Tag Archives: Fletcher Hanks

Skook WIP #10

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Well hello! It’s a delight to see you again! The constant insanity of the modern civilization doesn’t seem to be infecting you at all!

Me? I’m okay. There are been some bumps in the road but whether those bumps are problems or high points is something I’m still figuring out. I’ll talk about those next week when they are more sorted out. This week, let’s just talk about some art. We’ll start, as usual, with some greeting card conversions, before (scans of ink, colored pencil and marker drawings) and after (digitally cleaned up and edited) versions. (The final designs are available in my Zazzle shop.)

Carving Your Face

In America, Halloween is the season for giving faces to oversized, hollowed out squashes. This is, apparently, an evolution of an old European traditon of carving faces into hollowed out turnips. A long series of films to the contrary, it is not a season for killing teenagers. Killing teenagers is frowned upon by all right thinking people. If you’ve been thinking about killing teenagers, please consider carving pumpkins instead.

Admittedly, killing teenagers will give you more cardiovascular exercise. However, most teenagers are actually more entertaining when they are alive than otherwise. Pumpkins are much more entertaining as objects to carve than teenagers. Plus, you can roast the seeds for a tasty snack!

There are No Weak Kittens

One day Sarah, my fabulous wife, described herself as feeling “weak as a kitten”. That comment inspired this card design. She has the original.

That original was done on a sheet of 8.5×11 folded in thirds. For the version that’s in my shop I had a lot of fun moving and reorienting the elements to fit a standard 5×7 greeting card design. Climb those curtains baby!

A Bit of a Breeze

There you are, walking with your umbrella, staring at your feet, thinking out what you’re going to have for lunch, trying to keep dry and suddenly …

The wind gives you a new perspective!

The world is suddenly a much bigger place. So many colors! So many birds! So much moss on people’s roofs!

Love Is …

Time is short. Spend as much of it on the things that bring you joy in the company of those you love.

A little peace and some cuddling makes the chaos of the rest of the day so much more bearable.

Hail to the King!

Photoshop is a massive program and my knowledge of it is actually pretty minimal. I know how to do a few things fairly well but the program can do so much more than I use it for. Lately I’ve been practicing making gifs of my illustration processes. I save my work in layers so making gifs is fairly easy. This process gif is of one of my King in Yellow portraits.

Influences – Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones is the one of the first film directors I remember identifying. I didn’t really know what he did, I just knew I liked his cartoons more than most of the other cartoons I saw on television. The short cartoons were funny. The smart characters outwitted the buffoons. The drawings were attractive.
As an adult I can identify why I liked Jones’ work more than other cartoon short directors. His character designs are a mix of angles and long curves. His heroes were the smart guys. They succeeded by being more clever than their adversaries. When the clever ones crashed it was usually from failing to think out the ramifications of their latest plan. (Hello Wile E. Coyote!)

I saw most of his work on television. There was the regular Bugs Bunny show on Saturday morning and during the week there were blocks of cartoons that played on a local station in the afternoons. There was The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Horton Hears a Who. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. He drew a comic strip that ran in our local paper for awhile. I loved the art but it didn’t really stand out from the other strips. Jones was a master at motion and timing in film. His strip looked good but didn’t have the space to play to his strengths.


My Moe and Detritus/Misspent Youths comics owe a lot to Jones. The heroes (mostly) succeeded by being smarter than the bad guys, by being (mostly) calm in the face of chaos. Hell, I owe a lot of my personality to Jones. I got bullied and picked on as a kid. He gave me examples of characters who faced bullies and survived (and thrived) by being more rational and much weirder than their foes.

Model Sheeting the Super-Wizard

Last week I posted concept sketches and a model sheet process gif of the Heap. This week I’m posting concept sketches and a process gif of Stardust the Super-Wizard. (Superwizard? Super Wizard?)

The first thing I realized as I started sketching Stardust is that, in the original comics, his expressions were pretty much the same from panel to panel. They ran the gamut from stern to slightly more stern. I spent all of two seconds considering making my version of Stardust just as stoic and blank faced as the original before deciding, “Nah. That’s no fun!”


The original Stardust seems to be a giant – taller than regular humans. I made him about ten feet tall, lanky and stretched out. He’s a space wizard. Maybe he grew up in zero gravity. Maybe he grew up on a planet with lighter gravity than Earth. Maybe his practice of superscience has transformed his body. I’ll figure it out later.

