And So It Begins...

A little something I did to celebrate a little event happening today :)

Cheers,
Francesco

Look Out, Choopie!!!

The Perhapanauts (a fabolous series which you all should be reading) #5 just came out in the stores so I thought to share this alternate cover Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau kindly asked me to do for an upcoming issue of their book. Not sure which issue and when it will be out (I'll let you know) but I wanted to preview what I did for them.
Thank you, Tood and Craig, for letting me play with our favorite chupacabras :D

Cheers,
Francesco

SHELBY!

Hi guys,

I was wondering how a 1969 Mustang Shelby would look as Transformer. Well, here's the result. Hope you guys dig it and will not hate me for messing with a Mustang ;)
Click on the images for a bigger view.

Cheers,
Francesco

SCALPED!!!

I want to share a great news with you all: I was lucky enough to be invited to illustrate an issue of Scalped (#27), the critically acclaimed series created by Jason Aaron and R.M.Guera and published by DC Vertigo. I have been fan of this series since day one so you can imagine how excited I am to draw one of the stories written by the talented and Southern friend Jason. For those of you who are not familiar with this title, it's one of the top noir, gritty book out there (the other being Criminal by Brubaker and Phillips). I greatly suggest to hunt down the trades if you guys haven't got on this book already.
While waiting to show some preview pages, I hope you enjoy the promo art above.

Cheers and all the best to you all in 2009!
Francesco

"The Cold, The Frozen, and The Iced", Xmas 2008

Wish you all and your families a Merry Holiday Season and a Wonderful New Year!
Thanks for the continuing inspiration, my friends :)

Cheers,
Francesco

TearJerker!!!

Defnitely one of the most successful and funny 007 parodies in recent times. American Dad is really a good show (along with Family Guy, of course ;))

Cheers,
Francesco

Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Just a fun intermezzo.
Now I have the songs stuck in my brain ;)
One step to the left... :P

Cheers,
Francesco

Dr. No (1962)

All these nice words on QOS put me in a 007 mood these days :)
Decided to revise an old Connery sketch from 2006 and turn it into a movie poster and decided to throw in a Dr No "portrait" too to top it all. Hope you guys digg it :)

Cheers,
Francesco

Trio of Masked Heroes

Hello friends,

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with your families. I just got back home from mine and decided to share some of the free quick sketches I recently did on the back of my sketchbooks (since we were talking about this topic in the previous post).
If you have time, check out Pulp Sunday to see how I played a little more on that Sandman sketch in Painter and turn it in a (fake) cover piece :)

Cheers,
Francesco

Quantum of Solace... Retro Style!

Inspired by a certain movie I just watched this past weekend ;)

Cheers,
Francesco

Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July, everyone :)

And, of course, I couldn't help to do a quick (WWII) Capt AMerica for the occasion :)

Cheers,
Francesco

Zorro and his Zorro-Mobile!!!

Hi guys,

I did this costumized Zorro at the recent Atlanta COmics Expo as part of the charity event benefitting RIF (Reading Is Fundamental).
If you guys want to bid on it, there are less than 2 days remaining (I know, I should have posted this earlier, but I have been so busy On my Zorro and Scholastic gigs that had little time for everything else).
Click here for the e-bay auction of my Zorro munny
Anyhow, hope you enjoy it even if can't bid on it (I hope you can though ;))

Cheers,
Francesco

To Mike...

I did this last night to pay a tribute to a great artist.

Hope you like it, Mike, this is for you.

Francesco

Help This Blackbird (24/7 Preview)

I can now officially announce (since I turned in the pages ) that I will be part of the second vol. of the Image anthology 24/7. Ivan Brandon was gracious enough to invite me to contribute to it and I happily accepted and contributed with not one but two stories.

