Rest in Peace, Irvin Kershner

[Livio]

The world lost a great director last week with the passing of Irvin Kershner, the man who gave us "The Empire Strikes Back." If you ever get a chance to read an interview with him, you'll rarely find a more intelligent, thoughtful and caring person. Not to mention, a guy who really knew how to create atmospheric locations and stage amazing shots.

I missed out on a chance to meet Mr. Kershner at a recent comic-con when his illness tragically forced his cancellation of attending the show. I had a feeling at the time that it would be my last chance to meet him, and this turned out to be true.

Though I did get to see Lando Calrissian himself, Mr. Billy Dee Williams, at the same convention. And this was a pretty great experience in its own right. I did this Lando piece in an attempt to portray one of the human characters of Star Wars. The likeness is based on some photo reference of the main man himself.

"Empire" is a constant source of inspiration for me, and I thank Irvin Kershner for making such a great film.

-Livio

Happy 30th, Empire!

[Livio]

As any fellow Star Wars fanatic knows, this year is the 30th Anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. My favorite movie of all time.

I always thought "Empire" showed Darth Vader at his most hardcore (Brutally mauling his own son, torturing Han Solo because he enjoys it, ordering his own fleet into an asteroid field and patiently waiting as it gets beat to hell, making a habit of choking his own officers, constantly changing the terms of a deal seemingly only because he likes screwing with Lando's mind, conspiring against his own Master, and generally not giving a %&#^).

And, the moment when Vader goes in with the ground troops raiding the rebel base during the battle of Hoth. I always liked that he doesn't care that there's a warzone all around him and he's going in on foot. With this painting, I wanted to pay homage to that scene with one of those "could have happened off-screen!" moments.

The idea here is that the Walker in the center has been brought down by rebel fire, but in true Vader fashion-he just doesn't care, and is strolling straight through the warzone toward the rebel base. I really worked on the atmospheric perspective here so that it looked similar to the film's colors.

See you next time!

-Livio

Decepticons

[Livio]

With this painting, I was trying to go for a more monochromatic look, with mainly a bleached-out atmosphere and only bits of color here and there. I've found that putting a lot of the classic looking Transformers in the same shot with their natural colors can sometimes look pretty garish, and fight whatever sort of "realism" you're trying to go for.

Studiomate JJ has been doing some great "big team shot" commissions of The Avengers and JLA lately, and I suppose I was influenced a bit by him here. It was fun to play with scale and have massive characters in the same shot as smaller ones.

See you next time!

-Livio

Long Beach Comic Expo 2010

[Eddy]

Here's a video from last weekend's show, including Mike Mignola, Dustin Nguyen and Livio Ramondelli sketching away.

It was a fun, small show packed with fans and creators who I don't get to see as much as I should. I also gave away a stack of free WildStorm books to everyone who stopped by and even got my own free sketch from Mignola too.

Next stop, Seattle in 3 weeks and counting!

Livio Ramondelli

[Eddy}

The stage is set in this woman vs. machine piece by Livio Ramondelli and ends this week's look at the "Monsters & Dames" charity art book available at this year's Emerald City Comicon.

Just over a month away now!

Frightful Four

[Livio]

Here's a few recent drawings I felt like sharing:

Galvatron
I think Galvatron is personally one of the harder old-school Transformers to draw, given that his design is a big departure from the standard "boxes and squares" that most of the Transformers looked like at the time. He's also one of the few new characters introduced in the old animated movie that I actually like. I tried simplifying the business of his original design while still keeping him very familiar.

Grimlock
I really just wanted to play around with his bullish, kid-like nature here. So I intentionally had him fill most of the frame, as well as bulk up his limbs a bit.

Jango Fett
One of my favorite scenes in the Star Wars prequels is Jango Fett's rain-soaked mano-a-mano brawl with Obi-Wan Kenobi. So for this drawing I definitely remembered that scene and wanted to do something with rainy atmospherics.

Hobgoblin
This was done during some downtime at the recent (and awesome!) Long Beach Comic-Con that most of us at the studio attended. I had fun playing with Hobgoblin's expression here, and wanted to give him a suitably evil sneer.

Until next time!

-Livio

"Welcome Home"

[jimlee]

Finally can be revealed. A piece the WS office did for departing DC chief Paul Levitz.

You can also see some Legionaires Paul co-created. I penciled Sensor Girl & Colossal Boy & laid out the top half.

