Today’s addition to the Friday series is none other than Luna Lovegood. Easily one of my favorite characters in the entire Harry Potter franchise (despite being introduced so late in the series.) I’ll admit she was a bit hard to put together in the books. On the page she just seemed weird for the sake of being weird, even by wizard standards. Though the subdued quirkiness that Evanna Lynch brought to the films made her one of the more compelling characters.
It’s official for realz! I’ll have a table in the Artist Alley at this year’s GalaxyCon in Richmond, VA March 24-26! This year I’ll have some friends joining me as well, my writer and colorist for the comic book we’ve been working on the better part of a year. Josh is the brainchild behind Southtown, feeding me scripts and insights on the world he’s built, and Ally is a fellow artist, Twitch streamer, and acting colorist for the project.
In addition to our glowing presence, we’ll have original pages to skim over, sketch books, sticker packs, and hopefully a 5 page AshCan preview.
My own Fan Art Friday originals, prints, and previous years’ Inktober projects will also be available.
Next up! We’ve officially launched the SouthTown comic Facebook Page! We’ll be updating it with character sketches, finished pages, panels, and previews, release timeline news, and eventually the crowdfunding campaign to get these printed and distributed!
Around fall 2015 Amazon started targeting me with Leviathan Wakes, the first book in a series called “The Expanse.” I’ve been a longtime fan of sci-fi, specifically the “deep space” variety (2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon, the 2000’s Battlestar Galactica reboot, etc.) and naturally I can’t resist something with cover art as intricate and compelling as this…
Not long after I’d cracked the first book I discovered it had been adapted into a series for SyFy. Both the books and the show became an addiction very quickly (though I have yet to read the 9th and final book, appropriately titled “Leviathan Falls.”) Naomi Nagata is easily one of my favorite characters in the series and Dominque Tipper did an excellent job with all of her layers and complexities for the 6 season run of the show. Spoiler alert: I will be posting another Expanse character here in the near future.
It was around 1997 when my taste in cinematic comedy took a swift turn. Up until that point it consisted mostly of the SNL alum “Fat Man Fall Down” Adam Sandler/Chris Farley. That is, until I was introduced to the indie, dialog driven stylings of Kevin Smith. His ability to craft a specific brand of sympathetic man-child really drew me in (and to which I heavily related at the time, as the comic book collecting art nerd that I was.) Chief among my favorites of Smith’s IP progeny was Brodie Bruce from MallRats. Something about Jason Lee’s line delivery and his “devil may care, but maybe he does” attitude struck a chord and it became an instant classic for me, despite the less than successful box office performance.
While I don’t really relate so much with a number of Smith’s characters these days (as I’ve grown into a different kind of man-child, and a lot of Smith’s newer character work deals with fatherhood,) I can still look back on characters like Brodie and give a hearty chuckle at his misanthropic worldview through the lens of 90’s consumerism Have yourself a chocolate covered pretzel. You’ve earned it.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Week 2! So far so good. I’d like to think I have a decent enough back catalog to keep this up for at least a good while. In either case, thanks for sticking with it (or checking it out if this is a first time for you.)
I was recently turned on to the new(ish) Harley Quinn show on HBO and have loved every second of it thus far. The sly satire on the nature of Batman’s rogues gallery is nothing short of brilliant (ClayFace, specifically) while maintaining Harley’s penchant for villainy, and positing her as a sympathetic survivor of abuse. The long and short, Harley is nuts, and we love her for it.
So here’s the first edition of what I hope to be a weekly art drop, Fan Art Fridays (hashtag FAF.) I recently submitted for an artist table at the upcoming GalaxyCon convention in Richmond, VA and was accepted! So I’m hoping to pad the portfolio and available print selections ahead of the main event.
I spent a good portion of the last 5 years amassing the library editions of Mike Mignola’s groundbreaking series, Hellboy. Once I found myself unemployed at the outset of the COVID 19 lockdown, it seemed the perfect opportunity to dive in and read the entirety of the series. It was quite the journey, from the humble beginnings of “Seed of Destruction” all the way to the thrilling conclusion of “The Storm and the Fury,” and the ethereally abstract epilogue “Hellboy in Hell.” It was also inspiring to see Mignola’s own instagram filling up with new artwork and sketches while we were all stuck in our homes for the bulk of 2020.
So without further ado, here he is. Anung Un Rama himself; Hellboy. Enjoy! And everyone have a great holiday season!
So let’s sum up the last three years. Starting in late February 2020: GalaxyCon (yay!!) Covid (boo) Unemployment (boo) Art Commissions (yay!) Mid Covid Restaurant Reopening and job promotion (yay?) Rinse, repeat for a year and a half. Various work and personal ups and downs and we arrive at summer 2022. After being burnt out by the restaurant industry and falling off on my artwork, I was approached by a couple friends in the Richmond, VA area about a new project. A comic book project!
It’s been a good decade and a half since I’ve done sequential artwork in a narrative capacity. I’d worked on a partial outline for a potential series in 2010 which, due to my work schedule and return to higher education, took a back burner. Though, taking part in larger community projects like “Inktober” over the years, I’d managed to prevent getting too rusty.
