NEWS

ZEIT 3

Good to be back! As promised, here is the 3rd and final post for the ZEIT stuff I did a while back.

This third piece is a moment from the story where our main character is getting a phone call on the subway train. The guy on the bench is supposed to be someone generally familiar to us all; that odd fellow who is generally ignored by society that makes you a bit uncomfortable to be around.

Drawing weird characters like him is really fun. After I finished this guy I realized he looks a lot like the character from my comic Hamburgers for One (STILL unpublished). However, my hamburgers for one guy isn't as creepy as this old man is.

Also, I got the idea to give him a Mickey shirt from this sketchbook page from a few weeks ago.

As a quick note on how I think about character design: I usually think of someone I know or someone I have met or am familiar with. Starting from that angle, a lot of questions are usually automatically answered. For example, a character like this tubby fellow is living a sedentary lifestyle, so naturally he's going to be overweight, wear comfortable things like sweat pants and oversized t-shirts, and have messy hair. I find that if you can answer the question in your mind of "who is he/she?" then it's hard to get it wrong.

A.I. PARTY
Last Thursday was the annual American Illustration bash. As usual, a fun time was had by all. I got the privilege of meeting a few illustrators I've admired and never met, and some art directors I've worked with but never actually seen face to face.



One person I was excited to meet was Marcos Chin. Marcos is one of the big name illustrators from recent years that I look up to. He's also one of the coolest, most honest people I've ever met. If you don't know his name, you've still likely seen his work around.



Another person I got to chat with was Chang Park, an amazing painter who also has a reputation as a great teacher at Pratt here in New York and MICA in Baltimore. Chang is one of those guys who has been successful in the illustration world a long time and has done great work while managing to stay humble. I should learn a thing or two from him...

Thanks for reading!


-frank

ZEIT 2


This is my favorite piece from the series. I usually get really excited to do spreads, especially when they're narrative in nature.


In this scene, the main character (our writer from last week's post) is meeting with an extremely tall old man who can't stop wheezing and coughing. From events that happen later in the story, I decided he should look somewhat "artsy" and "creepy," not unlike a certain archetype of design teachers and artsy administrators I recall walking around campus when I was going to school at Art Center (it's a great school, but a weird place).


At the time of this assignment though, I'd also been watching a lot of CNN while at the gym, specifically Larry King, who inspired the posture and jeans + suspenders look.

I love Larry King Live.




Anyhow, an interesting thing to note about the process of all the Zeit pieces -- this one in particular -- I had a lot of difficulty putting them down. I kept experimenting with subtle layers, textures, and different colors, trying to push things to the next level all the way until the end when they were due. In the text below the images I've talked a bit about some of those things, and I regret not being able to go into more detail because of not exactly knowing what I'm doing with them.


I think that this piece feels very warm and cozy... which I guess is a way of saying it's not as "slick" as some of my other stuff. I tried to create an environment that the viewer could feel comfortable in. If that does not make sense, I apologize for not being able to describe it more concretely.

13x19" prints of this piece are available for those who are interested. Just click the button below.

Zeit Print (price includes shipping)

US and Canada $60.00 International $65.00

SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS COMPETITION
The Society of Illustrators competition deadline is fast approaching. You have until November 7th to upload and pay for your images. Enter here.

The student competition isn't for another 5 or so months though, but I highly recommend entering if you're in school. They give away big cash prizes that can be very helpful. Heck, it even paid for my Powerbook that I got back in the day, which I never could have afforded otherwise.



BONUS ANNOUNCEMENT
A lot of exciting things are taking place in my world right now. I wish I could mention some of them but... I can't! But I promise you that big stuff is a-coming!

Oh, and lastly I'm going to be out of town next weekend so the next post will be a bit late. DON'T FORGET TO VOTE NEXT TUESDAY!


peace,

Frank

Zeit 1

Several weeks ago I was commissioned by Art Director Andreas Wellnitz at Zeit Magazine (a German publication) to illustrate a feature for a short story written by esteemed fictionist Daniel Kehlmann.

The story was essentially about a writer doing an interview feature for a big literary magazine.

I've generally had great experiences with European magazines in the past because they tend to give big assignments and really let me run with them.



