John Carter of Mars

Here’s an illustration I created for an upcoming anthology of John Carter of Mars stories, to be published in January. It was drawn in pencil, then inked in Photoshop. I’ll post more info about this in the new year.

Tesla Graphic Novel

Last year, I was contacted by author Anthony Flacco and asked if I would be interested in illustrating a graphic novel, which he wrote, about the life of Nikola Tesla. I was thrilled by the opportunity to work on the story of this great man. It would have been  200-plus pages and at least 1100 panels. The script was compelling and beautifully written, and would make a great film. Long story short, it was eventually turned down by a couple of high-profile publishing companies. Heartbreaking for the author and I, but it’s still out there and who knows…maybe one day…

Here are sample panels I provided to help sell the book. They were drawn in pencil, which would have been such a fun way to create a graphic novel.

New Lightsaber

Here’s my most authentic-looking lightsaber yet. I found the top half at a camera flea market, and I recognized it right away as the kind of flash gun used to make Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber in 1977. I added parts I had lying around and voila.

Inside Fiction Science

This was an intro I created for my demo reel in 2007 during a long weekend, which is why it’s a bit rough. I love doing this kind of retro ephemeral film style.

Rebranding Fiction Science

Meet Joe-Bot, my new mascot. Still working on finding a good balance of logo, text and color, so this is temporary. I like this little guy, and want to make it my new logo, and build my new website based on this kind of iconography. I’m going to build a whole story around this little robot and look forward to refining and rebranding my company.

Half-Life 3?

Okay, I admit it. I’m a huge Half-Life 2 fan. I think Valve’s games are the best, most intelligent and immersive games. The worlds they create feel very real. I’m looking forward to the next chapter in the series. This is my own fan-based image, created from photos I took in one of the bleaker parts of the city. I combined them in Photoshop with various elements from screenshots, including a shot of one of my own prop guns. This character is obviously in a bad spot, with a train bearing down on him and two striders on the way. He’d better run…

A note about 3D

Roger Ebert posted  an interesting article based on a letter he received from the great editor Walter Murch. (http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/post_4.html) Buried among the 500-odd comments is my two cents:

One of the main reasons I feel that mainstream movies do not need 3D goes way back to the beginnings of cinema. Eisenstein’s definition of film is “a succession of images juxtaposed so that the contrast between these images move the story forward in the mind of the audience.” This very definition, which describes film beautifully, is summed up in our naming the medium of film as “Motion Pictures.” Moving pictures, affected by the expansion and compression of time through editing. The moment we add depth into this time-based medium we’re in trouble, because we are changing depth in every cut. Notice how the most immersive 3D films were the thrill rides at Universal. No cuts, just one continuous take, and all dependant on a continual forward motion, travelling ever deeper into the scenes.
Not all films are thrill rides, yet those bean-counters who saw the box office of Avatar suddenly saw 3D as the next step in film evolution. It doesn’t help that James Cameron is blowing that horn as well, and that’s troubling. It’s like trying to convince us that picture books are cool, but pop-up books are better. I prefer my succession of pictures viewed without gadgetry.

Superman and Batman, circa 1905

I grew up learning to draw from comic books, and I sometimes return to drawing Superman just as a doodle exercise in my sketchbooks. Here are a couple of steampunk versions I did for fun. Took them into Photoshop and added the old-time framing device.

With eyes almost closed

There are things we see that are almost impossible to reproduce on canvas, or digitally. Things like the patterns behind our eyelids that propagate geometrically when you press on your eyes, or the beautiful prismatic chromatic aberrations from sunlight through your eyelashes as you hold them open ever so slightly. Here are samples from a series of images I’ve been creating called “Eyes Half Closed.” These were created in Photoshop, using photos which I took through polarized mylar sheets and glass marbles. I added things like “floaters,” trying to reproduce the loose blood cells we observe floating inside our eyes. I’ve got quite a few of these which I want to make into an interactive looping slideshow to soothing music. (click to view full size.)

Another Raygun

It’s been awhile since I built a ray gun. I have a few “in progress” and by that I mean boxes of junk collecting dust in the garage. This one was relatively easy, since the basic body comes from a firehose nozzle. The front part is from a vacuum cleaner that burned out after only 2 months. The knobs come from a reel-to-reel tape recorder and the front firing outlet is from a plastic pepper grinder. For more ray guns, visit my site and look under Personal Work.