Wednesday, September 16, 2015

The Specialists

Today I blocked in all of the figures for the newest round of Sports Illustrated Kids, "What's The Call", illustrations. Meaning I sketched everyone out in non-repo blue pencil so I could get all the gestures and proportions ready before I go to detail and final pencil sketches tomorrow.

I also completed the first rough mix of my friend Adam's song. There are a few little things to tweak but I am pretty happy with how it is turning out so far.

All in all, it was a pretty productive day considering I wasn't feeling too well when I woke up this morning.

Today's piece of art is a pin-up I did for The Specialists, a web comic about super heroes and villains set during World War 2. Over the last few years of doing conventions around Denver I became friendly with both creators Shawn Gustafson and Al Fukalek. During this year's Denver Comic Con I, along with a few other very talented creators, were approached by Shawn to do a pin-up as an incentive for their upcoming Kickstarter campaign to fund a Specialists hard cover omnibus book.

I love the book both Al and Shawn produce and I love the characters so, of course, I said yes.

The character I was assigned to portray was The Bombardier. The design is very reminiscent of Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer so I had a blast coming up with the idea of this piece and putting it all together. I did feature the patches that are on The Bombardier's jacket in my final illustration but, after going back and forth with Shawn, it was decided to keep them off the final print. I figure you can see the final print over on the Kickstarter site so I thought I'd show you the alternate, what might have been, version here.

You can check out The Specialists Kicsktarter campaign HERE. I really hope this project funds because I think it would be really cool to have a giant hardcover book of this comic. I've already pledged so I hope you do too. And, if you pledge enough you can get a nice print of my piece.

To wind down tonight I watched the first half of Robert Rodriguez's Desperado. Man, I miss movies like this. They were super inspiring back in the day and it's nice to see that they still hold up. Hopefully I can watch the end tomorrow night. For now, I am off to sleep!

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