um...

...eek. Almost three full months without a post. Um. Sorry.

Working up something for tomorrow now, but in the meantime, has everyone noticed F. Ron Miller's fine process post on the America Lost and Found box set? A very nice post on a FANTASTIC design.

Also worth noting: Bill Sienkiewicz's Robinson Crusoe on Mars art prints are currently on sale at the Criterion store, through the end of this month. Use promo code "MONA50" to get fifty bucks off the regular price. Can't beat that deal!

And again... design post coming tomorrow. I promise.

Hallowe'en with the Criterion diaspora

Lots of seasonally appropriate design-blogging going on!

First up, designer/rock star Sam Smith has been picking up a lot of my slack on the Criterion-design-process-blogging front: check out his excellent posts on the poster for the Janus release of the creepy Kuroneko and the DVD/blu-ray design for the bats**t insane House.

Then check out Jesse Marinoff Reyes' fantastic blast-from-the-past post on the cover to Equinox, which he art directed and was illustrated by Tavis Coburn. (The link is to his Facebook page but I don't *think* you need to be facebooked to see the post.) It's part of his always interesting "cover-of-the-day" feature--that's right "of the day." Not "of the quarter-year" like some slacker bloggers...

Charade Blu-ray

I'll offer these without too much commentary, since there's not a lot of high-concept thinking behind them: we wanted to take the original Charade cover and update it slightly for the Blu-ray release. Ultimately, we basically just went back to something a little closer to the original poster, with the title treatment taken directly from the film itself, but as you can see there were a few detours along the way. Here's the original DVD cover (not by me), and a few of the various original posters on which it was based. I'm actually not sure which of these was the original, or who did them, but they're obviously all very indebted to the great main title work by Maurice Binder. (NOT Saul Bass as I've seen a few people inaccurately suggest. Bass was also great, of course, but Binder, who gave the world most of the classic Bond opening titles, among others, was no slouch himself!)






And here's my tweaks... interesting how subtle things (like changing the angle slightly from the DVD version) make a big difference, right?









Some at the office wanted to go for more of a departure, something like those last few above, but in the end I think we made the right choice. Those other covers might have been the right choice for a whole new edition, but this release is all the same content as the DVD, just in a new format, so it just made sense to keep the same basic look as the basically successful original DVD, just slightly tweaked to fix a few things that had started to grate on us over the years. Getting a little closer to the original poster gave me some confidence that we'd have something which had already stood the test of time. Here's the final cover:

Post-NYCC rundown

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the table this past weekend--I hope you all enjoyed your Liar's Kiss promos!

NYCC was an interesting experience--in some ways very different from the more crafty vibe of shows like MoCCA or King Con, but once you get to talking to people it's always good fun.

And I met some very cool people, on both sides of the tables... not least of which my tablemate Jorge Coelho, former (& future, hopefully) collaborators Dan Duncan & Joe Dellagatta, their buddy Shaun, Charles Ardai, Jason Latour, Rico Renzi, Jamie S. Rich, Scott Forbes, and of course the Portugese contingent, Ricardo Venâncio, João Lemos, Filipe Andrade, Nuno Plati and Ricardo Tércio, just to name a few off the top of my head. Talented folks, all.

Also: proper design post coming later today...

NYCC is on!

NYCC opens today! Come by my table (R-11) for lots of fun goodies, including a free (FREE!) minicomic sampler of Liar's Kiss, coming this spring from Top Shelf!

R-11

That's where to find me and Jorge this weekend: table R-11 in "Artist's Alley" at the New York Comic Con. Stop by, say hi!

New York Comic-Con

Have I mentioned yet that I'm going to be at NYCC this year? I'm splitting a table with co-conspirator Jorge Coelho in Artists Alley. (That's Jorge's drawing above; the first image from a project we're working on together that we're going to start pitching very soon... gorgeous, right?)

More immediately, I'm going to have the usual stuff for sale, comics & prints, including a proper colored version of "The Deserter," the return of the much-requested Steel Helmet print and a new print for everyone who liked the more whimsical style of the "Troubling of Goldfish" thing I did a while back:

(In case you can't tell, that's an elephant in Groucho Marx's pajamas.)

Not sure exactly where our table will be located yet but I'll update here when I know more. If you're in New York the weekend of October 8-10, stop by and say hi!