UNFINISHED PROJECT AND GENERAL ALL AROUND BAD EXPERIENCE

This is an unfinished job I more than likely will never finish at this point. I still needed to flesh out the 3 people standing on the phone, and I needed to add the title above the monster's head.

A couple years back a guy asked me to do a dvd box cover for his movie. I sent him a couple very rough ideas and and then we talked out a plan. I told him I'd do it for free for the exposure, and also he said I could do a camero appearance in his movie for fun. After I started working on this everything became mysterious. I didn't hear back from him for a year so I gave up on his project.

As luck would have it, I went to a monster movie convention and saw his booth with stacks of dvds on the table, and all the dvds had my crummy rough sketch on their covers. It was uncomfortable for both him and me. He was embarrassed for not telling me he went with the crappy version. I was uncomfortable and embarrassed that awful drawing was on all the dvds. He pointed at the dvd and said, "See? We put your name under your drawing!"

I looked and sure enough my name was under that bad drawing.

The cameo appearance thing never happened either. It was a big disappointment. Free exposure jobs are dumb and I'll never do one again. This job learnt me.

The topper-offer to this sour experience was when he gave me a free dvd, and signed it to me, and spelled my name "K-E-N." It was extra revolting because my actual name was 1 inch away from his signature, on that very dvd, under that terrible sketch, and he couldn't trouble himself to look that far away.

THIS IS WHAT I'M WAITING TO SEE

HIPPYCAT ALBUM COVER

I like drawing faces like these with both eyes on one side of the head. It would never work in 3 dimensions, but for some reason as a 2D picture, brains accept it. There's not really a band named HippyCat. I just did it for fun and maybe to stick in my portfolio. Now if there really is a gang of musicians out there who want to call themselves HippyCat and they need an album cover which says Time For To Kill, I will sell this image cheap!

THE SEA BAT

Here's a DVD cover cover illustration I did for an old 1930 movie called "The Sea Bat." Boris Karloff has a very small role in it. The Sea Bat looks pretty realistic for a movie from the 30s; so much so, I wonder if they found some giant dead sea bat and drug it around on a wire.

My friend Allen sells this movie. Ask me for his phone number if you want it.

GORILLA!

This is some bootleg DVD box art for an out-of-print movie called GORILLA made in 1956, and directed by Sven Nykvist. My friend Allen sells it if you want to buy it. (Ask me for his phone number) BUT!! Before you buy it - read... shudder

Here's the plot (found off the internet) :

In this adventure, set deep within the Belgian Congo, a local witch doctor decides the only way to stop a rampaging gorilla from terrorizing his people is to sacrifice a new-born baby. Meanwhile a local game warden and a journalist researching a story on the natives team up to stop the crazed simian. As they endeavor, the two fall in love. They succeed in stopping the beast and then as they part, vow that they will meet again someday.

The most memorable part of this movie is they actually murder this gorilla! They shoot the thing and you see it drop, and it ain't no special effect! The thing is dead! Then they go over and poke at it to make sure. It must have been before the humane society got involved in movie-making. When they are standing over it and lifting its arm and letting it drop back down it's pretty disturbing, almost as disturbing as if it were a dead human lying there.

Hey, as a side thought, I remember in high school they said you say "lay down" for inanimate objects, and "lie down" for people. Do you then say "lay down" for dead people?

MYSTERIOUS MOON OF ZANZIGRORX

I don't know why someone would have a switch like that on their suit, but it seems science-fictiony and high-tech to have one.

It's a symmetrical (on a color wheel) color scheme. There are names for color schemes like primary, analogus, triadic, quadratic, blah blah blah... HECK! I cain't remember all that! It's easier to just remember to keep the patterns symmetrical on a color wheel.

If the color wheel were a bicycle wheel, then I'm talking about the spokes of the wheel being symmetrical. The amount of spokes isn't as important as their symmetricalness.

The easiest is the "I" shape, which is just 2 opposite colors on the wheel.

The "Y" shape looks good. The 2 arms of the Y can swing out at any angle as long as they swing out symmetrically with each other.

On this space alien picture I used a "peace symbol" shape.

Yellow is the root color, and then flanking the yellow symmetrically on either side is green and orange. His suit is nearing blue which is not a part of this color scheme, but since it's almost white, it doesn't really disrupt anything too badly.

Purple is a safe color to use since it's exactly opposite of the root color yellow, and keeps the symmetrical formation of the color scheme. Actually I could just as easily say purple is the root color and yellow is the opposite. "Root" color doesn't really mean main color; It kind of delineates the centerline of the color scheme spoke arrangement. I could use or not use the purple and I'd still have a symmetrical spoke arrangement; likewise I could take or leave the yellow and it wouldn't really disrupt anything as far as a color scheme goes.

It's not important to have exact proportions of each color in your color scheme. In fact it's better to pick one as the main color (and it doesn't need to be the root color) and then use the others in small quantities. The smallness of the color doesn't affect the noticability of the color. If it's a symmetrically-shaped color scheme it will work even in tiny doses.

HERB'S HORRIBLE MEXICAN VACATION

This is a fake children's book cover. Parents probably wouldn't want their kids learning how to bull fight from a book with bad grammar errors.  
ENLARGE

SUPER HEROES

Here are some fake comic covers. These are fun to make because the cover is the fun part, and then you don't have to do the work of actually making all the story pages.Delusional hero



Lou has a language translator implanted into his neck (It's visible in the other picture.) Going through a surgery like that is MUCH easier than learning a different language, right? I heard now the military has invented a gizmo like this. You can speak into it, and it will speak your sentence in another language.

I thought it would be a good weakness for an otherwise unstoppable guy to have. He could always be getting it smashed and then wouldn't be able to communicate. Even little things make all the difference. One time, I was trying to tell my sister-in-law(who can't speak English) to look out because a car was coming, and I didn't know how to say "Hey! Look out!"

I saw the car coming closer and closer, and I was wracking my brain trying to think of a way to say it, and I couldn't think of a single thing. She wasn't looking at me so I couldn't point either. It turned out she didn't need my warning and just wriggled around the car's path. I guess she does that all the time.

I thought it would be funny if there was a super hero who's power was to throw things away. He has some mental disorder where he can't stand to see something NOT in the garbage. He never really does any good, just kind of annoys everyone. Maybe once in a blue moon his weird compulsion would accidentally make a good thing happen, but that would be a rare case. 

Most of the time he would just make everything worse. He could be part of a super hero team. When it's time for them to fly to the scene of some crime, they realize he's thrown away the keys and their weapons and costumes, and garage door opener, etc...

Maybe some times, the Thrower-Awayer is seen without his boot, or his pants or cape because they've obviously been thrown away. It would be unspoken but understood. 

I guess I felt like the word "awesome" looked better without the E.

If I made a real comic book with Half-Man, it would be easier than normal because the 2nd half of the book would all be blank pages. It wouldn't matter what was happening in the story, or how much trouble he was getting into, half-way through the book everything would just stop and there would suddenly be a big bunch of nothing. He he! Lazy and evil!