Hellboy Skeleton

Had a bit of trouble choosing who to do at first. Mike Mignola’s Hellboy was my first thought but I wasn’t sure the outcome would look interesting enough and then again all the other thoughts and suggestions I’d had were Disney – which would probably be even more uninteresting – and various forms of anime or manga which I refuse to do on principle. It is kinda unfinished with the legs and the tail, but that’s mostly because any of the reference points were hidden and my tablet decided to start playing up.

 

My Laziness Has Reached a Whole New Level

I got a scanner. I mean, it doesn’t sound like much but it is the material manifestation of my undying laziness. It was getting a scanner or walking all the way down Penglais hill and back up again – and there are a lot of things I’d much rather do than brave that hill unless it was necessary, like eating knives or squeezing dogs’ arse glands.

Anyway, I ended up getting the Epson Perfection V370 Photo and as things go it’s a bloody good piece of equipment for some thing that cost a bit under a hundred quid. The fact that the hinge is on the long end makes scanning pictures or sections above A4 a bit of a palaver but other than that it’s pretty much perfect and fulfills its purpose. You can even see that from a quick 400dpi test scan I did (that’s been cropped and scaled of course):

Even in full size at 400 you can see thefibers in the paper and the minute details in the pen marks, certainly more accurately than youcan with your eyes and this is a machine that’s supposed to go to at least 4800dpi or even somewhere in the 12000s according tothe options on the professional settings page, not that I’m ever going to try it just in case it breaks the laws of physics or something.

Two Illustrators… Let’s Make That Four

The first is Paul Kidby, illustrator to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels among other things but that’s what I know and like him best for. His drawings have life to them and character,and it’s one of the most interesting things – this immediate understanding you get of personality in each face, even if it’s just a lowered brow or crooked nose. I think it works well with Pratchett’s own style of intense peculiar personalities.

The next is Chris Riddell, for similar reasons to Kidby – the character he puts into his characters, or other people’s as the case may be. He’s one of the ones I’ve always enjoyed looking at, since I was a kid. I must have a rucksack full of books illustrated by him, usually ones I’d got with one of those one pound book tokens you’d get at school and you’d go into Waterstone’s and buy the most pathetic sliver of a book that ever existed, but which were always fun in their own right. But the thing that stuck in my head most about him is a poem book I had. It was this big slab of a book, hardback, could kill a man if it needed to, illustrated by hundreds of artists, filled with hundreds of poems from hundreds of poets. I can’t remember the name of the book or the poem or the poet in question – or even the most of the poem, even though I’ve been searching for it relentlessly on Google for the past 2 hours – but part which was always my favourite was this one line that said “and his aunt turned into a pill” with the best illustration of an anthropomorphised pill I have ever seen.

While we’re in nostalgia city, I thought I might talk about another one of my childhood favourites, David McKean – mostly for his work on Neil Gaiman’s The Wolves in the Walls. I liked the collage-y thing going on with it, that sort of added to the whole surreal effect of the story. The style was quick and dark and interesting and alive and scared the holy bejesus out of me on a regular basis, even if I already knew what was happening. Effective, me thinks. I don’t know much of his other work, other than seeing a bit of it in the Mirrormask movie, but when I’m more awake and don’t have a hairy, snoring beast sleeping next to me and being more than distracting, I might have a poke around.

Lastly, and largely unrelated to the rest, is Pasqual Ferry, a comic book artist (is that what you call them? *shrugs*) because I’m a massive loser and come on, comic books are great. He draws for quite a few, though I’ve noticed mostly Marvel, and, my favourite, in a Thor book with Matt Fraction. I would talk about how I like the style and it suits the book but I am far to tired and I’ve said it with all the rest so here’s a picture. Enjoy.