ULTRAIST STUDIOS

Last Sunday was the annual Word On The Street festival in Toronto, and despite calls for rain, the day ended up being warm and sunny. Once again Ultraist Studios was in attendance with Possum Press, and this year we debuted the SPY GUY and The POSSUM Superhero Movie cut-out stand-ups for the first time ever, which got a lot of attention (and photos).

An interesting side note:  I noticed all day that I was drawing a disproportionately large number of sketches with children robbing banks.  Must be a sign of our times.

Click to enlarge.

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This sketch was inspired by the amazing drawing style of artist Mike Kitchen!

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Click for slide-show.

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Below is my piece for The 2008 Shuster Awards Visions Of An Icon exhibit on the drawing board just before I sent it off to the Lillian H. Smith Library Auditorium, 239 College Street, Toronto.

If you’re in the neighbourhood, be sure to drop by this Saturday June 14th and see the original art, along with work from all the other fine contributors! Blair Kitchen (of The Possum fame) and myself should be making an appearance for the first hour of the show. Room B Exhibit opens at 10 am and runs until 4-4:30 pm.

Click the image above for more details.
Maybe we’ll see you there.

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Here is a glimps of what’s currently on the drawing board:

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Last October when Hawley Anderson contacted us on behalf of Dimension Films for comics, product, and signage to use in the upcoming feature film called SUPER HERO, I got the idea to create a life sized cut-out of SPY GUY.

The following documents the “creative process”.

Originally I was going to use existing artwork (due to time constraints) however there wasn’t anything in existence that matched what I envisioned in my head - so it was back to the drawing board. In a last minute rush, I hacked out this sharpie sketch.

I’ve started using sharpie markers to force myself to commit to a gesture rather than endlessly chicken scratching with pencil.

Next I used the Dave Sim tracing paper method to pull an actual drawing out of my sharpie sketch. I find that drawing on the mirror image helps to quickly tighten up the drawing, and then enables an easy transfer to the S-172 Bainbridge.

Once the pencils are transfered, the inking process begins, using primarily a Hunt 102 nib and a Windsor Newton #2 (not to mention some form of white out).

At this point I scan the artwork into the computer, and in this case I realized that I had drawn SPY GUY’s head too small. D’oh! For a moment I thought about redrawing the whole thing, however instead opted to just scale the thing in Photoshop.

Then I added some colour (doing my best to ape the Anime cell animation style) and voila! I had a final image.

This was then sent off to the fine folks at The Lot to be turned into a life sized cut out. Here is the final product!

Look for it in the background of the SUPER HERO movie coming soon to a theater near you!

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I’m looking forward to inking this one.

This shows my new work process of roughing out the page on 11″ x 17″ paper using pencil and sharpie marker (and whiteout) before doing a tracing paper transfer to bainbridge s-172 illustration board.

Photo was taken while on public transit commute.

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Visitors may have noticed the banner change above here at the Ultraist Studios Blog Journal. The complete pic can be seen below. Click on it to see all the stuff on the drawing board labelled.

I’ve always been curious about the workspace of other artists.

I think it was on TheEngine forum where I first found this Deskset of Flickr images.

Then, there is a feature over at the Comic Book Resources called Studio Tours, which gives you a glimps into the studios of some of todays top artists. This link will take you to Stuart Immonen, and then you can follow the additional links at the bottom of the article for everyone else.

Finally, a few weeks ago on Newsarama I discovered this book coming out from Image called Studiospace. It seems to be more a discussion on the work process more than the studio itself, but it’s interesting none the less. Check out the following excerpts:
Excerpt 1 - Tim Sale
Excerpt 2 - Mike Mignola
Excerpt 3 - Frank Miller

Also, check out Dave Sim’s studio space in the Off White House at Aardvark-Vanaheim.

Fun stuff.

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