Sunday, January 15, 2012

Your turn once again to rip me a new one. 1/14/12

Two covers this week. BTW, it appears that I can now respond directly to each comment given on this blog. I'm not sure why I couldn't before, but oh well. I will try my best to do so in the future. 
 This Lobster Johnson series is set in the 30's, so for all the covers for the series I was trying to reflect old movie posters from that era. Some worked, some didn't. I'm sure you'll let me know which ones didn't.
I've already taken some heat for this Punisher cover. Frank was a Marine not a Green Beret. Oops.

18 comments:

  1. Absolutely love the strong design and how it works with the logo to create a beautiful "S" pattern.

    The figure on the ground though is a bit stiff...something you could have overcome in portraying maybe "too accurately" covers from the pulp era.

    More engaging acting. :)

    =s=

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    1. I'm sorry. :)

      To be honest though...it was the image for he second issue on DEVIANTart that made me see if you had uploaded it here.
      Because I have the same comment, moreso for the second cover.

      Perhaps because that's the focal point. BUT...now that I see it's consistent with the first...and the era...I'm starting to think you did it all on purpose. I prefer the 1st cover to the second though.

      It doesn't make for a bad cover. It's just I've seen you hit perfection (at least to me) time and again. Who knows what's really behind a cover? Deadlines, dead animals, or deadbeat editors. The finished product is what it is and we'll never know the truth.

      Still it's like a paint chip in a new car...I can't stop seeing it.

      The Punisher cover is great BTW...and the forced perspective really pulls my eye in. I love that you've brought that level of logo and image design back into comics.

      For the record...I'm not kissing your ass or backtracking.:)

      =s=

      P.S. I'm not an easy guy to live with either. Though my wife still loves me. At least I think she does. :\

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  2. love the LJ cover - reminds me of old Dean Motter Mister X covers.

    The only thing in the Punisher cover that I can "think" is wonky is the slide section of the gun seems short . . . like if it was released back into firing position, the round barrel inside would stick out WAY further than it should. But that might be a perspective thing . . .

    Either way, I love both, just trying to see if my "critical" eye is on or not.

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    Replies
    1. It's the perspective. I took the photo that I used for reference.

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  3. I love the punisher cover. Iunno if the Lobster Johnson cover pops, I think the color from the logo and "from the pages of Hellboy" distract from the cover. I get the style so I have no real criticism.

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  4. I love the Lobster Johnson covers, because it reminds me alot of Batman:The Animated Series, when they'd show the title of the episode.

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  5. Both these are fantastic, and what I've noticed here is how well they read even at the small size you first see them---often the measure of a good cover.

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  6. I think I had tweeted you a while back on whether you have control over logo placement, logo color & text. You said no. Specifically I was asking about a Lobster Johnson cover, I don't think it was this one. The text seems to work on this one, but sometimes these things are out of your, and other artists control. Good job on both.

    Shouldn't an editor have caught the green beret on Frank Castle though?

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  7. Don't know if it's a problem per se, but the direction of the barrel draws my eyes to the logo more than all the wonderful details on the Punisher cover. Might just be me, but no matter how much I try to look over the important stuff, my eyes just keep drifting to the logo.

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  8. I love them both. Bloody brilliant work.

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  9. I love the idea and layout of the Punisher cover. I only have two extremely picky comments:

    1. The PUNISHERMAX logo does not follow the same vanishing point as the gun barrel. It's one of those things that only 1% of the viewer notices, and less than that cares, but it bothers me that it doesn't follow the same vanishing point. Everything else in the cover has been placed so meticulously... it makes the logo's perspective feel lazy. If someone else placed the logo, as Bobgar mentioned, then that person should've gone the extra mile and made sure that it followed the same perspective as the rest of the illustration. It took me 5 minutes to draw the vectors in Illustrator.

    2. The texture of the blood spatter. I get that the vector splatter is... well, vectorized to create tension and contrast with the texture of the rest of the illustration. I would've liked to see texture consistency with the blood spatter. Although it's cool that Frank is the only one that wasn't tainted by the blood spatter. Nice.

    Frank Castle's beret? I blame the editor for not catching that. Lolz.

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  10. Besides the mix up with Castle I think the Punisher cover is great.

    As for the Lobster Johnson I wasn't feeling it. You don't notice it on the picure but in person the figure has this odd look like he was pasted on with a different ink. Also i don't like the odd shapes for the fingers. Beside that it was a kewl concept. The claw also looks way to copy&pasted to me, shouldn't the claw on the hand be tilted with the hand or bended a bit like the hand itself?

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  11. I don't actually subscribe to PunisherMax but I bought the issue strictly for the cover. It's not something I always do, but if I really enjoy it, I'll fork out the money.

    I can see why a detail of Green Beret vs. Marine would irritate some fans, I didn't notice the difference.

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