Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Man with the Calabash Meerschaum Pipe.


This Captain (above) has nothing do with my 'Capain Should' character (below) from the Trout books.




Nope, this dude's supposed to be an old German WW2 Captain from a new 30 Days comic I'm doing for IDW.  Joe Lansdale's writing it (the Bubba Ho-Tep guy),  and I'm drawing it.  I just did a lame doodle of a Captain in my sketchbook by some thumbnails, which was mostly an excuse to draw the cool old fashioned pipe. 


I've always loved drawing these shrelock holmes antique Smoking Pipes but didn't know what they were called until an old friend of mine pointed it out yesterday. They're known as meerschaum pipes. Part of them is  made from meerschaum clay, but the bit you see on the outside is made from a gourd called a calabash. It's cool to learn there's a *name* for what you've been drawing for years! 




I wanted this guy's face here to be kinda rough and unfinished, obviously hand-drawn, not too much photoshop. 



Okay, a little photoshop... I darkened him a bit... but not too overworked (unlike the first Captain in close-up, which is wildly over-rendered).  It's easy to get carried away. The top one is more flashy, but I actually prefer these more modest ones... 



So what, you may ask, does a German sub Captain have to do with modern Vampires in Alaska? Well, you'll see once the book comes out, but first i gotta draw the sucker.


FEATURE FILM CONTRACT: Current  Status: in development hell. 

While I was digging through prehistoric rubble in my studio, I came across a work assignment in grade class which I blew off and never finished.  Instead I wrote something on the back of it.... this:  



This was my transparent attempt to coerce my then-7th-grade teacher, Miss Stone, into being in a film i planned to shoot. One I obviously never completed. I was always planning a series of big ambitious projects: sprawling comics series, huge movies. Projects I hadn't a clue how to pull off. I'm still like this a little. Slightly better at finishing, but not totally. 

I wonder where my teacher is now? Think she got over my not making her a famous actress?  

I'm guessing she probably did.