Expressions!

I updated Stardust’s outfit slightly, more for the fun of it than because there was anything wrong with the original. I don’t question the fashion choices of technosorcerors.

That guy in brown standing behind Stardust? His name is Bill. He’ll be in most of the model sheets for size comparison. He claims he’s 5’10” but, you know guys, he may be exaggerating somewhat. He is on the taller side of average. The average height for men in the USA is 5’9″. Since I’m an American that’s the height I’m conditioned to think of when I have to think “taller than” or “shorter than” average when designing characters.

What do I plan to do with Stardust? When I know I’ll tell you!

These Days …

“Bad art is forever.”

I have a friend who likes to quote that when talking about why he noodles on all his projects and has abandoned many altogether. I get that. I want to be proud of the work I produce. I want it to be the best it can be. I’m also plagued with more ideas and images and thoughts than I will ever get down on paper. I plan the work. I do the work. I fix glaring mistakes. I resist noodling. I put it out in the world and leave it to the world to judge whether it is good or bad.

I will always see the faults in my work. Most creative folks can tell you everything that sucks about their work before they can point out what’s good. But art, good and bad, exists in interaction between the work and the audience. Once I put art into the world it’s no longer completely mine. I retain the copyright and the trademark but the interpretation? The judgment of goodness, badness, coolness, greatness? That belongs to the audience. And that’s great! Not because the creator is a bad judge of their own work (although they often are, both rightly and wrongly) but because humans are social animals and art is part of the conversation we have with each other.

I got an email recently about Misspent Youths, a comic book series I created back in 1991.

Hi, there! I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been a fan of Misspent Youths for a while now–since they came out, actually, when I was a disgruntled and disaffected teenager working in a comic shop. The shop I worked at brought them in and I snatched them off the shelf eagerly whenever they arrived, but for whatever reason (it might have involved the store eventually going under; it’s kind of hard to remember) I never got to read Issue #5. Flash forward three decades and my original copies have long since vanished into the aether and I’m in lockdown halfway across the continent from my hometown. Regardless, I got a hankering to read Misspent Youths again and found a set on eBay for a reasonable amount, so I ponied up my money and waited. Well, they arrived today and I couldn’t be more pleased. I’ve read the first issue again so far and it’s just as great as I’d remembered it (and captured much of the flavour from my hometown’s punk scene in the ’90s (minus the Pile and the cop homicide (though we sometimes wished it were otherwise)). Interesting characters, fun dialogue, compelling story–just great  all around. In any case, I just wanted to shoot you a quick line to let you know that those comics you put out all that time ago imprinted on and have stuck with someone since they came out, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to read the entire series through for the first time. Thank you very much for the quality read.

I thanked the author, Chris Eng, for writing, saying –

Your email made my day. I’m delighted that, thirty years later, someone would track down issues of Misspent Youths. I hope issue five was a good read!

He replied:
Issue five was, weirdly, really touching. I mean, it did bring back the shitty kitchen job I had in my teens (where I put up with the first of many exploitative managers but thankfully not a hostage situation), but the issue in general was a nice coda on the (too) brief tales of Detritus and Moe (and all of the other assorted and endearing members of the cast of characters). The series in general summed up my time in my hometown’s punk scene: all of us living as best as we could and looking out for each other while scraping bottom. Good times all round. (Also, can I just say that I would have loved to have seen Detritus and Moe in Bugtown? That would have been a hell of a story. I’m imagining the bizarre and intense meeting between Detritus and Hiroshima. Or the Pile jamming with the Bulldaggers.)

His letter did more than make my day, it made my week. I loved doing Misspent Youths. I loved the characters. Doing that book was fun and exhausting and satisfying and … unprofitable. The publisher didn’t make any money. I certainly didn’t make any money. I did draw 160 pages of comics in about a year while working a part-time job. Brave New Words (the publishing company – they also put out the first four issues of Oz Squad) put out more issues of Misspent Youths than any other series they printed. Cancelling the series was a mutual decision – the guy behind Brave New Words was reassessing his business plan and I wanted a break to improve my art skills. I’d planned to pick the series up again, to publish it myself.

