Forbidden Love by Mike McMahon

Time was really against me this week and I knew I wouldn't be able to do a really extravagant piece so hopefully this drawing will do the theme justice.

Leif Ericsson vs. GIANT SQUIRREL

First, I want to take a moment to thank you all for the wonderful posts this week! You guys really did a fabulous job. Thanks for pushing the theme further and creating some really great work.

Now you can all yell at me for being late for my own post #fail. Here is Leif Ericsson fending off a giant squirrel. No wonder they went back to Scandinavia!

I did this all in brush pen which I am slowly getting the hang of, though I think I do prefer my drawing materials to be stiff and much, much thinner...

Madonna and baby HULK

I think baby Hulk qualify as a giant creature.

Young George Washington vs. The Cherry Tree Beast by Justin Zyduck

Young Washington could not tell a lie...but neither could he tell the whole truth, for the hidden facts of the cherry tree affair were far too unutterably bizarre and too horrifyingly fantastic to be believed.

B. Franklin vs Lightning by: Mark Hurst

So I really like this weeks theme, but as usual kind of ran out of time. But here is what I got. I kind of want to do a comic about this... Ben Franklin didn't get hit by lightning with a key on a kite... he got hit while trying to get into his place and a lightning monster attacked him. Yeah that's how it really went down.

BigFoot vs Theodore Roosevelt

Okey Dokey. Here's the Rough Rider, his Big Stick, and my historical character, Bigfoot squaring off. Teddy R did believe is the Sasquatch and so do I. If that makes you laugh you can kiss my ass. Any how, Mark I'm so sorry I have to pass on the Kirby Romance theme. Blah Blah excuses..
I hope you guys enjoy this, I know I did. Take Care!

The Pope vs. Godzilla

Yep.

Honest Abe Vs The Ipad

This was a completely random choice for me. Lol.

Einstein vs UmberHulk, by Josh Purple

second draft

Didn't get as much done as I planned... Breaking Bad, Venture Bros, Boardwalk Empire, :)
(more soon)

first draft

Einstein vs an UmberHulk, WIP.  Yup, this is just the start.  I wanted to post it now, since I know I'll continue working on it for awhile.  I'll be sure to post up a more completed version later tonight (maybe even early morning :) ).  Indeed, I was a complete nerd/dork in highschool, -played TONS of Dungeons and Dragons, and I loved it!  Hahaha :D .  As the DM one of my all time favorite things to do was create monsters that the party would encounter.  I picked an UmberHulk since it's a huge, hulking creature that's gone through many artistic variations/concepts.  So this is my own little twist to it.  I might make it larger.  I see it as a creature that is a cross between a; reptile/insect/dinosaur/crustacean/ -and I could see a version adding a Cthulhu influence.  I picked Einstein since his theory is in 'battle' in recent news, and because he is an easier historical figure to recognize.  I'm making him a bit cartoony (big-head,etc.), since it's a bit of a silly battle (LUV working on this :) ).

Weird Tales starring abe lincoln WIP by Josh Lynch

Genghis Khan & The Mongol Army vs A Horde of Tyrannosaurus Rex's by Mike McMahon

The drawing was too big to scan so I had to take a photo instead...was a lot of fun to draw

Scarlett Loves Snake-Eyes

Damn my shit is late. Reason being,this thing took over. I love these characters. Background for non G.I. Joe people: Fuck Duke, duke is a stupid character and the only reason they put him with Scarlett, i.e. cartoons is because the creators or whomever are too lazy to write a character who cant speak. They'd have to show subtitles and have sign language, which would be sweet. So instead of that they hook her up with some blond Aryan motherfucker. Larry Hama did a awesome job creating characters, writing and sometimes drawing the marvel books, but almost everybody else has shit on this property. Gi Joe Resolute and Renegades are awesome though if your curious. Ok Blah blah ablah

Stupidest joke ever

I didn't want to punt for two straight weeks, so I'm going to be kind of lame and post a cartoon I did awhile ago.  This joke is so stupid but it's one of the rare things I've drawn that's made me literally laugh out loud.

Darth Vader (Kirby Style) by Justin Zyduck

If only you knew the power of the...Darkseid?

For whatever reason, it occurred to me that a 1970s Jack Kirby-style Darth Vader would be cool. I didn't want to do too much of a stylistic pastiche; I think when artists "do" Kirby, they should focus more on the dynamism in his work rather than his specific artistic quirks (although I couldn't resist putting in the Kirby squiggles on the metal bits). To that end, I went through some Kirby comics of that vintage looking for a pose to base this piece off of. My first instinct was to go OMAC or New Gods, but neither one had quite what I was looking for. I finally found the pose I was looking for in Mister Miracle #5...in a drawing of Big Barda, actually! I think using a "crouching Kirby" pose gives it an interesting effect, because most Vader images are vertical compositions.

