The Chad Frye - Illustration GuyJust some random silliness that was inked in my sketchbook with a little color added later in Photoshop.
And yes, I do LOVE Taco Tuesday, but no, I do not eat sleeping people wrapped up in hammocks.
Yes, believe it or not, Flag Day is a thing. The United States adopted an official flag to represent the new country on June 14, 1777 – the flag good ol’ Betsy Ross sewed for George Washington.
Of course, as the country grew to have more than 13 states, the flag changed from the 13 stars to the 50 we have today. However, it wasn’t until 1916 that President Woodrow Wilson declared June 14 to be Flag Day, and it was backed by an act of Congress. Unfortunately, it is not a holiday that warrants a day off from work.
So, celebrate by hoisting a flag in honor of us having one to hoist!
By the way, the late Stan Freberg was a good friend of mine, and I just LOVE his comedy album from the 1960s called “Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America.” Stan takes you through the early years of our nation’s history and turns it on its ear. Done in a sketch comedy style, the album remains my favorite all-time comedy album. Just felt like taking one of his jokes and giving it some visuals today. If you think of it, seek out Stan’s album whether via YouTube, or better yet, a real record or CD of it to listen to over and over. GREAT for summer road trips!
Just to give you a taste, here’s the Betsy Ross skit on YouTube. Please forgive the frenetic visuals. Those aren’t Stan’s. Just the audio, and he plays George Washington himself!
I was aimlessly doodling in my sketchbook one day without a thought as to what was going to come forth, and penciled an overly large head with no other details. For some reason, that large blob seemed to suggest that this was a hero’s head of some sort, so my pencil continued doodling until it became clear that that face needed some kind of a retro ray gun. Combined with his old school cape, he looked kind of groovy, and immediately I whipped out my brush pen and inked him.
This fella sat in the sketchbook for MONTHS. I was flipping through the pages a couple of weeks ago, and realized that this odd guy needed to be in color. So, he was scanned into Photoshop, and with my trusty Wacom Cintiq monitor, I proceeded to paint him digitally.
Once completed in all his technicolor brightness, the name “Space Avenger” seemed to fit.
Here in the United States, today is our Memorial Day. It is a day we honor our fallen warriors who gave their lives in the service of our country no matter which war over the course of our country’s history. We are grateful to all our veterans and heartily applaud them for their service today and especially on Veterans Day (which will be November 11 this year), but today is the solemn remembrance of those who gave their lives in service.
When I worked for Disney Feature Animation a few years back, our country entered into war after the events in New York and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001. It was a scary time, not knowing if other parts of our country were also going to be attacked. We had received word that possibly the movie studios in Hollywood could be attacked, and security got really tight for a while with bomb sniffing dogs, checking all employee cars for bombs in trunks and underneath, and etc. We were appreciative of the troops that were being sent to the Middle East to try to prevent such a thing from happening again.
During that time, the studio put forth an effort to have employees draw, make cards, and participate in care packages being sent to our troops. I was asked to create a poster in support of these efforts. This Goofy image is what I came up with, and it was on display in the lobby of Feature Animation in Burbank, CA, for a while.
I was extremely honored to be asked to do it, and did so with an eye on the old posters for World War II. It was my goal to stir folks into helping out by hearkening back to the sacrifice many Americans made during that daunting time in our history. No one knew how long our latest efforts would take. Unfortunately, those efforts continue today, but we also continue to SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!
Two years ago I was fortunate to visit the Middle East and Africa with several of my cartoonist mates as we traveled with the USO to bring a few smiles to our soldiers. We visited with many of them listening to their stories while drawing for them. We brought to them a little piece of home, and they brought to us the realities of war. It was a sobering time that I shall never forget. (CLICK HERE to see previous posts of that trip here on the ol’ blog.)
I mention that because I brought this Goofy along with me on that trip. The USO printed up cards that each of us could give to the soldiers as a little memento of our visit, and this was the image that graced my cards. The cards brought many smiles to the folks overseas, and hopefully reminded them of all of us over here in the States.
On this Memorial Day, thank you to all the soldiers who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and I wish comfort to those they left behind. I thank our veterans for their service, thinking especially of my father, David Frye, who served during the Vietnam War. And thank you to the thousands of you serving today in some pretty rough places in this world. After having spent just a few days in some of those places with you, I came away with a greater appreciation for what it is you do and where you have do it.
