...Tis' the season!

Greetings fellow blog-lookers!

A few things,....

First, a big thank you to all who participated in the Hey You Guys charity auction. Those of you that showed interest helped make it, from what I understand, the most successful one they've ever done and I am personally speechless at the response to the Ghostbusters piece. I cannot thank you folks enough.

Second,... It's been a busy end of the year but I am working feverishly before my sabbatical to do my first annual Christmas illustration!

It's entitled, "Momma's Little Piggy" and for all you fellow nerds out there,.....I'm sure that's clue enough. If not,.....perhaps I will go sketch the rest of this piece by the light of my leg lamp,...which, as we all know,...is a major award!

Ghostbusters!

That's right, Movie lovers!

Took me a while but I finished the illustration for the Hey You Guys charity event my buddy Josh is participating in!

http://www.heyyouguyscharity.com/

I believe the piece will go up into an art auction and while I dunno if this image will actually get sold off, it was a blast to participate in the process and a great reason to dip my feet into the GB pool, get the old motor revved up and do a bunch more illustrations of the boys in grey cause God knows, there are enough moments in that film worth drawing to keep me going till kingdom come! ;)

This series is still "evolving" stylistically and I'll be working out the kinks as I go along.

Hope you all enjoy! Thanks for looking!

Venky

More sneak peeks!

Did a little more work on the illustration today. It's actually for my buddy Josh's charity art auction in December! I dunno if the piece will sell but I'm gonna do my level best to produce a nice piece of movie-related nostalgia, which, as luck would have it,...happens to be the theme of the auction this year.

They're also gonna have a screening of a little film called Ghostbusters, which I've heard of,...

I think I'm in the ballpark with this one. ;)


More to come as I slowly progress on this!

Lunch times and late-nights! ;)

Venky.

A little tease,...

I was happy enough at a first pass of this scene to put up a little WIP,...(that's work in progress, for the uninitiated).

Now, I'm sure it aint' gonna take a rocket scientist to guess what I'm working on but for those who may not be as rabid film-geeks as the miscreants in the circle I travel in, I'll give you a little hint,...

"Well,..Most of the original staff knows about the twelfth floor,...the disturbances, I mean!"

That's all you're gonna get but most of the folks I know who'll be seeing this guessed it before they read a single word! LOL!

I've been meaning to do these drawings for years.

I'm completely psyched that I'm finally starting! LOL!

This one may take a while but I promise, it'll be worth the wait! ;)

Venky

For my fellow finheads!

I apologize to those of you who may have seen this image a kajillion times but now that I have an "official" place for my movie/toon related junk this is where it's gonna live!

Besides, though this image has made an appearance on a few boards nobody has seen the high-res version of it, (click-a-the-pic!)

I waffled on posting this one for a few reasons,...first, it's old! LOL! Old as dirt. I did this thing a thousand years ago when I still drew on paper! (been all-digital for six years now).

Second,...it's not a great drawing but I think it's a case of the whole being bigger than the sum of it's parts kind of thing.

This of course, is the movie version of the Rocketeer with the graphic novel version of "Jenny" aka "Betty" which was NOT supposed to be Jennifer Connelly but rather, (and to you finheads I know you already know this one), cult pinup queen Bettie Page.

Stay tuned for more scenes from this amazing, brilliant film inspired by the work of the late, (rip, sir), VERY great Dave Stevens.

I know Disney dicked you over on the film and wouldn't release the rights back to you but screw em, man. You'll still get the last laugh.

Oh! And incidentally,.....finhead is the term Rocketeer aficionados refer to themselves as.

Take a peep at the helmet and it all makes sense! ;)

Hood ornaments,....they all look like hood ornaments. Fear not, fellas! The new illustrations will put this here lil' fella to shame! ;)

More to come!

Venky

We all know the scene! George McFly frantically tracks down Marty, (who is struggling with ancient bottle-cap technology), and begs him for help in winning the hand of the fair Lorraine! This was actually the second illustration, (yes, I'm aware I am hopping around chronologically! ;p), I did when I started the BTTF series.

