Vossome 2.0

New Work: IT Superheroes

2008-08-21T08:50:00.007-05:00

Trying to keep up with my man Von Glitschka over at Art Backwash by posting work more frequently.

It's a pretty easy sell to dial me up and say "do you want to draw superheroes today?" The answer is most likely going to be a resounding "yes." I've seen plenty of examples of what I'd call "corporate superheroes," where a company wants to pursue a comic-aesthetic for something and they tend to go overly generic and BAM! POW! ZAP! all over it. It hate that. I also believe that many of the artists who draw those didn't grow up reading and drawing their own comic books. So when the task finally came to me (6 years into my career!) I took it upon myself to do it right. Because of budget restraints, I didn't go full Jim Lee/Joe Madureira/J. Scott Campbell -style on it like I'd want to, but rather went to a style that most kids born after 1990 associate with superheroes: Bruce Timm, the amazing artist behind Batman: The Animated Series.

Started off with a sketch of each (Hero and Heroine, who I call Captain Keyboard and Mouse Girl), although they would be composited by the client and thus illustrated separately. One these were approved (with a few changes), I moved on to create the finals.

Captain Keyboard was originally based on Captain America, complete with giant shield and airborne ranger goggles, but the shield was axed in favor of a cape (which any reader of Watchmen or viewer of The Incredibles can tell you is a bad idea for costumed adventuring).

Mouse Girl was based on Wonder Woman, with some Batgirl thrown in on the costume (the Double-W shows a bit too much skin for the corporate environment, I guess).

I didn't quite nail the style — I suppose that's why he's Bruce Timm and I'm Nate Voss — but these were still a lot of fun to do. More than anything has me jonesing to dig up more of Timm's artwork — some of which seems to be not as safe-for-work/children as his Batman stuff. (fair warning for your Google Image Searches!)

media: brush and ink, digital color

The Legend of Lil' Red — I Got My First Copy!

2008-08-16T18:05:00.003-05:00

HOORAY!

Despite the delay (two weeks and counting now?), I was able to snag one of the … let's say … unique copies of the original print run. While the pages inside may be somewhat chronologically free-spirited, the cover looks like honey-in-a-glass-jar sweet!

Opening the envelope it arrived in was definitely a "moment," even knowing the book inside was flawed. It was an interesting experience, flipping through it, I was looking at the illustrations so close my nose was leaving marks on the pages. I think I'll do a complete project recap when the book is on store shelves, right now all I can say is "Geez, Nate. You sure did draw everything big enough to fill the entire page, didn't you?"

The Legend of Lil' Red Logo

2008-08-13T21:07:00.004-05:00

Since The Legend of Lil' Red's release has been unfortunately delayed a few weeks, I thought I'd give you guys a glimpse of the logotype that I designed for the cover and the title page of the book. The idea was to keep the type treatment very "collegiate" and to reference sports graphics (hence the double and triple outlines) without getting all pointy and stabby like those logos tend to nowadays. It's for kids — you've got to keep the stabby to a minimum. Based on the typeface Serifa by Adrian Frutiger.

Speakin' in Lincoln

2008-07-14T08:41:00.006-05:00

Yesterday I was invited to speak to a family-writing workshop of some 64 parents and kids about The Legend of Lil' Red at Walt Library in Lincoln, Nebraska. Read on for the story and a cool preview!

I'd never been to Walt Library before, it's in the newer, South-er part of town. I was always a Gear Library guy growing up. I showed up about a half-hour into the session as Paul Rea (the author) was winding down a reading of the story using what I supposed to be the final PDF of the book. I wasn't sure that the group would get to see the whole story (illustrations included) so the presentation I brought didn't include a lot from the second half of the book, because I didn't want to spoil anything. Too late!

There were lots of parents and children there, and after we were done talking they asked a lot of really great questions ranging from how the project got started, how many drafts the story took to complete, and a few questions on the process of illustration. Afterwards I got to talk to a few of the kids who really liked to draw; one girl beat out all the other first- and second-graders to win a local art contest — when she was still in Kindergarten!