Oh, by the way, I know I didn't draw Vader's...waist cape, or whatever you'd call it...but I couldn't figure out how to make it work in this drawing. NERD JOKE: Actually, I penciled it in, but Vince Colletta erased it in the inks.

Darth Vader Rise and Fall2

Really fun stuff!

Darth Vader by Josh Purple

I'm late! Sorry!  Since last night I've been trying to post on AF, and I just could not get the Blogger 'new post' page to load... excuses, excuses, :) .  But, I decided to use FireFox 6, and YAAA it works! 

Feel free to call this a total CHEAT :D !  But, I couldn't resist.  At first I was thinking of doing a cartoony fun Vader, until I let myself get sucked into a 3D version (and that went from doing a Lego Vader to this photoreal render of Vader).  Spent waaaaay more time on this that I planned on, but hope it looks good. 

I used 3ds Max 2012 64bit, hdri set-up, iray renderer, based my model & modeling work on Shatgan's 3D model (from The 3D Studio.com.  His 'read me' file shows his name as Wilson.  My Thanks to Wilson!).

I found an image from the hallway of the Death Star, put that in for all of the reflections, used an hdri image in the environment to add to the lighting & shadows, went with a gamma correct workflow,etc. Set-up shot;

Added a photometric light, casting slightly blue light (and a reflecting whiteboard), in front of Vader, used some Depth of Field, used Arch & Design materials, realistic scale, etc. Another Set-up shot;

Then I let the scene render in iray.   BUT, again, this is not a 3D blog, so I completely failed :D .  Forgive me!  I was wanting to pay tribute to the 'original' Darth Vader. 

Darth Vader Rise and Fall

Eventually I'm going to color this...

PopMusik: Darth Vader by Rich Flood

1984’s ‘Tonight’ was maybe the second step down towards a long ‘creative valley’ in the Bowie catalogue. It’s mostly covers, many of which songs he originally wrote with (or for) Iggy Pop. As such, it had pretty lazy writing but really slick 80’s studio production. Taken by itself (apart from anything pre-‘Scary Monsters’) it’s actually a pretty good listen, though definitely a lesser entry in the Bowie oeuvre.

Darth Vader by Beth Davis

Straight from the sketchbook. The real version of how Luke discovers his parentage. Vader didn't really know how to bring up the topic in conversation. The test results prove it.

Darth Vader by Mark Hurst

So I can't really explain where this idea came from. All I know is it popped into my head and well it made me laugh out loud so I had to go with it. I have never drawn Vader, so this was fun for me seeing the costume from different behind the scene photos and movie photos to get an idea of how it looked. I like to think I've put a little bit of my own twist on the helmet/mask.

Darth Vader by Mike McMahon

With a theme like this, I couldn't do just one piece and thought it'd be fun to draw an 8 page mini-comic. I penciled about 90% of it when I realized I wasn't gonna get it done in time so I decided to just complete the double-splash page for Armagetto which you see above. But if you want to see the other pages to get an idea of how the story played out, you can go here.

love is in the air

Darth Vader by Josh Lynch

Oh Dads...

Couples: White Queen and Cyclops by Justin Zyduck

Sorry this is late and just a quick sketch, but I was ill all weekend (like, not in the hip-hop way).

Anyway. EMMA + SCOTT = TRU LUV 4EVA, right? They are miserable together, but they are miserable together, dig? Strangely enough, their relationship seems to be the part of the Morrison's New X-Men run that has had the most lasting effect on the franchise.

Couples- Spidey/Peter & MJ via Joe Q.

OK, so if any of you know me personally you know how ticked I was a few years back with the whole MJ Peter split per Joe Q. Anyway, I wanted to do something pop cultureish so I was cruising around the interwebs trying to find a cool goofy couple and a few ideas like the Odd Couple (original) or doing a goofy comic spoof of Ms. Piggy and Kermit, but something flipped a switch when I saw an article with Joe in it so this came out. Not that great, mostly rushed because of a crazy work week. But, enjoy.