No matter how tough things get in life, I always try to keep this passage from the Bible close to my heart:
Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
There seems to be a lot of mermaids showing up on the social media sites I frequent. That’s because of the efforts of my pal Tom Bancroft who started the #mermay hashtag a few years ago encouraging artists to post mermaid art each day in the month of May.
Now, while The Little Mermaid was the film that first influenced me to consider animation as a serious career choice, I am not actually a fan of mermaids. They creep me out. Half woman? Half fish? Yikes! I’ll take my women with legs thank-you-very-much. So, you haven’t seen me posting mermaids left and right here on the ol’ blog, or on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook.
However, I DO like puns, and the other day while perusing the latest batch of mermaids from everyone, a pun came to mind inspired by my all-time favorite comedy movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (which itself was full of puns). Made in 1963, it featured many of the nation’s best comic actors, and had cameos of the rest of them. It was truly epic. One of the featured players was Ethel Merman who played a loudmouthed brassy mother-in-law to the beleaguered Milton Berle.
So, here is my one entry for #mermay, Ethel Mermaid as she would have appeared in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Seaworld.
I recently completed a new painting for an art show currently on display at the Creature Features gallery in Burbank, California. The group show is themed around the late Dave Stevens’ wonderful comic book creation The Rocketeer that many people also remember as a fun adventure movie of the same name produced by Disney back in 1991.
I have been enamored with Stevens’ character from his comics that absolutely oozed fun and excitement in the storytelling combined with the most amazing drawings. Dave painstakingly researched every little detail of the late 1930s time period, and then put all those details into his art including Art Deco sensibilities, every line and bolt in weapons, and every crease in the fabric.
Of course, when the movie came out featuring Billy Campbell in the title role, Alan Arkin as his mentor, Jennifer Connelly as his girlfriend, and that cool rocket pack all while resisting Nazis, the adventure was captivating!
When I moved out to California 20 years ago, I became acquainted with Dave, and was able to chat with him about his work. It was just an inspiration to be around him now and then. When the opportunity for this show came up, I had to be a part of it if not for any other reason than to thank Dave posthumously for the inspiration he instilled in me. It is hard to believe, but Dave Stevens passed away nine years ago much too young. Cancer.
When my old pal and fellow artist Andy Heckathorne heard I was working on this piece, he wanted to see a step-by-step progression during the making of it. It has been a while since I’ve explained my process here on the ol’ blog, so perhaps it is time to do so with this piece.
Whether you are a student of the arts wanting to know what it takes to do professional work, or perhaps you are a potential client wondering why a “simple” piece of art costs what it does, the explanation of these steps over the next five days will give you an insight into the complicated process of what it takes to create something from a blank piece of paper, some paint & pencils, and twenty-six years of professional experience.
When creating illustrations for clients, they will approach me with their ideas for what they want in a picture. You sketch out a couple of roughs of the concept for them, and then go through a period of revisions to get the idea worked out, and then multiple passes at the final drawing. When creating for myself, such as this painting, the process is a little more streamlined only because I don’t have to do revisions for someone else’s vision.
It all starts with a concept. To get myself in the right frame of mind, I re-read all of Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer comics, and watched the movie again. I even looked at old World War II propaganda posters to get a feel for the artistic time period. Then I started sketching VERY rough thumbnail ideas of what the piece could be. Clearly the Rocketeer needed to be depicted in in his full outfit, and I decided to draw Dave’s comic book rocket pack – not the revised version from the movie (as cool as it is). This was a show in tribute to Dave, so Dave’s rocket it was going to be!
These thumbnails are incredibly loose with no real attention paid to anatomy or detail. They are just meant to quickly get a rough composition down with the action/scenario in place, then to dash out another one as the ideas were filling my head. A recurring theme was creeping into several of these sketches – the Rocketeer fighting Hitler and Nazis.
As the Nazi thing was mulling through my mind, I remembered that Dave Stevens also created storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones also fought Nazis! Hmmm, what if the Rocketeer and Indiana Jones teamed up? This next sketch was the result of that musing.
