Nothing like vintage propaganda to get the creative juices flowing:

Labels: comical, inspirado

A few things inspired this week's comic.

The first was the bass player at Inara George & Van Dyke Parks' concert at the Largo a little while ago. I liked his style, but for humor's sake, decided to give him a ukulele.

Style-wise, I was playing with a loose impressionistic style and animation cells, inspired by Seo Kim's blog Instant Doodles and Oswald's Iten's analysis of Disney's 101 Dalmatians. Pretty sure I have to go buy it now.



And because I wasn't 100% sure what things look like, bass and ukulele images via Google image search.

Labels: comical, inspirado

A roller disco superhero with a milkshake was just some of the ideas Bexy tossed around. I tried to combine them to the best of my ability.

Dazzler was the first thing to come to mind:


Researching 70's outfits was fun. At Bexy's request I altered the jumpsuit to be a pants/blouse set so she could show a little belly. Who am I to deny a little belly?


Sometimes the little details can take over, like the Ms Pacman game in the background. I just realized Ms Pacman is a BBW herself!


And Bexy:


Rough sketch:


Flat color (I switched to sidesaddle to showcase the rollerskates and make it more pinup-ee with the turned in knees):

Labels: comical, inspirado

An umbrella and a unicycle were unique props, which required a bit more research than the school teacher:


















After I sent the flat color I got a note for more color, so I decided to add flowers to the field:


A few of the many photo references for Leigh Ann's likeness:




The rough sketch and flat color versions, you'll notice I moved her center of gravity as it looked like she was about to fall in the sketch:




The third commission is on it's way!

Labels: comical, inspirado

I want to steer everyone in the direction of Cartoon Brew and their story on Hattie Noel, the beautiful fat actress and dancer who modeled for Disney animators as reference for the hippo ballet sequence in Fantasia. Especially awesome is the clip they found of Hattie at the center of a song and dance number doing the jitterbug for the movie "Irene."

I love it when these things get out of the vault.

Week later update: Color version is up, here's the line art from last week.

Labels: comical, inspirado

Along with color, I'll be back later this week with all the fun Space-Girl pinup references I found.

Tuesday Update: Here's the line art from Monday.


Friday Update: Here's the flat color from Tuesday.


Saturday Update: Here's a whole shipload of Space-Girl pinup references. The first three I mentioned back in this post.




These are the new ones I found when I was look for specific inspiration. Danc of Lost Garden created this, which I loved for the haircut and the subtle tron-lines segmenting the sleek spacesuit:


Andrew North did this piece, which I dug for the emblem and the collar and the uniform style. Also: Batgirl!


Rob Ullman did this girl, which I liked for the ring triplets on the gloves and boots.


This piece, signed "Garcia" but labeled "thebottom" on the file? I found on Google images and I wish I could link the artist but I couldn't track down the original source. I dig the haircut and the mod suit. EDIT: Thanks for the link Erasmo!


Kean So did this one, I can't remember what I took from this one, but I had it open with all the others in my inspiration window.


Now for some post-comic inspiration. When I was trying to track down the Garcia/thebottom artist on DeviantArt I found all these great pieces, that, while they didn't inspire me this time around, I'll keep in mind next time:

Labels: comical, inspirado

Bonus points to whoever gets the reference in this comic's title.

I gotta go to bed but I'll update tomorrow with all the cool mermaid art I found while I was looking for reference.

There Will Be Blood is both amazing...and not quite. Hard to explain, there was no part I didn't like, but by the end I wasn't sure about it.

Fido on the other hand is fantastic. No reservations, go rent it.


Monday Update: here's my mermaid reference.

There's a restaurant down the street from me that has a drawing on their menu of a mermaid with two leg/fins instead of the traditional legs coming together to form a tail. I should have walked down the street to take a picture but I figured I could find similar stuff online, but this little knick knack is all I found:


I gave up on Google pretty quick and moved onto Flickr where I found this by tartx. I liked the texture and the layers and the general old timeyness.


Similar to that, I found a plethora of beautiful old timey layered textured mermaids by heyjupiter.


Planning specifically to draw a rubanesque mermaid I found curvygirl's adorable collection:


And about as perfect as can be I found out about a restaurant/bar in Zihuatanejo called "La Sirena Gorda" or "The Fat Mermaid." Here's a picture of their wall art, more courtesy of auntiem.



Unrelated: this might be the greatest thing to come of the Writers Strike.

Weeks later update: after I finished the space cadet pinup I wanted to go back to the mermaid and give her a bit more texture and tweak her color a bit. And add freckles. Here she is as I originally finished her:

Labels: comical, inspirado

Last week for my birthday present Meredith took me to the LA Philharmonic Presents: Sounds Of The City with a bunch of great artists, the stand out of which was Miss Zooey Deschanel, enjoy some bootlegs:




Shame that one got cut off, gave me chills.

Full review of the night on Pudgy Girl.

