We have a design challenge this week: take any DC hero and design their Crime Syndicate counterpart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Syndicate_of_America

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Related posts:

1. R3 Jam: Design Challenge: Create a Green Lantern!
2. R3 Jam: Celestials
3. R3 Jam: SuperYOU Design Challenge

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being Sage, from the X-books. Sage is a member of Extreme X-Men, or was, or whatever it is that Byrne’s wild, loose spin-off of the X-books is called these days. She was retconned when that book started, described as not actually ever being a real member of the Hellfire Club, but rather a deep cover plant of Xavier’s, created and inserted at the time of the original X-Men’s training. Sure, fine, a retcon is a retcon. But I’m really only interested in Tessa as she was i the original Uncanny books, the assistant to Sebastian Shaw, the Hellfire Club’s Black King. She was plenty interesting to me as it was. The whole Hellfire Club is rooted in quite a bit of cultural referencing, but to me growing up, I thought it was pretty fresh that the X-Men’s foes were these baroque high-society thugs in corsets, lingerie, and Interview with a Vampire type finery. Crazy! So, the fact that Tessa was very smart, very cute and played that ‘whisper-in-the-big-boss’-ear’ role, I thought that was interesting. I always wondered how much she manipulated events on the sly.

Anyway, here she is, hawking old timey cigarettes in another of my TRDL Pinup Series propaganda art pieces…

Process Notes:

Pencils:

Man this one was fun.

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Viper
2. TRDL Tribute- Emma Frost [Joao]
3. R3 Jam: Sage

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being H.E.R.B.I.E., the faithful robot assistant to the Fantastic Four from the old cartoons, and later comics. I love this guy. The design was always kind of weird, with a torso vaguely reminiscent of a Kirby rocket, and a vacuum cleaner head with a digital face on it that predated emoticons by decades. This piece is one of my TRDL Pinup Series’ Propaganda Art set, featuring a new Third Rail Industries company. A handy service made available for those concerned about wrong robots. I had wanted to draw Sue Storm’s brief foray into the miniskirt for a long time, but never found the right opportunity until now. I actually REALLY like the design, particularly because of the long sleeves juxtaposed with the short skirt. Somehow Sue experimenting with the fashion of the day was a sexism alarm, but Jean grey showing up anywhere NOT in her skirt was equally cause for alarm. Anyway, here we are!

Process notes:

My original face was to have a perturbed expression. It came out a little jangy as I inked it, mostly because of the angle in which i was working, and a baby on my lap. I drew the second face because I wanted a more ‘what the!’ face and a little less annoyance. Primarily, this was because these pin-up series pics are supposed to be in that vintagy theme, and you don’t see pissed looking pinup girls very often. Certainly not ones pissed at wrong robots, anyway. I didn’t like the second face as much as I had hoped for this particular pic, so i tweaked the first one to make it a little more ‘wah wah wah WAHHHHH’ [old timey horn]…

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The original miniskirt appearance is below, for science!

In addition, this was an opportunity to try drawing one of my favorite 60′s hairstyles, as memorably modeled by Princess Grace, and recently homaged by Heidi Klum:

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – Xartherian Org Battle Carapace
2. TRDL Tribute – Leeloo
3. TRDL Tribute: Supergirl 2010 [Tulio Design]

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being Blob, from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. I don’t have a lot of experience drawing the Blob. In fact, I have none. But one thing I always enjoyed about the character growing up was that he was often drawn out of scale with his environment. Whether it was lazy art or a clever trick to manipulate our perception of his girth, it didn’t really matter. So, here’s the Blob punishing a 15 Third SF MUNI bus. A little Star Trek nod there, as well…

Process notes:

Inks:

You can see I was trying out different hands here…

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. R3 Jam: The Blob
2. TRDL Tribute: Star Trek
3. Prospect: Small Press Comic Opportunity

The jam this week is Sage, previously known as Tessa, from the X-Men books.
Please enjoy! We’ll keep this the current jam through the following weekend, since we got a late start! No excuse to not draw the hell out of it now!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sage_%28comics%29

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Related posts:

1. R3 Jam: Hope Summers [X-Men]
2. R3 Jam: Clint Barton / Hawkeye
3. R3 Jam: Magdalena

Yay, get out your pencils, time for another hot pinup assignment. Er… it’s The Blob, from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Any version, any continuity!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blob_%28comics%29

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Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: The Blob
2. R3 Jam: Clint Barton / Hawkeye
3. R3 Jam: Magdalena

This was done for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen jam on the TRDL R3 Forum. I love this book SO MUCH I think i could just draw from this subject for a year. I knocked around several ideas, but settled on Miss Murray, so I could fold it into our TRDL Pinup Series. Anyway, the conceit here, of course, is that a Victorian era Murray is showing a bit o’ scandalous skin inappropriately. But then again, this IS the immortal, rebellious, defiant and awesome Mina Murray slash Hawkins, so I figure anything goes. Readers familiar with the book will note a dark easter egg in this pic as well.

Process notes:

head pencil detail:

color detail:

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Dagger
2. TRDL Tribute: Black Orchid
3. TRDL Tribute- Ranger Liu Connel

This was done for the Carol Danvers Jam on the TRDL R3 Forum. I’ve drawn this character a number of times, though in general I dislike her. It’ snot really her fault. Marvel’s writers never know what to do with her, and really dragged her through the gutter of unpleasantness over the years, from powers-related assault and violation at the hands of Rogue (which was actually a very powerful narrative moment, and the last I remember liking her much) to the typical way in which most comic writers don’t know what to do with an unpowered character, to later being assaulted by her own SON, to the alcoholism and brash personality. Frankly, I think the character is due for some good times. That all said, I have been wanting to draw the Ultimate version of Carol and Captain mar-Vell since I read Ultimate Secret. It’s been on my to-do list for years now, so I finally got my chance…

Process notes:

Inks:

I was a little stupefied by the chest script details… in final rendering I made a lot of costume design corrections while looking at the original work…

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. R3 Jam: Carol Danvers
2. TRDL Tribute – Ultimate Hawkeye
3. TRDL Tribute – Ultimate Wasp