The Tamalpais Valley Improvement Club is a non-profit group dedicated to preserving land and helping guide the reasonable development of the Tam Valley community, here in Mill Valley at the approach to Mt. Tamalpais. I offered to design them a new logo pro-bono, and this is what came of it. Nice, smooth process, with courteous and articulate responses from my client group along the way as we narrowed choices and came to some conclusions about the direction of the design.

This is the original design. Mountains evoke Mt. Tam, some indigenous pictographics, line art.

One of the members of the TVIC has lived in Tam Valley for longer than most have been alive, pre-dating the suburban landscape we have clustered today between the redwoods and the mountain. After my first round of concept sketches, I was introduced to some imagery that included her home, and decided to draw my inspiration from that. We started with Tam imagery, some egrets (lots of marshland in the valley by the bay’s edge) and so on, but it was mentioned how much the coyotes are a part of Tam Valley going back long before they were considered pests by the residents today. So, I pulled one in for science.

Here’s that classic image of the house, based on her actual property so many decades ago.
I worked up pencil sketches for the house/ logo framework of the valley and Tam beyond, and of a coyote.

Here’s the composite, and the early digital inks. The entire thing was done digitally from the pencil stage on.

Building up the coyote digitally.

Here’s the home and the valley, Tam beyond… working around the new logotype i created.

Obviously you’ve seen the final color version up top. Here’s the line art and then a grayscale version, below. I … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Side Project – ‘Two Chicks’ Logo
2. TRDL Commercial Project – The CraveDemon
3. TRDL Commercial Project – Sisters of Rapture RPG

TRDL 2011 Series, No. 84 – Ultron [TRDL Redesign]

This was done for the TRDL R3 Jam, the subject being the hardest metal in the Marvel Universe,adamantium.

Here’s the sneak WIP I posted to Tumblr earlier in the week.

I started this week’s illustration sketching X-23, but in thinking about the subject, what always comes to mind for me when I think of adamantium is Ultron, not just the ubiquitous Wolvie claws. What I’ve done is a TRDL Redesign of Marvel’s killer Oedipal robot, targeting the return of the character to the Avengers book as a full-fledged enemy, as revealed in The Mighty Avengers No. 67 in 1969. I’ve tried to make this design recognizable as the Marvel character, not a wholesale blank slate redesign exercise, but gave it my spin. A few of the design changes include increasing his size, though staying within the humanoid, relatively smooth surfacing concept which I think was always fitting, given Ultron’s issues with being imprinted off a human. I’ve created an interlaced tiling of the armor plating that comprises his shell, and since I always loved the glowing energy coming out of his mouth, I gave him a chest beam to show more of that. My biggest focus was the head: I love the iconic look of Ultron, though whenever the eyes are drawn all crooked and his gaping maw is shown like an idiot laughing, it drives me crazy. I tried to tone all that down, but still used the familiar tooth motif and make it recognizable. I gave him a set of inner jaws, just for fun. It’s one of two Alien nods in this piece, the other being, obviously, the state of Vision there.

You can read more about the process on this pic after the jump…

Artists, … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL 2011 Series No. 79 – Catwoman Redesign
2. TRDL 2011 Series No. 31: Scandal Savage [TRDL Redesign]
3. TRDL 2011 Series No. 40 – Iron Man Series: Force Redesign

TRDL Collaboration – Micevengers

This piece was done for Round 01 of a new Tag-Team Battle Royale on Outcast. my partner in grime is Miguel, who is understanding with my fleeting free time in the approaching presence of my future son. But so far so good! The concept is that there are 5 teams, so we are bracketed so that every team competes with every other team in a series of rounds, and points are amassed based on voting within that forum. Every round and therefore every challenge has a different theme. So Round 01, for us, was the theme ‘MICE’. We were talking about it and I had the concept to re-imagine the classic Avengers No. 1 cover, but with mice and a cat. Actually I think I thought of Loki as a hawk, but Miguel was down with a feline foe. He penciled it, I inked and colored it, and he did the final text and formatting for the cover art. Pretty awesome working with another artist, something I miss from our Picture This! Virtual Studio period.

Voting now:
http://outcaststudios.com/forums/index. … ntry119414
You can see the competition in this link. They did some sort of biker mouse from mars, from a TV show with which I am unfamiliar. Cool pic, though.

Edit: We won. On to the next round…

Process notes below…

:::

Artists, come join us on R3 and submit to the jams! The R3 Illustration Jam offers new characters weekly, but all jams remain open so you can contribute to any that you like, here:
http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum … m.php?f=27
or in the TRDL-R3-WeeklyJam group on DA, here:
http://trdl-r3-weeklyjam.deviantart.com/

:::

PROCESS:

Here’s that familiar cover. I love this pic. Actually pretty technically challenging, fitting all of the characters into that composition with a foe in the foreground.

