Tag Archives: The Heap

Skook WIP #17

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Open on: the Skookworks studio. The Cartoonist sits in front of his computer. He is typing. A black cat is slumped on his lap. It’s impossible to tell the time of day. The room has no windows. Two of the walls have built-in floor to ceiling bookshelves. The desk on which the computer sits is cluttered with scraps of paper and pens. The drawing table next to the computer is similarly cluttered but with a different variety of pens and pencils and the papers have more art on them.

The Salesman wanders in.

Salesman: “Hey.”

The Cartoonist doesn’t look up. Cartoonist: “Uhm?”

Salesman: “Did you listen to the Planet Money podcast about buying a superhero?”

The Cartoonist stops typing. He looks at the Salesman. Cartoonist: “Of course I did. We’re the same person. If you’ve done something, so have I.”

The Salesman rolls his eyes. Salesman: “For a guy with a lot of imagination you’ve got a narrow focus. Just pretend we’re two people so I have something to write about in this week’s newsletter.”

The Cartoonist rolls his eyes in exactly the same way the Salesman had done. Cartoonist: “I’m writing the newsletter while we’re talking. So keep talking.”

The Salesman frowns. Salesman: “Why isn’t the Writer writing the newsletter?”

Cartoonist: “We can only be so many people before I get confused. Let’s stick to the point. Or find one. What about the Planet Money thing did you want to talk about?”

Salesman: “What do you think?”

Cartoonist: “I think the Archie comics guy was right, Micro-Face is a terrible name.”

Salesman: “Not that. What do you think about us digging up our own public domain superhero?”

Cartoonist: “Another one? We’ve already got five. What do we need another for?”

Salesman: “All of our guys have been used by other people. Why not grab a more unknown character and use that?”

The Cartoonist stares at the Salesman. The cat yawns and adjusts its position slightly.

Cartoonist: “Having some recognition helps us doesn’t it? These characters all have some reputation outside my drawings. A more unknown character might as well be a completely new character.”

Salesman: “Have you at least looked at the Public Domain Superheroes catalog?”

Cartoonist: “I’ve looked there and at this list. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. There are thousands of characters listed. Lots of gods and goddesses from old myths. Lots of daring aviators. Lots of folks who wear masks to fight crime. Lots of Flash Gordon wannabes.It’s fun to look but it’s hard to get more than a glimpse at any one character.
And I think the public domain status of some of the characters is questionable. The lists were put together by fans not copyright lawyers. I’d rather not get inspired by some character, do up a bunch of designs and then get sued. That’s not fun.”

Salesman: “I’m just trying to figure out an angle to take to promote our work. It’s … weird.”

Cartoonist: “Isn’t that an angle. ‘Weird stuff’?”

Salesman: “There’s a lot of weird stuff online. I’m trying to figure out a more focused branding to use.”

The Cartoonist makes a crumpled up paper sort of expression. Cartoonist: “Do you have to use the term ‘branding’? Isn’t that outdated by now?”

Salesman: “I googled it before you typed my dialogue. It’s still in major use.”

Cartoonist: “I hate marketing catchwords.”

Salesman: “Deal with it. You’ve got to play the game to get rich.”

Cartoonist: “A. If we’re trying to get rich we’re going about it wrong. B. We’ve got a day job to pay the bills so we’re doing this for the fun of it.”

Salesman: “You’re doing this for the fun of it. I want us to be rich.”

Cartoonist: “You’re only a tiny part of our personality. The rest of us doesn’t care about being wealthy. Some parts of us are morally opposed to great wealth.”

Salesman: “The Mail Carrier wouldn’t mind retiring. Soon.”

Cartoonist: “He does have an exhausting job. And I would enjoy spending more time drawing.”

Salesman: “Right! So I’m trying to figure out a more focused branding for our merchandise. The stuff in our stores is all over the place. Cute cartoon animal greeting cards. The Mighty Nizz. Cthulhu stuff. One-off scifi and monster illustrations. I’m thinking we’d better off having a half a dozen more directed stores instead of a couple general ones.”

Cartoonist: “Have you wandered off the point? I thought we were talking about our superheroes.”

