Went to a live WWE event ...

C M Punk once again proving why he's one of my favorites.

You could probably guess from some of my sketches I enjoy watching Wrasslin'. I got pretty bored of it in the beginning of the 21st century when everyone seemed to be and angry bald guy with a goatee in black trunks. But near the end of last year I heard about this C M Punk guy going off on how crappy the WWE was, they were his bosses, and talking about how boring wrestling had gotten. I completely agreed with him. He also talked about how he wanted to change wrestling or something. Anyway long story short I figured I'd watch a couple episodes of RAW see how different wrestling was and was surprised at how fun things seemed to have gotten again. So after not watching it for a little more than a decade I'm back into digging wrestling. Its fun so who cares.

Any way last night Leigh and I went to out first Live WWE event ever. We had floor level seats seven rows back from the ring so they were pretty good. We enjoyed ourselves enough we're looking forward to the next time we get to go see them live.

None of the matches were terrible, there was one that featured two guys I'd never heard of before and the Divas' match seemed to go on for a long time, Cena and Kane's last man standing match spent a lot of time out side the ring so it was kind of hard to see but everything else more than made up for it.

That picture at the top? Punk had a best 2 out of 3 falls match against Dolph Ziggler which was right after the Kane / Cena match were a couple of tables were broken and the ring needed cleaning.  Ziggler had a difficult time with a broom, it kept attacking him (seriously that's what was happening).  But I managed to snap this quick shot of Punk calmly sweeping up the ring apron. They went on to have one of the best if not THE best matches of the night. I wouldn't expect less from them they're amazing performers.

Anyway here's some other cool shots Leigh and I managed to grab through out the rest of the night.

Santino Marella facing off against Jack Swagger, couldn't believe how awesome this match was and it was the first one of the night! 

Chris Jericho talking about how crummy Toronto is. The crowd hates him.

Jericho taking a break from beating up on Kofi Kingston. Now the crowd loves him.

Kane waiting to see if John Cena will get up after  he hit him with a chair, sadly he did. Kane lost. boo.

Dolph Ziggler confused by how difficult it is fighting C M Punk after his difficult match with a broom.

Taking the pet for a walk

Doodling on the way to work.

Bunch of evil guys.

Doodling on my way to work.

Dead Projects File: MONSTER BAITERS

First page of Tim Seeley and Andrew Barr's Monster Baiters.

A long time ago I got in touch with Tim Seeley, creator of the comic Hack/Slash among others, to tell him how much I enjoyed the book and jokingly point out the similarities the first issue of the comic had with one of my self published Something-a-Go-Go comics. We had a few laughs. Eventually he got involved with a comic anthology project with Troma featuring short stories by a bunch of different artists, he asked if I'd like to be a part of that so I said sure. I did the art for a Toxic Crusaders story in that book in a totally digital style, just as an experiment to see if I could. I thought it turned out pretty good. 

Any way a short time after that Mr. Seeley asked if I'd like to collaborate on something. Since the Troma thing was kinda fun I said sure. Tim started working up a script about an island inhabited by B-movie style monsters and a sleazy director who films his movies there to save on special effects. There was some time travel involved an evil genius from the future, most of the characters had dark secrets or strange pasts and it all sounded really fun. Unfortunately due to a lack of a publisher and other projects I had on the go at the time the Monster Baiters ended up on the back burner and slowly disappeared from both our RADARs, although there was talk about selling it to a movie studio or something. 

Fortunately some of these ideas survived and made it into a recent story arc in Hack/Slash. (issues 12 to 14 of the current series) Since my local comic shop seems to only get Hack/Slash sporadically I never got to see these issues. If you are into horror flicks and comics you should be reading Hack/Slash its a great book.

What you see in this post is the extent of the work I completed for Monster Baiters. I still like most of these characters, but after all this time I don't think I'd ever want to do an entire comic in this style. The short Toxic Crusaders thing was tough and it wasn't even 10 pages long. Hopefully Mr. Seeley and I will get a chance to collaborate again one day (may be the terrifying Hack/Slash–Something-a-Go-Go crossover [which will never happen]) but until then, enjoy this peek into what could have been. Thanks again Tim for letting me show off these designs.

 

I still love this drawing of Rudy.

 

wow, seven years ago.

Life drawings.

Had to go to London to do some court room drawing for the National Post, these images are what I did to warm up a little. I think you'll be able to see the stuff I did in the court room if you swing by the National Post.

Sometimes it takes a while...

So you probably saw the illustration I did for the front of the NATIONAL POST. While that illo was pretty awesome, it wasn't the first one I did for the story. Since they weren't used I'll show you the other illos I did that ended up not being exactly what the designer/art director were looking for.  It happens sometimes, but very rarely do you end up with a bunch of art you really like. Everyone was happy with every version of what you see here but for some reason they just weren't working. That big eye at the top of this post was the first version. They ended up suggesting the image needed a more "High-tech, computery look" so I did this version.

I had a lot of fun playing with gradients. Stylistically I don't tend to use gradients that often in illustrator, I don't know why but I like the more flat shading look I usually use when working in illustrator. But again for whatever reason it didn't quite match the designer's vision. She wanted something with a little more Propaganda poster flavor to it. So I worked out these variations.

Everyone was happy with these but again something didn't quite line up with the vision the designer had, and since I was having fun exploring the idea we went with one more idea. Based on that final pair of blue eyes we decided to go with a more "Big Brother" idea and ended up with what you saw on the front of the paper and if you followed that link to the article.

I hope you enjoyed this look into the creative process of what goes into illustrating a story. 

Weekend illo for the National Post

Go HERE  to check out an illo I did for last weekend's National Post. I think it turned out pretty good.

Weird but good. Sadly the version that ran in the paper was in black and white.