Saving Private Rogers

[Livio]

I just did this piece for fun as Captain America is not a character I've attempted very often. It's a bizarre coincidence that the one time I try drawing him is during a week where there is all sorts of big Cap news in comics.

In terms of the color version, I wanted to very much keep the desaturated palette used ( and probably overused to some extent) in a lot of recent war movies. My challenge was in trying to make sure Cap's signature reds and blues didn't contrast too sharply from the world around him.

With the initial drawing, I wanted to give it a bit of a feel like those old World War II photos that have very stark black shadows in the foreground contrasted by very smokey/white backgrounds.

Studiomate JJ Kirby was invaluable in helping me with Cap's pose and shield. Thanks, J!

See you next time!

-Livio

Devastator vs. Dinobots

[Livio]

All of us at the studio are big movie fans. And now that the season is here, we're finally getting our first taste of the big summer movies. So far "Star Trek" has been my favorite, with "Wolverine" being two hours of my life I wish I could get back. "Terminator Salvation" is looking more solid than expected. "Up" is looking like yet another great Pixar production. But it will come as little surprise that the most anticipated movie for me is "Transformers 2."

This painting was a challenge, due to how many characters I was trying to fit in. I probably did at least ten different layouts before finally settling on this one. At first I thought about doing a redesign on both Devastator and the Dinobots and make them a bit more "gritty", for lack of a better world. But I decided that I definitely wanted this painting to look like the oldschool G1 characters. So I kept all the basic shapes and colors and just tried to texture them up in a hopefully semi-realistic way.

As cool as some of the redesigns are in the Michael Bay films, sometimes the original character just gets lost in them. But, one of these days I am going to try redesigning a classic TF character for a "live action" look.

Until next time!

Livio

Clone War

[Livio]

I was a big fan of Gendy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars series that first aired a few years back. More so than the actual Star Wars prequels, I felt like that animated series painted a really cool portrait of just what an entire galaxy at war would look like. And I always enjoyed seeing these elite Clonetrooper soldiers carrying out an impossible assignment on some god-awful planet.

So with this painting, I wanted it to seem sort of like a World War 2 photo taken during one of the rare "quiet" moments of combat. This was also the first digital painting I've done entirely in Photoshop, with no Painter IX. Which I didn't even notice until I finished it.

Until next time!

-Livio

Livio vs. Monday

[Livio]

This was a recent pencil drawing commission. Always fun to wreck some sentinels!

Another recent commission, where I was asked to do an unusual pairing of Optimus Prime and the DC Comics character Death. It began as a pencil drawing, but I was asked to do a full color painted version as well so here it is!

Initially I had Prime's gun blasting out a traditional orange colored blast but it didn't seem to work with Death's icy nature, so I changed it to blue and I think it suits her far better.

Recent Ramondelli

[Livio]

Starscream - This began as a pencil art commission at Wondercon in San Francisco, but I wanted to do a digitally colored version as well. This is probably one of the faster paintings I've done, maybe 4 hours from start to finish. I wanted to achieve a bit of a blurry/speed effect here.

Green Lantern - This was a commission, acrylic on illustration board. Later on I scanned it in and added a little digital glow to Hal Jordan's ring.

Zatanna - Another recent commission, and definitely a little different than what I'm normally asked to draw. But I had a lot of fun with this one. And thanks to artist extraordinare Mike Lopez, who always provides great tips on drawing the ladies.

[Livio]

Rorschach - I did this pencil drawing for fun in anticipation of the movie finally coming out. I still can't believe we are living in a movie era where Rorschach is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

Until next time!

-Livio

Hurm - Colored

[Eddy]

Jeremy Roberts did a sweet job coloring our Watchmen jam piece, so we wanted to highlight it here.

Thanks Jeremy!

WonderCon 2009 Pics!

[Eddy]

WonderCon was another big hit for everyone and we're already planning next year's show, so thanks to all the wonderful fans!

Personally, I'm still recovering from the show and catching catnaps, so above are some photos I found online featuring the gelatometti crew. To check out more of Jay Fayloga's pics from the show, click here and here.

Thanks Jay!

WonderCon Jam!

[Joel & Livio]

Hey all,

Joel and Livio here. We just wanted to show you our contributions to the WonderCon jam print we're doing. Above are Batgirl by Joel and Poison Ivy by Livio. We're all really excited to be jamming on these together, which in the end will include a group of DC's hottest females drawn by us as well as Eddie Nunez, Michael Lopez and some guy named Jim Lee!