This was the first group that ever got to see the book from start to finish, and they seemed to enjoy it. A few parts of my presentation elicited some laughs, including an "11-Nate" reference photo I'll post … someday. For now, here's a portion of what I was able to show; the complete coming together of one of the opening pages:

The Legend of Lil' Red: Sample Illustrations

2008-07-08T14:38:00.007-05:00

Since the beginning of 2008 I have been hard at work on a new children's book titled The Legend of Lil' Red. Lil' Red, as most Nebraska sports fans know, is the Huskers' highly energetic inflatable mascot sidekick, seen on the sidelines of most UNL sporting events. He was first introduced in 1993 and has been a fixture ever since.

Lincoln author Paul W. Rea penned The Legend of Lil' Red as his first foray into children's books and hired me to illustrate it. The book is 64 pages long and required 28 full-color, two-page-spread illustrations to tell the tale. It will be available this Fall.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

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Keep your eyes posted here at Vossome.com for more news on The Legend of Lil' Red!

media: brush and ink, digital color

New Work: Bernard Uy

2008-07-03T08:19:00.003-05:00

The third in my series of ten planned watercolors for the Reflex Blue Show, Bernard Uy is a designer who has lived everywhere, and now finds himself in Honolulu, Hawaii. He's brilliant and engaging, and shows off his mad ukulele skills in this video (just so you know I'm not playing to stereotypes here).

Check out all of The Relfex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery at 36 Point.com.

Illustration: Sean Adams

2008-06-19T11:59:00.006-05:00

The Reflex Blue Show illustrations keep pouring on in.

Sean Adams reminds me of a classic movie star, like Sinatra, but with a bit more color and good humor. This time I got to use a bit of everything from rubber cement to salts to white-out over on unfortunate smear of ink. Watercolor's never officially been my thing, and while the bright colors are definitely very Adams Morioka, I think the next spot's going to see me experimenting with some more subdued tones. Hope you enjoy!

John Henry Müller & Dave Nelson

2008-06-05T16:05:00.003-05:00

So one of the things I've been wanting to do for a while is quick illustrations of our guests on The Reflex Blue Show. I'd say 60% of this was completed during editing of the show, in between clicks and snips, then taken to town with a $1 watercolor set. I haven't used watercolors since college, but I've always loved the results you get when you go quickly. So while it's essentially a sloppy mess, it's a step back into my old shoes. Hope you like it.

As for the show we recorded with these two fine fellows, click here to listen. Or visit the links on the right-hand side of the page to check these guys' sites out.

Meet the Pros 2008: The Un-Poster

2008-02-26T08:43:00.015-06:00

After watching Shaun of the Dead on DVD, I was struck by the similarities to zombies attacking humans, hungry for their brains, to an annual student event here in Omaha called Meet the Pros. I pitched the concept to their board of directors for their 2007 conference and they bit, resulting in on of the most thoroughly enjoyable and successful projects of my career (more on that one later). When the time came to handle Meet the Pros 2008, I was struck with the question: how does one follow-up the best thing they've ever done? Answer: Don't.

I pitched three ideas to the Meet the Pros board, instead of one, and they came back selecting the idea I'd tossed in as a personal aside: the comic book. It was an idea to show students at Meet the Pros and chronicle their experience in comic form, telling a story rather than selling a headline and an image. I pitched this idea because at the time I was becoming more serious about my illustration as a career and wanted a testbed — but I never thought they'd go for it. Sure enough, they did.

Now I'd read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics a few times back in the day and had recently picked up his newer Making Comics a few months before this. Added to a childhood spent reading the things and patterning my illustrations after my heroes, I felt confident, just untested.

As with any good story, it starts with characters. I needed a few: a hero, and antagonist, a love-interest/triangle, and a few complicating members of the cast. You can see their genesis below:

For the Hero, it all began with one sketch of his panicked face (which ultimately was inked and included in the final poster) and was expanded in the sketches below. Astute designers will notice his shirt is an homage to Saul Bass. Detailing was heavily inspired by Japanese anime and manga character designs — not out of fandom on my part, but an appropriateness to the subject matter. These kids would essentially be "battling" with their work, and they should be dressed for combat as such.

