This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being the DC character Black Orchid.

I was only familiar with the mid-80s redesign of this character, the fuchsia floating nude in the painterly book… but doing a little research I learned about this original incarnation, which has a cool Gypsy Moth vibe… the references for costume design were scarce so I’ve definitely made some alterations to suit my taste: where the cover I referenced showed her in a largely pink and purple suit with a lot of inky shadow, I’ve taken the liberty of bringing that black into the design as design elements. I also gave her a visible pony tail, and a five part wing/cape system to reflect the floral petal configuration.

Otherwise, for this TRDL pin-up advertisement, I’ve used the original cover as a setting inspiration.

Please enjoy! Hell yes!

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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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Process Notes:

This is the original cover to Adventure Comics, which I used as my primary inspiration… you can see where a lot of the costume design details are murky and the inky blacks feature so prominently on her figure… it really made me want her costume to have that black for contrast as well.

Here’s an early color progress shot, showing how it looked prior to my adding the extra blacks…

And here’s the finished figure, prior to the design of the all digital background image…

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Spider-Man and Black Cat
2. TRDL Tribute – Black Mary
3. TRDL Tribute: Black Widow

For those who are interested — a video of me playing w/ some of the neat features on the new Cintiq:

http://www.justin.tv/clip/eac3517a50c52225

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

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I’ve received a number of inquiries about the status of the Friends of TRDL Gallery project… just a quick update. I have one piece that is coming in a little late, and then have most of the gallery assembled, and will be featuring this on the next site update on the master site http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com soon. I’ll let everyone know before hand, as I wrap up the names and file size checks and such. Hang tight!

Thanks again to everyone who submitted!

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here!… Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. Announcing the 2010 Friends of TRDL Gallery Project!
2. 2010 Friends of TRDL Gallery Project: 1/2 Way Point Reminder
3. TRDL Update – Dawnstar

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being Kirby’s Fourth World or New Gods work.

I never drew any of these characters before our jams. There’s a lot of older fan love for them, i think. They seem to generally get favorable responses from folks who actually read the work. I confess, reading the DC books more recently, in the last twenty years, let’s say, the New Gods never resonated the same way that Kirby’s godlike creatures created for Marvel did for me. But the more I read about stuff like the Anti-Life Equation and some of the nuance of his crazy backstory for these characters, the more I liked it. Some, admittedly, still reads as some sort of drug-fueled therapy session material (I’ll never get used to Granny, for example) but I LOVE Kirby design work, and it’s always fun to draw his characters. For this jam, i chose one of the Furies, Lashina. This was partly because costume designs that obscure the nose bridge always give me trouble, so I wanted the challenge. Seriously!

I envisioned this piece as an inverted bomber girl, the type that is lounging at a downward angle in that bombs-away thing… plus, Lashina seems like a lanky character so i made her thin and lithe, or at least tried to. I was of two minds on the costume: I’ve seen the banding on the bodice interpreted as pure color blocking, and I’ve seen it as belts connecting to rings. In this piece, I chose the latter, since that seemed to follow the concept of her electrified steel bands as weapons. But I LOVE Kirby color blocking, so I tend to favor that direction normally, and certainly utilize that theme in my own costume … Read on for more awesome…

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This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being the nebulous term ‘childhood hotties’ as applied to comics and film…

For me, there were crushes and thermometer-bursting babes. Sometimes one, not the other, and sometimes both. Just like today, of course. Anyway, the first comic character I remember thinking was hot was Rogue, in the pages of Uncanny X-Men #173.

With this piece, I was trying to play up the ‘good girl’ allure of an inviting hottie, with the alarming detail of that glove off. This was like, what, a decade before the ‘bad girls’ thing, and all of the pr0n of later Rogue portrayals… I came into reading about Rogue around this time, and while I was aware of her brotherhood days and what happened with Danvers, I didn’t have an angry-stereotypical-villain perception of her: I saw her as a pretty southern belle, hat in hand, entering the mansion, with everyone who knew better running for cover. That dichotomy stuck with me at the time: pretty, but sweet, or cute too, but dangerous. As opposed to sultry and overtly sexual.

Very soon after, I think my next eye-popping moment was noting the hotness of the cast of the Macross cartoon under the Robotech banner. Those have already been given illustrated homage here…

Please enjoy! Hell yes!

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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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Process Notes:

Here’s the original cover inspiration:

Man I still love that cover. Go Paul Smith GO

These are the original inks. I don’t have a lot of process looks on this piece because of the timing, but you can see that I was playing with two versions of the leg-cross. I wanted … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute- Rogue [Joao]
2. TRDL Tribute: Rogue
3. TRDL Tribute: Rogue [New Years 2010]

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being the classic Eisner hero, The Spirit.

What an intimidating assignment… drawing the classics is always scary, but touching the work of a master is really an extra level of stymie. I haven’t read any complete issues of The Spirit… I think i’ve read ABOUT the work more than anything… but man, studying the panels and the craft and reading about Eisner’s philosophy over the years really gave me a daunting task ahead: play homage to the spirit of the Spirit, so to speak, without mimicking the style of his work.

What i’ve done here is make a nod to a classic Spirit cover that struck my fancy. I was looking for a femme fatale to work with and thought the original cover had everything I wanted… so it was just a matter of reinterpreting it to tell a story in a marketing effort rather than a tease for a serial within the book.

Please enjoy! Hell yes!

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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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Process Notes:

Here’s the original cover inspiration:

This one started out very, very badly. Her face was mangled, her head to torso to arm proportions were wildly off, Spirit was too big and his arm was jangy. This is what happens sometimes when drawing in the dark with a baby on your face.

After a lot of Photoshop work, I got P’Gell to look how I envisioned her, and made a few corrections to Spirit’s arm, intending to do scale adjustment after colors.

From there I kept tweaking until I got things as I wanted them, brought the larger art into my TRDL imprint … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: The Spirit (Joao)
2. TRDL Tribute: Black Orchid
3. TRDL Tribute: Modesty Blaise

This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being a Design Challenge this time around: Create your own ‘Crime Syndicate version of a DC Hero.’ For those not familiar, the Crime Syndicate was an Earth-2(?) version of the JLA, as villains. The jam suggestion gave an opportunity to play around with the design of an established character, give it that villainous touch, but try and make it identifiable.

As I have been angling to do as many of these jam pieces as TRDL Pinups as possible, I gravitated to Zatanna. In my redesign, instead of being a stage magician themed character, my Zsatannei was a baroque carnivale magician who made a deal with a sub-dimensional horror, giving her access to unspeakable evil in the form of a dimensional portal in her hat. The concept was that she isn’t ready to just unleash this Lovecraftian horror upon the world, but rather keeps it in check through force of will, in order to make use of the power to fuel her insidious methods. I wanted to go old school with the costume, taking inspiration from a number of vaudeville vintage photos as well as the leggings and shoulder/arm sashes from a ‘naughty gypsy’ adult costume. Sadly, I didn’t see this costume live on anyone I knew. Anyway, I used the top hat as the design element that reinforces the Zatanna theme, which I hope is a successful tether to the original character. Easter egg: MOOD Parfume… that’s a nod to Zatanna’s say-it-backwards spellcasting… also alluded to in the Mood banner logotype.

Please enjoy! Hell yes!

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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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Process Notes:

Pencils and Inks…

The original … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Sorceress (He-Man)
2. TRDL Tribute – Xartherian Org Battle Carapace
3. TRDL Tribute: Black Orchid