Fanboy Monday: superhero anatomy

When I originally posted this, I was squirrelly about infringing on copyrights, and so I called it a "Made-Up Hominid". I've tried to learn a lot about copyrights, both here in Canada and in the U.S. and a fan homage is another thing entirely. I own some moral rights to the art, but I may not profit from it since the character belongs to one of the comic companies. So. Time to "out" this drawing as the fanboy piece of art that it is. Should be easy enough. After the guess, I'll list the diagram notations that are absent in this picture (you can see the indicating lines) in the comments.

This art was done like, a gazillion years ago. Next week will feature some more new content.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Fanboy Monday: Capturing Man-Thing!

Lately I've been filling my sketchbook with some of my favourite characters from various pop culture franchises in a very fanboy-ish manner. So for the month of August, expect each Art Monday to feature something fun and different from usual Flying Trilobite fare.

Created for Marvel by Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas and artist Gray Morrow (who has an awesome name), Man-Thing is a swamp creature that is arguably representative 1970's comic world's fascination with monsters. A living mass of swamp matter who burns evildoers with an acidic touch, Man-Thing was scientist Ted Sallis who has lost his humanity and mind. Steve Gerber is generally credited with doing the seminal Man-Thing storyline, though I was a big fan of the art and writing in the 1997 series by J.M. DeMatteis and artist Liam Sharp.

Despite the science-y beginnings, Man-Thing is often used as a more or less supernatural guardian of realities, and changes form in his travels out of the swamp. He meets tons of mainstream Marvel characters, from Spider-Man to the Thing to Howard the Duck.

I know there are a lot of comparisons with DC's Swamp Thing, but I love this character's look. The weird facial tendrils give him both the look of a being of vines and an elephant. In this drawing, I thought I would have Man-Thing being captured by some sort of quartz, and being frozen to the ground. I also gave him a big belly, and little "eyelashes" similar to the sweet-scented drops on a carnivorous sundew plant.

Colour? I'm not sure...

Next week: ??

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Man-Thing is copyright and trademark to Marvel Comics.
This is a fan homage, not a licensed illustration. Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Fanboy Monday: Cloak & Dagger sketches

Lately I've been filling my sketchbook with some of my favourite characters from various pop culture franchises in a very fanboy-ish manner. So for the month of August, expect each Art Monday to feature something fun and different from usual Flying Trilobite fare.

Cloak & Dagger are two of my favourite Marvel Comics characters, created by Bill Mantlo and Ed Hannigan. The duo are teen runaways who were forced to take a fictional, experimental synthetic heroin, which unleashed their powers. They have fought alongside superhero staples such as Spider-Man, the Punisher and Dr. Strange in their efforts to stop the drug trade, lead normal lives and rescue the innocent. I drew these two in my trusty Moleskine Folio book.

Cloak's real name is Tyrone Johnson. He's a nice guy, a stutterer and he suffers from low self-esteem. When he is Cloak, he can travel through darkness, sweep the guilty into his cloak and the demons within will feed on their guilt. Or their "light". Or their minds. It's a bit vague, which helps with both science-y and magical plots. Unlike his alter-ego Tyrone, Cloak is haughty, brooding and does not stutter. Both as Cloak and Tyrone, he worries he's not good enough for Dagger, on whom he depends to feed him with light to keep the demons inside his cloak.

Tandy Bowen is a rich kid who ran away, and met Tyrone at the bus station. She was an excellent dancer, at one point became blind (with some well-researched stories about what that's like by writer Terry Austin). She can throw light 'daggers' at criminals and infuse them with a sort of pure goodness, painful to their evil bodies. The blindness got better.

Costume-wise, these two represent for me comic characters at their most iconic. Cloak's deep blue and black costume with only his human face -invariably with glowing eyes, and sometimes deep lines- is mysterious and spirit-like. I wanted to show here that his cloak is not always a solid article of clothing, but more unreal, like a piece of fabric you could be lost in.

Dagger on the other hand has one of the only excuses for a superhero to be wearing tights. She's a dancer, and in battle usually gracefully leaps toward the villain hurtling light-daggers at the foe. The deep cutout dagger shape on the skin-tight costume gives her an almost scandalous look, which really doesn't come out in her personality. And I love that weird circle around her right eye.

These days, usually both male and female comic characters have unrealistic bodies, but Cloak's swirling costume, and Dagger's skinny physique are different from that.

Hmm. I will see what I can do about oil painting these two and using Gimp to assemble the final piece.
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Next week: more Marvel!
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***
Cloak & Dagger are copyright and trademark to Marvel Comics.
This is a fan homage, not a licensed illustration.