Thursday, July 24, 2008

Promotional posters

My good friend and colleague Steve over at Rough Sketch Studios has been hard at work creating and publishing his own comic books for a few years now. They're doing pretty well, and as much as he has encouraged me to create and illustrate my own book series, I simply haven't yet had the time to make the commitment.
But it hasn't stopped me from contributing some one-off illustrated posters to promote his titles.
The print sizes on these are about 28" wide.

The first piece was done in '06 to promote his Koni Waves series.
Koni is a private detective living and working in Hawaii, and the premise is roughly a cross between Modesty Blaise and The X Files.
The intent for this pin-up was to show the character of Koni surrounded by elements and minutia of her daily life, ..which gets pretty surreal and creepy.
It was a challenging piece, but a lot of fun went into the details.
There are some little easter eggs in there.
















Another title that Steve's studio is producing is a book called Velvet Rope.
It's a horror anthology much in the vein of "Creepy" or "Tales From the Crypt".  Except instead of a gnarly old uncle or a cackling zombie corpse, the segments are hosted by "Velvet", an undead vixen and grindhouse movie usher.

Steve's idea.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Psychotronic culture and old horror, so I gravitated toward this pretty easily. Steve suggested the idea of Velvet standing next to an old hearse, or a "Big Daddy Roth" kind of Hot Rod. I zeroed in on grandpa Munster's "Dragula", created by George Barris back in the mid 60s.
I thought it made the perfect car for Velvet.