What You Talkin' About? Coraline

"...And he said that wasn't brave of him, doing that, just standing there and being stung, " said Coraline to the cat. "It wasn't brave because he wasn't scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave."
-Neil Gaiman"Coraline"

When my wife and I first saw "Coraline" in the theaters we were amazed. This movie was everything we look for in a film. Excellent story, beautiful visuals, the sound track fit well...it was a movie that we knew we were going to own and share with our daughter(s).

So my first female character for little girls to look up to is Coraline Jones, from the book (and movie) Coraline. Just in case any of you has not had a chance to lay your hands on either telling of this story, I'll not spoil it for you by going too in depth here...The story revolves around a young girl who, just having moved to a new home with her parents is bored. Everything seems colorless and dull. She has no friends, her parents are busy with work, and (like many tweens) she feels like she never gets what she wants.

However. Behind the peeling wallpaper in the great-room, she finds a little door, and behind that door is another world. A world that is so much more...interesting than her own.

Coraline Jones gets my vote as a female character to look up to for three big reasons. She's clever, she's brave and she's compassionate.

Daily Life 017: The Fence

More new boots... What can I say? My daughter loves shoes. And she's not a baby anymore, she's a big girl now. Today when I got home from work, Amy and Abby were outside sitting on the porch swing. Abby has on a red sweatshirt (over a Batman T-shirt), purple flowered pants, bright yellow puddle jumpers with monkeys on them, and quite possibly the ugliest greenish-yellow felt bunny hat... ever. Apparently, she's been very into opening and closing the fence gate into the backyard today. She spent a couple of minutes showing me (over and over) how good she was at it until we walked across the boggy ground to the shed so I could give her rides in the wagon.

The one nice thing about this ridiculous time change, is that there is still plenty of daylight after work to do a little playing outside before time to make supper.

Science is about ideas and preparation

A few years ago, my oldest brother got me a book for Christmas called "Build Your Own Humanoid Robots", by Karl Williams. There is a sort of pattern with the two of us... a set of gift buying rules, I guess. Generally, everything is off the beaten path, and touches on our interests and sensibilities in unobvious ways. The use for this book is nearing as Abby gets older, and some of the little boys I know are approaching an age where little fingers are less clumsy, and interest and attention can be held on a project through completion. This leads me to the title of this post.

I was thinking about making a robot. This brought to the surface of my brain a memory of my youngest brother (he was about 10 at the time) collecting old electronic junk (literally parts of VCRs, Stereos... I think he might have had part of a CPU in there) to make a robot out of. None of these things were really useful to his final goal, I think. This was an idea without preparation, and looking back on it I wonder how things would have turned out differently with a few less encouraging "mmmm-hmm"s and a little more guidance... I take my share of dropping the ball on that one. So... let's say you wanted to make a robot that had legs like a crab, and moved like one. (idea) Part of the preparation is obvious robot stuff (programming, servos, actuators... remote control), but part of it is less obvious. Stuff like biology (studying the muscles and joints of a real crab and how it moves), fabricating (parts have to be made somehow) and drawing. So many of the best ideas fall apart due to poor planning.

Mostly this post is set-up for next week. Your homework this week is to think about what the word "Subversive" means to you. I'm going to endeavor to adequately explain where I'm going with it (with a little help from my local library). There are some ideas and thoughts that have been weighing heavily on me of late, that I think I would like to share with my friends.
This weeks drawing is basically just practice for my next cover for Hex, trying out some new brushes and inking techniques, and practicing my color work. The colors on this one are still pretty rough. I'm hoping to grab a couple of minutes this week to tidy them up a little bit and push this drawing to a better finish. Her shirt was originally just going to be a big red circle... maybe with some text in it. The Eggplant graphic was totally accidental, but once I saw it it was too good to just let go.

Until next week. Take care and be good.
Your friend,
(in an effort to be more searchable) Jeffrey Johnson

What You Talkin' About: Role Models

One thing about growing up and having kids... you want them to have strong role models. When my first daughter, Abby was born, I noticed that there was a general lack of female characters out there to really look up to. Sure, there were I guess the Disney princesses, but by and large they seemed to just let events happen to them. I guess you could say that some of the pantheon of mythical gods could be considered strong female role-models. They were strong, clever, independent... but they were also... bitches.

Fortunately, as I've been paying more attention to such things, I've noticed this trend changing. Does this maybe have something to do with our changing views on woman's role in our modern world? I don't know, but it does make me feel a little better to know that there ARE some very good examples of strong, clever, capable, compassionate, smart, friendly... girls who are independent and powerful without losing their femininity.

The reason I'm bringing this up this week, is that my second daughter is due to be born soon, and I think it might be a nice way to look forward to that event to spend a couple of weeks showcasing some of the wonderful female characters out there today. I have a few picked out, but would love to hear who you all think would make a good role model for a little girl (both real and make-believe.)