Also: some random links I enjoyed last week:
Mid Century Modern Stickers
Pinball Countdown
Steampunk Justice League
Big Fat Deal
Shapely Prose
Junkfood Science

Labels: comical, inspirado

As hype for The Dark Knight is about to kick into high gear with the trailer (playing with I Am Legend this weekend) I was thinking about one of my many issues with Batman Begins: the music. The producers regrettably cut a lot of classic Batman iconography in Begins, but one that I think hurt the film the most was it's lack of strong music. There were moments when the ambient Zimmer/Howard score fit the mood, but it was forgettable and no part of a Batman film should be forgettable.

So it made me happy to find some YouTubers who synced up Batman Begins with the iconic Danny Elfman and Shirley Walker scores from the Burton Batman and Timm animated series:







Hopefully some memorable themes will be introduced in the new one. And maybe it will inspire the Bond producers to think "hey, maybe we should actually give Bond some good grooves in this next one" since they're following the Begins formula so closely.

Labels: inspirado

I've never painted ceilings before
or molding
or two colors in the same room
or a two colors on the same wall

Should be fun!

Monday update: Results!

First order of business (easy order of business) was my cereal shelf. I have a pretty built in molded shelf above my sink that I've been using for my cereals (like Seinfeld). But cereal boxes are covered in ads and promotions and sort of ugly even though I dig the colors and cartoon characters. So in my old apartment and this new one, I'd just been placing them ingredient side out (lame). Then I got the jar idea and found these tall narrow ones at Ikea for $4 and got a wooden dowel from Lowes and screwed it in front as an earthquake precaution. Safety first!


The big project of the weekend was painting. This was my original paint plan:


And here's the before picture of one side of my apartment. The blue bedsheet was a quick-dorm-room-solution to no drapes that turned into a three month solution for no drapes. But as you can see new drapes are there on the theater seats to be installed:


Yay color! I took this picture before I installed the drapes but I did it, honest. My friend and I could only finish the aqua and the orange before we went to see 3:10 To Yuma, but afterwards I decided that I really liked the aqua/orange/white combo and I'm not going to use the green. It took three coats of orange to cover the gloss white finish on the shelves and the ceiling was a pain in the butt to paint but so pretty.


Me being pleased with my new apartment. I still need to clean up the edges and corners with white cause we were planning on using the green paint to cover our mistakes at the time. Can't wait to do the bathroom and the kitchen!

Labels: comical, inspirado, snappy

I saw this Iron Man cover on Comics Continuum yesterday:


Which is not unlike one of my favorite movie posters of all time:


And speaking of graphic movie posters, I've been passing this 3:10 to Yuma poster on the way home from work, it's really iconic:


Looking it up online I found a few others, this one is also striking, I especially enjoy the texture and the font work (love the formation of the title). As with the one above, the only thing that would make these better if they abstracted the figures, maybe with a little Soul Bass cutout style.


Of course even the most beautiful movie campaigns now-a-days still have their crappy "here's our stars pasted together in Photoshop" poster:


Poster links: IMP Awards is a great poster archive with some nice large scans. While I was musing about posters I also found PosterWire, a movie poster blog that has good content but only updates a few times a month. Wish more advertising agencies put more thought into their poster campaigns.

Labels: inspirado

These pretty pretty pictures come from Brazil. They were intended to be mocking as part of an ad campaign for low fat yogurt. "Forget about it, men's preferences will never change." was the slogan. It seems somewhere down the line though, signals got crossed and they ended up with these striking, classic photos that will probably be used in feminist media classes for years to come.

If anyone in Brazil is thinking "would Matt like me to mail him a magazine with these ads in them?" the answer is yes. Yes I would.

These will go on the inspiration wall of every casting director I work with.

I don't know what blog/news outlet to credit for these, but Judgement Of Paris first brought them to my attention and the Dimensions forum mentioned the slogan.

Labels: inspirado

For months I've been brainstorming things to do with my new apartment, paint colors, sleeping solutions, storage tricks, etc.

Today I found a bit of inspiration for what to do with my fridge:



It reminds me of an old idea I had involving M&M bags. I have a jar at work that I fill with candy and for some reason I decided instead of throwing away the bags, that I would save them in my desk drawer. Now I have years of candy bags but no clue what I'm going to do with them. M&M bags are a little more garish than gourmet chocolate wrappers though, so I don't think I can use them for this.

Labels: inspirado

I've got another Team Ellie commission to do and I'm thinking about drawing something noir/pinup. So I hopped on Google images.

Vintage Paperbacks is a great little archive of old book covers:


And the Stainless Steel Droppings pointed me to the Robert McGinnis archives, I especially like this monotone background:


I should invest in some of those "pulp covers" and "classic pinup" compilation books.

Ned Sonntag on the Dimensions forum brought up Leigh Young who does adorably plush pinups:


Which reminded me of this piece by BBW artist Derrick Fish:


And randomly my noir search brought up Shane Glines of Cartoon Retro who also had a space girl piece:


I forget how the links led me here but then I found The Girls Productions who also have fun with the 50's modern style:


Finding those two reminded me of Verabee who I found through Ryan's links forever ago:


Anyway, one of the things I wanted to do with this blog is use it as an inspiration wall. So there you go.

Labels: inspirado