Salesman: ” …. Right. So we’re not going to revive some obscure public domain character?”

Cartoonist: “Not today. Our stores are a jumble because we just jumped in and started putting them together with what we had on hand. We’re past that stage now. I’m designing images for the available merchandise. I’m having fun. I’ve got plans for Stardust, Octobriana, the Heap, Fantomah and the Face.”

Salesman: “Are you doing new comics?”

The Cartoonist makes that crumpled paper sort of expression again. The cat hops off his lap and wanders out of the studio. Cartoonist: “Ask me that when the Mail Carrier has a long vacation. Comics take time and concentration and those are rare commodities in this studio. Meanwhile, I’m working on some fun designs.”

Salesman: “Fun designs that I’ll be able to sell?”

Cartoonist: “They’ll be designs I’d want to wear myself.”

The Salesman sighs. Salesman: “More weird and obscure things? You hate me, don’t you?”

These Days …

Happy Friday! Thank you for dropping by.

This issue is a shorter one, a bit of breather between finishing the greeting card conversions and starting discussing the next phases for the online shops.

It’s been a weird couple of weeks. If you read my last newsletter you know that we (me, my wife and our housemate) have been quarantined because our new housemate is recovering from covid. The responsible thing to do after exposure is to stay away from other people for 14 days. So no work outside the house. No delivering mail.

Last week I was in a bad mood. I like my routines. This wasn’t in my plans. It wasn’t a vacation. I may have complaints about the number of hours I work at USPS but working there gets me the paycheck to fund the rest of our life. Not going to work makes me nervous. Not going to work because there’s a potentially deadly disease in my living space adds to that discomfort.

This week I was in a lighter mood. Our housemate has been getting better. Neither Sarah nor I have had any symptoms of covid.

I’ve been able to use the home time to get a lot of designs completed for my shops. Chemo, the black cat, has been acting as my executive assistant. He was waking me up at 3 am before quarantine and he has continued to do so now. Most of the new work is available now in my Redbubble store. I’m really happy with how the new stuff has been turning out. I’m enjoying the challenge of creating images that both suggest stories and look good on t-shirts (and mugs and blankets and shower curtains and phone cases and ..). I will be showing the process steps for each design in upcoming newsletters.

We’ve been rearranging the space a bit so our new housemate has room for her own stuff and has a place to work on her paintings. We’ve been giving away furniture. Chemo and the new grey cat, Flax, have been getting along.

We plan to all get tested for covid tomorrow or Sunday. Assuming we’re clear I’ll be back delivering mail next week. I’ll be getting my second Pfizer vaccine the week after that.

Yay.

I hope that things in your world are looking bright. If you need to wear shades, put them on. Everyone looks cooler in shades.

See you next week!

Skook WIP #9

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Welcome to the ninth issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter. You are a fabulous person and very good looking. Give yourself a gold star!

Greeting Card Conversions

In which I present a sampling of before (scans of the original ink and colored pencil/art marker drawings) and after (adjusted in Photoshop) greeting card designs. The final designs are available at my Zazzle store.

Probably Not Bob

In the January 15th issue of this newsletter I posted a card design featuring a beer drinking, cigarette smoking reptile. One of my reader’s asked if it was a portrait of Bob the Lizard. My response was, “Who?” The reader sent me an image of Bob saying that he was a character in the Grimjack comics published in the Eighties and Nineties. I read a good chunk of those Grimjack comics but I don’t remember much about them.

My beer drinking, cigarette smoking lizard is Aunt Hortense. She made her first appearance in The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus minicomic, issue 5. She’s the parental figure of a bunch of dimension hopping lizards. I published that minicomic in 1989. I don’t know when Bob the Lizard started showing up in Grimjack comics but the first issue of that series was pubished in 1983. Did Bob influence my creation of Aunt Hortense?

I don’t remember. What I do remember is that, sometime in the mid-Eighties, a good friend of mine got tattoos of some drawings I had done. One of those drawings was the silohuette of a lizard. I remember thinking, “I should draw more lizards!” From that seed came Aunt Hortense, Seth, Zerro, Lamallia, Missi and Willy. I first drew them as basically identical but, over the years, they evolved distinct appearances. Aunt Hortense got craggy and squarish. In the Nineties I featured the lizards in a series of xeroxed calendars and some issues of GLYPH magazine.