This was an exercise focusing primarily on static and background elements like the Pepsi Machine and the vintage Texaco pump, building them up from a series of color shapes to simulate form.

(click on the pic for super close-up action!)

I was particularly pleased with the idealized Pleasantville/Toontown quality of the Hill Valley town square, right down to the, (rather exaggerated), puffy clouds that are about as rare as hen's teeth here in Southern California.

Boy, did Zemeckis and his crew luck out THAT day when they were filming! :)

You wouldn't believe how many George's I went through just to get to this one that I am only still partially happy with! I figured that because Crispin Glover had such amazingly severe sculpted features that he would be easy to caricature but it couldn't have been further from the truth! LOL! Crispin made me work for it!

On a related and serendipitous note, (serendipity is very big in my world), a few weeks after I did this piece I was up in Pasa Robles attending a friend's wedding and found this in an amazing antiques store up there!

A perfectly restored Texaco pump exactly like the one in the film. Hell, from it's condition I wouldn't be surprised if it was the one from the film. If I had a spare $3,500 it would be in front of my garage right now! LOL!

More to come! ;)

Venkman71

Welcome, film-lovers

Well hello there everyone and welcome to THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MOVIE ART BLOG!

If you're here it's not by accident! I have either sent the address to you directly or I've lured you here by baiting a link somewhere else! ;)

Regardless of the delivery method, it is excellent to have you here to witness the genesis of my little,.....exercise? Experiment? Perhaps it's a little bit of both!

"What the heck is this?" You may be asking yourself and it's a fair question. This is the end result of something that started out as an artistic exercise and grew into a tiny movement but the concept behind it is simple enough.

What if some of the greatest films of all time had been ANIMATED rather than LIVE ACTION?

And I mean from Citizen Kane all the way up to Oh Brother Where Art Thou and everything inbetween. The reason behind this seemingly useless exercise is simply an attempt in artistic growth.

In my chosen career, (very blessed), as an artist, (storyboard/writing), historically, I have been given all the material I need to do my job before I even start drawing!

I'd get prop model sheets, backgrounds, color sketches, character designs, you name it, before I ever put pencil to paper! Now after fifteen years of this I felt,....rusty.

Artistically fat and lazy is what I felt and I thought if I am ever going to produce/write/draw my own material, (books, graphic novels, prints), I needed to get off my duff and learn how to do all the stuff that I was getting handed to me.

I needed to know how to replicate textures, create lighting effects, blend and contrast color palletes, draw backgrounds, cars, props, characters, buildings, cities!......I thought,..."This is sounding a LOT like work."

Now I KNOW me and if it was already starting to feel like homework and I REALLY needed to see this one through so I started searching for a pastry to wrap this pill in!

Enter the film angle! Now I am a maniac when it comes to movies. I love damn near all of em' and even some of the horrendous ones, (That's right, Showgirls, I'm lookin' at you), and I thought,...well I don't feel like drawing just a boring old city but what if it was KONG on the Empire State? What if it wasn't some boring old textbook town square but Hill Valley in 1955? What if it wasn't simply a dark room but Vito Corleone's study?

What would animated versions of these characters look like? Quint from Jaws? George Bailey? The "Dude"? Ralphie Parker?

What about The Ghostbusters Firehouse or Delta House or even Marion Ravenwood's tavern in the freezing mountains of Nepal?.....The Freeling's house from Poltergeist?

NOW I was INTERSTED! The great films of our age are the best teachers of composition, staging, lighting and the purveyors of all manner of lush visual concotions that create moving paintings on canvases of light.

Now THAT is something I wouldn't have a problem staying interested in but where to start?

So I went deep into my childhood well, (those that know me know I didn't have to go TOO deep), and I picked a film that is very close to my heart and very big in my head. A film that first gave me a taste of that same intangible magic that I've been trying to find my own version of ever since.

It needs no introduction, it has no rivals and you'll be seeing a great many more pieces inspired by this film in,.....the future. ;)

Thanks for stopping by! Come back soon!





Venkman71

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