Playing with Adobe Illustrator CS3.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The Spider
"Death Reign of the Vampire King"
A 1975 reprint of a 1935 pulp. With Conan doing so well in new editions with Frazetta covers a lot of the old pulps were ripe for repackaging. The Spider was one of them. He was very much like the Shadow and the Green Hornet complete with a Kato-like valet and sidekick. I started rereading it, and it's obvious to me that Bob Kane must have read a few Spider pulps before he cooked up Batman.
The 1975 cover dropped the Spider's theatrical costume designed to strike terror into the hearts of criminals in favor of depicting a generic gun-toting adventurer which made it appear to be more like a James Bond or Destoyer novel. It's more like Doc Savage than Ian Fleming. It's pulp at its pulpiest.
The illustrator's painting looks like Darren McGavin.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Monday, May 05, 2008
Battlestar Galactica 1978 TV Guide Cover
I never really cared for this illustration, but I kept the cover for years. A few years later, I would be entering art school, and this is the kind of illustration some of my teachers would be championing. LUCY everything and arrange it artfully. It looks like the guy took more time rendering the patterns on Lorne Greene's tunic than he did drawing the half-hearted Galactica which looks more like the ship from either "2001" or "Silent Running.".
Friday, May 02, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
All the kids are doing it
Today it's branding, piercing and tattoos, tomorrow it will be gene splicing with nonhuman DNA and cybernetic augmentation. Although your friend is really good with tools, it would probably be a mistake to let him implant that new digital olfactory array so "you can, like, smell colors" or give you a really cool pair of titanium tyrannosaurus legs. It might not work out so well.