Athena pin up

A pinup for the back of Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess (and the upcoming Olympiansrule.com website) that I thought came out rather well.

Gigantomachy

I was pretty happy with the way this page from Athena: Grey Eyed Goddess turned out, showing the opening stages of the Gigantomachy, the war of the Giants. Thought I'd share it with y'all.

Sneak Peek- Page from Athena: Grey Eyed Goddess

Zeus has a splitting headache. Luckily Hephaistos is there to help him out...

This is why it pays to have a good editor...

And I have two good editors on Olympians. Mark Siegel, head honcho of First Second, acts in the capacity of my art director, whereas Neal Porter acts in the capacity of my text editor, helping me to refine my words and story. I'm also ably assisted by Calista Brill, who keeps the whole show running, and David Langva, but I digress. Back to why it's important to have a good editor (or four).

Longtime readers of this blog may remember seeing this pencil sketch before:



Not bad, but it is a small sketch. Everyone liked it, signed off on it, and then came time to do the finish.

Normally this is not a problem that I have, but I just couldn't nail this drawing. It's no exaggeration to say that I probably drew about 7 separate pencil drawings of this, and none of them were clicking. The signs were all there that the composition was falling apart at a larger size, but I couldn't see them. Hades looked too small, when we were looking down on him, Cerberus looked liked three dogs, rather than one horrible 3 headed beast. I even took some embarrassing photo reference of myself, acting all mopey on my throne, which has since ended up in the hands of nefarious forces. Finally, over one weekend, I said screw it, and penciled, inked and colored the below image (with several departures from the sketch).



At the time, I was so burnt on this whole cover that I fooled myself into thinking the above image was good. I look at it now with a real feeling of 'meh', so much so that I almost didn't put it up on the site. But at the time, I was blind to it's faults.

Cut to a few days later. I'm at my studio, drawing away when I get a phone call from my two aforementioned editors, Neal and Mark. To their credit, they approached it very carefully, but they said, gently of course, that the Hades cover wasn't working for them. Demeter's headshot overwhelmed the piece, Cerberus still looked like three digs,Hades looked like he had a migraine. A lot of illustrators will get pissed when there's changes to be made after the sketches were signed off on, but I am grateful they flagged this one. We talked a bit, and while I was on the phone with them , I knocked off a few sketches of the cover design you see below. In my opinion, it's stronger in nearly every conceivable way.



So there you have it. Editors can be your friends.

Not a hoax! Not a dream!

It's been forever and I day since I last updated the ol' blog. The good news is that's because I've been creating scads of new artwork, so lot's of stuff to share!

First up, the complete colors for The Glory of Hera. Enjoy!

Earth 2100: The aftermath

So I hope everyone saw Earth 2100. Did we save the world? Head on over to the ABC official site and see clips and extra stuff, and wade through the sea of right-wing conspiracy buffs and bible thumping armageddonists to see what folks who were open to having their minds changed had to say.

Bob Woodruff talking Earth 2100 on Daily Show

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Like the title says, Mr. Bob Woodruff plugging Earth 2100 on the Daily Show. I storyboarded that whole frog thing! I had to boil, like 3 dozen of them until I got the right poses.

Tune in tonight to see the whole show on ABC at 9pm!

The cat's out of the bag!

So for the past six months or so I've been working, on and off, on the animated segments of an upcoming ABC news program entitled "Earth 2100". I didn't tell many people, so as not to worry them with my excessive workload (it never got in the way of my other projects, I promise!) and also as not to jinx the project. Nothing's stopping it now, however, as it airs in ABC primetime next Tuesday, June 2nd, at 9 pm (and forever after in perpetuity on the History Channel).

I was lucky enough to storyboard this endeavor, and have many of my own illustrations actually become animated through the magic of Adobe After Effects. Click on the link above to check out a preview on Yahoo News of some of the work. I was joined in this endeavor by my studiomates Joe "Disco" Infurnari, Tim "Hambone" Hamilton, and Leland "The Purv" Purvis. It's a grim little cautionary tale of what awaits us in the coming century unless we act soon to counter some of the effects of climate change. FUN STUFF! That said, it will have some very nice pictures :-)

If only it were this easy...

A self portrait I drew yesterday for planned inclusion in Zeus: Father of the Gods-- going to press this week!

The Glory of Hera

Check out the final inked cover to the third book in Olympians, The Glory of Hera. Of all the covers I designed, this one by far took me the longest; ironically, or maybe not, it's also now my favorite.

hubba hubba

keeping with the hot and wet theme started by Poseidon, here's a closeup of the gams of the future first wife of Zeus (and mother of Athena) Metis.

I promise there will be some new artwork soon ;-)

Poseidon

continuing with yesterday's theme of hot gods, here's a drawing of Poseidon that my studiomate Becky Cloonan thought was all that, albeit in a Danzig kind of way. She's a real headbanger, that one.

Tomorrow, I'll try to dig up something for the appreciators of the the female form out there.