Thursday, July 31, 2008

the piece not really for the TFP [painted]

I painted this piece the other day.

______________________________________________


I'm sure many of you are fans of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.

I'm also sure many of you have heard of the Totoro Forest Project.

I wasn't involved in the TFP but I made this piece in honor of it.

I love Totoro and just couldn't help doing a piece in honor of what the TFP is trying to accomplish.

Above is just the drawing. There's been a lot left to get together and projects to get in order before we hoist our flag at Comic-Con (small press booth M10!) so I haven't gotten the time to finish the painting yet.

* * *

I think my introduction to Totoro was the video store near us growing up. In the kids section there was an old, faded, sundrenched VHS tape of My Neighbor Totoro. I'm not sure how it was there or who put it there but it was there.

Totoro is still my favorite Miyazaki film.

the dragon suit

I have a ridiculous idea for next years' Comic-Con: a guy in a suit.

Specifically, Ben Kammer in a suit. I designed it on our turbulent plane ride back.

Behold:



We'll see. At least it wouldn't be half as bizarre as that guy with a Curious George doll trying to get people to high five it.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

sketchbook doodles at Comic-Con

Justin celebrated a birthday while we were in San Diego for Comic-Con. He left our booth for a while that day and came back with two sketchbooks. He said he was going to celebrate hobbit-style and give presents. Worked for me.

Here's a sampling of my "behind the booth" doodles while the likes of Boba Fett, Batman, and various anime characters with unpronounceable names shuffled, slunk, and squealed past.

Enjoy~





Tuesday, July 29, 2008

San Diego Comic-Con 2008: pictures + video

Not really any reason to wait posting these; here's a little video of the San Diego Comic-Con 2008 with some of its 150,000 visitors. And a few clips of our time spent running Small Press booth M10.

I probably got a 1/16 of the show here. I walked from the middle to one end of the main floor. To get from one end, tag that wall and make your way to the opposite wall took about 30 minutes. Or more, maybe. Sure there were a ton people but it was also a massive place.

Also be on the look out for a few famous faces in the video below. They're labeled. Except the one at 2:05. See if you know him.



Also, if any one has any tips for making the YouTube video have better quality I'd love to know them.

__________________________________


On the way in.

On our apartment roof.

Donato Giancola's demo. Stunning.

Kitty, our Can-Asian (Asian-Canadian) friend helped us set up t-shirts and build card houses out of our give-away postcards.

She also scored Justin and I free tickets to a pre-release showing of Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. Get some!

__________________________________

I'll be collecting writings and sketchbook notations in the coming days. Cheers!

Friday, July 25, 2008

KA-BLAM ! THE COMIC-CON REGISTRATION LINE !


That's all I got for now.

A few more on the Portland blog here.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

COMIC-CON 2008

Hey everyone! We're here in San Deigo. The weather's perfect, the food is incredible, and the nerds are here. And I have brought all of my fan-boys t-shirts.

My personal highlight so far was the opening night on Wednesday: I had my nose buried in the three inch thick magazine of Comic-Con (the thing telling you where all everybody is going to be) I wasn't paying attention to the booth when I suddenly became aware of people standing in front of me. I looked up and saw 4 or 5 people standing there. We had nothing set up, no boxes opened or anything. These 4 or 5 people said, "Hi! We're here for Ticket!"

I sort of blanked, "Really? Are you serious?"

They had seen it on Drawn! and found our booth, first thing. Said it was at the top of their list. That was amazing. If you guys find your way to this blog, thank you.

I'll be posting a massive account of all our dealing in a few days.

-Cory

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Ticket original watercolors. [updated 12:19PM]

Ticket original watercolors. $90

Original Art, Portland Studios Store.


1. Pinwheel Flowers.



2. Windmills.



3. The Magic Hat.



4. Bird Watching.



5. Landing.




6. Peter, Peter and the Beanstalk.



7. Ruins.



8. The Mountain Dragon.



9. The Old Man of the Docks.



10. Poseidon.



11. Lily Above the Waters.



12. The Ticket.


13. Pinwheels and Windmills, reprise.


End. Lily von Silvie Lenore.

_________________________________

I looked through all these paintings last night and wasn't sure I wanted to part with them.

In the end I held back one for me and one for Erin. I'm sorry if this ruins your future wall space plans.

Maybe if we get some demand going we could run a round of posters? Make your voice heard below.

