Cork 38

Me is productive lately.

Dean Cornwell-Hot Link-Fail

I joined this Heitage Art auction place to see large jpgs of great art. I wanted to see if this hot link from their site works. You have to be a member to access the full size art but maybe when you have the url, anyone can see.

Well, it tries to display the full size resolution and that messes the blog up. I'll do the usual upoad.

Click the title to get the really big jpg

Here's another big JPG....

http://tinyurl.com/yh4u53x

I recommend joining this auction house to get these big jpegs that aren't watermarked.

Gun Nose Roughs-First Page-Digital Inking Tutorial by Doug

My New Credo


















I'll get this done by the weekend and publsih it on the blog as well as send it along to Tom Carroll.

Added my pencils for the characters on the first page. I'll be com positing it all together with backrounds eventually. The 2nd page is simpler.

Digital Inking Tutorial by Doug added

Cork 37

Here, after the usual hiatus, is the new Cork. Just setting up everyone's place in this universe. Gloot needed a purpose.

Got the next one planned already. Hopefully you'll see it soon.

Drawing with Flair

This is Flair pen over pencil (with the pencil erased). Done on the bus. I used to use Flair pens when I was in grade school... Working with one now, after so many years, is kinda cool. Also, I had recent occasion to draw with this pen on a photo, which works really well, let me tell you. I'll share the results of that effort in a while... it's hanging up at work right now.

Placemat Proportions

I think this is the last of my random, no purpose doodles.
From this point forward, unless I have something I'd happily display on conceptart.org, I won't post.
That should limit my posts to about 2 a year. Heh Heh

I added a rough of the idea for the painting done off the top of my head. I've got my Tura ref ready. I'll do some more sketching plus make the monster less of an overt rip off of Frazetta's Spider Man.

Some rough PS work

Ricks sketch, reminded me of some dabbles I did a few years ago back when I was experimenting with PS brushes. I used a mouse.

Any relation to the Lealand that you guys used to work for?

Click on the title to see an Obit for Lealand Cook Jr., Founder of Tradewest. Does this fellow have any relationship with the Lealand game company in El Cajon that Ellis, Scott, Jeff J., Dok and others used to work at?

Another Phony Drawing

I did this today on my ride to and from work on my phone (probably 50 minutes total effort). This wasn't using Brushes, but Sketchbook Mobile, a very watered down version of the PC program. At first I didn't find it as intuitive as Brushes, but it has more options, and some nicer brushes. I'm still looking for some sort of eyedropper in the app, but other than that I'm liking Sketchbook more and more.

Wall-E Game PreProduction Art / Click for Akira Model

The top two ideas here (not mine) were Wall-E would see things trying to convey sentiment, like this love/heart. Or a silhouette of a friendly Dog. When he got closer it reveals itself an illusion. These illusions draw him to areas for some game purpose I've forgotten.

The two on the bottoms were ideas of mine. But ideas that weren't useful because of the shortage of time left on the game by the time I was brought in. I'm prone to draw up what I think is a good idea without understanding that a very narrow range of options exists. I only like the bluesky period of preproduction

Click the title to see a groovy model of AKIRA.

Another lost gem from the 60's

I haven't posted any clips in a long time but I saw this and that long dead brain cell came back to life. I wish shows today would have artsy animated intros again.
Plus I was messing with some video editing.



Also this one I found interesting and forgotten.



And one of my all time favorite intros.


had to throw this in.

Doodles on my Handmade vellum sketchbooks

I cut up some vellum I bought at a garage sale and had kinkos put a spiral binding on the top. Pencil loves this paper

Work in Progress Blog

Watch in amazement as Spanish comic book pages come to life!! From pencils to final color. Fun!

Work in Progress

Age of Bronze #30 pencils

Here's a penciled page from the issue of Age of Bronze that I'm working on.

Age of Bronze is TM and copyright © 2009 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.

Warming Up with Thumbnails

I'll try and get serious with some real art tomorrow. I'll share as I do them.

Random Video Game Name Generator

Click the title of this post... It's the Random Video Game Name Generator... it's fun. The favorite one I've generated so far is "Fisher Price Ninja Farmer ".

Re-Mixed Art Correspondence Commercials

I ran across this because of a link that Rob Schrab had on facebook.

That link of Schrab's you can get to by clicking the title.

Warning. The title link is ADULT.

Stupid and adult. But I thought it was very funny.

More Color pencil

Inking with the karatuke brush

I'm pleased with how much control I had for this inking. Got a bit palsied here and there. Next, instead of inking a tight pencil, I'll do a inking on very loose pencil so that I invent more.

TAG North Pic

Click on the title of this post to go to our sister Blog, TAG North, to see some recent posts. We have a bunch of new drawings and a photo of some of the attendees... you may even recognize one or two of the names and faces.

