Sketches for 'Strange Romance'

Just wrapped up a great job for the SF weekly's dating issue featuring a cover, full page and 3 spot illustrations. Andrew, the AD, gave me freedom to have fun with the topic so I pushed the envelope as much as I could.

Above are my three initial sketches which were all very loose. I first toyed with the romance comic idea here depicting the gimp kissing the woman.

Once it was decided to run with the comic idea, I focuses more on the gimp depicting him in two settings. 'Gimp Love' was used just as placement until we could decide on a title for the comic. The overall layout using the SF logo, verticle 'featuring' bar and the comic title are coming together above.

Above, the AD and I have finalized the layout of the comic and it's characters. The title and thought bubbles of each person are still left open.


'Tales of Strange Romance' was chosen for the title of the comic along with final changes to the 'featuring' bar.



And here is 'Sad Gimp' in all his glory. Will he EVER find love?

2011 Rose Bowl Cover

For the 2nd year in a row, I was asked by Joel at the Pasadena Weekly to illustrate their 2011 Rose Bowl cover. It is truly one of my favorite jobs as it accompanies all my favorite things - action, energy, bright colors and college football!

Joel needed to have both mascots (the TCU Horned Frogs and the Wisconsin Badgers) large and central with roses somehow tied in. Last year, I had the mascots battling in the actual Rose Bowl stadium so this year, I depicted the moment just before impact as the two behemoths charge each other on top of a pristine hill of roses.

Above I started, with loose thumbnails just to understand the composition and what each mascot looked like!


As I decided on the two battling on the Rose hill, I took the sketches farther with each mascot more defined.



Above is the finished piece. Room is left above their heads for the header of the magazine while text will go over the bed of roses.