I was given an image of the author and asked to illustrate my version of the character from the story in the same position, with which it would be juxtaposed in the magazine. This would be the introduction to the feature. >>Dramatization<<

The character described in the story was essentially a single, mid-40's, successful writer living in Berlin. For me, designing this man's surroundings was sort of a chance to draw what I could imagine to be the surroundings of other successful artists I know, people who make a living from their creativity, and their work environments, living in a big city. I guess the thing I was going for was more a creative person's workspace rather than the usually imaginary super swank famous big city artist experience.




I used my friend and fellow illustrator Doug Cowan as the model for the character. I pushed his hairline back and tried to age him up a bit with gray hair. In reality, he's much more handsome than was appropriate for the story, but Doug can pull off a good angst-ridden artist look, which I thought fit the character's personality well.


Also, they requested that the illustrations feel similar to this piece I did a while back for NYU Magazine.

I will be posting more images from this series in the coming weeks.


Conceptsby Jillian Tamaki


Fellow illustrator and kindrid spirit Jillian Tamaki just wrote this fantastic article about how she comes up with ideas for her illustration assignments. If you don't know her already, you must not be clicking on the links I post on here. Jillian is a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal winner, Ignatz comic award-winner, phenomenal draughtsman and all-around good person. Respect!

Prints

Lastly, as an experiment with Paypal's merchant tools, I've added cart buttons to some of my old posts that I'm now offering as prints. Click on the posts linked below to check them out.

Who's Who
The Dark Knight
Sex

Thanks for reading,


Frank

One of the blog suggestions I got a couple weeks ago was asking about my influences/inspirations for individual pieces.

I thought it would be interesting to talk about here because all that has changed so drastically in the last several years, both in school and more recently.

In school I was kind of a workshop junkie. I really enjoyed learning as much about the basics of drawing, painting, composition, design, etc., etc. as I could. I didn't have a specific way of working that I felt compelled to do over and over.

This isn't to say that I didn't have my own way of doing things; I definitely had a strong personality flowing through everything, but there was much more of a direct influence from outside sources going on, whether it was a teacher or a famous artist, and of course some of my friends from school.



And I think that's all good. I'm the type of person who loves a lot of variety. I like playing around with different types of images, ways of telling stories, and tonalities... more so than most people perhaps, but thankfully not so much that I'm unable to express something more unique to myself.

I think that modeling ourselves after people who have the types of careers we admire is extremely important to our artistic and career development.

I actually have two categories of people who I consider "heroes" in art; there are the businessmen who's careers I am inspired by, and there are the artists whose work makes me want to keep striving.

Some examples of artist businessmen I like are Charles Schulz, Walt Disney, and Todd McFarlane. All three of them were tenacious in their drive to create empires out of their art*, and unfortunately some other individuals were adversely affected in the process. But regardless, I respect their drive to create what they envisioned on a world-wide scale.



Examples of people who's work has inspired me is a far longer list. Degas' sculptures, Rubens' voluminous drawings, Manet's life-sized portraits, Schiele's aggressive line, Leyendecker's perfectionism, Rockwell's rich storytelling, Robert Weaver's rawness, down to the tenacious spirit and drive of some of my contemporaries (who I'm fortunate enough to also call friends), like James Jean, Tomer Hanuka, Nathan Fox, Jillian Tamaki, Sam Weber, and Josh Cochran. Along with many others...

While it comes down to there being a ton of individuals who influence different aspects of my art, what I gather from most of them is a higher standard to hold myself to; that is, when I look at the works of these people I see them as a duty to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with.

Sometimes that doesn't work out, but I consider this stuff to be a journey. Every failed experiment is a brick in my castle. These folks are who keep me striving to do it even better the next time.

But as far as specific influences on my work, took a long, long time and many, many failures to get to a point where the work itself drove the next piece (some call this "style," but I hate that word).



The work I do now came directly from an experimental comic I did back in the Spring of 2006, called Swordsman Monsterslayer. While developing my portfolio in a serious attempt at doing editorial illustration, I tried many times to recreate the look and feel that the comic had, before finally nailing it the way I wanted in Winter of '06 as something I wanted to continue developing.

Every piece has its own successes and weaknesses, and every piece ideally will have chances taken and will inspire an experiment for the next piece.

