I'm here visiting my father and stepmother, who live in the foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains...and find myself musing on how many Concrete stories I've set in the desert, although I really haven't spent much time there. A new one is germinating...
I'll try to run some of my sketches once I return home to scan them.
In the meantime, here's a link to an interesting Andy Clarke article on comics design elements that can be used by web designers, which uses Dave Gibbons panels from Watchmen along with a couple from Concrete as illustrations. If only I always enjoyed such elevating association.
It reminds me of an interesting thing Gibbons said during his presentation on The Originals in San Diego a couple of years ago. When he was nineteen, he saw Barry Smith's first work for Marvel -- an Englishman of the same age. It made him realize he could do that, too.
So he sat down and took a Smith-illustrated comic (Nick Fury, I believe he said) and pencilled, inked and lettered all twenty pages of the story over -- his way. Same script, but different layouts. With those samples he got professional work.
Can you imagine having that discipline and motivation at nineteen? Twenty pages in continuity!
Me neither.
This Monday, I'll be with Battlestar Galactica writer/producer Mark Verheiden, an old friend, giving a joint closing keynote speech (actually, a conversation) at Vidfest in Vancouver BC.
It's Monday, Sept 24, at 4:20.
Organizers suggested I gather some images of my work for projecting on stage, so I did. No word about whether they can get a scissors-lift.
For those who can't make it, they're viewable here, though, alas, without commentary. Click the picture album link at left.
They progress from fanzine drawings from high school days to what I'm working on today.
I'll try to record the talk and post it here.
And because I hate to post without an image, here's one of those (click to enlarge):
It's a cover for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction illustrating a R. Garcia y Robertson story about a Pinkerton, a Chinese slave, and a voodoo shapeshifter in old San Francisco.
Alas, if I could only have captured the opium-smoke atmosphere of the story...
Here's a little more "Orange Glow". The book in which it appears, Depths, may be ordered here. Click to enlarge.
Here's a little more "Orange Glow". The book in which it appears, Depths, may be ordered here. Click to enlarge.
Here's a little more "Orange Glow". The book in which it appears, Depths, may be ordered here. Click to enlarge.
Here's a little more "Orange Glow". The book in which it appears, Depths, may be ordered here. Click to enlarge.
Here's a little more "Orange Glow". The book in which it appears, Depths, may be ordered here. Click to enlarge.
Here's a little more "Orange Glow". The book in which it appears, Depths, may be ordered here. Click to enlarge.
Here's a little more "Orange Glow". The book in which it appears, Depths, may be ordered here. Click to enlarge.