Other things happened instead. My drawing skills did improve. I drew the Misspent Youths characters in some calendars that got printed at Kinkos and sold to friends. I got married. I moved from Santa Rosa, California to Seattle, Washington. My wife and I tried running a publishing company and put out few anthology magazines. I worked in a couple bookstores and as an office manager and now as mail carrier. In the thirty years since Misspent Youths I’ve illustrated/collaborated on a lot of projects (comics, RPGs, novels) that haven’t gotten finished. I’ve enjoyed that work. I got paid for most of it. I’ve improved my skills in the process. But I’ll never get any fan letters complimenting or complaining to me about that work. It sits, unfinished, in my files.

Bad art in the world is more fun than great art in a drawer. I’m not saying that Misspent Youths was bad. Not at all. I put my heart and soul into it. It was the best work I could do at the time. And it’s out in the world. Copies can be found on ebay and on comics specialty sites. If the internet crashed all the art on my websites would be unavailable but someone could still read an issue of Misspent Youths.

I’m a different person than I was when I did that book. The characters still keep me company but they’re older and wiser and (mostly) more settled. They wave to me from the back of my imagination. I love the idea of drawing comics but, so far, working as a mail carrier doesn’t leave me the time and mental energy necessary to do an ongoing series. Drawing is relatively easy. Writing takes more concentration than it used to.

So what’s my point?

Number One –
A big thank you to Chris Eng for writing! Chris has finished some projects of his own. He has a couple of novels available through Amazon: Molotov Hearts and ZeroWave. He didn’t ask me to include those links.

Number Two –
That project you’re working on? Finish it. Put it out into the world. Art is ephemeral. Do the best you can and let it go. What was brilliant once is often considered terrible by a new audience. What was obscure and forgotten originally can find new fans. But it needs to be available.

Yes, I’m talking to myself as much as to y’all.

Back to work. See you next week!

Skook WIP #7

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Welcome to the seventh issue of the Skook Works In Progress newsletter in which I show off some art and write a lot of words. Thank you for joining me. The finished version of each image is available in some form at either my Zazzle or my Redbubble store.

Card Conversions

I’ve spent a few weeks converting scans of hand drawn greeting card illustrations into more print friendly images. The originals were done with primarily with black ink and art markers or colored pencils. The print versions have been been cleaned up and had color added using Photoshop.

Little Red Dragon

I love dragons. I haven’t drawn that many of them because lots of other artists who also love dragons so there are plenty of beautiful pictures of dragons already out in the world. But once in a while it’s fun to add my own depictions to the horde. 

Clearly this is a friendly dragon. It’s the sort of critter that hordes buttons instead of gold. 

Bunny Frankenstein Monster

This fellow is part of my series of classic monsters recast as cartoon bunnies. Because bunnies are terrifying.

I find it amusing that the Universal version of the monster is often depicted as green. He wasn’t intended to be. Charles Pierce, the designer of the creature’s appearance used green make-up because it looked better as grey when filmed in black and white. The original Universal Frankenstein films were all filmed in black and white but color publicitiy photos of the green make-up led the general public to believe that creature was supposed to be green.

An Ice Scream Dream

While I was doing bunny versions of classic monsters it seemed like a good idea to also do bunny versions of modern horror icons.

Three scoops!

Smile!

This critter is one of my favorite drawings. It’s so damned happy.

We all need some happy!

The Beast Within

Sweet and innocent outside. Big jerk inside. Your typical cat.

The original art was done as one of my daily art posts in 2019. I’ve now updated it as a design for a mug. 
Coloring Fluffy

I haven’t managed to do new work for my Redbubble store yet this year. When I do I’ll be sure to make gifs of the process. I’ve now made enough of them I can do it without having to google the process every time. Until I can do (and show off) that new work, here’s a gif of Fluffy putting on his Easter colors. 
Inspirations – Fletcher Hanks

Hmmm. Fletcher Hanks is both inspiration and … anti-inspiration to me. I’d read I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets, the first collection of his work, a few years ago. That got me sketching versions of Stardust and Fantomah. Since I’ve started to create merchandise featuring the characters I felt compelled to do a reread of the book. I discovered that there’s now a complete collection of his comics – Turn Loose Our Death Rays and Kill Them All. I was tempted to buy the book. I mean, I’d need it for reference, right?

Fortunately my skinflint side prevailed and I checked it out of the library instead.

