That About Covers It

Cover, "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl", No. 01
Digital mixed media
3,975 x 6150 pix
March 2010

Matthew Crouch designed this second logo after I decided that the book title needed a modifier and his first "Tuff-GIrl" logo with its stepped outline proved to be too much of a pain to simply stack the long and by nature very horizontal "unstoppable". He kept the typeface of the first and explored different envelope shapes and different treatments for "unstoppable".

Merrill Hagan "captioned" the illustration with dialogue after the art was done.

The illustration was hand-inked and colored digitally. For the most part, the colors are mixes of cyan, magenta and yellow of the standard CMYK printing process with only a gradient of black behind the masthead. Last year I thought that I might use a colored version of the art I made for "Tuff-Girl" sketchbook No. 2 for at least the main image if not the whole thing.

The Wichita logo is a temporary (so I say) design I put together loosely based on the kilted lettering of Mickey Mouse title cards.

The Tuf Gurlz logo is just Cooper typeface mashed together similarly to the "Beach Boys Pet Sounds" album title.

Is it "fantastic", really? Yes. Yes it is.

Gary Albright

In typical fashion, the time I planned to devote towards the completion of my "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl" comic book, got diverted by another project, a going away card for Gary Albright, Sr. V.P. Trade Creative Services, Cartoon Network.


2010
in the style of Al Hirschfeld
* * * * *

More or less I had the idea of a Hirschfeld caricature of Gary for several years, ever before I had done one of my boss, Ed Murrieta, but I needed the right occasion. Two weeks ago, he announced that his position at Cartoon Network was going to be eliminated, and his group, Trade Creative (TCS) of which I'm part, would be merged with the On-Air creative group.


c 2002
in the style of Hanna-Barbera's "The Flintstones"
* * - - -

Part and parcel of the Hirschfeld caricature was for it to be comprised of the names of past and present TCS staffers. If you're familiar with Hirschfeld's work, then you probably know that he would often hide his daughter's name, "Nina", in his work. Infusing the Gary drawing with the names of 92 staffers, temps and interns plus 58 Cartoon Network characters isn't exactly hiding things, but mixing in there 11 "Gary"s is.


c2006
in the style of Jim Davis' "Garfield."
* - - - -

Gary plays the harmonica, whose rows of little square holes are the perfect motif to be replace with the network's logo. It was especially fortunate, because being undecided about what to do with Gary's hands, the design cycled through black berries, whiskey bottles and other property.


2003
* * * - -

On Gary's last day, he received a gift from the company, a memento commemorating his 15th year with the company.

Cover Girl

Cover, Unstoppable Tuff-Girl, No. 01
Carmine Red Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
25.1206 x 38.862 cm (9.89 in. x 15.30 in.)

Now this is starting to feel like progress.

I'll follow this up later with a montage of the thumbnail drawings done leading up to this composition, and at that point it will make sense of my thought process.

Here you can get a sense of the pleasure I get from the DC Comics covers from the late sixties and early seventies that, unlike the mini movie posters on modern comics, had tantalizing outrageous imagery like more playful pulp novel covers. It may be especially evident that the multiple panels motif is borrowed from their 100 Page Specials which contained multiple stories in a "something for everyone" sort of way.

This first issue promises adventures of this new hero against a bounding man-lizard, a befuddled pup impossibly fitted in a magician's top hat, and a little pig-tailed girl enjoying the California waves.

Sound like fun?

I can hardly wait until I can fill the top with the official logo. Oh, but I must.