Sorry it's been a while...EDDDIIIIEEE!!!!

I just got an email from a reader of my blog who told me i needed to update this thing more regularly....  I'm sorry for my dalliances. I honestly didn't think anyone was reading this thing.  I just post stuff when I'm feeling bored and feel like I need to add some outward face to my work.
  Life has been pretty busy lately.  Eddie and I have been working on way too many projects, and he tends to make fun of me a bit too much in his posts so I gave him a break from it.   As it stands, I'll probably make him write up some posts for all the animation we've done with Doubleday and Cartwright over the past year.  He was supposed to post about that after he finished the comic book art stuff....
  Now there's quite a laundry list of work to chronicle.  If you're interested in my newer works. I tend to update my flickr and tumblr pages more often than this.
http://stephenhalker.tumblr.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenhalker

Illustration Friday: SNOW

Here's a quick illustration friday drawing... .Not the most well put together, but I had a free afternoon and was hoping to pump out a quick drawing.

Somehow, the colors got all sorts of screwy when I uploaded it to the web.  I guess you gotta be careful with those cyans and magentas.  The first time I uploaded it, the pinks in his face were popping so much that I had to go back and desaturate them to this extremely vivid color.  But the cyans... well nothing i did could help them.

 Note to self, be wary of cyan.

   Not the best, but a fun way to spend the afternoon, hope you like it.  The keyword: SNOW

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

  Finally, I've gotten through writing up Stephe's Artist Series.  I don't even know if they are still available, so why does Stephe want me to type these up?  Just a sec.  I'll go ask him.

Okay, so apparently it doesn't matter that much.  As in, it's fine that it's late. It would've been better if I'd've  promoted the designs while they were actually at stores, but probably someone else has taken care of that and this site is really more about cataloging the designs rather.  But, next time, I should sit on this stuff, so long..... story of my life.

Anyways, this design is my favorite of all of them. Have I said that before? I hope not.  There's something that just seems really old about this one.  I like the pose and expression and everything.  And the colors are pretty cool too.  I would probably even wear this one.  Sure it's a little loud. But every once in  a while you need a loud shirt, right.  I also think the halftone pattern would feel really cool if it were printed kind of thickly.

  I know everyone is asking, "So Eddie, what did you do on this one?" And the answer is..... nothing. I was out of town.  The only thing i remember is looking at the reference material and then coming back to teckpack the finished design.  Maybe that's why I like it so much. (sketches and stuff after the link)

GRIN AND BEAR IT

Okay, so it's been a while.... I feel like the last time I posted some actual graphics on here, it was, like,... Summer or something.
    Here's how my life goes. Stephe will finish up some projects and get super psyched about having a "web presence" again(especially since some japanese domain scalper stole his website name). So while he's working up some Creative Briefs and sketches, he tells me to start blogging and tumbling and whatnot. So then, I've gotta make up a bunch of stuff about all these illustrations, even though usually I have no idea what to say. A lot of times, he'll just laugh when I show him what I've written, but every so often, if I catch him on a bad day, he'll make me rewrite these blog posts over and over again until they're "right". whatever that means. It's your money, dude.
   Well, it's been Crazy-go-Nuts around here all fall. I've gone from t-shirt and jeans to puffy coats and scarfs, and yet, I still haven't had the time to write up posts on designs that dropped in the summer.

   Anyways, What's this piece? Grin and Bear it. Aaah yes, Grin and Bear it. That was a good one. We played around with colors for that one for a few days. If I can find all the color treatments, I'll drop them at the bottom of this post. While I was coming up for colorways for this one, Stephe was in one of those moods I mentioned above. The one where he wants to fine tune everything and can't be pleased. I guess it's good, and I end up learning a thing or two about color theory from it. But sometimes I wish he'd just put the graphic to bed and deal with the A instead of the A+.

