Friday, July 13, 2012
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
FAKE CRITERIONS: MEGAFORCE
A mock Criterion cover made for the Fake Criterion Tumblr's Salute to $9 Air Conditioning! Also, I love this movie. It is awful.
Monday, July 9, 2012
THE OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE: REDUXE EDITION
In the footsteps of DC Fifty-Too and Marvel Universe-Too, it's THE OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE - REDUXE EDITION. I've recruited literally hundreds of artists to redraw the almost-1,000 entries of the original 1980's Official Handbook Deluxe Edition! What madness! Check it out!
Graphic Design: DC Archive Editions
Several weeks back, designer Dylan Todd mocked up some visual updates for Marvel Comics’ line of Marvel Essentials reprint collections. Seeing Dylan’s clean, concise and appealing redesigns reminded me of my feelings about competitor company DC Comic’s hardcover reprint collection, the DC Archive Editions.
I loved the Archives for reprinting and restoring stories which had – in most cases – never been reprinted since their debut in the golden age of comics. What I hated about the Archives was just about everything else; the garish re-coloring, the occasional editing of content, the loss of line quality endemic to what was called the “Theakstonization” process of reproduction, and some cultural and editorial issues which are better delved into elsewhere.
Mostly, however, I’ve always hated the cover design for these volumes – at the very least, the Archive Editions are the only books I’ve ever owned with pinstripes. Gross.
So, inspired by Dylan, I tried to address some of my design issues with the series by mocking up my own take on the DC Archive Edition (See the Flickr set with higher-res images here)
(Mockups behind the cut...)
I loved the Archives for reprinting and restoring stories which had – in most cases – never been reprinted since their debut in the golden age of comics. What I hated about the Archives was just about everything else; the garish re-coloring, the occasional editing of content, the loss of line quality endemic to what was called the “Theakstonization” process of reproduction, and some cultural and editorial issues which are better delved into elsewhere.
Mostly, however, I’ve always hated the cover design for these volumes – at the very least, the Archive Editions are the only books I’ve ever owned with pinstripes. Gross.
So, inspired by Dylan, I tried to address some of my design issues with the series by mocking up my own take on the DC Archive Edition (See the Flickr set with higher-res images here)
(Mockups behind the cut...)
CORNERED: The Avengers
I haven't done a new entry for CORNERED (the comic corner cover blog) in forever, so here's a set of Marvel Superheroes drawn in paint pen.
Also, Cornered is always looking for submissions, so don't be shy!
FAKE CRITERIONS: ORCA
A mock Criterion cover made for the Fake Criterion Tumblr's Salute to $9 Air Conditioning!
I never have seen this movie, but I have keen memories of it as a relentless back-page ad on just about every comic book I bought for an entire Summer when I was a kid. I've always been curious, but its reputation precedes it...
HALF PINT HEROES : THE VISION
Many many years back, I collected action figures. I had hundreds of them, some still in the packages and some loose. Not even the vast majority of them were on display, but they still occupied an overwhelming amount of space in my home – I had two full bookshelves, several partial bookshelves, dozens hanging on the wall. It was a mess. I’m sure a lot of you have been in similar straits.
For a lot of reasons – the space, the clutter, the ethical issues of compulsive plastic purchasing and assembly-line worker conditions overseas, the fact that I had dozens of these things in boxes in a closet or a storage unit and never even got to look at them, and so on - I cleared out my collection.
My life is a lot better in a lot of respects for having gotten rid of my collections – it’s less cluttered, for one thing – but I still sometimes miss those colorful little creations all lined up on my shelf.
To satisfy the collecting bug, I started putting together templates in Illustrator for what I call Half-Pint Heroes – I’d been drawing big-head versions of my favorite characters for years, but creating them in vector form lets me re-use body parts and change paint jobs while retaining the uniform scale (just like action figures!), and yet still come up with a virtual ‘shelf-full’.
I’ve been tweaking and refining the template for a year or so, and finally have it at a point where I was happy with it. The Vision below was the first completed figure from the inaugural ‘set’:
He makes up the first figure in my “Marvel Costumes From The 1970s I Thought Were Awesome” set. See, that’s another benefit of having a completely digital ‘toy’ collection, I get to create my own releases!
Coming up are the remaining four from this first set: Captain Britain, Daredevil, Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch...
For a lot of reasons – the space, the clutter, the ethical issues of compulsive plastic purchasing and assembly-line worker conditions overseas, the fact that I had dozens of these things in boxes in a closet or a storage unit and never even got to look at them, and so on - I cleared out my collection.
My life is a lot better in a lot of respects for having gotten rid of my collections – it’s less cluttered, for one thing – but I still sometimes miss those colorful little creations all lined up on my shelf.
To satisfy the collecting bug, I started putting together templates in Illustrator for what I call Half-Pint Heroes – I’d been drawing big-head versions of my favorite characters for years, but creating them in vector form lets me re-use body parts and change paint jobs while retaining the uniform scale (just like action figures!), and yet still come up with a virtual ‘shelf-full’.
I’ve been tweaking and refining the template for a year or so, and finally have it at a point where I was happy with it. The Vision below was the first completed figure from the inaugural ‘set’:
Coming up are the remaining four from this first set: Captain Britain, Daredevil, Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch...
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