Lines and Colors

Lines and Colors is a blog about painting, drawing, sketching, illustration, comics, cartoons, webcomics, art history, concept art, gallery art, digital art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it’s fair game.

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Jake Parker

December 19, 2005

Jake Parker (no relation to yours truly) is an illustrator and comic book artist living in New York. He as done conceptual art and illustrations for companies like Disney, Warner Brothers and Wizards of the Coast. He has also done a number of comic stories, including contributions to Flight VOL1 and VOL 2. The “Comics” page of his site lists several comics described as “For the web only” but doesn’t link to them or give any indication of where they might be posted.

The “Sketches” section of the site, in addition to featuring the sketches you would expect, also contains links to two tutorials that go through his process from rough sketch to finish. To my eye, his work shows influences from European comics artists like Moebius, anime directors like Hayao Miyazaki and to a lesser extent, American super-hero comics.

www.agent44.com/

Categories:
Comics, Illustration
Puppetfilm (Darkstrider.net)

December 17, 2005

In spite of all of the recent interest in stop-motion animation, notably Wallace & Grommit, Tim Butron’s animations, the original King Kong and, of course, the grand-master Ray Harryhausen, most people, myself included, have been unaware of an entire genre of stop-motion from Eastern Europe called Puppetfilm. Puppetfilm doesn’t refer to puppets in the Jim Hensen/Howdy Doody sense, but to the miniature figures used in the painstaking stop-motion animation process.

Mike Brent, an amateur independent animator from Illinois, has created a site devoted to the appreciation of this remarkable branch of animation. His site contains a good introduction to the genre and its masters and features a fascinating gallery of clips. (Shown above, clockwise from top left: Jiri Trnka, Noro Drziak, Jiri Barta, Jan Bubenicek.) The eastern European sensibility is strongly evident. The animated images are dark, surreal, intricate and vividly imagined.

The site also contains links, resources and information about the artform and related topics, as well as some of Brent’s own work, which is, of course, very influenced by his love for these films.

http://darkstrider.net
http://darkstrider.net/gallery2a.html

Categories:
Animation
Josh Viers

December 16, 2005

Josh Viers is a concept artist who has worked for ILM and is currently working with Doug Chiang at Ice Blink Studios. He studied industrial design and has done design work for a number of toy lines, which explains the wonderful toy-like sensibility that enlivens many of his designs.

The site contains finished paintings as well as pencil, pen & ink and marker sketches in various degrees of finish. The ink drawings in particular are appealing for their fluid brushwork. The images aren’t labeled with any indication what project they’re for, which is unfortunate because some of them are so intriguing that I would really like to know what movie, game or other project they refer to – particularly a series of monochromatic and color paintings depicting night in a strange city with bizarre little vehicles.

The links below are to Viers’ own site and to his gallery on the Ice Blink Studios site.

www.joshviers.com/
www.iceblink.com/bios/joshviers/gallery1.php

Categories:
Concept & Visual Dev.
Christopher Moeller

December 15, 2005

Christopher Moeller is an illustrator and comics artist who is one of the foremost proponents of fully-painted comics art. Rather than the traditional um… lines and colors format, each panel is a painted image. Many painted-comics artists use watercolor (see my post about Alex Ross), but Moeller uses an opaque medium (it looks like acrylic or possibly gouache). There are only a handful of artists who can really make this work and Moeller is superb at it.

Moeller has done a number of painted comics stories, numerous comic book covers as well as illustrations for games, gaming cards and posters. There is checklist of his work (from 1991-2003) on the site. There are also prints and original art available.

In the late 90’s he illustrated (and wrote, or co-wrote with Kevin Moeller) an extended painted-comics science fiction series that builds on his interest in military history to create a rich setting for stories of interstellar conflict and intrigue. The stories have been collected in two graphic novels: Iron Empires Volume 1: Faith Conquers and Iron Empires Volume 2: Sheva’s War. There is a site devoted to the series, but it’s still incomplete. There is a preview of Volume 1 and Volume 2 on the Dark Horse Comics site.

DC comics has just released Book One of a two-issue superhero/sci-fi series, written and painted by Moeller: JLA Classified: Cold Steel.

http://users.adelphia.net/~moellerc/

Categories:
Comics, Illustration
Jacob Collins

December 14, 2005

The difficult thing about painting a still life is the “life” part. Many still life paintings have a lot more “still” than “life”. Jacob Collins has a touch that keeps his still life subjects vibrant and fresh. When I first encountered his work, I was impressed with his range of subject matter. He is remarkably strong in figure, portrait, interior, landscape and still life painting. Most contemporary realists are satisfied to specialize in one or two of those subject areas. Collins is highly skilled in all of those categories. For some reason, though, I was particularly taken with his refined and painterly still life technique. The site contains many examples of his work in all of the genres as well as showcasing his figure and portrait drawings. (Link courtesy of State of the Art.)

www.jacobcollinspaintings.com

Categories:
Drawing, Gallery and Museum Art, Painting
Sam & Max (Steve Purcell)

December 13, 2005

They’re back! If you’re familiar with Sam & Max, Steve Purcell’s delightfully demented pair of vaguely animal-like things, you’ll be thrilled to your cynical little toes that there is a new Sam & Max interactive webcomic on the Telltale Games site. There’s only one page up at the moment, but get in on the ground floor and sign up to be notified when pages are posted. (The image above is from an older print comic.) You can read the press release here.

If you’re not familiar with the sardonic duo, drop on over to The Unofficial Sam & Max Website, a veritable treasure trove of information on the various incarnations of Purcell’s deranged characters, from comics to games and the short-lived TV show. My favorite, of course, are the original comics and the samandmax.net site features a nice taste on the Ads and Shorts page. It’s an excellent site maintained by Jake Rodkin and David “Metallus” Eggers.

If you can, pick up some of Purcell’s original comics on eBay or wherever you can find them. Sam & Max are my favorite “Funny Animal” comics, and I do mean funny and I do mean “animal”. Where does Max keep that gun, anyway?

http://www.telltalegames.com/comics/samnmax
www.samandmax.net/

Categories:
Comics, Webcomics