Monday, July 21, 2008

the piece not really for the TFP


I'm sure many of you are fans of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.

I'm also sure many of you have heard of the Totoro Forest Project.

I wasn't involved in the TFP but I made this piece in honor of it.

I love Totoro and just couldn't help doing a piece in honor of what the TFP is trying to accomplish.

Above is just the drawing. There's been a lot left to get together and projects to get in order before we hoist our flag at Comic-Con (small press booth M10!) so I haven't gotten the time to finish the painting yet.

* * *

I think my introduction to Totoro was the video store near us growing up. In the kids section there was an old, faded, sundrenched VHS tape of My Neighbor Totoro. I'm not sure how it was there or who put it there but it was there.

Totoro is still my favorite Miyazaki film.

originals.


Tomorrow at noon I'll be putting the original watercolors from Ticket for sale on the Portland Store.

I originally was going to do them today, but I wanted to give anyone who wanted to get one to be able to hopefully hear about this in time.

They'll be for $ 90 + shipping and include a Ticket. Of course you can still get Ticket on it's own ($12) I just wanted to make these available for people. Think of this bonus Ticket as a gift to you. Or for you to give to a friend.

* * *

The way I work follows something like this: I do the drawings, I scan the drawing, I paint the drawings, I then scan the paintings and then to some degree put the pencil back on top of the watercolor in photoshop. I like the texture of the paint and I like strong lines. The watercolor tends to wash out the lines so to be able to get them back like this is great for me.

I painted all of these pieces with a mixture of Prussian Blue, Burnt Umber, and white gouache (opaque watercolor) So when they were printed, I made them black and white and I did some retouching in photoshop -- mostly correcting the levels (the contrast balance) scanning the image tends to flatten the values to a mid-range and not reflect the true painting.

The paper I used is a kind I was introduced to in school from Graphic Chemical and Ink Co. It's a type of printmaking paper.

That being said, I just wanted to be clear about the originals. Most all look mostly like the printed version in Ticket (except in black and white) but one or two were trounced with the watercolors. You can be the judge of their value as an addition to your wall.

So! Tomorrow, noon. Enjoy.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Illustration Friday: "Enough"

Maybe ... enough is enough? I'm not sure.

I've been promoting Ticket (see right sidebar for more info) for an entire week. Maybe it's been enough of constant posting and writing about it. I'm not sure. But maybe enough is enough. I'll leave that to you to decide.


Ticket didn't take off (...that ...might be an unintentional pun) until this piece. When I brought up this picture for Ticket, it was the first one I feel that I really had to knuckle down and improve on to do. The simplest things stump me. I went through half a dozen or more thumbnails for this one. It'd been several nights in a row and I'd made it through the first 4 spreads. I drew everything at about 14x20. This piece has managed to be my favorite one out of the bunch. (I think, it's hard for me to know and harder to pick one) I think it might be though, there's something in it that completes a little half inch by half inch thumbnail I did and tacked up on my desk maybe two years ago.


I don't know. There's always been something that struck me in it. I'd had the idea for sort of Grecian architecture, giant birds landing, they had more Greek architecture on their backs and something. Lights at night, a party. In the end having such regal birds carry something on their backs felt like they were just big winged donkeys and felt demeaning.

There maybe a way to yet make it work. I'm sure I'll be back.

Who knows for sure, but it's nice to think that some ideas are good enough to be mined again for fresh pieces. I love drawing birds. And little flying boats and clock towers. Enough? I don't know, maybe, for a little while.

. . .

No, it's never enough.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Seegmiller

I know many, many artists who consider Don Seegmiller to be the father of digital painting. His Digital Character Design and Painting was one of the most influential books for me personally as well as countless others.

Today in the mail I received my copy of d'Artiste : digital painting 2.

I'm honored to have been included in the "Don Seegmiller Invited Artist Gallery."





Mr. Seegmiller, if you read this, thank you, and let me buy you lunch sometime.

Pipe Organ Melody

I've been working on a few unrelated pieces. Here's the rough pencil for one of them.


This is an idea, a simple one, that I've had it in me to do for a long time. And I just got around to (having the power) to do it. The other two I'll post eventually. The one is nearly painted and finished the other is just as rough as this dragon one.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

More Comic-Con materials




Here's a couple pages from our new collective portfolio for Comic-Con.

How do you show animation in print? Short of a devastating ocular barrage of overwrought and 12 inch thick lenticulification, that is a great question and one our Chief Designer, Matt Mantooth answered brilliantly: an image sequence.

