Friday, November 25, 2011

'Creature from the Black Lagoon' remake-inspired concept


The original idea for 'the Creature from the Black Lagoon' actually came from Amazonian legend. In the 40's, Producer william Allen overheard cinematographer Gabriele Figeroa (who shot 'the Pearl' and 'night of the Iguana' for John Huston, amongst others) telling the tale of a half-fish, half-man during a dinner party at Orson Well's home. Figeroa actually claimed that he had SEEN the creature and could produce a photo of it. During my research of Amazonian wildlife, I found that the legend also matches the Amazonian River Dolphin, a pinkish, almost human-like creature, and that the local tribes believe that it is a Shapeshifter. Unlike many of the other 'Gill Man' that I've seen, I wanted to approach it from a different angle, and try to make my Creature more like a Neanderthal man, and make him look more like one of the local tribespeople, but with subtle fish properties.
Back in the 80's, John Carpenter was attached to do a remake (and after his treatment on 'the THING', I was a lot more than excited to hear this..), and this is kinda what inspired this design. In reality, it would never fly...it's just too far from the original film version and would probably piss people off..heh, So I did it on my own, for kicks, and this is the only place you will ever probably see it. Enjoy.

P.S. hope you all had a good Thanksgiving

Monday, August 22, 2011

M.I.A. Mike...

..sorry folks, I haven been on a show for tha last four months...so my updates have been sparse.

BUT, some good news! Cover painting of mine on october's FANGORIA magazine!
Also, the THING (which i did numerous desgin concepts for) comes out in mid-October, so it looks to be a busy month for me..
In the meanwhile, just trying to catch up on laundry and the like after not being at home for a bit.

more later

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Quick Work-in-progress update

Okay, so this is a re-do of an old painting i did about 5 years ago.
Before I sold the original canvas, i lit it from the back and photographed it. From that photo, I color-picked every color to try and match the feel and colors of my original (However, I re-draw her as a hotter girl),
Actually, it had a creature/monster kinda super-imposed on her in the original...but I liked it so much without it, I decided to leave it without..


It's Corel Painter with a tiny bit of Photoshop

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Best werewolf idea I ever had

What, I thought, if werewolves were on the moon? then they could never turn back to human, right?! LOL!
Russian scientist were sending dogs and monkeys and animals (and humans) into space long before the U.S...

With the coming of 'Apollo 18', I thought I'd share this artwork I did some time ago...

Enjoy.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

final Curse

Okay, put a little bit of time into cleaning this up, and thought I'd post it...
Re-did the hands, feets, and adding some more detailing throughout. Also a nice gloopey coat of digital clear varish to top it off..

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Progress of 'Curse of the Wolfman' painting

I've finally started that 'Curse of the Wolfman' piece I've wanted to do for about four years now, Since doing the 'Phantom of the Opera' painting some time back..
And I thought I'd include some of my progress shots here.

After the first rough sketch, I scanned it in Painter and started working colors from a framegrab of the movie, building up form, etc.
This is still kinda rough, but I like the impressionistic feel of it..

Ideally, I'd lke to print it onto canvas and REALLY throw some chunky paint on that back wall behind him!

stay tuned.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Okay, thought I'd include
a partial, Close-up, detail of a work-in-progress that I noodled on a bit last night @ around 3am.
A couple of years ago, this concept came to me while I was doing those live paintings down in Hollywood, and the idea was that the deformed 'creatures' were kinda ppraying to this angel, who would be painted in Ultraviolet light.

Well, i wasn't happy with the attempt, and shelved it, until I could do it right (It really SHOULD feel very Lovecraftian, painted by Pickman) and I have quietly put a stroke here and a stroke there ever since. I even shot pictures of a model posed in the same poses, with striking side lighting to get the feel i wanted. So now it's just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Damn, I'm the worst blogger on the planet...

...but, ya know, it's a lotta pressure to update stuff all the time, to have something to show to you, my loyal 5 followers (Er, and you, as well, my secret, invisible followers...). but hey, Man, it's all so top scret in this business. I've GOT new stuff, just can't show you all yet..

But, I have found time to add an, albeit bad, photo of something I did recently..

Way back in the design phase of 'the Hills Run Red' I did a drawing of a Voodoo-painted Babyface character, where, instead of the glaring white mask, it would have  the Skull-painted design on it (After all the mud and blood, it kinda ended up looking like that anyway in the movie), So I poured up one of the masks from the molds of the Jim Kagel sculpt and made one...The coffee-can jaw idea just struck me as kinda cool and funny, nothing more dangerous than rusty, torn metal to me...
I'll see if I can dig up the sketch and add it here later.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

One of my favorite Werewolves, I've ever done..

...Back when I was little, the ol' timers said that they were some runaway coon hunting dogs that lived out in the Kessler's swamp. Said that the ghosts of some old Indian Medicine men took 'em over, turned em bad, CHANGED 'em somehow, like werewolves.
Always ran in a pack, they said, lost deer dogs, one-eyed, mangy strays, three-legged coyotes that had chewed their way out of a trap, throwaways....

You could hear 'em, out baying in the night sometimes, howlin', huntin' along the river for whatever hunters has lost his way back from his stand....

Farmers always blamed those dawgs when they had chickens disappear, and that swamp was never any good to hunt. Always SMELLED bad, like something rotten...maybe that's why they liked it down here, who knows?
Jimmy Wages claimed to have shot one rummagin' through his trash, says it was carrying off a dead possum, loped off into the night like it wasn't in TOO much of a hurry...

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Woot WHOOT!! FOUR followers!!!!!!




...So here's four Corel Painter sketches i did a while ago, have had little time to do do anything NOT NDA...but am going to try.
Busy guy these days, guess that's always good.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Quick idea..

Inspired, of course, by Amityville Horror (the book, not the remake).
Quick photoshop sketch idea that I had...

Thursday, January 6, 2011

some sketches...

Gee, I feel like everybody's seen all this stuff before...

...Will have to scan in some new-ish stuff for your folks. So much of what I'm workin on is NDA...or whadever it's called, and not to be shown til (at least) after the release of whadever project it is.
And, ya know, you post stuff online, it can go anywhere in a flash and get in the wrong hands before ya know it.