IS THERE A SUPERHERO IN THE NEXT CUBICLE??

Earlier this year, I was contacted by Patricia Bacall, the multi-talented head of Bacall:Creative, to design a series of superheroic images for a marketing campaign for Crucial.com.  The concept was a very clever and original one: First, find the person in your office whom everyone turns to when computer malfunctions erupt, causing widespread chaos and panic, who is uniquely capable of solving the problem.  Then, nominate him/her online for an award: "The Official Unofficial Office Computer Go-To Superstar" Award, to be precise.  The competition seems to be over now, and the website down, but you can read all about the competition and Crucial.com, plus scan some other interesting data here.  Crucial.com's announcement about the contest is available here.

I created six images for the campaign, seen in the above image and the enlarged single hero illustration below.  Click on the pictures for larger views.  Each character was a pastiche of an ordinary office worker and a superhero.  Special thanks to Patricia for finding me and handing me the illustration reins for this very entertaining project!

THE NOWHERE-MEN™ NEW ANIMATED LOGO AND CHARACTERS ART ONLINE!

A year passes like nothing, or so it seems.  The first six months of 2013 are a total blur, as I was busy with a major book project.  The rest of the year has mostly involved catching up with everything I put off during that period.  Hence, it's been over a year since my last post and even longer since I revamped The NoWhere-Men™ website with this very cool and dramatic animated art featuring all of the heroes on the cliff with the logo animated and some striking lightning and lighting effects.  It's an animated GIF and at 2.5MB can be a bit of a download, but is worth the several seconds of wait time in my opinion.  The above image is one frame from the animation.  Click on it for the larger version, or go to the site for the animation  Several more updates for The NoWhere-Men™ site are in the works, including adding Joe Comet™ and Hour Father™ images, as well as animated logos and a wild illustration featuring a face-off between The Maniacal Mister Bones and The Phantom Aardvark!  Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, I've added some new products to The NoWhere-Men™ gift shop, including a very cool new black T-Shirt adorned with the classic cliff scene.  Check it out here!

JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE!

Early this past spring, I was contacted by my long-time client, the awesome Jodie Bernard of Lightbox Visuals, regarding an unusual assignment for an English book titled "Modern Morsels: Selections of Canadian short Fiction and Poetry."  To be featured in the book was a poem about comics legend extraordinaire Jack Kirby, his experiences as a soldier in World War II, and the influences those experiences may have had on Kirby's later characterizations, particularly his villains.  There was no specific concept for the accompanying illustration, so I was asked to come up with one.  I submitted two ideas.  The one which was decisively chosen is the image above.  My idea was to draw Jack in uniform, as he was in WWII, fending off villains with a giant pencil wielded like a rifle.  I also wanted to draw the piece in a close approximation of Jack Kirby's own, unmistakable style.  My other concept was similar, except that it would have shown soldier Jack riding the giant pencil through space like the Silver Surfer.  I liked that idea because it would have given me the chance to draw some "Kirby Krackle," but the chosen concept was a much more literal interpretation of the poem's message.

Little did anyone know that I was a decades-long fan of "King" Kirby's work and was also familiar with his WWII experiences.  That helped make this a very special assignment for me.  I was determined to do a fitting tribute to Jack, so I immersed myself in numerous back issues of The Jack Kirby Collector, some Sgt. Fury comics, and reprints of monster comics from the late 1950's.  When I'd absorbed enough Kirby-isms (such as his treatment of lightning and craggy mountains), I started drawing.  There are no "swipes" in the illustration, just my attempt at capturing the Kirby style, his treatment of anatomy, drapery, dynamic perspective, etc.  For the inking, which was usually handled by other artists during most of Jack's career, I leaned toward Mike Royer's style, which is considered the most faithful to the original pencil art, rather than attempting to ape the style of my favorite J.K. inker, the great Joe Sinnott.  Joe (whom I've had the pleasure of meeting a few times over the decades, including at the 2012 Boston Comic Convention) had a way of smoothing out and adding just a touch more naturalistic sculpting to Kirby's pencil art, but this piece was all about Jack.

The book is finally in print and can be ordered here, with a full description of the contents here.  It's an English Literature textbook, and the Kirby poem is the only comics-related feature in the book.  My special thanks to Jodie for choosing me for this highly enjoyable assignment!  Click on the image for a larger version.

GALLERIES GALORE!

As part of my ongoing quest to create more synergy for my web-presence, I have created three new web galleries which I have now added to the list on the right. All three galleries are somewhat different in form and content. I try to give each one its own feel as well as some visuals and text not found in the others, and I will be adding new images periodically. Click here for my TopIllustrations.com page, here for my Behance.net galleries, and here for my new FolioFox galleries. My Behance page is now linked directly to my LinkedIn page, with thumbnail images appearing there for easy connecting to the galleries. You have to be signed up with LinkedIn and go to my Full Profile page for that, though. The image above is a montage of some of the illustrations you will find in these online portfolios. As always, you can click on the image for a larger view.