I’m … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Collaboration: Locked and Loaded
2. TRDL Collaboration: Appleseed
3. TRDL Collaboration: Runaways as the Pride 2.0

TRDL 2011 Series, No. 16: Amy Pond [Dr. Who]
Third Rail Thrills No. 52

This was done for the TRDL R3 Jam, the subject this week being: Sidekicks.

I’ve had Karen Gilian on the brain ever since I saw the first episode of the run featuring the 11th Doctor. She is a pretty redhead, with very pale skin and bright eyes, kind of flushed lips, and a very alert expression. She’s a pretty neat actress to watch. And in the first episode, she’s dressed as a cop, which added to the cool look, contrasting with her hair once she took her hat off. My original sketch for this involved her sitting on the Tardis, but I aborted that detail in the final, once I mocked it up.

An explanation of the project and process notes below…

Artists, come join us on R3 and submit to the jams! The R3 Illustration Jam offers new characters weekly, but all jams remain open so you can contribute to any that you like, here:
http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum … m.php?f=27

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Background:

Here’s a good shot of Gilian as Amy Pond in the uniform. You can’t see her weird men’s shoes or the line up her stockings that alerted keen-eyed (and lecherous) viewers that perhaps she was only DRESSED as a cop, for other reasons. Anyhow…that’s the purview of the fanfic world.

Here’s the Tardis, the time-machine in a tesseract…

Process:

Here’s the original pencils. I thought they looked quite nice on their own.*

Here’s the inks. Not too much needing modification. Just thinning out the hair whip, adding a bit more to that side behind the shoulder, and some touch ups from inking errors in the … Read on for more awesome…

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1. TRDL 2011 Series No. 87 – Pixie
2. TRDL 2011 Series No. 33 – Cable and Siren [X-Force 1996]
3. TRDL 2011 Series No. 85 – Enchantress

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

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum
here!… Read on for more awesome…

No related posts.

This piece was done for the TRDL R3 Jam, the subject being ‘Golden Characters’ from comics, TV and film. I took this opportunity to try my hand at another of these excellent concept art designs for the apparently terrible Iron Man Adventures cartoon. I haven’t seen the cartoon, but the designs are GREAT: well-harmonized between classic looks and modern takes on all these characters. Madam Masque has been one of my favorite Marvel villains, because of the basic premise of a hard, emotionally twisted terrorist mercenary wearing a mask because of an assumed disfiguration. I think in recent years she was shown to actually BE disfigured, but I always interpreted it like that old Twilight Zone episode: she might look normal or even pretty, but believes shes hideous. Anyway, one thing I’ve never liked about the character is the basic design. It’s hard to take a terrorist seriously in a leotard. Full body spandex I can handle, but LEOTARDS over tights… not even extraneous utility belts can save that look. Especially in two-tone blue. The redesign for the cartoon pushed most of the costume into blacks and dark grays, with a touch of orange/yellow to relate to the mask. I took some of the design literally, such as on the abdomen, hips and neck, that may have been intended as highlights in the original sketch. But it looked good to my eye. The original design has a great Sphinx thing going on at the eyes, with opaque optics, but I let my version come back some to the classic look for Madam Masque. Not that I don’t love the concept art version of the mask, because I do. For my illustration, however, the pose suggested a false modesty (while preparing to draw) that I wanted more human expression in the … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Madame Masque
2. Third Rail Thrills No. 65 – Iron Masque [Nemesis Jam]
3. TRDL 2011 Series No. 35 – Iron Man vs. Batman

My wifebot(tm) puts up with a lot of TRDL crapola from me, from my insistence onpausing the TV to take brand aware snapshots, to my obsession with harmonious threes, to my Sunday all-day Finit-e production and it’s associated indulgences and free time limitations.

Every once and awhile, she throws me a little bone with regards to my eccentricity. Here, yesterday, she offered me a fine mini-pizza in triplicate, to go with my fini-champagne.

That’s the good stuff, right there. For her to throw threes at me is painful for her, as OVER it as she is. I loved it!

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum
here!… Read on for more awesome…

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1. TRDL Character Factory, No. 26: Fine Ancestor
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The Bad Seeds were an early Confrontation Team (fabricated combatants to give posthuman national teams someone to pummel on live TV) gone rogue, and deadly.