For the love interest, I created Hytome. Short and spunky — intelligent to a fault. As a copywriter, she doesn't know when to say when and often tries to say too much at once in her work. Her design was, well, not exactly "conservative," and it was my goal to make up for this with her strong personality. The jury's still out on how successful that was.

The other characters, including the main antagonist, Corden, filled out in sketches over the next few weeks. At one point I realized I had designed Corden and the brutish Ox essentially the same, so a few nips and tucks were put into place to separate the two, and Ox was introduced much later in the comic than originally planned. Student-X is directly based off the character Racer-X from Speed Racer, and the end of the story gives a wink to this fact as well.

Once character design was complete, I began scripting with a basic outline of the story and a loose sketch of the page layout. Being a designer, I couldn't let myself make a page that reads simply left to right, top to bottom. No, I had to go and make it hard. The comic would travel clockwise in a spiral, ending in the center of the poster where the relevant information regarding the event would be stored. This would prove to be a problematic decision.

The panels were then sketched out along side dialog markers, and the whole thing looked like this:

Once complete, they were cut out and assembled as such on an 18" x 24" poster.

Then it was the long and laborious process of fleshing out the illustrations, inking them, scanning them, and assembling them into the layout.

At this point the text was refined with the client, and small details such as the negative space in between the panels were tweaked. On a few occasions I tossed the poster onto the HOW Forums for assistance, as I was still acclimating to working solo ad needed some help getting past a few rough spots. I really have to hand it to the folks over there on the forums. They were both a great help and very encouraging.

In the end, the final poster looks like this: (click for a bigger size)

I call it "The Un-Poster." It has no central focal point. No short message. It cannot be read in passing, it requires you to stop and interact with it. And after it was posted on college campuses I heard from several teachers that their classes would, in fact, stop and read it. Some even going so far as to skip their smoke breaks. I don't know if it was that successful everywhere it was posted, but in as far as ambitious projects go — I'd rank this one a 9 out of 10.

I also handled their website — which you can check out at MeetThePros.org.

Today's Wacom Test: Bone

2008-02-06T08:35:00.001-06:00

Big props to Steve Hamaker who does this job for a living. Originally I hated the idea of seeing Jeff Smith's seminal Bone series reproduced in color, but Hamaker has really grown as an artist over the course of the run, or at the least he's found a lot more confidence in his use of color. Those books look good.

This morning I warmed up on a black and white Bone drawing I found on the internet. I think Phoney (middle) turned out the best, because I did the least amount of shading. Less is more?

New Tool: Wacom Intuos, 4x6

2008-02-05T08:41:00.000-06:00

Just got my new Wacom in yesterday and I've been playing around, trying to remaster the tools of digital painting. I've had plenty of Wacoms before, but this is the first time I've had one all to myself, and more importantly, at the home office. The new design of the tablet is much nicer than I've had in the past, and the pen tool is larger — offhand I'd say about 50% bigger — which makes it much more substantial and easier to hold. Love it.

I thought about getting a bigger tablet, but they have a new Cintiq model for about $1,000 now, so I am officially saving up for one of those. Any illustrator who's seen one in action knows what I'm talking about.

For now, here's a test colorization of a Jim Lee sketch of Batman and Wonder Woman I did this morning. The Intuos rolled right into Photoshop without hesitation or installation, and I used flat base colors with Multiply and Screen brushes at different opacities to shape the colors. Like I said, just a test, I can't wait to really see what this baby can do.

—nv—

Read the Story of How This Site Was Created!

2008-01-24T10:10:00.000-06:00

Over on Be A Design Group I've retold the story of this site's creation. From it's disaster-laden beginnings to it's current form, you can read all about it here:

Part One: The Original Site

Part Two: The Reversal

Part Three: The Current Site

A Bad Chip Kidd Illustration

2008-01-22T09:52:00.001-06:00

For the celebrated designer's speaking engagement in Omaha. Ink on notebook paper.

Welcome to Vossome.com 2.0

2008-01-14T16:00:00.000-06:00

Thank you for visiting Vossome.com. If you would like to view samples of my work, click the giant "samples" button right above this post. If you would like to take a little piece of me home with you, may I suggest the "download" page? Thank you very much for being here and I look forward to seeing you in the future.