My artist friend Ally Slawson approached me alongside her writer friend Joshua Eadie about a comic book project he’d conceived of several years back. The idea was for Joshua to write, I’d do the principle artwork with Ally finishing the images with color and lettering. The comic is called “Southtown” and will be set in a futurist cyber-punk world. All tech-mods, tattoos and corporate terrorism! After spending the summer meeting every few weeks, mocking up character designs and defining roll-out plans, the actual comic is starting to take shape. Several pages are already completed (pre-color) and the crew and I have set up a website (still under construction) with a Kickstarter campaign soon to follow. More (frequent!) updates as these details and dates are solidified. I’ll be dropping art teases on Instagram and Facebook as more progress is made. If all goes well enough in the coming months, we may see you at GalaxyCon 2023 in March!
Until next time,
Cheers, friends!
Well, here it is. The final 6 days of Inktober 2019. Full disclosure, The last entries were finished between October 31st and November 8th. Regardless, the last time I finished all 31 drawings, it was 2016 and I finished in mid December, so I consider this a win for me creatively. So here goes!
Neil Marshall, most recently known for a handful of Game of Thrones episodes and that horrifically bad Hellboy reboot is the director responsible for not only one of the best takes on werewolves in the last 20 years, but also a horror film that encompasses three different types of terror in one cohesive narrative.
The Descent manages to combine a severe emotional trauma character arc, a claustrophobic caving adventure and said cave being overrun with photophobic monsters into one hell of a ride. It spawned an unnecessary sequel (derived from the American release ending, which was a little too optimistic than the original UK release.)
I hope Neil Marshall finds his way back to some worthwhile projects following Hellboy, because his contribution to Game of Thrones was pretty good (his notable episodes being the classic “Blackwater” battle of Blackwater Bay and the season 4 battle for the Wall.)
This was a prompt that took me a minute to nail down. Urban Legend was one of those disposable Teen Slasher genre flicks that spiraled out from the success of Scream. And despite starring a post-My So Called Life Jared Leto (pronounced LEE-To) it managed to be pretty fun, spinning some kills into its narrative from the ever disturbing series of “children’s” novels Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (whose terrifying artwork was egregiously replaced for its anniversary re-release…)
The sequel it spawned was… lacking, but I’ll always appreciate that Brad Dourif cameo in the original (known for his voice of Chucky from the Child’s Play series, Wormtongue from the Lord of the Rings series and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.)
I’ve always had trouble with backgrounds and set-dressing as an artist. This was my way of getting over my phobia of anything with angles.
It’s a little crooked on one side, but overall, I’m happy with out it turned out.
Side note, I’ve had the opportunity to be on set with this car on a different film and can’t wait to see how that footage turns out!
Full disclosure: Monkey Shines is BONKERS. You don’t have to take my word for it.
From the first frames of the film (naked stretching?) to the inciting incident (hit and run, backpack full of bricks…) to the inexplicable STANLEY TUCCI cameo??
Yeah, this movie is straight up cocaine addled 80’s madness and it has to be seen to be believed.
HELPER. MONKEY. MURDER!
Thankyou, goodnight.
STD. Demon. It Follows was a really fun horror movie. Despite a little bit of Scoobie Doo planning in the 3rd act, for the most part it was an extremely original concept.
Again, this was an attempt to get out of my comfort zone artistically. Backgrounds and perspective scare me. A lot. You can almost tell with the trees on the other side of the street and the houses on the other. Guh. Also, I’m going to point it out: The hands are holding each other in a way that is FACING the demon that’s supposedly following them… Whoops…
One of the high points of the movie is that it forces you to pay attention to the background because the demon is so innocuous you can’t tell who or what it might be at distances…
This is the last day of Inktober. I finished it on Thursday 11/8. It is from a movie you should most definitely see if you’re a horror movie fan.
DUDE BRO PARTY MASSACRE III
Thank you, good night.
I’ll admit the prompt list this year was more of a challenge than the last couple. Though It’s wholly on me that I insist associating each daily word with a “horror” movie, and therein could lie the problem with my approach to the whole Inktober project.
That said, with thought I landed on David Lynch’s hollywood nightmare, Mulholland Drive. While the movie starts out with a happy-go-lucky tone with a far darker underbelly than can be trusted. Then an hour and a half in, the rug gets pulled out from under the audience and it becomes pure Lynchian nightmare fuel. I spent a large portion of my 20’s being very annoyed at this movie until I came across this gem of a write up. Just be ready to read all caps for a while.
On the nose again. A Ghost Story is a very strange concept film. Not really horror, it’s more of a drama with a silent protagonist (well, Casey Affleck dies in the first 10 minutes or so and spends the rest of the film under a white sheet.) The story touches on lonliness, nihilism and the potential time-slippage ghosts may experience in their post-mortem existence.
This piece was also a nice reminder that during Inktober I don’t have to go all out on every single entry and sometimes minimalism gets the point across better than anything ultra involved and complicated.
