX's 50th cover contest. I'm approaching this a little differently than I have before in that I am using texture overlays. I'm not sure how I actually feel about it - Part of me really likes the texture that this affords the image, but the other part of me is rebelling against the idea of not having painted what I'm seeing. To make this work in my head, I am looking at this as more of an exercise in graphic design.

Overall, it's fun playing around with a technique I've not previously used. I'll post further updates as I get a long.

In other News
I'd like to give a shout out to the crew at Nth Degree Fanzine, who I have worked with on and off over the past couple of years. They are back after a bit of a hiatus and I'll be doing at least one image for their online edition in the next week or so.

Also, wanted to say "Thank You" to Ben Watson and his dad Richard for some good advice and direction the other day. I really appreciate your time!