Art and Origin: Thom Chiaramonte

:::

The Bad Seeds

Base of Operations: New Orleans
Affiliation: Former Confrontation Team, later rogue criminal organization

Leaders: Scorpia and Sabot
Members: Basilisk
4Vector
Pugilista
PROXIM

The Bad Seeds were one of the early Confrontation Teams developed by the Yorke Group, a shell corporation operated to shield the Posthuman Development Initiative, as ordered by the PPD under new political leadership. The President’s Posthuman Policy Directorate had determined that growing public resentment in the Third World towards the actions of the Liberty Group, in defiance of national sovereignty, would eventually overcome the positive public relations value of the American sponsored posthuman heroes, weakening their ability to promote nationalist propaganda and exercise American policy wherever needed. The concept of the Confrontation Team was originally conceived by the JEJ Group, a private posthuman development collective under contract to the American Government and several private corporations. The Confrontation Team concept consisted of producing posthuman-based conflict, with which to showcase the posthuman hero franchises and rally public support against the new supernormal enemy that threatened to target innocent taxpayers and impoverished Third World workers alike. These posthuman terrorists were actors, much in the same way the posthuman national heroes and corporate symbols had been, often developed alongside one another in the same programs. Their objectives were to create the sense of impending peril in the normal human population, and to give the posthuman heroes someone to fight, to conquer, from which to save the people who might have otherwise grown to suspect the posthuman franchise premise might be a fabrication itself. Like the posthuman heroes across the globe, the Confrontation Teams consisted of highly-trained operatives … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Character Factory, No. 71: The Liberty Group
2. TRDL Character Factory, No. 79: Blackguard
3. TRDL Character factory, No. 76: Crew Mururoa

Annotation for Finit-e: Scene 02

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Pg 9, p1: This is a view down Third Street, actually in my own neighborhood. Of course, at the time it was drawn, there was construction in progress in order to prepare for the new Light Rail line preparing to launch in the coming months. My interpretation of how that rail line would look, based on the center islands they had poured, isn’t too far off, though they ended up putting two cars side by side, so my scale is off width-wise on Third Street. In Finit-e, things are nearly-now, but a little different. We don’t have this level of density on Third Street currently, though it may happen in the coming years, as of this writing. Most of what’s seen beyond the cross street in this panel, now almost one year later, is UCSF Campus Expansion, with a taller residential tower to the left, park area, and other buildings currently planned, with structural steel sprouting from the fresh foundations on either side of the street. It’s pretty amazing. Seeing how my glacial pace makes this panel more or less a year old at the time of publication, it’s a good indicator of just how fast this area is being developed, that much of this view is already different. In this story, I’ve drawn the Giants stadium geographically a little different, in order to condense that corner of where the stadium meets the Lefty O’Doul bridge. I did the very thing I criticize shows set in SF of doing: strategically reforming geography to suit my sight lines. HA.

Also, anyone from SF will tell you we don’t have a tower of that monolithic proportion jutting out of the SoMA district. Actually, though, to the consternation of some residents, there are several tall residential towers … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 04 Annotations [BONUS]
2. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 03 Annotations [BONUS]
3. TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Scene 01 Annotations [BONUS]

This was a piece I have been promising Jason for over a year, but finally had a moment to get it done. We’re doing a little promo swap, so he’s getting this TRDL illo for his pin-up book, and I’m getting something top secret from him which you won’t see for awhile, but will like when you do! Anyway, this piece showcases three of the characters from his book, the female contingent of the SuperReal team. I tried to follow his model sheets as close as possible, while still holding to my TRDL style, and it was a lot of fun. Those SR graphics on the pieces and the parts are a little tough to nail, so to speak, but I gave it the old post-college try. Check it!

:::

Some of you may already be familiar with Jason Martin’s SuperReal comic, having seen it on the Internets, or through his exposure on Newsarama, or his appearance at the cons. The premise is great: Reality TV manufacture meets superheroes. Where Todd Nuack’s Wildguard features real superheroes auditioning for a televised reality event in a fairly straight-forward manner, Jason’s book is edgier, funnier and certainly more cynical. Jason writes from obvious personal appreciation for the reality TV show as a concept that isn’t necessarily to be obsessed about or villaified… but the comic is more about the motivations of each of the members of the team who’ve been selected, and I have to say, between his staccato dialog, the creative, personal camera angles and pacing, and the vibe of the book’s stylized art, he deserves the positive accolades he’s been getting on SuperReal this far.

If you’re curious, I encourage you to check out his site:

http://www.superrealgraphics.com

And you can read the first issue free online:

http://www.superrealgraphics.com/online … splay.html

His blog’s … Read on for more awesome…

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2. TRDL Tribute – Red Robin
3. TRDL Tribute – Panda from Body Bags [TRDL Redesign]

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