The Walking Dead Season 5 Poster Process

Hey All,

I thought that I would cap off all of my process videos by providing you with a breakdown of how I created this Walking Dead poster image. Up until now, I've shared a few time lapse videos but this time I will share how I got from point A to point B.

To start off with a spent a lot of time photo comping and rearranging various images trying to come up with a pleasing arrangement. I ended up setting on a nice triangular composition with that included almost all of the Hero's cast from season 5 as well a few zombie to indicate the threat and motivation in the overall narrative. You can't make a zombie movie poster without zombies in it!

I didn't keep many of these photo comps but what I do have is the initial pencil drawing. I had originally thought about putting a border around this image as a bit of a homage to some of my drew Struzan posters but in the end, my wife talked me out of it and I think that she was right.

 Next, I painted in some background color and texture. The show in general has a real saturated, green/ sepia tone to it and I wanted to start off and paint into a nice ground that conveyed that gritty, dirty, blue world.

 Here I am laying in all the local colors with an airbrush ( Photo shop) just like I would do it traditionally. The goal here is to give me an indication of the basic colors and forms and how they will interplay with one another.

 

This next image is a halfway done process shot. I've completed the rendering of about half the characters and really it is all just labor from here on out. Rick himself took me about 7-8 hours to paint. The time lapse condensed it into a nice 4 minute chunk but I ended up putting a lot of time into this piece.

 Final Image. Once all the rendering was done, I added the text and a few embellishments to the composition. I ended up making several minor adjustments in photo shop to harmonize the color scheme a bit more and "amp" up the piece in general. Photo shop really does have several "Make it Better" buttons. ;)

Well that is it in a nutshell. If you have any questions or comments on this piece and/ or my process, please drop me a line as I'd love to hear from you.

Cheers.

Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead by Mike Perry

Michonne from The Walking Dead by Mike Perry

The Walking Dead Season 5 Poster

Hey all, I finally finished my "The Walking Dead" Season 5 Poster. Just in time for the second half to kick in.

Carol From The Walking Dead by Mike Perry

Carol played by Melissa McBride.

Glenn from The Walking Dead by Mike Perry

Mikka Kipprusoff Poster Illustration Concept

Today I am sharing a Poster Illustration Concept that I created based on the all time greatest goalie of the Calgary Flames, Mikka Kipprusoff. What can I say,I'm a huge Hockey fan ;)

As always, names, logo's & trademarks are copyright to their respective owners.

Newt Liked my painting!

I can't believe that I forgot to post this.
Anyways, at the last Calgary Comic Expo, I got to meet Carrie Henn, the actress who played Newt in Aliens. She liked my "Aliens" piece and stopped by my booth for an autograph and a quick photo with me. Needless to say, it made my day and I enjoyed meeting and chatting with her husband and her agent as well. They were very friendly and I can't say enough good things about it. Of course I didn't have a camera on hand to capture the moment but luckily my trusty neighbor Tom was on present to snap a few as well as my booth hand Nick had his I phone. Thanks guys!
So here is the proof and I've got my nice signed print framed and staring at me in my studio as we speak!
Cheers!

Come and Get Some!

I love Army of Darkness and Evil Dead! Nuff said....

ALIENS! My favorite movie 1986.

To continue with the favorite movie theme, this time I wrapped up an image based off one of my top 10 movies ever ALIENS. Pure 1986 GOLD!

I started off thinking that I would end up doing another "Full Struzan" movie poster similar to what I did on my Predator piece but instead I went for a more intimate take on the movie. Really, so much of the movie is about motherhood and Ripley being a surrogate mother to Newt and the Queen and her "children". Both fight to protect their offspring and in the end it comes down to a battle of the "B*@!h's".

Take a look and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers!

My favorite Movie 1987 " The Predator"

Oh Man how I love this flick. I don't think it is possible to get sick of this movie and I could not resist creating this faux movie poster. The premise was for me to go " full struzan" and do a Study using his technique. Well, as per usual, I went "whole hog" and created my version of the movie poster for this classic. I managed to squeeze the whole cast in except for the general. Even Hopper made it !;)
Anyways, here is the image and some process shots.

Final Image

Final Illustration

Line Under Drawing

Initial color lay in with the Air brush

Final Pencils w/o adjustments

Blaine Detail

    

The Princess of Power

Here is the latest in my Motu Fanart series for Lily. This time, the Princess of Power her self, SHE RA! I figured it was time to do a good guy. I showed it to my daughter and the first thing she said was " She's so beautiful" and then "You need to paint He Man". lol I have a rough started for He Man, we'll see if I get to him next. Personally, the villains are more fun and I'd like to do Scorpia.

Here is the image with a couple of Crop Variants and a Detail of the portrait. This one took much longer because of all the metal and 80's Glam.

Shadow Weaver

Hey Gang,

Here is my latest contribution to the MOTU fan art realm. This time, another Princess of Power villain "Shadow Weaver".  This is not strictly cannon but is what I imagine she might look like.

Next up She Ra herself.

Cheers

Catra Fan Art

"Rwowrr... I'll get you SHE-RA!"

