Death of the hero!

The other day I recieved this wonderful piece of artwork from artist and friend Robin Barnard. Iron Man #230, the classic 'Death of the Hero' was one of the first issues I ever bought, part 6 of the classic 'Armor Wars' storyline, containing possibly my favourite armor, the silver Centurion! 

Let's talk a little bit about the artist. Robin Barnard is a practicing artist who has a real passion for comics, he is the creator/writer/illustrator of the excellent weekly comic magazine 'Images Degrading Forever' which is an ongoing of the exploration and analysis of comic books and their creators, at the moment IDF is focusing on recreating issue 186 of Frank Miller and Klaus Jansons famous Daredevil run. I urge you to go and pick this up, it's great stuff, every week at orbital comics.

If you want to check out the home of Images Degrading Forever, visit imagesdegradingforever.blogspot.com

Robins work has been published in Dave Sims 'Glamourpuss' #12, where he himself is proclaimed as the 'genius behind Photo-Primitivism' I first got in touch with Robin when I discovered IDF, I emailed him, and he generously let me contribute a page of artwork, which was a really rewarding project. Robin really nicely sent his original drawing of Iron Man #230 to say thankyou, which was an amazing gesture.

Next week my drawing will be published in IDF aswell as a small interview from me about my work. You can see an interview with Robin all about his work for glamourpuss, and his ways of working on Matt Seneca's blog:

http://deathtotheuniverse.blogspot.com/2010/05/robin-barnard.html

Ohhhhhh Canada!

I've just sent a package to Canada to Dave Sim. He doesn't know that he's getting it, it's just a bit of fan art, hopefully it will arrive in a week or so, and I pray I get a reply. the quality of the photos are not that great.

If anyone doesn't know why I am doing this. Dave Sim is the legendary creator of Cerebus, possibly the greatest independently published comic book of all time! himself with the help of Gerhard conseculatively created the longest running original english comic book of all time! Consisting of 300 isues, and over 6000 pages, taking 27 years. The reason why I love Cerebus is because of the humour and extremely well written characterization of characters, I also love seeing the progression of Sims' art and writing skills, in such a short period of time, he improved so much, it's very inspiring, and proves that constant practice will improve your craft!

Final Project- Sticker Book Final pages+Stickers

Here are the final pages for the album with the number boxes attached.

Here are the stickers I've made, they reflect the pages that they are placed in.

Underneath are the sticker backs, with numbers

 My favorites include the 3 part spiderman/carnage/venom, the magneto head, juggernaut, Iron Man, and Spiderman 300. If I was a kid, I would make my parents buy me these.

Final Project- Sticker Book

For my final project, I decided to make a sticker book based upon things I like. It all came about because I recently bought a Spiderman 'WEBS' sticker album from 1992, that was unused from America. I bought it as it contains artwork from Todd Mcfarlane. 

Front and back of the album.

It really is that simple! Here are the finished pages

Wolvie

Spidy

Space scene

Megazord

Magneto vs. X-men

Venom webs

Venom

Incredible Hulk

These pictures were immensely fun to draw, I really enjoyed it, it's always so much easier when your passionate about the subject.

The Zine

I've made a Zine, and it's about J.F.K. I took six photos in harrow, of places that looked similar to the actual scenes of Dealey Plaza, Texas, where he died. As the background was done, it was just a case of filling in key players like Jackie. K, Lee Harvey. O, and the Ford Lincoln. But let's delve into why I did this, and how it came to be.

Why-I've always been fascinated with the murder of J.F.K, it happened on the same day of my birthday. I've always found the imagery extremely compelling, it's just great for using in work for getting that strong quality across, their good strong images, It's something I come back to again, and again. We're joined forever, in an endless struggle, just like Captain America, and the Red Skull

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 Here are the pictures that I captured for the zine, the Dealey was always there.

 

 

 

 

  

 

This one looks  really like the Book Dispository.

 

Now that I had the images, I had to start bringing it all together, my zine would tell a short story of some key events on the day, but I also wanted it to be visually striking, I looked at the work of Robert Rauschenberg, and Dieter Roth for inspiration, their work was extremely inspiring as it seemed so untouchable, extremely timeless, work created 50 years ago, that looks as fresh today as it did back then.

 

Rauschenberg, A big inspiration for me was his inclusion of american culture, such as Baseball, mixed with iconic imagery, like the eagle.

 

This work just looks very powerful, exactly the thing I wanted.

 

Another great inspiration was Atlas by jake Tilson, I was lucky enough that the library has the first four copies of the zine, so i could see one in my hands, It was etremely exhilirating, and fascinating, it seemed out of the future, it changed the way I thought how the zine could be. The production values were so high, printed on glossy paper. It had lots of free bits to cut out, and collect, in one copy, there was a whole sheet of specially printed Atlas stamps.

So I went away with all this inspiration, and just sat down, and made the zine.

 These are just images stuck onto accetate.

I was very happy with the finished pages, as they have an edgy look that I want, but also have some really powerful imagery too, I feel it looks very expressive, and playful, it was nice to just sit down, and experiment alot with collage, something I havn't done in a while.

 

Seeeeeeee my Power!

I've been thinking about making a website, one where I can display my work, and sell my things. I base alot of my work on things that i fondly remember and love from my childhood, and this one is no different.

This was based on some of my favourite memories when I was a little boy, playing the Sega Master System and Sega Mega Drive with my brother. They were really expensive, but somehow we had both, with lots of games. This is meant to resemble the title screen, where the player would 'PRESS START' or if in an arcade 'INSERT COINS' The characters are totally generic, but the three pouncing are loosely based on Power Rangers. I think this is great because when people click on my site, and see this, they will think my work is fun, free, enjoyable, nostalgic, personal, and true. I think the website should definately say something about you, and the work.

This start screen from 'Captain America and the Avengers' a game that we used to play endlessly, is the kind of thing I'm trying to recreate. I remember when this would flash up, someone one shout 'THE AVENNNNGGGEEEERRRSSS!!' I imagine I would have something like that with lots of flashing lights where the lightning bolt would fly down, and the characters would dive in, and there would be loads of flashing lights.

I used to think this was the coolest part of the game, as the drawings were so detailed, this is my favourite depiction of iron man, by Jackson Guice, and Bob Layton. I think this could be turned into a great web page, as each character selection could be a link to another page, like a shop or a contact address.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World. The first game I can ever remember playing. This was built into the Sega Master System II. This is the title screen, I remember it would flash erratically, green and purple strobes of light would dance all around. It has the classic push start button, and the C, SEGA 1986 which I think is great!

Below are two of my original ideas for the website, which have been rejected just to not being exciting enough.

The little yellow parts are the individual body parts of my JFK action figure I previously made. I thought this was a nice idea, and I still do, it's just that if someone looked at this, they wouldn't know what it was, plus they would think my website is all about figures, which I wouldn't want.

Another idea which was to have the head part of my JFK figure looking as if its just come from the silicone mould, which is also the ENTER button. Once again, you get the feeling that this website would be just about figures, and moulding. Plus, its too dull.

Heres a basic plan of the different pages that could be on offer, this is by no means final, it's very plain as I havn't designed each page yet, but I will, I want to re-do my sketch to a higher standard to give an authentic experience of what I want.