Over time, things build with a kind of snowball effect, and a lot of times the inspiration for a new illustration is one I did a little while back, but this time I think I can do a little better.



Lately I've been pushing through what I feel are strong growing pains, trying to get my work to the next level, and while I think it's working, I also think there's a long way to go.

It's really exciting to me that I have no idea what my work will look like just a few years from now. One thing I know for sure is that it will be stronger and more unique to my vision.

Thanks for reading,


frank.

*These guys are all people I've read or watched biographies of. On Amazon:
Charles Schulz
Walt Disney
Todd McFarlane

Hello,

I did this a few weeks ago for INC Magazine.

Every quarter INC does a feature to the theme "horse race" where they compare different companies in a similar field, with an obvious first, second, third, and last place.

This is as straightforward as jobs get, the editors weren't even interested in my request to make the different riders from different cultures (i.e. a cowboy, a samurai, a knight from the crusade, and a native american, or something to that extent).


Because they gave me the layout to work with ahead of time, I got a chance to focus on making a stronger design.

For spots, quarter-pages and vignettes, I tend to favor a "break out" composition; that is, something that isn't confined to a square or rectangular shape. I think it helps the rest of the page breathe easier and the nature of type tends to bring solidity to the page anyway.



So what I came up with floats on the page with a lot of white space all around.



Here is a scan of the inked image with pencils, un-edited in any way in photoshop. You'll notice the rainbow stripe across the center--that's my scanner who is due for a replacement in the near future, because I'm tired of going in with the clone stamp and repairing my images :)


For the sake of experimentation, I decided to try to paint the last horse in the background with Gouache and color him in digitally like the inked horses. I used to do this a lot more when I had less work and had more time to spend on images. Lately I'm so busy that I usually have to find other kinds of experiments, but I've been trying to turn more jobs down so that I can make better work.

In the end, I'm happy with the piece. I've really been pushing myself hard the last couple of months to try and get my stuff to the next level.

I'm happy with the addition of the gouache textures, though I haven't had a chance to use them in anything since I finished this one.

And lastly, I'd like to thank everyone who wrote in their suggestions for future blogs, I can't wait to get to some of them. I might post one as early as next week.

Thanks for reading!



Frank

Hey guys,


This is a recent piece for a first-time client, Fast Company and the fabulous art director Henry Yung. The piece is about big corporations jumping on the hi-tech band wagon without really knowing what it's all about (i.e. myspace, twitter, facebook, etc.)


This was one of those rare cases when the AD gave me a PDF of the layout that I could compose my illustration within. I'll try to get a screen grab of the image on the printed page if it's ok with Fast Company.


By the way, I'm trying to come up with some blog ideas besides just assignments I've been working on from time to time. If anyone has a suggestion of what they would like me to blog about, let me know either in the comments section or by sending me an email if you are the shy type.

A few weeks ago I was about to start inking this job for Field & Stream Magazine, but I couldn't find my ink well. To my shock and horror I found it had fallen off my table and onto my fedora, forming a moat of black ink around the brim.


It was bad enough to lose the hat, but I had a job to do, so I searched my supplies for more india ink. Unfortunately I couldn't any, but I did find a bottle of black Luma "Brilliant Concentrated Water Colors." I've been experimenting with them ever since and so far I like it.


As for the assignment itself, the piece was to be about practicing camping in your back yard before actually trying it in the woods. The first sketch I came up with had "African Jungle" inspired wildlife, which I was looking foward to drawing because every great illustrator does a "Tiger" illustration at some point.

Some great tiger illustrations:
James Jean
Tomer Hanuka
Josh Cochran
Nathan Fox
Sam Weber

With sage-like wisdom, art director, Mr. Neil Jamieson, asked me to change the animals to be more North-American, suggesting a bear, a mountain lion, and a wolf.

I didn't understand why I had to change it at the time, but now I realize it's because I'm not quite ready to move to the next level by doing a tiger piece. Oh well...

Here are a couple of the colored versions I mulled over. On the left version the wild animals are rim-lit by the window outside, and on the right side they are kept graphic. The graphic version wound up being the one I submitted to Neil for print.

I had a lot of fun working on this, and it gave me some ideas of techniques to try on future jobs...


thanks for reading,

F.