In recent years I’ve only drawn Hortense a few times. Once was the previous greeting card design. More recently was this portrait done for my tattoo sporting friend for her birthday.   

I didn’t do much to update the image for a greeting card. Hortense is not someone you mess with.

Good Buddies

This image is blatantly inspired by the Chuck Jones directed cartoon Feed the Kitty. I saw it as a kid on one of those afternoon cartoon shows and it stuck with me.

We all need friends and having friends who are very different from us is good for our character.

A Smile and a Dance

I have no idea what’s going on in this illustration. He’s happy so I’m happy when I look at him. That’s good enough for me.

Let the joy shine!

A Little Monster

Inside every big monster is a little monster that just wants a hug. And a cookie.

Giving this critter a cookie and a hug will not only bring you joy, it will keep you from feeling those claws and teeth. It is a monster after all.

Spreading the Heap Around

I did this drawing of the Heap as one of my daily sketches back in 2019. It’s one of my favorite pieces from that project so it seemed like it would look good on a mug.

To better fit a mug I extended the image, colored the figures and redid the background. Here’s a process gif showing the main stages.

I usually imagine there’s story behind my illustrations. The Heap and this girl are grooving at a night club. Why?

I don’t know. I often always know the story. I have to think about it.

The Heap as a DJ? As an MC? Maybe this image is part of an album cover?

Okay then.

And if it works as an album cover, why not on a t-shirt?

Okay then.


Influences – J.C. Leyendecker

It’s hard to discuss J.C. Leyendecker separate from Norman Rockwell. Rockwell is now the more famous of the two illustrators but Leyendecker came first. Rockwell idolized Leyendecker and his early style is strongly modeled on Leyendecker’s. I was glad to read that the two artists did become friends.

I love Leyendecker’s art for its precision. It’s deceptively simple. It’s all sharp angles and clean lines, geometry and design. All his characters, even the (rare) down and outers, have a sparkle to them. No grime.

Oddly, it was easier to find good images of Leyendecker’s work online than Rockwell’s. The link in my first paragraph will take you to a ten part blog series that features a wealth of his paintings. I only grabbed a few for flavor. The man did thousands of paintings – magazine and book covers and clothing advertisements.


It occurs to me that Leyendecker’s idealized men and women could have been models for the original comic book superheroes. The artists of early comics would have known his work. Today, he is a nostalgic footnote. In the late thirties and early forties, he was famous. It would have been hard not to think about Leyendecker’s work when you wanted to depict a heroic figure.

Character Concept Sketches and Model Sheets – The Heap

The Heap. The Face. Octobriana. Fantomah. Stardust. You’ll find depictions of all these characters in my shops. They are all comic characters who have escaped into the public domain. They are actually just a few of the comic characters who (mostly) debuted in the early days of the American comic book industry who are now available for anyone to use. So why am I  interested in this bunch?

Honestly, it feels like they found me. I didn’t go looking for public domain comic book characters to illustrate. I’ve participated in online remake/remodel challenges using other public domain characters and none of them stuck in my imagination.
Each character has a different appeal.

Stardust is a space wizard. His sorcery is of the “Technology so advanced as to seem like magic” variety.

Fantomah is a jungle vengence goddess.

The Face is … so basic he’s fun. He’s a guy who puts on a scary mask to fight crime. No superpowers. No tragic backstory.

Octobriana is a kick ass revolutionary.

The Heap is the original comic book swamp monster.

Until now, all my illustrations of these characters have been one-off images. I hadn’t considered drawing any of these folks on a reoccurring basis. Because of that they often look significantly different from version to version. I’m now past the “just get started” phase of creating merchandise in my shops and I’m moving on to the “create a consistent brand” stage.

That has meant doing what would have been preliminary sketches. These are to try out different versions of a character to see what looks good. I figured I’d start with the Heap. I’ve drawn him quite a few times over the years and his design is pretty simple. He’s basically a humanoid haystack with a sort of a carrot nose. In most of my illustrations I’ve given him some sort of eye. The Heap was drawn by a number of different artists during his original comic book run but most of them just gave him shadows where his eyes might have been. Having eyes means there’s more of a chance of having expressions so I decided to keep them. Most of my earlier versions have had some sort of roots and fungus on them. That gives a little variety to his design.