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend
Jeffrey

Mustard

Now that I'm in my thirties, I can look back on some of the people I knew in my twenties with a little more... Perspective. This is the final interior illustration I did for "Waxmans warriors". As much as I enjoyed the other three, this one was the most FUN. It did not stress me out, and the ideas just flowed. Ha-ha-ha! I imagine this guy would be a bit of a disappointment in most respects. One thing that I didn't put into the drawing that I considered but just didn't really have time for is his mother. I sort of pictured her character as Marie from "Everybody Loves Raymond" (except played by Madeline Khan). She loves her first-born son to the point of being blinded by his faults. She was going to be bringing him a bowl of cheese-doodles.

Here's a shot at the pencils for this pic as well. I remember this episode of "The Simpsons" where Otto, the school-bus driver gets kicked out of his apartment. He asks the landlord if he can at least go in and get all of his stuff. The landlord tells him that all that was in there was a car magazine, and a jar of mustard. Bemused, Otto asks "I have mustard?" It's funny how some things just stick with you. The reason I bring this up (aside from the obvious pot-head reference) is that I had a minor epiphany today. The difference between McDonalds hamburgers, and everybody else's... Mustard. Everybody else uses Mayonnaise to add zip to their burgers, but McDonalds uses mustard. I guess it's not as monumental a realization as I make it out to be (you should've seen Amy's mom when I told her. She was like "So?") but I thought it was interesting.

Okay. That's it for today, I'll talk at you a bit tomorrow with a new "Daily Life".
Take care and be good.
Your friend
Jeffrey

What You Talkin' about? Mark Zug

There are several conversations that I have carried with me through the years that help me through rough patches. Overly simplistic as it may sound, they take on a sort of mantra quality, and even thinking about them can often calm my thoughts.

I remember once talking to my friend Nathan about working on our art... our skills. There was a desire there to work doing illustration for roleplaying games, media and ourselves... and to make a living doing it. He said something to the effect of, "Do you think all those great artists like Brom and Mark Zug were always amazing? No. One day, they pretty much said to themselves that they were going to learn to paint really well. And then they did it." Like I said, I'm paraphrasing there, but that's the gist of the conversation.

Whenever I feel like I'm maybe not good enough, or I need to get better, work harder, or practice more I think of Mark Zug. And I get to work.

I first ran across Mark Zug's work in the Shadowrun 3rd edition handbook. The quality of his painting and his characters was just simply... stunning.

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend
Jeffrey

Links: Mark Zug
Brom
Nathan Miller

Daily Life 016: Chainsaw

I read in the manual that this is the face you're supposed to make when you are chainsawing stuffs. Grim and purposeful... this face has nothing to do with the fact that I spend faaaar too much time sitting in a chair working with virtual things, and not enough out showing real stuffs who's boss.
I keep on telling myself that it will all be different in six months. Maybe I need to change some of my habits now. Ha-ha-ha!

Interior Illustrations for Hex Games' "Waxmans Warriors"

As the babies due date gets closer, the weeks just seem to go faster... Whew, they're exhausting too, LOL! So, the week flew by and I managed to miss all three of my posts, but I got some other stuff done, and am ready to hit you all with some new stories this week... so I'm not going to apologize.

Last week, I talked a little bit about the cover art, and the general idea of the game. Like I said, it's satirizing the religious tracts of Jack Chick and offering a sort of commentary on that world view. While it can be tempting to dismiss much of this dialogue as juvenile, with some very generalized statements taking easy pot-shots at a... Let's dial this back a bit, before I get myself in trouble. I realize that this can be a sensitive subject, so I've been hesitant about even posting and talking about it. I am going to talk about some of the things that I thought about while I was working on them though, because I feel like that stuff is an important part of this process.

This first drawing is the kingdom of heaven. My brief described it as "...a large, clean city with streets paved of gold and an eclectic mix of breathtaking architecture and numerous public plazas and parks. A clear, pure river flows through the center of the kingdom from its source near a golden palace on a hill in the city’s center." Going on to describe some of the other landmarks in heaven. I chose to illustrate the Tree of life against a backdrop of the City and Golden palace.

Often while I'm drawing, I'll write notes to myself in the margins of my workspace. I had this idea that I would put a paved walkway circling the tree of life. In the margins I wrote "What kind of (insert explitif here) would put a sidewalk around the tree of life?!" For me, this is more of a comment on the culture I live in than on anything else. It seems like a terribly arrogant thing to do. I concede that this kind of thing makes nature easier to enjoy, and probably makes it possible for people who otherwise would not be able to. As I am writing this, I'm thinking of other examples of things I enjoy that should by rights be put into this category (the zoo, the botanical gardens... ) Wow. This is turning into another terrible post, where I look like an idiot that didn't think things trough very well! Ha-ha-ha!