Couples: Destro & The Baroness by Rich Flood

Ethan and "Power" Julie

Not too long ago I did quick sketch for a good friend of mine. So this week I thought I color it in Photoshop. It was for his anniversary. Basically he wanted his wife to be a superhero character. Preferably Power Girl or Super Girl. So I chose Power Girl. lol

Couples; Hank and Dean Venture (Ride the White Horse) by Josh Purple

It's in the next season, honest! :)

The Post Previously Known As Sneak Preview of Couples: Vivien Leigh and Lawrence Olivier by Beth Davis

So DAMN is Laurence Olivier hard to draw with all his dimples and subtle facial anatomy. Anyway, here they are as promised earlier, also with a bonus cheesy gradient background. Darth Vader, coming up next!

Couples: Captain Kirk & His Conquests by Mike McMahon

Couples: Robot Love, by Josh Lynch

Daredevil by Rob Ayotte

So I was trying some new things for me,. I worked metaphorically. I'm always thinking that good art doesn't need explanations, so I hesitate when I offer one. I'm not saying this is good art in fact through most of it's production I felt lost. Any who, the concepts I was considering concerning Daredevil were, Christan martydom (St Sebastian), Justice, and his love and weakness towards women. I' m a huge Daredevil fan and with so many great artists working on him I really wanted to try and do something different. Not too sure if I succeeded but here it is.
My couples piece is gonna be really late, this one just wouldn't relent .

daredevil!!!by two

Dare the Devil

I couldn't do too much bc I was on vacation. However I did come up with a sketch :)

Here comes DAREDEVIL, the man without fear, by Josh Puprle

Some more silly fun :) .  I was thinking, enhanced senses, so... big nose, big ears, big hands, -and that's when I thought, he's an imp!  Used this cover for reference.  Not that it's fitting, but I thought it would be kinda' fun to have him as an evil little imp ( I should have given him a goatee).

Original pencil

Daredevil by: Mark Hurst

So I've never really read any strictly DD comics. But for some reason I have always loved the red and yellow costume. It isn't as sensible as the all red, but the colors are great to me. So here is my yellow daredevil costume with some ninjas getting ready to get some butt kicked by DD himself.

The Man Without Fear by Mike McMahon

The other day I came up with an idea of Daredevil in the air kicking the crap out of a couple guys and did a rough sketch of what it would look like (which you can see here). Then I noticed that Beth pretty much did the same exact thing and did it a hell of a lot better.

So it was back to the drawing board and came up with what you see above.

The small cartoon, I came up with tonight and thought it'd be pretty funny.

Daredevil, the Man Without Fear by Justin Zyduck

So the reason that I suggested this theme is because I've been wanting to try out this style on Daredevil for years now.

The first time I ever saw Cowboy Bebop, I was totally blown away by the main title sequence to the point where I was disappointed when the show actually started that the whole thing wasn't done that way. So that's basically what I'd want to do with Daredevil. I sent everybody this long, rambling e-mail about how Frank Miller still exerts this huge gravitational influence over how we think of Daredevil after thirty years -- all film noir and anguish. If I were doing DD, I'd want to move on from that without rejecting Miller (because why would you?), so what I'd really like to do is what Bebop did. Bebop takes film noir as a starting point in a lot of places, but then totally goes off the rails -- it's not slavish to film noir in the way that I think artists and writers tend to be slavish to Miller.

So yeah, if I got the keys to Daredevil, I'd want it to be bright, stylized colors with an emphasis on graphic design, and "Chick Habit" by April March would be the theme song. (Appropriate stylistically and lyrically given Daredevil's history!) I didn't draw enough of him for you to really be able to tell (although maybe you could from the lips), but Matt Murdock is to be played by James Spader in Pretty in Pink.

The Man Without Fear by Beth Davis

I was introduced to Daredevil and my favorite comic artist, David Mack, at the same time when he did a 5-issue DD series (that was mostly about a secondary character named Echo). So I tried to pay homage to DD and Mr. Mack this week.

You know how you go through a love-hate cycle with art? Well, this ended on the Hate side of things. There are about 20 things I wish had turned out differently, but I jumped off the deep end, and stepped outside of my comfort zone so I guess I shouldn't worry about it.

David Mack is the reason I embraced watercolors in college, he was doing radically different things at the time. I think I have followed his style though it is choppy. I kind of rushed at the end.

Oh, and the circles are supposed to be echolocation soundwaves.

Also, here is the pencil sketch I did for DD:

Sorry I don't know how to make it a link. So, go ahead and rip me a new one, lol...

The Man Without Fear by Josh Lynch

So I did a couple of different sketches this week.  The one I chose to upload is an homage to my favorite visual look for Daredevil done by Rafael Grampa.  While I have loved the art from Michael lark, Miller and Janson, Buscema, and many many others I really dug what Grampa did to bring in that boxer influence.
Other Daredevil Sketch
Other...Other Daredevil sketch