World's Finest sketches...

Watch out, bad guys.

So, the second pass at these guys yields better likenesses, and I'm pretty happy with this as a cool little sketch.  But, I need to put a little more time into Superman, so bye-bye for now, Batman.  (In Joker voice.)

This is a very meaningful image from my childhood, I had a similar poster of this when I was really little, along with Star Wars, Close Encounters, and an erupting Mt. St. Helens (being originally from Washington State) - it was a sideways poster I think, with a city street background.  And I, like MANY kids I'm sure, struck that pose and ran swoooooshing down the hallway towards my room.  And that was a run back then, although now it's literally two long strides from the old point A to point B.

But I digress - this will be the anchor to the next forgotten movie poster painting I do.

Bats&Supes Sketches

Been on a movie kick lately, watching that first series of Batman movies, starting with Burton's '89 film, and revisiting the Batman Animated Series as well.

But that is just in anticipation of going to see Dark Knight Rises - I'm really all about Superman '78, getting a comp together for the next epic, which will be themed Superman I - II, the two-parter that was originally intended to be one giant film.

But I got bats in the brain, so I'm doing a little World's Finest (Movie Style), to ease into practicing likenesses for Christopher Reeves - but first, here's a little Michael Keaton:

And then on to the real subject.  Probably the first time I drew what was meant to be a movie Superman since the early eighties:

Still needs a little practice, good thing I have a lot of pencils...

On Friday, a two-shot of the Movie World's Finest.

Gotham Control Program

I see these ironic pop culture T-Shirt mash-ups all the time, so I thought I'd try my hand at it.  I never really ever have good ideas that last, usually I just end up focusing on one theme and work it out, dropping the mash-up, but this one came to me really fast.

How fast?

I was watching Tron : Uprising, and during the commercial I was flipping through the guide and saw Dark Knight Rises was going to be on.  Boom, that fast.

The Sentinal type pose also arrived pretty quickly, as it's a fairly classic look for ol' Bats - but the symbol was fun to work out, taking a bit of time reducing it down to the bare minimum of geometric shapes, to read both Tron-verse, and clearly represent the bat signal.  I surprised myself to discover that it was that the most simple of concepts - three triangles - was all it took.

And for a further challenge, I did it in six colors.

So watch yourselves, Programs...

Kitty Pryde and Lockheed!

Up to no good, it looks like...always sneaking around.

I had a lot of fun with this one, and worked on skin textures moreso than in the past.  I gave her a texture pass on her face, and figured out how to do freckles.  Now everybody's getting freckles.

And I hadn't really done a creature yet in this newer technique approach - I like how it came out, but I can see the potential to push it a lot further...

A Portrait of DOOM!

I, Dr. Doom, shall practice the mathematics of your destruction!

Iron Man Head Study

This is just a quick paint up of Iron Man, taken from the drawing for last years' Iron Man flying with the Warthogs painting.

I wanted to take what I had learned doing this more painterly approach with organic figures, and apply it to a wholly mechanical image.  (Pushing it a little further than I had with the Optimus sketchbook cover)  Then I thought to really explore the test, I added in the nicks and scratches - just to see what I could do with it.

Not A Movie Skrull

The Avengers was awesome, wasn't it?  I thought so, but I really didn't care for the alien (not going to even bother looking up how to spell Chi Atari) designs in the film.

As I sat down to crank out some warm ups, I had that Junker Ship going, and I also needed to do a figure design (a vehicle and a figure, wow, wonder what I was getting ready to work on...) and in the design I was going for, was going to be a new take on a Skrull.

Well, somewhere along the way I added a tail, and when I roughed in the hands and feet I did them very reptilian...and I started to get away from what I thought could be a cool Skrull design, and just refocused on the technical details, which was the point of the relatively quick exercises, not some grand statement.  So I painted it all up in monotone, and when I switched over to finish the Junker, my friend Adi released one of his designs from the film, which I absolutely loved - it totally re-inspired me - and when I came back to this final this Not A Skrull, I colored it with comic book themed colors.

So...it started out to be a movie Skrull, then it became just a monster alien design, then came 'round again to be a Skrull.  But not.

Junker Ship

Sometimes, I'm working on projects, or have something coming up that I'm out of practice on, and I need to switch gears.  For example, one week I might be doing Fighter Pods, or something similarly cartoon/animated style, then need to jump on to a high resolution design project.  If I have the time, I'll whip up something to shake the rust off, and this is one of those images.

Because I wasn't going into it too seriously, I don't think I even set up perspective lines, I just started out with a black blob and worked out details from there.  I felt it was worth posting; I worked on it longer than I meant to, because I see what could be a cool concept in there - if I ever need a cargo ship, I might dust this one off and do it properly.

I almost posted this almost-non-post, but I thought maybe I should post my quick Starfield Photoshop Recipe to add some value - I take the airbrush, set it to dissolve, one click it with the mouse at 1% with around 20-30 size brush.  Then I scale it up to fit the frame.  Then I'll copy the layer and reduce opacity to around 50% and flip and rotate it to offset the copy.  Then I'll randomly reduce stars with a light eraser, or blow some out with a hit of soft airbrush.  I do it all with white, and let the cloud/background colors blend to add colors.

Alien Warrior

Here's a companion piece to the Predator image from earlier this year.  Same techniques as before, etc., etc., so on and so forth.