Monday 7 November 2011

'Tales of the Freaking Weird' work in progress

'Tales of the Freaking Weird' is a remake of a piece by ace illustrator Joe Carr and I have to say it was an absolute pleasure to draw. What's not to like about drawing a man with alligators for arms? This is how the illustration gradually came to be.

Joe had already designed the perfect layout for the pretend comic so I didn't have to think too hard about the composition. Probably another reason why I liked it doing it so much. I had a few options for the Alligator Arms piece but I was struggling to draw the actual arms without them looking rubbish - there were a fair few pencil attempts before I got a decent rough to ink.





I decided to use my own concepts for the mini stories - first up zombie hipsters from beyond the grave. A bit cheesy I appreciate...



At this point I realised by having tentacles too far to the right of the piece it throws the composition out but rather than get messy with white ink cover ups I decided I'd finish them and lose them in the computer tweaks later on.



'The Lycanthrope Swimsuit Edition' was vaguely inspired by the work of another of my favourite illustrators James Murphy - he does terrific ghoulish centre-folds - it's sort of in homage to his artwork.


And finally 'The Sailor with the Beard of Snakes' was something I just came up with - I wanted weird and you can never have too much nautical.


And the last of the inking - I was stoked with how it turned out after just a few hours of work. It's really busy but I think in the context of fifties trashy sci-fi comics it works.


I'll post up the finished artwork tomorrow.