So a friend called me up two weeks ago and asked if I had time to do series of small portraits – various people before and after zombification. I told him I thought I could do six total. If I had time I’d do more. Of course, two days later, I heard from one of the publishers who occasionally pays me to for art asking me if I was available. Unless I’m already doing paying work I’m always available for paying work. So I was only able to do six before and after zombies. Here’s the first, predead portrait.
Author Archives: skook
Lady Fairplay Remake/Remodel
This is probably the last contribution I doing for the Remake/Remodel challenges for a while. They’re fun to do but I’ve got another book deadline on my plate and a bunch of weekend weddings coming up and that’s going to kill whatever “spare” time I thought I had. I almost didn’t contribute to this one. The character wasn’t inspiring any good ideas. It wasn’t until some other artists had put theirs up that I thought of modifying a drawing I’d already done weeks ago.
Hyper the Phenomenal Remake/Remodel
Another contribution to the Remake/Remodel challenges over at Warren Ellis’ Whitechapel forums. This character’s name sounds goofier now than it probably did in the 1940s but even then I suspect it sounded a little silly. Hyper the Phenomenal? Sure. How about Super the Unbelievable? Ultra the Amazeriffic?
International Patents, part 2
And here’s part 2 of my interpretation of the villainous International Patents.
International Patents, Remake / Remodel – part one
The first half of my contribution to the International Patents Remake / Remodel exercise. Apparently Harry Houdini made some serials back in the day. International Patents were the villains in his first one The Master Mystery.
Ghost Exterminator Remake / Remodel
Another contribution to the Whitechapel Forums Remake Remodel exercise – a character called the Ghost Exterminator this time. I’ve been trying to do double duty with these illustrations. One figure at least has to be useful for another project that I’m working on. I’d started getting a little more ambitious by adding color for The Blue Lady and then more elaborate illustrations for Digambara Samiyar. I’m always amazed by what other contributors come up with. Sometimes the pieces are one off jokes. Other times, as with this character, little comic stories get created. I recommend following the link and checking out the results.
Digambara Samiyar Remake / Remodel
My version of Digambara Samiyar for the Remake/Remodel exercise at Warren Ellis’s forums.
The Blue Lady – Remake / Remodel
Another bit of recent art. Every week at his Whitechapel forums, Warren Ellis has been running an exercise called Remake / Remodel. He puts up an old pulp fiction character that has slipped into public domain and invites his readers to contribute new artistic interpretations of the character. This is my version of The Blue Lady.
Another Bride
Many film Frankenstein’s have been happy to do what the novel’s Frankenstein refused to do – create a mate for the monster. Besides Bride of Frankenstein we’ve been presented with female creatures in Frankenstein Created Woman, Frankenstein the True Story, The Bride, Frankenstein Unbound, Frankenhooker and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’m sure I’ve missed a few.
The illustration above is inspired by Helena Bonham Carter’s creature in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I’m rather fond of this version of the story. It’s bombastic and operatic and generally over the top. The biggest misfire is De Niro’s performance as the creature. He’s got no otherworldliness about him. He’s ugly but he’s not Wrong, an aberration. Ah well. One of my favorite reviews of the film can be found at And You Call Yourself a Scientist. Go and read!
The Original
Frankenstein’s creation, as described in the novel, has never appeared on film. Mostly we’ve been given reanimated patchwork corpses. When I reviewed the novel I came to the conclusion that, while some of ingredients originated in the charnel houses the creature had to be more than just stitch together body parts. There are a couple of films that apparently come close in appearance – Hallmark’s 2004 miniseries and Frankenstein vs. the Creature from Blood Cove – but even they are unlikely to have presented him in his full glory. Shelley doesn’t give much of a description –
“His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!-Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath: his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriences only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips”
Beyond that he’s eight feet tall and, unlike most of the slow lurching film versions, he can move swiftly, with agility and quietly.
A good recent depiction I’ve seen was by Steven R. Bissette for, of all things, a recent translation of the Phantom of the Opera. For some reason my links to his site aren’t working so you’ll need to go to http://srbissette.com and look around in the sketch section.
Berni Wrightson did an incredible illustrated edition of the novel (the 1834 version) in the early nineties. His creature is both sad and hideous.
So the portrait at the top of this entry is my version of novel’s creature as he might have looked in the century after the novel’s events. He’s older. He’s, if not at peace with humanity, no longer at war with the world. He’s found a place for himself and his kind, hidden away in the place human beings don’t think to look.
