The Holy "Grisaille" at last...

This is to be the grisaille underpainting for the newest piece in the series...
Let's hope it continues smoothly...

Can't touch it really meaningfully again until this coming weekend, so I just have to glare at the thing until then and feel guilty about my protracted inactivity...

OK, back to the grind then...

"Put your back into it..."

And another one bites the dust...

The pages are moving along nicely now... I'm hoping to at least keep a decent pace as the Summer months wear on, work schedule permitting. This was a fun page... but even now I'm still trying to restrain myself from further noodling with the shadow effects in the last panel. Gotta try not to kill the damned thing as a result of my own overly critical appraisal...

Wish me luck...

POW!!!

Well... here we go...
Proof positive that I've got some seriously deep-seated issues regarding women!

In all seriousness though... this was one of the more difficult pages to color. It was just hard to look at such violent images for such an extended period,.. no less drawings of my own creation!
Still... it was necessary for establishing the utterly impersonal nature of the Pugilist's brutality... while also indicating the subconscious fury of the young woman at his helm.

The carnage continues...

"You wouldn't hit a girl... with glasses... would you?"

More progress on the pages...

It's amazing to me... the more I get done, the more behind I feel!
I never seem to get any closer to the end of this cursed thing. I'm beginning to feel like a modern day Sisyphus...

Got to keep pushing...

PS: The next page starts with a bang... let me tell you;-)

Sketchdump Deluxe!

Here are some sketches from the last SVA alumni night class that I periodically attended this past semester...

I'm anxious to start anew this coming September...

These are all 10 to 15 minute drawings.

"Giant Monsters All-Out-Attack Showdown!"

OK... here it is.

This was last years live Halloween Show that we put on in Brooklyn... complete with full monster suits, a giant replica of the Empire State Building, and a shit-ton of chalk and cardboard building props!

This is a fairly condensed version... hopefully once it is fully processed, it will look a bit less pixelated.
Until then, enjoy the nuttiest Halloween Show in New York City in it's full color cubist glory!

Just click twice on the image to link to Youtube and watch the show uncropped ;-)

Atlas shrugged...

Here are few sketches from the SVA alumni drawing class I occasionally attend Wednesday nights...

These feature a fellow with a tremendous physique... thick and sinewy... potentially perfect for a future Hercules/Atlas/Zeus painting for my mythologically themed series.

The first is a 10 minute drawing... the other two are 15 minutes.

Back in the saddle...

OK... trying to get back on schedule again with the work...
This page came fairly quickly once I was finally able to put my full attention to it.

Lotsa junk freelance work to pay the bills interfering with what I want to do... need to do.
I have to keep sight of what is really important and get through this.

Some life drawing sketches coming soon as well...

Keep peddling, Greg...

"At least it's evenly divisible by 2... that's GOT to count for something, right?"

42... Just another tiny footnote in human history... but it seems somewhat relevant to me for some reason.
Geez... don't feel any different... just a general malaise creeping into the back of my brain that tells me my habit of putting off the things I want to accomplish for another day is fast becoming a recipe for disaster.

This year needs to be different.

I will endeavor to make it so...

"Clusterfuck"

Finished with this page... for now anyway.
There are still some things that bother me about it... but I need to keep moving forward.

I'll come back to it later for tweaks and small adjustments, but for the most part I think it does what it was designed to do... portray a chaotic scene full of desperate characters fighting for their lives. Sloppy and haphazard are the call-words of this page... and I hope that the work involved shows through on some level.

Hopefully... not so many figures per panel in the next few pages;)

"Even sexy on the inside..."

Here are the assembled armatures of my latest "Sculpt-A-Saurus" class...
Pretty tremendous work for a bunch of amateurs that had never sculpted before!
Just wait until I post the shots of what they do with these babies later on...

I'm very proud of these kids... and we've just begun ;)

"Ignore the little man behind the curtain..."

A brief interim post before the next page goes up...
Just a few tweaks away now... a bit of slowdown has me a bit discouraged, yet still undaunted.
Things will hopefully pick up as I gain momentum.

These are various 10 to 15 minute sketches from the alumni life drawing class I periodically attend to keep my hand moving...

Keep pushing, old man...

"Knock knock..."

More progress... nothing too fancy.
Still, with everything else... at least I'm still moving forward.

I might blur the broken door pieces on the bottom panel a bit more yet... but for now, the look of the page seems satisfactory to me. That should change almost exactly 23 minutes from now...

Started a new painting recently and will post progress on that once it gets past the initial "color block" stages and is actually worth looking at. I'll also post some recent life drawings I've managed to squirt out recently to keep my "artsy" styled work from atrophying overmuch. I do love those conté crayons...

More soon...

"OH.., THE HUMANITY!!!"

More Halloween madness!!!

Here is the posted preview for this year's show... the producer whipped this up just to drum up interest, I suppose.
It's crude and somewhat long... but it really gets some of the frenetic energy of the production across quite well;)

Watching it makes me anxious to get to work on the actual footage so we can post a proper video of the thing for everyone to see complete with full effects and sound!

Just click on the image once it starts to get the fullscreen treatment:

"Here... take a closer look..."

Ok... back on track...

Here's the next page in the upcoming finale sequence. The whole timecode device ended up working nicely... even though it was an absolute pain in the ass to set up at first;)

This page features one of my guilty pleasure story panels... the "Head-butt Carnival". I truly DO feel bad about how much glee I derived from creating that fight sequence. Still, I feel it stands as a fairly effective piece of dramatic combat storytelling... albeit a brutally violent one!

On to the next ridiculous page... wait'll you see the funky lower panel on that one...;)

Some of the players backstage...

Here are a few reference shots of both the Goji-suit and the version of Kong we used for the show... more to come, of course.
This is just the tip of the iceberg;)

"Goji-pants"

Ok... here is a shot of the finished suit... albeit a bit dark and blurry.
It looks best in the video... this was just a pick-up shot we took during the insert sequences we filmed yesterday.
I'll try posting a better image of the costume in the days to come as photos roll in.

I do think that this is the best representation of the suit though... and even this photo is taken after the thing has been abused a bit and been featured in three concurrent shows. We just never got a chance to shoot the damned monstrosity the day it was finished... too much to do... not enough time for such things...

More to come soon...

Mission Accomplished!!!

The 2009 Halloween Show went off as planned with nary a hitch...

The Gojira suit turned out even better than I'd imagined... and soon I will post not only images of the suit itself, but also eventually the filmed show footage! Not everything was perfectly captured and we may need a few pick-up shots... but for the most part, it looks fairly amazing for the materials and budget that we had to work with!

Stay tuned for more soon... and expect new colored pages to follow for "The Pugilist" as well....

"Two arms do not great feats make... so feets, don't fail me now!"

Ok... another quick progress post.
Nothing fancy... just a few photos to document the building of this foam shit-storm.
The materials are really starting to make their cheapness felt... very uncomfortable and ungainly... and I still need to stuff it with cotton batting to get it more bulky!

Still... the light at the end of the tunnel seems a bit less dim now.
More soon...

"We interrupt this madness for some... uhh... stuff."

It's Halloween time again and the madness has already begun...

I've spent the last few weekends or so trying to bang out a full body suit using sub-standard materials and meager supplies... Hopefully, in the final stretch... I'll come up with something decent;)

On a side note, I had to come up with a promotional poster for both the new site and for advertising purposes...
Here was the tiny sketch I did on a napkin a few nights ago...



And here's how it turned out last night after a frenzied few hours work when I was told it "HAD TO BE DONE ASAP!!!"



Back to the grind soon...