This was done for the This Week jam.

There are seven people on the planet who don’t know who Lois Lane is, and it’s probably statistically unlikely any of them are reading this. What I found interesting in the contributions to this jam so far has been that with one exception, everyone chose a golden age interpretation of Lois in one way or another. I LOVES me some retro pin-up stylings, so it was an easy call for me. Didn’t enjoy the herringbone, though.

Enjoy!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. Third Rail Thrills 47 – Lois Lane [Happy new Year 2010-2011]
2. Happy New Year from Third Rail Design Lab 2010 – 2011
3. TRDL Tribute: Jimmy Olsen

Here’s a quick one before Turkey Day… this was done for the TRDL R3 This Week Jam, and the subject is Daily Planet cub reporter Jimmy Olsen. That poor Jimmy, always in the wrong place at the wrong time. And when Lois asks for a zip-up assist, back away slowly.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Lois Lane

OK, this was also done for a This Week jam… but last week, not this week. Or rather, the week before last week. Things move quickly when you’re not looking.

Anyway, the character was Songbird, of Marvel’s Thunderbolts. Formerly Screaming Mimi, her Banshee-esque scream now channeled into ‘hard’ soundcasting’ of whatever form she likes, as long as it’s… pink. I really like the colors in this costume. The weird golden gauntlet and shoulder harness action was a creative design for the character, and I think Mark Bagley did a great job realizing these costumes for this team. Anyway, hope you like it.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Dragontail
2. TRDL Tribute- Olive Oyle
3. TRDL Tribute: Warrior Woman

This was done for the R3 Forum’s This Week Jam.

Cate Archer is a sexy bobbed spy in the James Bond videogame franchise. When reviewing the reference material, it struck me that so much of what I was excited about with this character were her cool, colorful mod outfits, and had several ideas about ways to lay out a piece that would focus on the clothes. Then it hit me, my favorite espionage/spy/assassin thriller female character was Nikita in Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita, so I decided to do a homage to the most memorable scene from that film. The sniper rifle is based on a Fusil FR-F1, but gun fetishists please excuse any inaccuracies, as I have neither held one or pulled it out of a clawfoot tub.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Batman Begins
2. Third Rail Thrills No. 57 – Babydoll [Sucker Punch]
3. TRDL 2011 Series, No. 18: Artemis [Young Justice]

Enrico Salvini’s Top 10 Lies My Client Told Me

This was posted in an artshare group I follow, and has spawned about a week’s worth of rants. I thought it might be worth posting here as well, see what you all think. SOme of this might be familiar to some of you. It applies largely to commercial paid projects.

I should mention though, I have had virtually all positive experiences myself in terms of commission art, with the few glaring exceptions being wrong from day one anyway. These don’t apply to my personal experiences so much as an illustrator, than as an architect.

:::

Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook Pricing and Ethical Guidelines

1-”Do this one cheap (or free) and we’ll make it up on the next one.”

No reputable business person would first give away their work and time or

merchandise on the hope of making it up later. Can you imagine what a

plumber would say if you said “come in, provide and install the sink for

free and next time we’ll make it up when we need a sink.” You would be

laughed at! Also the likelyhood is that if something important came along,

they wouldn’t use you.

WR: sadly, this is all too common in architecture. But architects are notoriously bad businesspeople. Too much emotion and insecurity, I suspect.

2-”We never pay a cent until we see the final product.”

This is a croc, unless the person is leaving the door open to cheat you out

of your pay. Virtually every profession requres a deposit or incremental

payment during anything but the smallest project. Once you have a working

relationship, you may work out another arrangement with a client. But a new

client should not ask you to go beyond an initial meeting and, perhaps some

preliminary … Read on for more awesome…

No related posts.

Yesterday, Third Rail Design Lab reached the 100,000 hit mark. To the big guys, that’s like three minutes of traffic. But we don’t advertise, don’t market much, and largely get spread around through word of mouth, so to speak. So that’s a lot of clickeroos.

We also recently welcomed our 200th member to the TRDL R3 Forum. That’s also small potatoes to the big guys, but huge to me, considering that this forum was a place for a couple of knuckleheads to argue about which superhero film is cooler or why I drew one foot larger than the other in some pic. Today, we have all of the entertainment news and reviews content from our old Monkey+Robot Reviews blog, plus a weekly art jam, links and galleries, and host a virtual drawing studio.

I think this is all quite swell.

Once I noticed we were actually getting some pretty reliable traffic, I started working on a celebratory illustration for hitting the 100,000 hit mark. That was back in August 05. On honeymoon, actually.

Let me know what you think. I hope you dig it. By now, I hate it. It gave me carpal tunnel.

Here’s to the next 100,000 hits, I say!

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 04 Annotations [BONUS]
2. TRDL Tribute: Batman Begins
3. TRDL Blog is Live

This was a secret commission (say it with a whisper) done for a client and fellow group member Teri, cooked up by a friend as a surprise.

This is her version of Moon Knight, female, with more of the Egyptian detail and imagery of the second MK series. I originally did 4 schemes in the rough phase, trying to nail the right pose for the client (Teri’s friend) and then once I got going on it, I realized there were many ways the costume could go, and it would warrant Teri’s choice of how she’d ultimately like the pic. I was doing a TRDL redesign of MK, based largely on the description of Teri’s character. But the question of what metal color the gilded armor elements on shin, forearm and belt should be, led to two sets of schemes in color, one with a silver/anthracite detail, and one with gold. Then we weren’t sure about the face, so I did three versions of that: mask, mask with hair, and exposed face. Lastly, just for kicks I set it to night, with a moonlit background, which led to pushing the colors and brightness way down on the figure to simulate moonlight (losing a bit of the detail in the hair, sadly.) SO Teri ended getting bombarded with variants, and variants OF variants. But she chose this version, and generously allowed me to share it. It was a fun one to do, and the surprise aspect made it even more enjoyable! Glad she dug it…and for you Moon Knight costume purists, we’ll just clarify up front that the costume is silver, not white, ha.

Enjoy!

You can see these illustrations herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute : Moon Knight
2. TRDL Tribute: Misty Knight
3. TRDL Character Factory, No. 106: Blood Knight

http://www.advancediron.com/AIzine.php

I’ve been a contributing artist to Advanced Iron magazine for awhile, though I only rediscovered them last year. I had the first print issue back in the day, then looked them up on a whim and discovered they had been printing the issues electronically, and got involved. This issue I have the cover art, as you see above, as well as some interior art as well. The cover was decribed in the Editor’s forward as “killer!” which you know is one of my favorite compliments…

The mag can be downloaded as a PDF from the link above, as a ‘TRDL collectible’ or as reading material for IM fans. They put a lot of work into it each issue, and have some good interview and armor resources this time.

Cheers!

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL 2011 Series, No. 30: Iron Man Series – Iron Man MK II
2. TRDL Tribute: Iron Man 2020
3. TRDL Tribute: Iron Man: Tales of Suspense [TRDL Redesign]