This second drawing is of hell. Hell has always seemed like a disjointed set of ideas that are put together in discord. Maybe that's part of why we remember our bad dreams more than our good ones. Things that are off-kilter and discordant, seem to resonate more in our brains and are... scary. I think we tend to like and gravitate towards order. So, silly as I always thought Bosch was in art history, perhaps he was on the right track.

These two illustrations were basically conceived at the same time. I wanted the heaven drawing to be vertical and tall. Light and airy... tranquil, and framed by clouds. Hell was to be horizontal and heavy. Framed by flames and darkness. Jumbled and chaotic. The central elements of the hell illustration are the lake of fire and the heavenly monorail. This is the real impetus of the thoughts of arrogance and ego-centrism. The idea is that there is a monorail tour of hell for the residents of heaven. Like a tour of a third-world country where you see the highlights on the surface and get an idea of how horrible things may be, but then get to go home to a comfortable life.

It's all just thoughts, and the start of a line of questions about my values and beliefs. I hope I didn't come off too... something bad. Ha-ha-ha!

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend
Jeffrey

More work for Hex Games: Waxmans Warriors

Hi! I hope everybody had a good week. Mine was long, and a little tiring and frustrating. Tomorrow starts a new one though, with new possibilities. Looking forward to that.

This week, I have the cover image that I did for another game by the guys at Hex, "Waxmans Warriors". It's a satirical adventure based on the cartoon religious tracts of Jack Chick. I read a lot of these during the research phase of this project, and was really struck by how... mean they are. That's really neither here nor there, just an observation.

So, here are three images. The first is the pencils that I sent to Steve Johnson over at Hex for initial approval. The character is "Giant Glowing Jesus", a 25 foot tall robot Jesus that guards the gates of heaven. His character would be played by Viggo Mortensen if they ever made a movie of "Waxmans Warriors". Steve's only suggestion was that I add in St. Hubbins, the patron saint of quality footwear, to give a sense of scale.
...So I did. The next step is inking. Pretty straight-forward line work inking. I've been looking at some stuff on the interweb, trying to expand my inking repertoire, and have found a couple of things that I'm going to try out on the next project.
The final step was to take it all into photoshop and color it up! I'm really pretty happy with how the clouds came out.

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

What You Talkin' About: Josh Middleton

Since beginning his professional career as a comic book artist in 1999, Joshua Middleton has worked for every major comic book publisher, as well as book publishers and movie studios as a cover artist, character designer, and conceptual artist.

Joshua maintains a full slate of regular cover and illustration work while working on his own forthcoming illustrated faery tale, Sky between Branches.

I feel bad about making such a short post for such an incredible artist, but it's already been a long week, and it's just half over... LOL. I've been looking at the blog of Joshua Middleton for about two years now, and am always just STUNNED by his work... beautiful and ethereal, he captures the grace and movement of the world around us, and shakes it up (Yahtzee style) into these gorgeous drawings filled with fantasy characters and superheroes. On top of that, he makes it feel effortless. He's apparently been very busy with work of late, and so hasn't updated his blog since October, but it's still worth checking in on because there's always the chance that there will be something new to inspire awe and delight. Check his links at the bottom of the post.

Until next time, take care and be good.

Your friend,

Jeffrey

Links:http://joshuamiddleton.blogspot.com/

http://www.joshuamiddleton.com/

Daily Life 015: Things to Come

This weekend, we watched our friends' four-year-old son, so they could go out to lunch for Valentines day. Abby was so funny, wanting to hang out with him. She followed him around, and sat on her little couch with him to watch a movie... it struck us that this is the same age spread that she will have with her little sister. Just old enough that they CAN do things together, and just young enough that maybe they'll WANT to.

Hex Games: Mars & Venus at War

The Year is 1939. Mars and Venus have been at war for thousands of years.

My first experience with Hex games was around 2002 at Archon, a science-fiction and gaming convention in Collinsville, Illinois. A (more or less) randomly chosen adventure... actually, I think we were waiting for a different game and got invited to join this one at the last minute. I guess it doesn't really matter. The GM (game master for the uninitiated, LOL) was a fellah named Colin Thomas, and the game system was one I'd never heard of before, Quags. (Quick Ass Game System) Living up to its name, the game is easy to learn and moves at a speedy pace. While there is room for more rules, the focus of the game is primarily on setting and cinematic storytelling, drawing the players into the experience rather than bogging them down in rules.

I was hooked.

Fast forward a few years to 2008. Once again I was attending Archon, this time with work in the art show, mostly showcasing Abigail and the Doom Crew, but there were a couple of other pieces in there too. By this time, I'd played in a few other games hosted by the guys at Hex, and I was going to make a point this year to talk to them about doing some work with them. After the first game called "Destroy All Squishy Humans!" (involving war between the self-aware robots let by the infamous N-I-L-8 and the humans.) I handed out my card to everybody at the table (You never know where work may come from) and Colin said I needed to talk to Leighton, the creative director for Hex.