The Heap is a compost pile that’s come to life. It grew up around the body of a WW! pilot who had crashed his plane in a Polish swamp. It shambles about the world fighting monsters and human evil doers. 
Once I’d gotten a feel for the details of the character I set about creating a model sheet. I plan to do this with all the characters I will be using. Model sheets are usually created when a character is going to drawn by different artists in a variety of media (animation, comics, toys, breakfast cereal, whatever). It gives the creative team a base to work from. I’ve done model sheets for myself when I’ve been designing characters for comics and graphic novels. Most model sheets feature a character in a series of standing positions – front view, side view, back view. Most of my model sheets will have character in motion. It’s more fun to draw.

I basically stuck to my Big Swamp Boogie version of the Heap. I liked it when I drew it in 2019 so why not?

I’m mostly going to be showing my process work as gifs. I like watching an image as it evolves but, if you’d rather (or would rather also) see the different stages as separate images, just let me know.

These Days …

I like deadlines. But only deadlines that I’ve either given myself or negotiated with a client. I like them because they help me to structure how to manage a project. If something is due in two weeks I know I should be finishing at least 1/14th of it every day. I therefore know the minimum of work I need to complete. I also know that life happens and I may not be able to do 1/14th of the project every day so I aim to get 1/7 of the work done each day. That does not mean I push myself to do twice as much work as possible every day. I hate rush jobs. It means I’ve planned (or agreed to) a schedule that allows me to do good work at a comfortable pace in the time I have available outside of my USPS job and my responsibilities at home.

Last year’s newsletter was an exercise in getting myself to write on a regular basis. The art I posted was primarily from past projects. I published an issue a week. That was my goal and I met it. Yay me! My one frustration was that I wanted folks to subscribe and only a couple of people did so. Apparently the set up of my website made the subscription link difficult to find. I subscribe to a couple dozen newsletters. I don’t read every issue but having them show up in my inbox reminds me that they exist. So for 2021 I decided to use an email newsletter service to see if that would make it easier for readers to sign up. A number of the newsletters I read are hosted by tinyletter.com. Most of the rest are hosted by substack.com. Substack allows writers to charge for subscriptions. Tinyletter does not. I don’t plan to charge for subscriptions so I chose tinyletter.

Because I like being ahead of a deadline I started setting up emails. At the moment I’ve got images prepped (and some writing about those images) for newsletters into April. The first seven newsletters went out with no problem. You folks subscribed. Thank you!

Last week I hit a snag. I pressed send on issue 8, went to have a cup of coffee and came back to this message –

“Your account has been flagged by our abuse prevention system. Our team reviews all accounts for Compliance with our Terms of Use. If your letter has not been sent after 12 hours, please reach out to our Support team with the username for your account.”

Issue 8 was stuck in limbo and, most annoyingly, I didn’t know why. Was it the Rockwell images? Was it the joke about the red canid with the trumpet? Did I have too many links? I read the Terms of Use. I checked FAQs. I missed my Friday posting deadline. Phooey. After 13 hours the newsletter hadn’t sent so I sent tinyletter an email asking for help. Friday became Saturday became Sunday. I

The really embarassing thing is that, having concentrated on putting together this newsletter for the last few weeks, I’d kind of forgotten that I still had a website. Having remembered I recreated the issue as a blogpost and sent out links via tinyletter as a test to see if it was just my 8th issue that was blocked or my whole account. Those links went.

On Monday morning I got a response from Stanley at tinyletter –

“Hi there,

Thank you for reaching out about your TinyLetter account. We’ll be glad to help offer some clarification here. 

Taking look at the account, it appears that our automated prevention system, Omnivore, detected content, keywords, or activity that can indicate the possibility of harmful information being sent through our service.

Upon review, however, we can see that the letter is fine and has been moved back to drafts where it can be resent. 