We have been getting fantastic results at the sessions with the last 2 meetings hitting 24 artists in attendance. The mailing list has become pretty huge and there is a lot of excitement for this whole thing. We meet on the first Tuesday of every month at the PopCap office, where there is a large break room for us to hang out together in. We are attracting comic book guys and freelancers as well as game artists.

It's surprisingly easy to maintain as well... I send out a meeting reminder a week before the next session and then the day before. I also send out an occasional reminder about the blog. Then all I need to do is keep the mailing list up to date and bingo! We've got a new Seattle institution!

I don't get too much of a chance to draw myself at the meetings as I need to let people into the building after hours (shades of the K street loft!) and because I want to walk around and spend time with all of the folks who show up.

Our last meeting was the day that Shel passed away, and it seemed like going to a TAG meeting was a very fitting way to remember him. If you guys come up to visit us, you need to make sure that part of your visit falls on the first Tuesday of the month... :)

Shel's burial

Thanks, Ellis, for the invitation to join the group. Someone had sent me an invitation years ago--it may have been you, Ellis, but I don't recall at this point. Back then when I saw that I had to register for a Google account to join, I ignored it. During the intervening years, I established a Google account for other reasons, so this time it was easy to join.

It was good to see many of you at Shel's burial on Wednesday. I have some photos of Shel from the '80s, so one of these days I should scan and post them. My relationship with Shel back then was contentious at times--as some of you may remember. I lived two blocks from him so I saw him in situations that maybe others didn't usually see him in. Sometimes he didn't have very good boundaries and, heaven knows, I could be really tactless. I was still in the process of coming to terms with being gay back in 1987-'88. Shel remained in the closet all his life, as far as I know, so this also caused conflict between us--more conflict then I realized at the time. Only in retrospect years later did I realize some things that were going on--Shel never approached me directly about problems he had with me.

When I moved back to San Diego in the late '90s, however, he phoned me and we re-established contact. It had been long enough that any contentions had been left in the past--at least as far as I was concerned--Shel and I never confronted each other with any conflicts. He and I spoke on the phone every once in a while--often he encouraged me to attend SCCS meetings, which I'd gone with him to several times back in the '80s. But I didn't, and actually never ended up seeing Shel until he was in the hospital last year. Last time we spoke on the phone was maybe 2002. I know he attended the Con in 2003, because someone sent me photos he'd taken of me at my booth talking to a mutual friend. I was disappointed that Shel hadn't come forward to say hi because I would've liked to see him.

Every once in a while I'd say to myselft that I needed to go visit Shel. I didn't get to Ocean Beach much any more, but every time I drove out there, I'd drive by my old place and because it was on the same street as Shel's place, I'd drive by Shel's too. But I never stopped. I ran into Ben Herrera at the San Diego Con in July 2008. He mentioned Shel and I said I'd been meaning to go visit Shel sometime. Ben said to call him when I went because he'd like to go too. Steve Schanes sent out a letter last December to friends of Shel, announcing that Shel was in the hospital and would appreciate visitors. So I decided that if I was going to see Shel, I'd better do it quick. I called Ben and we made arrangements to meet at the hospital. I was late, so Ben and his girlfriend were leaving when I got there.

I went up by myself to see Shel. He was in a hospital bed asleep. Ben had mentioned that Shel was in bad shaped and not really responsive but that the attendants had told him that Shel was taking in what people said, even though he looked like he was asleep. I was prepared to see Shel in really bad shape, but when I got up to his room, he didn't look as bad as I feared. He looked basically the same as I remembered from the last time I'd seen him about 18 years before. So I stayed for about half an hour, telling him what was going on with me, talking about people we both knew, saying whatever came to mind that I thought might interest him. I don't know if he heard me. He was a little restless, and every so often some nurse or doctor would come in to take some little test. They always called him "Sheldon," which sounded weird to me. I'd always known him as Shel.

I called Steve Schanes afterward, because I had no idea if Shel had anyone left to help him out in his situation. Steve said that Shel's brother was overseeing things and that a few other friends of Shel's were paying attention. I decided that I'd try to visit Shel again, but that plan slipped away in procrastination and the call of other things in my life.

So it was a bit of a surprise on Tuesday when David poked his head into my studio to tell me that Jeff had posted on Facebook that Shel had died. It wasn't so surprising that it had happened at last, just surprising that it was now. I'm working on Age of Bronze issue #30 currently. Interestingly, When David told me about Shel, I was penciling the character in the story who has some physical and personality characteristics that I based on Shel Dorf.