This is from the Zune Arts' piece Le Cadeau du Temps for Microsoft's Zune.

* * *

Here's some banners that'll be hanging at our booth (small press booth M10)


As well as one of our give-away post cards that'll be cluttering our booth.


If you're going to be around stop by and get some stuff!

And buy Ticket.


There, that's my pitch for the day.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Comic-Con 2008 stuff!

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic around here.

With the release of Ticket and planning and getting materials together for Comic-Con on top of real work, everyone has been going like crazy. I've done quite a bit of the promotion of Ticket myself so that's confiscated a lot of time.

But now printed stuff is rolling in and we're finally get to see some things come together.

The buttons will be part of the free, take away stuff littering our booth.


And the sketchbooks. I'm not sure how much these go for. I don't think a lot. Here's my cover as well as some sample pages. All together there are 16 pages in the sketchbook.


Ka-pow! Mythology!

* * *

I've been posting a lot about Ticket recently but that doesn't mean there's nothing else going on. There's quite a bit in the pipe line. After a few days after a big project (like Ticket) I get a surge of ideas (mostly weird ones, but a few good ones) and I've spent the last few nights putting some of those ideas down. Look for some of those in the coming days.

Monday, July 14, 2008

TICKET : HOW & WHY


Ticket is here.

Those of you who frequent this blog will likely recognize the protagonist as Lily von Silvie Lenore, someone I've had with me for the past 6 or 7 years.

Lily von Silvie Lenore
Curious Events

Curious Events is a small book I made, printed and simply bound, for my wife (then girlfriend) and is one of my most closely guarded works. Ticket is a continuation of that story.

To me, Ticket is sort of like a postlude to the Curious Events story. There are four stories in my (yet unreleased) "Library of Curious Events."

Not necessarily essential to the overall story but more of a distillation of the tone and feeling of the books. Another enjoyable visit, for me at least. Curious Events in the abstract -- if that makes sense.

From the teaser itself:

Ticket is a story in pictures and a collection of all things Cory loves to draw. From windmills flying above grassy hills to massive birds landing in Grecian vineyards, Ticket follows the story of a girl, her hat, and the curious events which transpire.

* * *

More than a year ago, I made a list of most of the stories and ideas I had going on at the time. I've kept it tacked up on my desk. Here it is:

If you notice at the top there's a doodle of little boat and an idea called "The Ticket"


That was the first idea for Ticket as it is now. But I can trace that idea to this drawing I did the summer between my junior year and senior year of college:

I've loved clock towers and boats for a long time.

* * *

When the time came to start I made a list of everything I wanted to try and include and made notes and thumbnails. I spent several days deciding what I was interested in putting in it, what sort of things I wanted to do. I spent a while. I finally condensed the thumbnails to 13 spreads.

I then took a Saturday and sat on the couch for about 10 hours and went through each thumbnail and made a bigger, more realized thumbnail.


* * *

Once the little story worked and I had everything I wanted in order, I set to work on the drawings.


They took about a two weeks to get through. I was working on a pretty tight deadline. On top of that, I could only work on it all at night. Unfortunately, there wasn't time in my work schedule to do this during the day so all production on Ticket was done at night.

I'd work like crazy at work on these three commercials at work then come home and do Ticket. It never once felt like a chore. Work did, but not Ticket. Ticket is something I've been wanting to do for a long time and I'm just thrilled I get the chance to see it in print.

* * *

Once everything was drawn and scanned,


I set to work on the painting. This is probably the part I live for. I taped all of them down on boards on the floor of my room (not floor boards, boards laying on the floor -- don't be confused) and got to work.

I made a couple all nighters in the production of Ticket. These paintings represent one of them.


* * *

The next night I scanned them all, complied them in Photoshop, and called it good.

I think I took two nights to do the post-production finishing work. I think. Things started to get fuzzy towards the end.

* * *

They put it all together and sent it off. Then the proof came back.

Check out here for my post about the proof.

A few more days of waiting and now it's all done.

* * *

Ticket's here. I'm glad. And I hope you will like it.


* * *

TICKET IS NOW AVAILABLE!
$ 12


or

https://store.portlandstudios.com/
(link to the main store -- click on the "Publishing" tab at the top)






Check out our little commercial above. It takes you through the book page by page.
This is a compilation of all 28 pages of
Ticket for you to see. Music written by Matt Silver.