Lol, I've been watching a lot of She Ra with my Daughter lately. It's her favorite show and she even had a She Ra themed birthday. Most of the kids her age have no clue who She Ra is and I just love it that my girl likes and watches the same shows that I did when I was a kid. So, we watch a lot of Motu shows and I decided to do some fan art. I was inspired by this guy I found on deviantart who goes by the handle AldgerRelpha and his Motu fan art is fantastic. Anyways, in my spare time I've been noodling around with this image and I finally had the time to wrap it up and post it. I figured that I'd start with an Evil Villain before I moved onto a Heroic Hero. I've got a couple more in the works so stand by for more and let me know if you like it and if there are any characters that you'd like to see.

Cheers!

Mac's Revenge

I was watching the original Predator movie the other day and did this sketch to scratch my " I need to draw this" itch. Which I get every single time I watch this movie. I never get sick of it and it is just so Awesome! Anyways, here we get to see what might have happened if Mac was able to keep his promise to Blaine.

Battle of Serenity Valley

So I finally finished my second Firefly image that I started a while back. This one is more of a narrative depicting our favorite characters Mal and Zoey in all their Browncoat glory at the Battle of Serenity Valley. I used the same paintings of Zoey and Tracy and did a different version of Mal and this time I rendered the Independence logo as if it were a medal.
I think I scratched the Firefly itch for now...

I'll be at the Calgary Comic Expo this weekend at booth #1006  Please stop by and say hi!

Cheers

Mike

Painting Mal

Hey Gang,

Keeping in line with my recent Brown Coat Propaganda Poster image, I thought that I'd post up a
"How I Painted Mal" process article.

Malcolm Reynolds AKA Nathan Fillion is a pain in the butt to paint. The reason being is his features are very unique yet subtle. His nose and chin/jaw are very prominent yet difficult to get right. Needless to say, I've wasted many pages in my sketch book just trying to get it right and so far, this painting, I think, is my best attempt to date. You be the judge.

The process that I am outlining below is not neccesarily typical for me but in this instance I think it worked out. The intent was to give the image a poster feeling and how could a guy NOT be influenced by the great Drew Struzan? So ,I decided to emulate his technique some what and here is how I did it.

First off, I started with an under drawing. Some guys just launch straight into paint but I'm just not built that way. I like to think of the drawing stage as building the skeleton of the finished work. The more accurate that I can get this stage, the less guess work that I have to do later.

 Next, I completed a monochromatic under painting over top of the drawing. This helps me to work out the basic values and forms as well as establishing a uniform tone to the whole piece. The Browncoats are always depicted as dirty and sandy so I chose to use a tan color for this stage.

 On top of the under painting, I now go in with my digital airbrush and block in my colors. This is what I borrow from Mr Struzan as he is a master at this part of the process. He is a lot more subtle with the airbrush and chooses to rely more heavily on his drawing skills to refine the forms in his work. For me, I just wanted to quickly establish the overall color scheme.

 Now we get into the fun and laborious part that some people call rendering. For this stage, I pretty much kept to my chalk brush and blocked in the forms being conscious of establishing the planes and over all tonal management.  I'm particularly inspired by the Premier Coup method as championed by the great portraitist John Howard Sanden and I can't help but gravitate to using his methods at this stage. I confess that I initially intended to go " Full Struzan" on this piece and get down and dirty with pencil like mark making but this just felt more natural to me and more importantly, more consistent with the period poster look that I was going for.

 This is the final stage. To achieve this, I spent a lot of time noodling around pushing pixels and further refining the image until I was satisfied with the final rendering. After that, I played around with some adjustment layers in photo shop and voila!

I hope that you found this article somewhat useful and please let me know if you have any comments or questions as I'm always happy to hear from you.

Cheers!

Brown Coat Recrutment Poster.

Hey all,

Today I am posting up a finished version of my Firefly/ Serenity "Browncoat" recruitment poster. Previously, I had posted up a link to just the drawing as a WIP on facebook and I got ripped for making a spelling error so here's hoping that I didn't make any more. lol ;)

Anyways, on to the piece.

 

Here are some up close images of the various character portraits.

Mal ( Nathan Fillion)

 

Zoey ( Gina Torres)

 

Tracy ( Johnathan M. Woodward)

I also have several variants besides the full color version and you can see those below.

Cheers!

For a more in depth article on my process for creating this image, please stop by my other blog The Daedalus Workshop Here

Can't Stop the Signal

Here we go with some Firefly/ Serenity Fan Art that I am working on and hoping to have completed for the upcoming Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. Keep your fingers crossed.

I whittled it down to 2 main ideas and both focus on the Browncoats. One image is intended to be more of a propaganda/ recruitment poster and the second image is intended to look more like a book cover/ movie poster.  In a perfect world, I would create both but seeing as how time is short, I'll be lucky to complete one in time for the show.

Anyways, take a look and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers!

Did I forget the Sethlan?

Well well. I guess I did. Back in the spring some fellow Geeks and I at the Daedelus Study Group decided to create a fictional creature character that could exist in the Mass Effect universe. It is a Fan Art gig but also a challenge to add some Sci Fi and creature/Alien characters to the portfolio. There was a big expansive brief and many iterations until I finally came up with a design that passed muster so without further adieu.... Behold the Sethlan!

For an in depth view into the whole development cycle for this character click here