We appreciate your patience during our human review. As the specific keywords and content that Omnivore detects are constantly changing, we’re unable to provide a full list of all potential triggers, however if you run into any issues in the future, please reach out and we’ll be happy to assist. 

You can read more about our detection practices here:
http://mailchimp.com/omnivore/

Please let us know if you have any questions. We’re here to help. “

I responded, jokingly asking if it was my joke about the horny fox. Stanley then answered with –

“Hi David,

Thanks for the reply. For proprietary reasons I wouldn’t be able to divulge exactly what set off our system, but rest assured we’ve made adjustments to prevent it from stopping letters in the future 🙂

Let us know if you have any questions. Take care :)”

I sent out issue #8 on Monday afternoon. If you haven’t read it yet it’s available in both the tinyletter archives and my website. Hopefully you’re reading this issue on Friday morning in your email as planned. If not, check my website on Saturday. I’ll be reposting it there.

Hopefully you are also doing well and only a little stir crazy. I get outside as part of my job and I’m stir crazy. Hopefully you’re managing better than I.am. See you next week!

​

Tuesday Night Party Club #24

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Have I mentioned that I’m a fan of both swamp monsters and public domain characters? Of course I have.

Have I said that I often fall back on familiar characters when I’m doing practice illustrations? I’m sure I have.

So here’s another faux cover for an imaginary Heap comic. Of course it’s a number one. Number one’s are more valuable than number twenty-sevens. Usually. Below is a process gif. I had mostly finished the image before I thought of turning it into a cover so the gif is a different size than the cover.

Story Seed #44
Move the Spotlight

Everyone is a protagonist of their own story. Everyone plays a supporting character in someone else’s. One way to find a new story is to take a favorite story and move the focus. This is not a new idea. John Gardner’s Grendel tells the story of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view. Gregory Maguire’s Wicked tells the story of the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. John Kessel’s Pride and Prometheus tells the story of Frankenstein from the point of view of Mary Bennet. Heh.

There are many, many more examples. And there are so many more “supporting” characters than there are protagonists. Each one has a story waiting to be told. That cardboard villain may have a good reason to behave so poorly. That butler might spend his evening hours doing far more interesting things than bringing the master drinks. What did that femme fatale do once she’d screwed over the square jawed sucker and left with all the cash?

All we have to do is listen.

Recommendations- Pulp Covers

Pulpcovers.com does daily posts of pulp magazine and early pulpish paperback covers. They have thousands of images to peruse. One can easily lose a few hours looking. And I have. Still more fun and rational than a lot of Facebook.

Local News

Life at home is fairly quiet. The cats are doing well. We tried scheduling a couple of get togethers at the homes of friends who have big yards but ended up cancelling due to rain. This has left us with a freezer full of varieties of cheesecake. There are worse problems to have.

I’m working busily to finish up the last of the Lovecraft Country Holidays illustrations. After that it looks like I may be illustrating a short comic story. The writer and I have tried to work together before and the projects … stalled. We’re firends and do want to finish some kind of project together. My stipulation for working on this one is that he provide a complete script with thumbnails. I’ll then do new, more detailed thumbnails with the dialogue roughed in. If we both like the result I’ll do final drawings.

I hope that your days are as fun and/or relaxing as you need them to be. Times are weird and will get weirder. Be as weird as you can. Be kind. Be patience. Be stubborn. See you next week.

Tuesday Night Party Club #18

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Art Gallery: Thirty Years of the Heap

I’m a fan of swamp monsters. Over the years I’ve drawn a few versions of the first big name comic book swamp monster – The Heap. He’s a got a simple, interesting design and he’s in the public domain. It’s always more fun for me to draw my version of a public domain character than another version of some corporate possession. But, yes, one of those illustrations below does feature both Swamp Thing and Man-Thing. The final two images are swamp monster portraits I did for Jason Levine. The first is, again, yes, the Man-Thing, done in 2011. Both Jason and I love the Man-Thing’s design. The second is a pin-up I did of Jason’s character Mishmash and a random sewer monster back in 2006.

Story Seed

The Heap regains/retains Eric von Emmelman’s mind.

