Just been recovering from comic con and getting back to work. I have a real treat to share today and that would be some of my process. So lets get started... first the set up. Sometime during the month of July I had a spare moment to lie on the beach with my good pals Jordan Helman and Sean Odlum. We got caught up on each others lives and Jordan mentioned that his band the Jury Pool was finished recording their album and that they had gotten the Viper Room, in Hollywood, for thier record release party. He then asked me if I would be interested in making a piece of art for the show, a gig poster, and if I thought I could do something that looked like the cover from the old 1950's "Tales from the Crypt" comics. To this I said "sure" and then didn't give it another thought for a whole month. This past week Jordan emails me and says "remember that poster can you still do it? if so we'd need it by Friday" So as any good friend I got to work first I searched out some inspiration....
Looking over all these great covers I knew I needed a girl, a monster, a dark castle, and a Mad scientist, or some combination of those things.
Jordan had also thrown out that his CD cover featured 18th century art work of Little Red Riding Hood meeting the Big Bad Wolf all dressed up as Grandma... and that might give me some direction so I thought I could go with a(not so)Little Red Riding Hood as my girl element with a big bad Were-Wolf carrying her off. I'd throw in a skull faced Crypt Keeper like character and that would be the cover. I did feel like I was missing the weird science element but I did this thumbnail first and then did a Sci Fi one with a Mad scientist, a girl, and the band in the background as shadowy figures, and sent them in to Jordan .
He showed the Band and they were not going for the monster thing at all it was too beauty and the beast... But they really liked the other one, with the girl strapped to the table begging for Jury Pool "music shock therapy" or whatever the hell was going on... so Jordan green lit that design and I started to work. I got into the Blueline pencils and I knew Jo was impatient too see it ( no doubt a little worried that I'd blow this off like I had all last month...can't blame him.) So I sent him a little re-assurance in the form of a blueline pencil version thus far.
After that came the Inks stage which kept me up late night... I had gotten busy as the week wore on, other work kept me from getting back to the poster until midnight, so I inked until about 3a.m. and then decided I'd finish up the following night.
Finally, I was able to color it up throw on the title treatment in Illustrator and get all the pertinent info onto the poster. Jordan was happy I was happy the band was happy an the rest is history. Limited numbers of these posters will be sold at the show so I am very proud that Jordan and the band where so pleased and though Jordan had me drop the retro genre side Tag I am posting it up here as I had originally intended it as to make it a more true homage to the good old brain rotting, morality diffusing, EC comics!!