Anyway, at the burial on Wednesday, I did a lot of remembering of times with Shel Dorf, a number of memories that I hadn't thought about in years. All the tributes to Shel about him being the father of Comic Con he deserves and it's good to see him getting that credit. However, that's not the side of Shel I knew very well. When I knew him best, his relationship with Comic Con had begun to deteriorate and there was real friction. I also saw him during the time Milton Caniff and--just weeks later--Mrs. Caniff both died. That was a hard time for Shel personally, not just because he'd lost these close friends, but because it also meant his lettering job on Steve Canyon was gone. I gave Shel a little advice about getting lettering work elsewhere, and he got a few jobs. Unfortunately, the experience of lettering Steve Canyon did not prepare him for lettering comic books and that didn't work out. Those were also the years Shel was boxing a lot of his comics memorabilia up to send to the comics archive at Ohio State. He was cleaning out the storage unit at his apartment complex. Part of it was just so that the University would have a lot of his Caniff-related stuff, but Shel was also sending them stuff that wasn't Caniff-related. I don't know the details, but I wonder if he was down-sizing because his income was shrinking. This was also about the time Blackthorne went out of business, so the Dick Tracy reprint books stopped.

This is getting gloomy. There were also good times with Shel. He took me to SCCS meetings, to Blackthorne, to a local paper company. First time I ever went to Souplantation and to the Corvette diner it was with Shel. Shel and I went to life drawing classes together at some night school in the eastern part of San Diego--I don't remember where now. Then we both attended life drawing at David Cody Weiss's place--that was before TAG--although I generally went with Brent Anderson to those sessions and Shel didn't attend them regularly. I think David Scroggy introduced me to Shel. Shel introduced me to Brent. He also introduced me to Jim Dunn, who I think most of you don't know. Jim assisted Shel for awhile on cleaning up the Dick Tracy reprints. Jim and I became friends and spent a lot of time talking over our frustrations with Shel.

One thing that Shel did for my partner David was to put him in touch with Willie Tuck, Caniff's secretary/business assistant. David was at NYU in the late '80s and one of his teachers was researching Kurt Weill. The Caniffs were good friends with the Weills and Milton Caniff had Kurt Weill's piano. After the Caniffs died, Shel arranged for Willie to loan David a bunch of Weill papers that had belonged to the Caniffs so that David's instructor could use them.

Anyway, that's enough--probably way too much. But I've been wanting to say some of this since Shel died.

Doodle Provoker

More of the same from me above.

The big news is that I just invited Eric Shanower to be a part of our co-op doodlefest.

Shel Vid

Hey I got a downloaded mpg4 of the Fox 5 report on Shel. If you want one...send 39.95 + shipping to...Oh just kidding. Just email me and I'll send you the zip file.

Click title to see it uncropped on Youtube

Ghost Provokers

Hey guys. Just wanted to let you guys know about a new personal project I'm working on with my boss here at work. For anyone who has ever enjoyed those ghost shows on the Travel and SyFy Channels like Ghost Adventures, Most Haunted, and Ghost Hunters, we are shooting our own spoof of those programs called "Ghost Provokers." We've been filming several scenes already and hopefully we'll have a 6 to 10 minute 'trailer' available on YouTube or something in about a month's (maybe sooner) time. My partner Dave is an editor so the rough-cutted scenes I've seen so far look pretty good. I'll give you updates as to when and where you can see it when it's ready. If you can, kind of keep it to yourself right now.

Oh, and I'm the abrasive ghost-hunting host by the way.

Page 05

Title is to Meal Magic Corp. site.

Here is the next page.

RIP Shel!!! :-(

Just got this on Facebook:

I just spoke with Shel's brother Mike. Shel passed away at 1:15 PM Pacific Time today, Tuesday November 3rd at Sharp Hospital in San Diego after a lengthy illness.
Funeral services will be held at 1 PM this Wednesday at the "Home of Peace" cemetary located at
3668 Imperial Avenue San Diego, Ca 92123 ( Ph: 619-583-8850).
Mike said that any friends of Shel are more than welcome to attend the service.

Respectfully, Charlie Roberts

Brush work and Pencils

The bottom group is me working out with my new Kuratake brush.

The top is pencil but I plan to ink the dog walker as another work out for the brush skills. i'll post it when I get that done. In this slot.

Also, the title is a link to Marshall Vandruff talking to FanBoy radio. I think any artist would find the codified mind of Vandruff stimulating. He knows what will make you a better artist. But he also talks about inherent ability. So Buncake shouldn't get his hopes up.

Dragon creature

Another excerpt from my sketchbook in color pencil.

"Tale of Two Schools" comic is finished ...

I just shipped off the .psd files this evening after fixing about six typos ... They loved it (so much better than their first comic). I'm pretty happy with it too. I'll post a page a week or so. Here is Page 04.

Rick Tall Tales Radio Podacst

Click on title for the link to hear Rick Scmitz and Tom Racine discuss game art and other topics, Including the Star Trek ReBoot.

Oliver, the Humanzee

I have watched several short news clips about this odd fellow over the years, but this is the first documentary that goes into great detail about him. He's definitely an interesting creature.

KZ added....

The Ape Human Hybrid "unused" from Beneath the Planet of the Apes.