Are you tired of hearing how I started working for Hex Games yet? Ha-ha-ha! I will be doing a "What You Talking About?" post on them in the future, so I guess I'll wrap it up. Mostly, I just wanted to underline the fact that so much of the work I do, and the work I get is about relationships. That's really true for anybody, but especially true for freelance illustrators and designers.

So, these three drawings are from my first assignment for Hex Games, "Mars & Venus at War". Set in 1930's New York, the people of Mars and Venus are in a state of cold war. Neither has the strength to decisively eliminate the other, so they have signed a tenuous peace treaty while they each stockpile weapons and soldiers for that final battle. Meanwhile on earth, an "incident" has occurred that threatens to bring destruction upon both of these great peoples... as well as the hapless people of earth.

If you're interested in learning more about Hex Games or buying any of their products, you can check out their website, or their online store.

Until next time, Take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Links:Hex Games Website
Drive Through RPG

One MO Picture 001: Penguins at the St. Louis Zoo

My wife loves penguins. This past weekend, we went down to the St. Louis Zoo to see the Penguin Parade that they do every Sunday in the winter. It was the perfect day for it, too. A sunny 40 degrees with no wind, and it was Super-Bowl Sunday too, so it wasn't too busy. The parade was pretty cool... Abby wanted so badly to run out and play with the penguins, and got mad that Mom was holding the back of her coat so she couldn't.

These guys weren't actually in the parade, but Abby had a lot of fun pressing up against the glass and talking to them!

What you Talkin' about? "Swallow Me Whole" by Nate Powell

At times, arranging and reordering was all i could do to handle the day. Didn't know they had a name for it and everything else. - Early on, I thought I'd found a way to exercise just a little control over my world, until I felt my size through it.

The first thing that caught my attention about this book (as with most books) is the cover. Beautiful, cleanly brushed linework and a muted color scheme grounded in drab reality... And a fantastical subject matter of a girl being carried over the trees by a swarm of insects. Glimpsing it out of the corner of my eye as I chased my daughter to the check-out counter at the library, I felt compelled to pick it up. And I was not dissapointed.

The line between what is reality and what is imagination is blurred in the Book "Swallow Me Whole", by Nate Powell. The story follows (I think) a year in the life of Ruth, a teenage girl living in the fictional town of Wormwood, Arkansas. Between Powell's lyrical, sometimes sketchy/sometimes clean but always precise, drawing style, and his well crafted writing, we are given a pretty clear picture of a girl, suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and mild Schizophrenia, trying to make sense of her world. a family trying to hold it all together, and a girl, suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and mild Schizophrenia, trying to make sense of her world.

As the book starts out, the family is going to see Grandma in the hospital. One of the things that struck me about this scene, is the way the details were handled. The hospital was clean, white... sterile. Grandma looked fragile and distant. The kids were sad and awkward, the way kids are in situations where they know they should feel a certain way, but aren't sure why. All of this was beautifully, delicately handled, but the thing that really hit me was the background. The doctor coming in the door was practically scribbled in... just a loose sketch in ink, because all too often, that's all a doctor is, somebody who's in and out, a fleeting character in the event of being in the hospital. the relatives out in the hall are loose drawings too, not on the minds of either the kids or of grandma. Their words just scribbled murmurs, hanging over their heads.

I'm a sucker for poignant moments, and subversive reinforcement of real social morality (is that even a word?) rather than the PC lip service that much of the media outlets feed us as "correct". Powell does such a good job of letting the reader identify with his characters. They know when they are doing something wrong, and as a reader I felt that. Also, even though Ruth felt like the world was (is) confusing, and jumbled she knew when something just was not right, and took a stand against it, when most of us wouldn't have. All in all, the book was a very good read, and I think I would score it a 4.5 out of 5.

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Daily Life 014: A Tale of Four Penguins

Two-year-olds are funny people.

We went to the Zoo this weekend, and watched the penguin parade. All of the penguins marched out the back of their habitat, down the side-walk, and back into the front. Strutting their stuff, waving, straining their necks... one even laid down to take a nap in the sun. Abby loved it. She was so excited that Amy had to hold the back of her pants to keep her from dashing out to play with the birds.

After the parade was over, we decided that it would be fun to go to the gift shop, and let the girl pick out one of the cute stuffed penguins we'd seen earlier, to take home with her. Baby girl could care less about the four stuffed birds Mommy held out for her to pick from... She had her eye on the souvenir pen holder with the penguins that floated inside of it.

That's what we get for thinking a two-year-olds idea of "cool" is the same as ours.