Paul Karasik is the book’s editor. He loves Hanks’ work. This interview gives a good explanation why. His reasons make sense to me. Hanks was working at a time when the comic book industry and the superhero genre was being invented. He worked solo when comics were mostly being done assembly line. He had a big weird imagination. I admire that. I understand being a fan of something because it’s a weird seminal work.  
Now that I’ve seen all of it I’m also quite happy to not own any of his work. Besides Stardust and Fantomah, Hanks created the characters of Big Red McLane (a lumberjack) and Space Smith/Whirlwind Carter/Buzz Crandall (same guy, same girlfriend, different names – a riff on Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon ) and some one shot characters. 300 plus pages of Hanks is too much Hanks for me. Intellectually I get the raw appeal. He was one of the pioneers of early comic books. He was doing superheroes before the genre had been codified.
Unfortunately decades of comic reading – superhero, underground, manga, bande dessinee, etc – as well as drawing my own comics means that I have a hard time appreciating his comics as more than artifacts. Fantomah and Stardust are his stand out characters. They are more fascinating to me for their potential than for most of what Hanks did with them. They are in the public domain which means anyone can use them in art and stories. Other folks already have. That potential wakes my imagination. What could one do with a space wizard and a jungle vengence goddess?

These Days … 

So far, so good.

When I’m out delivering mail I’m often asked how I’m doing and that’s my answer. I wear my mask. I get my job done. I come home and do work that wakes me up.

Writing this newsletter and having my online shops has given me a focus that, until recently, I didn’t realize I was missing. I’ve enjoyed doing commissions the last few years. I’m proud of the work I’ve done. In between the commissioned work I did a lot of one off illustrations and posted them to my website. I did those for fun, for practice, to fill my time. Between commissions and one offs I kept pretty busy but everything I did was short term. If it was a commission, it had a deadline. If it was a one off it needed to be a small project because I was doing it around the commissions that had deadlines.

I finished my last commission in early autumn last year. With nothing on my plate I looked for something else to do. I considered setting up a Patreon account but I didn’t feel comfortable asking folks to send me money to just indulge my whims. If I was going to ask for support and subscriptions I wanted to be sure that I was providing something predictable. I was also interested in creating things that were real and physical, not just more digital ephemera.

And then I remembered that print on demand online stores existed. When something seems like a good idea I tend to dive in first and figure out what I’m doing as I go along. I signed up for a Zazzle store. I made some merchandise. I did some research and decided that Redbubble was a better platform for some of my work than Zazzle so I set up a store there too. Suddenly I had places to put all those one off illustrations I’d been doing between commissions.

As of this writing I have 174 products on Zazzle and 77 designs on Redbubble.Yes, none of this merchandise actually exists until someone orders it. That’s part of the fun. I’m creating potential products. I’m not putting up images that I think will sell. I don’t know what image will catch someone’s fancy. I’m delighted when someone orders something unexpected.

I’m now in the process of creating new art for my stores.I’m thinking more of specific designs. A cup design is not a greeting card design. What works on a t-shirt probably won’t fit on a mask. As I think of specific designs I’m also thinking of consistency and style and branding. Ew. Branding.

I don’t plan to apply a hard style to future work. I’m not going just do one type of image because I think it will be popular. I’m a terrible capitalist. I’m doing this for my own amusement as much as to sell things. Hell, I’m making art so I have something to write a newsletter about. By publishing this newsletter every Friday I’m prompting myself to make art to put in the shops. One thing leads to another and another and back.

The idea of branding comes up because I know I like consistency in the work of others so, probably, others would like consistency from me. I’ve got a number of characters I’m planning to use regularly. I’m creating model sheets of them so I can keep them recognizeable, consistent, from image to image. I’ll post those and other process sketches in the upcoming weeks. More art!

I’m waking up earlier so I have more time to work on the art, the shops, this newsletter before I head to USPS. I put in a little more time before I go to bed. (Big thanks to my wife for pointing me at my drawing board on those days when I think I just want to sit and stare into space.) Focus is … oddly relaxing. Instead of a lot of little projects I now have one (somewhat vaguely defined) project. It’s an evolving project. A work in progess. Heh.

Thank you for your help. You subscribed to this newsletter so I have to show up with something for you every Friday. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think would enjoy it. I welcome any comments or suggestions. Hit reply and start typing.

I hope your week has gone well. I hope you have the focus you want and projects that give you purpose. See you next week!