Bela's got a brand new head

Here's a personal project I'd been wanting to do for some time. below you see a promo pic of a remarkably well sculpted Bela Lugosi head on a "nodder" or "bobblehead" produced by Neca. That's a Ray Santoleri sculpt -- and it's just fantastic. But it's always bothered me that this wonderful realistic portrait of Bela was attached to this cartoony nodder figure. I had it in my head that Ray's Bela would look great as a bust -- and that the nodder could use a more appropriately cartoony head.

This is in no way a criticism of Ray's work -- it's amazing -- but I couldn't resist the notion of turning this cool piece into two cool pieces!

The only problem was, that the nodder was out of production and hard to find at an affordable price. I mentioned that I was looking for one on the Universal Monster Army website -- and much to my surprise, my UMA pal, Packy, gave me his as a gift! The nodder has been sitting on a shelf "as is" for some time -- and this weekend I decided it was finally time to get started -- so, off came his head!

Now I should have taken a "before" picture -- as the head on my nodder was not quite as well painted as in the prototype pic here (snagged off the web somewhere).

And here's Ray's Bela head, removed from the nodder and hit with a coat of primer, so it can eventually be repainted.
This is my cartoony replacement -- sculpted in polymer clay (Super Sculpey) -- sorry that the pic is a little blurry.
And here it is, placed on the nodder. You'll note that it's considerably bigger than the original. I felt that was more in keeping with the tradition of the sort of "big head" caricature style I was going for here. I'm quite pleased with the end results, and hope you'll think it's nifty, too. Making the original head into a bust will have to wait, as I have other work on my plate, and I've taken up too much time for now with this personal project. But one of these days there will be a "Part Two" post for this project!

And before we get on with the pics of the end results, a reminder that I am available for commercial sculpting work and private commissions -- I can be reached via the contact links at my website.

SCARY MONSTERS #79 -- a whole lot of vampires!

Here's an advance look at the just-finished cover for Scary Monsters #79. Created with a combo of Manga Studio and Photoshop. Get out your garlic, mirrors and crucifixes, folks -- that's a LOT of vampires!

Scary Monsters -- Werewolves and Vampires!

Another Scary Monsters cover done and delivered! This time editor/publisher Dennis Druktenis asked me to ape the cover of the vintage monster mag, Werewolves and Vampires. Instead of a generic pair of monsters, we used television horror movie host Wolfman Mac and Jonathan Frid as Dark Shadows' Barnabas Collins. Our back cover features two vampires -- Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Gloria Holden from Dracula's Daughter.

This cover was all digital -- the front cover images painted digitally, using photo reference -- the back cover is digitally manipulated/reworked photos.

Now back to drawing comics!

Haven't had time to post much over the last couple weeks. A trip to Iowa to celebrate my mother's 90th birthday had me off line for a while -- and I'm trying to get ahead of schedule on my Return to Perdition pages -- but here's an item worth sharing. Martin Powell (script), Tom Smith (colors), Kerry Gammill (art direction) and I collaborated on a short story for the new comic book, Bela Lugosi's Tales from the Grave. Here's the listing for the book in the August Diamond Distribution Previews catalog. The painted cover is by Famous Monsters cover artist Basil Gogos. This was a great deal of fun to draw -- and I'm eagerly looking forward to the comic! Here's hoping it has a long run and I can contribute another tale or two down the line. For now, I have to get back to the drawing board. I'll try to post more "cool junk" soon...!

Bela Lugosi's TALES FROM THE GRAVE!

I recently finished the artwork for a story that will be included in the first issue of the new comic book, Bela Lugosi's TALES FROM THE GRAVE. The script was written by my friend (and former Tekno-Comix editor), Martin Powell, and was a real treat to draw. Editor/art director Kerry Gammill made some contributions to the art as well, and Tom Smith finished up with a great color job. You can see the final production in the published comic this Fall. In the meantime, here's a peak at Basil Gogos' fantastic cover illustration!

How MONSTER MEMORIES are made.

For quite a long while now, I've been creating the cover art for SCARY MONSTERS magazine and its annual MONSTER MEMORIES edition.   Over the past two days, I produced the wraparound cover art for the upcoming MONSTER MEMORIES 2010 issue.  I thought it might be fun to follow the process.  

It begins with an email from editor/publisher Dennis Druktenis outlining all the images and copy he'd like on the cover.  As this issue contains a previously unpublished interview with the late Forrest J Ackerman, Dennis sent along multiple photos of Forry in his cluttered office.  For the movie monsters/actors depicted, I searched my collection and the web for appropriate reference photos.  On this cover we have Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster, Bela Lugosi as Dracula (from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein), Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Lon Chaneys, Senior and Junior -- and Aurora model kit "Big Frankie."

The next step is a rough pencil layout -- which I neglected to take a pic of -- but it's just a bunch of squiggles anyhow -- you're not missing much.  I then drew all of the cover-featured creatures in pencil -- roughing in the logo and placement for some of the cover copy.

I scanned this image, dropping out the rough logo and copy, and using Photoshop, altered the pencil tones to a light blue.  I then printed this onto bristol board.

Using colored inks, I started working on "Uncle Forry."

Here we are a little further along.

The  Forry portion of the piece was fully colored/painted -- with the messy elements on his desk just suggested, and fading away into white in the corner of the piece.  Using blue inks I added more depth and detail to the "background" monsters/actors. I also printed out a light blue scan of FJA's "Frankenscience Monster" book and with x-acto knife and glue, placed it in Karloff's hand

The next step was to scan this and start playing with contrast, hue and saturation in Photoshop.  I bumped the blue up to a darker purple and tried a greenish background color.

I liked that -- but maybe orange would look better?  Yup.

Next step was to hand draw the logo, scan it and combine it with the already existing illustration. 
More fussing with color -- a deeper reddish orange for the background, and a little more contrast saturation on that purple.   A little "Sam Scare" head was added by the logo, as well as all the cover copy requested by Dennis.  A few minor tweaks, and it's done.  Look for the cover below on your newsstand in the not too distant future!