By the way, all of these rough sketches were drawn on my Cintiq. The Cintiq is a computer monitor that you can draw on with a stylus. I use Photoshop as my drawing application because I can work things out on layers, resize bits and pieces, and just get it all figured out before taking the art to the traditional steps for a real bonafide painting.
After that last rough sketch, it is time to work out the details of the final drawing. I won’t bore you with all the stages of that, but just know that it usually takes several passes to get the sketch to the next level you see below.
After getting the drawing worked out, the next thing needed was a color comp (“comp” being short for comprehensive). Again, Photoshop is used for this process. It is convenient to work out any color problems on the computer, then I make a high quality print on my 8-color printer, and keep that at the drafting table where I will mix paint to match it.
You can see in my color comp, I decided to get a little artsy with the interpretation of the Nazis. The viewer’s attention needed to be instantly attracted to the middle where the two heroes are. Having all the soldiers looking and pointing their guns in that direction is an obvious way to draw the eye, but by keeping them the color of the background with just some highlights will end up putting even more emphasis on the middle. Also, by having a mostly red canvas, this piece will really stand out on the walls of a crowded art gallery. I wanted people in the room to be naturally drawn to this painting.
This past weekend, the legendary Bernie Wrightson passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was a true master of the macabre with his monster work for comics and movies, with his take on an illustrated Frankenstein in 1983 being a benchmark that few have ever achieved with ink and paper. His work was simply inspirational.
I first met Bernie at the first comic convention I had ever attended back in the mid-90s. It was HeroesCon in Charlotte, NC. I was brand new to the business, and was spending the day with my friend Jim Scancarelli, artist/writer of the Gasoline Alley comic strip. We attended a dinner for all the invited pros (of which Jim was one) hosted by the convention coordinator Shelton Drum. Jim and I sat with Green Lantern creator Marty Nodell and comics legend Dick Giordano. Bernie was there, too, and I was thrilled to meet him. He was very gracious to the new kid in the room.
While my path did not take me down the road of comic books, animation called me away from the east coast to the sunny San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area. A few years later, Bernie also moved to the area where it was a thrill to get to know this giant a little bit better at various local industry events.
At one point, I became the president of the local Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS) where it was my duty to bring in guest speakers for our group of professional cartoonists. Bernie graciously accepted the invitation to come speak one night, and once in a while would drop in as a spectator for some of our other meetings just being one of the guys.
Perhaps the most fun I had around Bernie was at a dinner party we had been invited to. It was an anniversary party of some mutual friends of ours, and I got seated at the best table because Bernie and his wife Liz were there, too. To my right was movie director Ryan Schifrin and his wife Theresa, on my left was Frank Darabont, to Frank’s left was Bernie & Liz, amazing designer Greg Aronowitz, and I believe writer David J. Schow and his wife were sitting there, too. You may be wondering what a table full of creative people talk about at dinner – just about anything and everything would be the answer. It was such a pleasure to be in the company of these folks eating, laughing, and telling tales to each other late into the night.
While I had always hoped a little of Bernie’s talent would rub off on me, especially since I love drawing monsters, I will just have to settle on being the humorous cartoonist that I am, and remain in awe of Bernie’s greatness. (If you don’t know his work, do yourself a favor and Google him NOW!)
Feeling a little inspired yesterday, I thought I’d sketch this creature in Bernie’s honor.
Two weeks ago, my pal Matt Diffee asked me to help out with a tour poster he was designing for bluegrass banjo artist Noam Pikelny. Diffee is widely known for his cartoons that appear in The New Yorker magazine. He drew the art for Noam (including the lettering), but due to some traveling he was going to do, he asked if I could color it.
So, I took Diffee’s pencil drawing, and proceeded to color it in Photoshop, and added some paper texture to it to give it more of that homemade look. Noam wanted it to be 11×17″ in size, so I added the spattered brown paper border further giving it that rustic look that compliments the environment of a pirate ship. At least I assume it compliments it. I’ve never actually worked on a pirate ship before. Sailing & pillaging aren’t really my thing.
Noam’s Universal Favorite tour begins today in the state of Washington, so it seemed like the right time to show you all this illustrative collaboration!
