This time, I chose to re-imagine the classic cover to Tales of Suspense #53, starring the Black Widow in her cold war best… and using Ole Shellhead’s repulsor technology against him… doing this illustration was fanboy geekery at a new level for me. I just don’t get to draw the older armors enough, and I love em all. I I remember correctly, this was the last issue before Stark changed the armor to it’s most well-known incarnation, lacking the points at the helmet’s edges, the removable face shield, and moving the non-nipple thingies above the chest beam emitter. This was one of my favorite Stark armors from childhood, so there you go.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Ruin is a recent Superman villain that selected, at random, as our topic for this past week’s This Week Jam.

I couldn’t help but notice the similarity in color and appearance between Karl Kerschl’s cool design for the Darth Maul-esque villain, and my own ‘Wrongrobot’ mascot… so thusly, off wit’ is ‘ead!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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When I look at stuff done by WR, Vlad, Tsparhawk, Tweenerjay, and others, the coloring seems unattainable to me. In my recent Weekly Jam submission, Ruin, I did the best I could with what I knew, which, admittedly, ain’t much.

Was wondering if some of you would be willing to share some secrets. I’m definitely into participating more regularly in the jams, but I get frustrated and embarrassed when I try and color stuff myself.

I don’t have any problems with flat colors and my sense of compliment and contrast in colors grows every day. I’m also OK with shadowing, in a black and white scenario. But when I see stuff such as planes of color around body curves, like in WRs stuff, or amazingly professional tones and highlights, as in V’s work, I want to be able to do that.

Anyone wanna help a brother out by posting a tutorial? Or at least some helpful hints? Sure would mean a lot to the old Lunger.

IronLung out.

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OK, one thing that infuriates me, mostly just cause I’m an unabashed asshole, is poor Photoshop clipping paths. Even when I break off a shitty path, I get pissed. So I’m gonna hip you all to some basics of good pathing.

I know that most of you are working from your pencilled or inked lineart images, and as such, this will really not be of much help to you. But if you’ve ever thought, “Man, I wish I had it in me to clip that image out of the background,” but didn’t believe in your skills — I’m here to hook you up.

(The interfaces you’ll be seeing are on a Mac running OSX.3.9, and Photoshop CS. Your interface may be different, I have to rely on your knowledge of your own machine to get you past some of the inherent differences here.)

Firstly, let’s go over what we will NOT be using…

-> “Extract” filter.

Certainly a feasible tool for knocking a dark figure out of a white bg, but it doesn’t give you the subtle control you need for professional-quality compositing.

-> “Magic Wand” tool.

There is nothing ‘magic’ about this tool. If you’re working on a bitmap image, or you’re working in indexed color, fine, go for it — it’s helpful. But when you’re dealing with a good-quality photograph, it ain’t gonna cut it.

-> “Lasso” tool.

Technically, you will be using this tool, but only AFTER you’ve established a good path for the majority of the image, and only to create subtle adjustments to SECTIONS of the final product.

-> “Eraser” tool.

NEVER USE THE ERASER TOOL. It’s far better for your state of mind if you use a layer mask in conjunction with a black paintbrush. Same outcome, but you can go back if you … Read on for more awesome…

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This piece was done for the This Week Jam… the subject is one of the female fighters from the Dead or Alive series of fighting games… I chose Kasumi. Here, she’s kicking a55 and chewing bubblegum, and all out of bubblegum*

Hope you like it!

*apologies to Duke Nuke-em!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This piece was a commission for a client who’s been writing a comic loosely based in the Star Wars pantheon. This particular character from his series is called Cherie, and she’s essentially a batlike creature/human hybrid, who wields dual lightsabers. A bad nasty. Now me, I wouldn’t wield ANY lightsabers if I had giant membranous bat wings, but I guess she’s careful. The client had very specific requests for the look of the character’s wings, the uniform, and the general pose, and I was able to embellish the hair, the nature of her facial features and ears, and some other little details. Once his material is available online, I’ll post a link to it here…

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Hey gang…

I need some immediate help for those of you that know your Photoshop…

I’m trying to emulate the Roy Lichenstein-big dots for color-effect. Kind of like a colored zipatone, only bigger. The name escapes me at the moment but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, right?

Anyone have a good tutorial URL they could send me? I know I’ve read some articles in the past that tell you how to do this effect but for the life of me, I can’t remember where I saw them.

Please contact me off-list at either chrisflick@csfgraphics.com or chris.flick@drcs.com if you can help. Thanks!

-Chris

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The topic for the weekly jam is once again defying the odds by being simultaneously neither comics-based, nor female, though the show’s writers were DC stalwarts with plenty of Superman experience, and being the sixties, there WERE a lot of short maiden’s skirts in the show, among other bisexual delights.

Anyway, it’s Hercules! As in “The Mighty Hercules”, the sixties ‘spartan animation’ (sorry) who’s diversity of animation sequences was fairly limited, though Herc’s centaurian sidekick’s penchant for double-stating everything clearly had lasting impact on Scorsese, who, you know, certainly based Goodfella’s Johnny Two Times on him. Right? Right.

This pic was inspired by a tiny animation screen-cap I found while trolling the internet for ideas. I’d hazard a guess that that there is a pissed-off genie… and I’m fairly certain Hercules ends up winning.

Hope you like it!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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For those of you who seem to have a steady stream of commissions going on, I’m curious as to how you go about securing those commissions. Is it word of mouth? Ebay advertising/posting? Paypal links?

I’m thinking about putting either a Paypal donate button on all of my forum-related art work (like the “This week” jams) or possibly adding a Commision request form somewhere on my site (database-driven, of course).

I’m also thinking about collecting all of the ones that I have done and creating a mini-comic book I can either sell relatively cheap or hand out as a promotional item at the few conventions I am lucky enough to attend each year.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas?

-Chris

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1. Questions of paper

Jeremy Adolphson is an original art collector who hit on the clever idea of collecting 4×6 index cards from his favorite artists. He posts them to his online art collection, and new artists are contributing to his collection all the time, since it’s as easy as sending a postcard, literally. Granted I’m sure most artists sent a more protected package, by the looks of the art he’s collected over the years he’s been doing this, with lots of pencil, painted, or other more delicate media. I posted a link to his site, http://www.4×6-art.com in the TRDL R3 Forum’s Robotic Links section last year, and had agreed to contribute a piece to Jeremy’s collection last summer.

My original piece, featuring the cast of Hellboy’s B.P.R.D., was lost (not surprising, I suppose, considering the natural disaster’s affect on the mail service, nation-wide) so I did another one for him this year. I decided to do a fun little portrait of one of my favorite heroines from a great book from the Luna Brothers, ULTRA, now being shot as a TV pilot for the fall. I’ve included the full-color version of the piece here, which was originally done in pencil in postcard-size, then re-rendered in ink, scanned, and colored. Below is the original pencil scan…

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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