”Hail to the King, baby.” While it’s a line from Army of Darkness (unofficial Evil Dead III), it’s more appropriate for Don Coscarelli’s (Phantasm, Beastmaster) adaptation of Joe R. Landsale’s geriatric caper, Bubba Ho-Tep. Bruce Campbell plays “Elvis” (it’s never REALLY established if he’s THE Elvis or a dementia ridden impersonator) who is wasting away in a nursing home. Then an escaped mummy starts killing the residents of the nursing home and it’s up to The King and his sidekick JFK (played by the late Ossie Davis… yeah, you read that right) to dispatch the crusty corpse.
It’s delightfully juvenile and just completely bonkers as a concept. A+ 10/10 would watch again.
Again, while not really considered a horror movie, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include some Hitchcock nod during Inktober.
Vertigo has always been a solid favorite of mine when it comes to the Hitchcock oeuvre. Alongside Rear Window, I think this might be the best performance Jimmy Stewart put forward, especially since after a certain point he becomes not only unsympathetic, but wholly unlikeable as a character.
As a bonus addition, the band Faith No More used the film as a template for their video for the 1996 single “Last Cup of Sorrow” which subsequently starred Jennifer Jason Leigh alongside band frontman Mike Patton. It might be the best music video to come out of the 90’s.
Before going on to direct both Guardians of the Galaxy films for Marvel Studios, James Gunn wrote and directed two of my favorite indie genre films, one of which being 2006’s Slither.
As a devout fan of Nathan Fillion (from his Firefly days, we can forgive him his cop-drama career move,) this was immediately up my alley as a cinephile and horror fan. Also Gunn’s history with Troma films and his writing credit on Dawn of the Dead (still the only Zack Snyder film I can watch without getting the urge to destroy a television.) Slither was a goopy horror movie with a solid comedy backbone. It also forged the adorable friendship between Gunn and star Michael Rooker!
Meanwhile: Posts are being made (mostly) daily on my Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages. Final days write ups will be arriving soon!
The halfway point has been breached! Thus making this the farthest along in Inktober I’ve ever made it while, for the most part, staying on schedule.
All month, so far, the subject matter has been a little on the bleak side, so for Day 16 I decided to lighten the load a bit and went with horror/comedy classic An American Werewolf in London for the prompt “Wild.”
I was first introduced to this film by its VHS box art in various mom-and-pop video stores in the 80’s and 90’s and then to the film-proper by a media studies class during my junior year in high school. The combination of body horror and lore-inspired comedy was something refreshing in the self-serious landscape of 80’s genre horror, and something I wouldn’t encounter again until Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s zombie rom-com Shaun of the Dead.
Day 17 was a tough one for me to land on. The prompt “ornament” definitely elicits a Christmassy vibe, though, I’ve never seen any of the “Silent Night, Deadly Night” films or any iteration of “Black Christmas”.
And while Gremlins will always be my go-to, favorite Christmas season movie, it is… at its core… a horror movie (horror comedy?)
The scene that has always stuck with me (and subsequently one-upped in the spoof-sequel The New Batch) was the scene in which Mrs. Peltzer, armed with only her wits and a kitchen full of culinary appliances, dispatches the first litter of Gizmo kin. The most notable kill being the gremlin pepper-sprayed (with a can of PAM) and stuffed into a microwave and set on high. SPLAT!
MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR IT CHAPTER 2: The new adaptations of IT were a mixed bag for me. There was a lot to like on the character development end, though a lot of the “scary” elements were bogged down by oversaturated CGI and on the nose jump scares.
The novel was introduced to me by my grandfather when I was probably 6 or 7 years old. We would vacation in Maine (and it wouldn’t be until decades later that I would realize the Maine/Stephen King connection) but he would always be tucked into a Stephen King novel by the fireplace every night and would give me the best, age appropriate synopsis of the novel with the REALLY interesting cover art.
And yes. This is an image of Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak holding hands.
Monster Squad is a movie that is near and dear to me. It’s basically Universal Monsters’ presents The Goonies.
The prompt was a bit of a stumper for me, so rewatching this underrated B-movie classic set the wheels in motion and I figured the best sling I can correlate is a bow & arrow.
The dispatching of the Mummy in this film was always a fun memory for me, aside from the obvious revelation that Wolfman, indeed, has nards.
It’s a legitimate bummer that the Tarantino/Rodriguez collaboration film event “GrindHouse” didn’t perform better on the commercial film stage.
Featuring two “films” by each director and several fake trailers by noted genre filmmakers (Eli Roth and Edgar Wright, to be specific) it was an endurance trial of cinema. Especially considering the stylistic disparity between the two featured films: Film #1 being Planet Terror, a pulpy, gory, cheese fest with go go dancers, zombies (?) and barbecue. Film #2 being Death Proof: a moody, over-dramatic character study of a villainous stunt driver, featuring a thoroughly scene-chewingly stuffed Kurt Russel.
But there it is. Day 20: Tread, tires, Death Proof, car, whatever. I’m terrible at drawing cars, so I felt like I should challenge myself.
Meanwhile: Posts are being made (mostly) daily on my Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages. Days 21-25 write ups will be arriving soon!
Wil Smith Illustration 