Illustration Friday: IMAGINATION

Illustration Friday has crept upon me once again, and I fear i will not have enough time to finish this one off by the Thursday night deadline.  I think I bit off more than i could chew with this one, although I like it enough to hopefully finish it at a later date.... hopefully.  That line's been said too many times in the past, and rarely ever been true.
  This was another wandering image.  I didn't have much of an idea when I started the drawing.  When I was done sketching though, this is what emerged.  It's a little more biological than I thought it would be.  At first, I figured it would be more of a light pattern blasting from the head, i guess that didn't come to pass.

   The key word here: Imagination.

PAY THE PIPER

Oh man, Stephe's been working me hard the last few days cause we took off for Labor day. I guess he wants me to be grateful for my days of or somethin.  Nah, just kidding.  But the studio has been really crazy ever since we took Monday and Tuesday off.  For everyone who was waiting patiently for an update with a skull graphic, sorry for the delay.

  Anyways, Check out this punker Uncle Sam skeleton graphic.  The 99% must've been on his mind while coming up with this one. I like how this one sort of detours from the rest of the series by being a little more DIY and Zine inspired.   But it still fits in with the Captain America title font and the rest of the comic assets.
  This graphic popped out super quickly. I barely got to work on it at all. If you look at the sketch, it looks like Stephe just drew his final lines right over it.  All I got to do was figure out how to flip the colors for a 2 color Black background option. (which I think i did pretty well, thank you very much)

IllustrationFriday: IDENTICAL

It seems that I can't stop drawing these Illustration Friday Drawings.  And though I've got a ton of stuff on my plate right now, lately I've had the strongest desires to do my own stuff.
  So, for the second week in a row, I'm turning back to Illustration friday to fulfill my whimseys. I'm pretty sure that this idea was already done a bunch of times over, and that the whole IF site if gonna be filled with a lot of "twins" drawings (well, and random drawings by jerks who just post whatever images they have while pretending to do the challenge).
  The first image that came to mind was the scary twins of the Shining. Yes, I know that most of the scariness is housed in their banality, but I wanted to add a bit more drama and otherworldly mystique.
  So, here you go.  Hope you like it, IF crowd.
Key Word: IDENTICAL
You can find the sketch after the jump

STREET KING

Here's the 3rd in that Artist Series Stephe did with Zoo York. This one, by far, wins the award for being the ugliest... I bet no one is gonna be turning this into a girls graphic any time soon.

  Originally, Stephe made this as a giant alligator, but the powers that be asked him to change it into a rat.... go figure.  Maybe rats have been proven to have more selling power than alligators? They're probably more "city iconic". Gators are sort of southern things, righ?  I wish it was still an alligator though, cause the rat is just kind of... too ugly.  Stephe could've done a nicer looking rat, i guess.  But the sketch of the alligator looked really cool. (check it out after the jump.)

POSEIDON

So, This one is called, well, I guess now it's called Flush the Streets, or something. Previously it was called Come Hell or High Water, but Flush the Streets sounds more Poetic.... it looses some of the Apocalypto Global Warming message though.. but whatever.
  Personally, I think that Stephe just came up with this idea cause he was like, "Hey, I wanna draw some waves and Octopus tentacles."  (Two things that I make fun of him for drawing) and then he was like, "Alright, add some buildings, and the empire state building, and....Neptune. Why not?"  And boom, Illustration done.
  Okay. so scratch that.  Stephe got a little mad at me for writing that and he lobbed a banana peel at me.  Um... he spent a lot of time thinking about this graphic and it somehow relates to another one he did where the city is snowbound and theres a Yeti thing or somethin.

Illustration Friday: TALL

It's been quite a while since I've done an Illustration Friday Drawing.  I honestly haven't had time.   I guess I still don't have the time, but I needed to get myself into a good drawing head space. So, what the heck.  might as well whip up something fast..... it would be fun.  I haven't been able to draw something "for fun" in quite some time.
  It used to be the case that I'd try to make all my Illustration Friday drawing refer back to a Greek Myth. The box just seemed a little too confining.  So, I just started drawing and let the my mind wander a little.  When I woke up, this guy was staring back at me, and I was half way through with coloring him.  I like to think that he's one of those whole grain fed viking kids whose parents moved to America when he was in middle school, so now he's a giant among dwarfs.

  The key word: Tall.
 Hope you like this pictorial missive.