Gallery: Pulp Action Cousins
I finished illustrating the Lovecraft Country … oops … The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection a few weeks ago. Our book has had a title change in order avoid confusion with a certain HBO series called Lovecraft Country. The series is based on a book of the same title. Confusion wasn’t expected when it was just the book out there but TV series tend to be more noticed than books. The studios that produce them also tend to have lawyers on hand to make sure that no one can profit on a property, even accidentally, without proper payment and licensing. Our book is only related to TV show in that they are both inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft but who wants to deal with lawyers when a simple title change can let you avoid them?
The final illustration is of the Cousins as grown ups. Oscar wrote two versions of them. The first was as “regular” adults, at least as regular as the Cousins were likely to manage. Those versions of the Cousins appear on the cover of An Eldritch Legacy. That book is kickstarting now.
The versions of the Cousins below are the Pulp Action versions for folks who want to play characters who are more rough and tumble. One thing I like about working with Oscar is his willingness to roll with some of the stuff I put in the illustrations. When I showed him the sketch I suggested that the Cousins were fighting Serpent People. When he posted it online he included this description – “On the Island of Blood, the cousins are ambushed by the Dino-Sapiens, transported here from a parallel universe by the Thule Society! The Eldritch New England Cousins as adults for Pulp Cthulhu.”
Oscar asked me to do this illustration in black and white to evoke the look of an old Saturday matinee serial from the 1930s.
I like how the illustration came out but I’d visualized it in lurid color as the cover of a pulp fiction magazine. So, for the fun of it and to satisfy my itch to see it closer to how I’d originally imagined it, I did a quick color job on it and added a title.
Story Seed #50
Take the cover above. Forget everything you know about the Cousins. Who are the Abnaturalists? How did they get together? What sort of adventures do they have? Many a pulp magazine was started with a spare cover that the publisher had laying around and then had stories written to fit it.
Recommendation
This week I’ve done very little reading of newsletters or watching of youtube videos. The reason is below.
Local News
I spent most of my non-postal time in the last week working on my Zazzle shop. I did some research to see if Zazzle was actually the best place for me to establish a shop and the answer was … probably. There are print on demand sites that have more focus but, of the comparisons I read, Zazzle is as likely to work for me as Red Bubble or Society 6 or … They all require me to market myself. They all require me to create and add products. So what the hell, I’m starting with Zazzle. I’ve made individual products from the site in the past and was happy with the results.
So far it’s both a little fun and a little frustrating and a little weird. The fun part is taking art I created years ago and putting it on … something. A t-shirt. A coffee mug. Leggings. The frustrating part is adjusting the images to fit some of the products. I did a lot of illustrations at a 5×7 aspect ratio. That ratio works well for greeting cards. I did a lot of others at a 6×9 ratio. That ratio works for comic books and trade paperbacks. Neither of those ratios work as well for posters or puzzles. 8×10. 11×14.
But it’s more fun than not. I’ve posted links to Facebook and sold a few items. Yay!
Beyond the creation of products I need to figure out how to market them to people who have never met me.
The links above should take you to the store. Once I’ve gotten used the process I should be able to set up a store page here at Skookworks that will link directly to the Zazzle one. Please check it out. Let me know if there are certain types of products or images on which you’d like me to focus. Thank you!
I hope your week has gone well. Thank you for stopping by. Stay safe. Stay cool. Remember to drink a lot of water. And wear a mask!