The first one, at 4 page story titled Confession, is something I am very proud of since it's my first time where I did everything (story and art and even lettering). For those who are around my age, there are some Easter eggs and homage to one of my wife's favorite songwriters in this story (like especially the pacing/time signature is meant to have this certain tone, but there are lots of other little elements in these pages). Probably nobody will notice or care, but it is still a lot of fun and I think add another level of meaning to the story I was trying to tell here (or at least it was meant to; we'll have to see if that comes across or if I accomplished what I was aiming to do). There is a big hint also in the title of this post.



This is something I like to do with little short stories or even with single illos -- I try to communicate ideas on different levels and really tell a full story. Even if I'm just drawing a Batman or whatever, I have in mind a story or a situation that I try to get across with background or costume or mood or something.

In a very weird way, this tendency to do things in this way kinda leads me to the second story I have in 24/7. The second one is based on an illustration I did some time ago. The excellent writer, Macon Blair, took all the elements from the illo and built a very unique and cool story of 13 pages. That is the famous ANDY I was mentioning earlier (and I showed a page from on the drawing board). It was a blast to draw and I hope you will enjoy it as well.



This story was a surprise for sure. Ivan Brandon had seen my illo and passed it along to Macon and asked him to write a story based on this. I absolutely had no time to do this project, but when I saw Macon's first script, I was really compelled to draw it. You see, what really got me was not that he had done the script. That is flattering, but not so important.

The thing that got me in the heart was that he picked up on all the elements I put in the illo, even things that were not so obvious. He got the weird ape language references, he got that that I was trying to say something about the cyber jungle and hoping that somebody sees the illo thinks to the natural jungle and make that comparison in the mind and think about what is the same and what is not and what is going and gone. That is what touched me, because really it was probably the first time that a writer really understood (or even tried to understand) what I was meaning and what I was really trying to say.

He went past the surface elements and really thought about what was in the art. It felt like a true collaboration, even if we never spoke about the project because all what I was thinking and feeling was in that script. Then he added some of the coolest story on top of all that and made my humble little illo into something totally amazing. It was kinda spooky actually. I am really looking forward to hearing reaction when this book comes out and hope everyone really enjoy these stories!

OK sorry for going all intellectual or whatever. I promise the next post will just be a Batman or something!!!!

Spartans! Under Siege

Back in March I started a thread/jam dedicated to the movie "300" which was about to be released. The jam's goal was to reach the amount of 300 drawings by having several artists contributing to it and being inspired either by the movie or by the real historical events of Leonidas and the Battle at Thermopylae.
The jam is still going and since I run out of single illos, I decided to start a sequential strip: that's how Spartans! Under Siege is born! :)

Here are the first panels. Hope you guys enjoy it :)

Cheers,
Francesco

Raccoon & Skunk's Investigations

Here's something I have done today in between the pages: I might have actually started something here . :)

Lovecraftian Frogs

His is what I call a nice break from the pages I am working on. It actually started as a frog doodle and rapidly evolved in a full lovecraftian illustration.

I decided to slap some quick colors on it: still managing to get half good at Painter

Girls, Girls, Girls

Did this for the jam over at the girls forum on the drawing board based on J Bone's templates. These were so much fun to do!

WIP - new project

Here's a wip from rough to final of a panel from a page I am working on today. And, as you can see, this isn't from the american indian book!

Bond... James Bond

Here are a few sketches that I did for the monthly drawing jam over at the drawing board. This month's subject was James Bond. Hope you enjoy!

Moonraker 11/02

Classic Bond 11/07

Another Bond homage 11/09. I tried to kill 2 birds with one stone by homaging "Goldeneye" and "The world is not enough". The satellite is completely invented because I don't remember it and it seems I can't find any reference.



















Sun 11/12 - Just thinking about the die-cast model of a Lotus I used to have as a kid -- the model, not the car. :)














11/14 - OK that was too cool not to make a sequence out of it.



















































11/15 - License to Kill
You know, having a license to kill isn't always pretty.
































11/24 - Akiko from "You Only Live Twice"