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What You Talkin' about?: Paolo Rivera

Do you remember the first time you knew you wanted to be an artist?
It was right after I realized that I couldn’t be a superhero. The first time I really "heard" about Paolo Rivera was on The Art Department blog by Tor art director, Irene Gallo. She posted a really good interview with him about the "Mythos" comic series he painted for Marvel. Unfortunately, as is often the case when tooling around on the inter-web I read the interview, went on to the next thing on mind, and Paolo Rivera was out of my head.

I got a second chance though, two months later with the Lines and Colors blog, by Charlie Parker. Charlie started off the post like this. "At one time the brief description line at the top of Paolo Rivera’s blog read: “I am a painter for Marvel Comics. Really, I am.”" How cool is that? So, interested, and read the article. Going to the follow-up links that Charlie is so good about adding at the bottom of his posts, I found Paolo's blog, The Self-Absorbing Man. Wow. He's not only extremely talented, but he does some WORK. Posting at least three times a week there's always really solid, exciting content. There's an fairly even balance between current works, Tips tricks and equiptment, and appearance announcements.

One of his segments "Wacky Reference Wednesdays" is especially entertaining, and I really look forward to it each week. In fact, it's what inspired this segment for me, and that's why he gets the dubious honor of first post. Last week, Paolo posted an example of how he uses Google Sketchup as refrence for his comic panels when he has a tricky perspective problem, or the same environment from different angles. So, here's an example of the sketch up models, set against a backdrop of his initial layout drawing. He builds parts in the program, as well as importing elements from the sketchup warehouse. And then here's how it all fits in with the finished page. I've given an extremely truncated version of the process here. To read more about it, go and check out his blog.

Just for fun, I thought I'd also share a handful of my sketch up models and a page that I finished recently for a personal project, I hope you enjoy them. Well that's all for now. Until next time, take care and be good!

Paolo Rivera: http://www.paolorivera.com/
Lines and Colors article: http://www.linesandcolors.com
Art Department Interview: http://igallo.blogspot.com

Posted by Red Herring Jeff at 7:12 AM No comments: Labels: Paolo Rivera, What You Talking about


Work-In-Progress: "Time" Part 2 

Until Wednesday then, take care and be good.
Posted by Red Herring Jeff at 7:09 PM 1 comment: 


Work-In-Progress: "Time" Part 1

This has been a busy week. Valentines falling on a Saturday really cuts in to my working in the basement time... Ha-ha! Actually, Valentines day was great. I got almost caught up on my taped episodes of "Get Ed", did a little work in my sketch book, went and saw "Coroline" with Amy (and it was AWESOME, easily the best movie I've seen in the last two years, and I've seen some really good ones too), and I got a little bit of work done.

This week, I took a break from the animals (though I do have a nice little sketch for the next one worked out, and I'm excited to get started on him! It's the drummer, and he's going to be soooo boss!) and got fully entrenched in what has turned out to be a kind of enjoyable pain in the butt. That being said, I am not finished with it so I thought I'd share a little work in progress. Amy calls this one "Old Man Jeffrey" LOL

This started out life as a drawing for the Illustration Friday topic "Time". I didn't want it to be something silly, like a watch or spinning clocks, but rather something a little more concepty. Going back and forth with ideas, one thing that struk me was that little clock that is used in regulation chess games that times the moves. Which let me to the old man playing chess in the park idea. I started with the old man, thinking that there would be two players, and that one of them would maybe be a kid. As I got into it though, the other player got scrubbed for another idea. (I feel like I have to admit here that this was mostly out of lazyness, and that I didn't want to draw the other players back. On the other hand, that's not a very interesting illustration element anyway.) I added the monsters creeping up behind him. So this is the "High Concept" story for this image.

"Time sneaks up on us loudly, as we focus our attention on the moves of our lives." I should write fortune cookies. I did the original drawing in blue pencil, and inked it. It looks fine, but I knew I wanted to mess with it in illustrator. It started with wanting the monsters to be a certain way. I really wanted the blue outline with the dark brown fill, and the empty, glazed eyes. So I decided to build them. This was the beginning of a weekend of general irritation on my part.

After I made my new Illustrator monsters, I started working on the old man, and was just not happy with the clunkyness of some of my inking, and of course (why would I want anything to be easy?) I wasn't happy with all of his outlines being the same (Black) so now I need to cut up the trace too. So I work his right hand over (our left) till I'm happy with it, and then I get to looking at the chessboard and pieces and am just NOT happy with them. They look totally sloppy. I wouldn't buy them, so how can I expect anyone else to. So I rebuild the whole chessboard and all its pieces from scratch. Amy says I'm too hard on myself. But what's the point of doing it, if it's not done right? So I'm mostly done with this part of the illustration, and then I just have to decide how I want to deal with the back ground. Hopefully next week, I'll have the finished illustration to show you. Until then, Take care and be good!

Jeffrey Johnson
Posted by Red Herring Jeff at 9:29 PM No comments: 


More Vector Animals
 Posted by Red Herring Jeff at 8:52 PM 1 comment: 


Some Change of Direction: Animal Vectors Posted by Red Herring Jeff at 9:00 AM No comments: Labels: Cartoon Animals, Illustration, Jeffrey Johnson, Vector fish, Vector Tiger