I have the three volume collection of the original Hillman Comics adventures of The Heap. The fact that the Heap was born from the body of Baron Eric von Emmelman, a WW1 fighter pilot, makes little difference in most of the stories. He could just as well have been born from the body of Vladmir the plumber or Olga the shopkeeper. The Heap doesn’t speak and so far as the reader knows, he doesn’r quite think. The Heap never really remembers who he was. In some stories he encounters former family members and helps them out but neither he nor they know why. In other stories he follows an American boy because the kid carries around a model biplane. Mostly he wanders the globe and acts as deux ex monstrum to take down evil doers and monsters.

Two possibilities:

  1. Stories set during WW2, the era when the original Hillman Comics were published. When the Heap rises out of that Polish swamp he awakes with the mind and memories of Eric von Emmelman. It’s 1942. How does a former German aristocrat react to the Nazis?
  2. Stories set in modern day. Perhaps the Heap regrows von Emmelman’s memories. Perhaps he is granted (or cursed with) those memories by an outside force. One hundred years have passed since his death. How does a man from 1918 deal with the world of 2020?

In both versions von Emmelman must interact with the world in the form of a huge swamp monster. Chances are he won’t be able to speak. There’s no guaranty that either version of the new Heap will be heroic. In life, von Emmelman doesn’t seem to have been a bad guy but the original comic stories are short and light on details about his character. Waking up as an inhuman pile of vegetation might have toxic effects on his attitude toward humanity.

Recommendations

Mythcreants is a website for creators of speculative fiction. It features a host of posts looking at SF cliches and tropes and suggesting ways to address or remove sid cliches and tropes. I’m a nerd. I both love SF and I love endlessly examining what makes (or doesn’t make) a good SF story so I’ve happily gotten lost for hours on this site.

Current Events

Let’s see –

My Big Sister dropped off another cooler full of amazing, ready-to-cook dinners. I think this is cooler #7. This week’s menu is:
Broccoli mushroom stir fry and shrimp/pork pot stickers with dipping sauces
Large cherry tomato, bacon, shallot, mushroom, garlic, pepper tart with fig tartlettes
Lamb tagine with couscous.
Avocado/bacon snack toast using Sea Wolf sourdough bread.

Of course she delivered the latest the day after I’d stocked up the fridge with supplies from Costco and Trader Joes and I’d baked two large lasagnas. No chance of starving this week.

I got my copy of An Inner Darkness from Golden Goblin Press. I’d backed the project on Kickstarter and then Oscar Rios commissioned me to color some of Reuben Dodd’s black and white illustrations. The work looked good on my computer screen and it looks good on the printed page. That’s not a given. Kudos to Mark Shireman for his excellent production work. I’ll be posting one or two these pieces in a future newsletter. The book is available for purchase here.

I got word from the 42 word anthology folks that my story had been accepted. I’ve no idea when that story will see print (or other form of publication). They’re still accepting new work. They also rejected my brother’s story. That says something about their taste. I don’t mean that as a dig. I think he’s a brilliant writer. Not everyone likes my stuff. Tastes vary. I just think, given their goal of 1764 stories and they are still looking for stories after almost two years, perhaps broader tastes are needed.

Work at USPS continues, same as ever. I wear a mask and gloves while sorting mail and packages in the station. I mostly don’t while I’m delivering since that part of the job is a solo affair. Mail volumes are still down. Parcel volumes are up.

I’m grateful that life is pretty much the same as last week and the week before. I’m lucky. For those of you whose lives are seriously impacted, you have my sympathy. If I can do anything to help out, please let me know.

 

 

September the 8th, 2019

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Baron von Emmelman was a German WW1 flying ace who was shot down over a Polish swamp. He died. The swamp claimed his body and then … magical stuff happened. Two decades after the Baron died, the Heap shuffled out of the swamp and into the hearts of millions.

Happy Birthday to:
Adam Scott Glancy

May the 17th, 2019

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Life as a swamp monster is, generally, pretty peaceful. Sure, occasionally you have to punch evil supernatural horrors or rescue an idiot human child (or, worse, adult) from being eaten by the local wildlife, but mostly all you have to do is enjoy the sunshine and watch the world go by. Nothing to complain about there.

Happy Birthday to:
Adam Crossingham