 We're all really excited for the con, so definitely stop by and see us at booth #1348 this coming Friday through Sunday!

See you there!

[Krb Wonder]

Here's the star of the ball. This was my first time drawing one of my favorite Titans. It was a blast.

Stay tuned for the colored version at WonderCon.

Cheers.

Soundwave Superior

[Livio]

Hey everyone,

Just as we're settling back into work after the craziness of the New York City Comic-Con, we're about to hit San Francisco for WonderCon next week! Personally I can't wait for the show since I lived in the city for almost three years and still have some great friends there. So if you're planning to attend the show, be sure to stop by and say hello!

The above piece began as a pencil drawing that I did in anticipation for the NYC show. The original has since been sold and is now in the hands of a fellow Transformers fan. But since I really enjoyed doing the initial drawing, I wanted to take a crack at digitally painting it in full color.

This one went through some major palette changes along the way. I always knew I wanted Soundwave and Co. to be emerging from some hazy environment, and it ranged from a snow drift to black smoke before eventually settling on the colors its got now.

Hope you enjoy, and maybe I'll see some of you guys at WonderCon!

-Livio

Soundwave vs. Optimus Prime

[Livio]

We're all getting pretty excited to hit the con in New York City next week. I've been to the city a few times in the past, but have yet to see the Statue of Liberty (same with several of the guys here), so that's definitely on our studio checklist while we're there.

In anticipation of the con, we've all been burning pencils doing drawings and getting into the groove. As one of the newer guys here, I'm trying to take what I learned from each previous con and use it at the next one. So the above drawings of Soundwave and Optimus Prime represent characters I was asked to draw semi-frequently while we were at the shows in Australia and New Zealand. As much as I like the freedom of painting digitally, I still really love shading with a pencil on paper.

If any blog readers are attending NYC, stop by our tables and say hello!

-Livio

The Big Apple!

[Eddy]

I love New York City and always look forward to going back as soon as I can. This time, we're hoping to visit the Statue of Liberty and find some good hamburger joints too. Traveling always turn into a gastronomical adventure, even just finding lunch around La Jolla.

Most of us from the blog will be heading out to New York this February 6-8 for the big New York Comic-Con and we hope to see everyone there! Artists include: Carlos D'Anda, Joel Gomez, Sandra Hope, JJ Kirby, Jim Lee, Michael Lopez, Oliver Nome, Eddie Nuñez, Livio Ramondelli, Alex Sinclair and Scott Williams.

And just to get in the spirit of things, above are some Big Apple-inspired drawings, which will be available at the show. It's the first time Lopez and Nuñez will be hitting NYC, but I'll let them talk about it themselves later.

We'll be sitting in Artist's Alley all weekend long and hopefully, it won't be too cold for us folks used to 80º February days!

The Power Cosmic

[Livio]

After I did this painting, I was asked to do another Galactus and Silver Surfer as a commission. The difference this time was that this painting isn't digital, it's acrylic on canvas board.

Having just finished a previous painting of both characters, I wanted to do do something different with them to keep my interest. So I opted for more of a classic "heroic" shot of the two, to contrast it against the moody painting I just did before ( especially since I had the Surfer pretty much regretting his existence in the last one). I played around with Galactus' helmet a bit, making it a bit sharper and more alien. I also wanted to get more of the characters' classic purple and blue colors in, and be less muted by their surroundings.

Before I mailed off the actual painting, I scanned it in and played around with it in Painter. Mainly just adding a little bit of glow effects to the energy blasts.

See you guys next time!

-Livio

If This Be Doomsday!

[Livio]

This piece takes place back in the days of the Surfer being the herald of Galactus. Having just helped kill an entire planet, the Surfer is taking a moment to reflect on the horrors of what he's done while his master is sucking the life from the world.

I had this lighting scheme pretty much in mind from the start, this sort of rainy blown-out overcast look. I also wanted to play around with the idea that just Galactus' presence alone might be enough to upset the natural order of a planet-hence the tidal waves destroying buildings at his feet, and the bizarre vertical lightning

And above are my initial rough thumbnail and pencil linework, done during a jam session at studiomate J.J. Kirby's pad! J was full of good suggestions for this painting, so he's getting a shout out here. Thanks, dude!

-Livio