Romantic Zombie Comics of the 1950's

I had been working on ideas for this project for a few months. SLG (my publisher) had announced that they would be having a zombie-inspired art show to accompany their annual zombie walk. People get dressed up like zombies and walk the closed-off streets. SLG even offers to make you look like a zombie by having makeup artists come in to zombify you. I love putting artwork up on their gallery wall, so I started coming up with fun ideas using zombies. The first thought I had was replacing the people in the romance comics of the 1950s with zombies and I ended up sticking with it. These images were a big inspiration. I love the bottom image. In case you can't read it, it says, "If we don't stop now... we'll be living a lie!"

                                             

These are the beginning sketches. I came up with two ideas that I liked equally. The first was a woman zombie opening up her door for a blind date and finding a zombie nerd waiting to take her out. She says, "Oh great, my first blind date in months and he's a nerd. Sigh!"  I decided to leave her as a zombie, but thought it would be better to change the man at the door to a regular non-zombie nerd. She is still upset. The woman's look is kind of a June Cleaver from Leave It To Beaver / Barbara Bach from Mission Impossible-type look. Very Mod. 

The second illustration (on the right) would be a teen romance cover. The boy on the right is a zombie and the girlfriend is not. I thought it might be funny to have both of them using thought balloons. She is very enamored with him and all he can think about is eating her brain. I didn't do any sketches of this one which is unusual for me. I just sat down and started drawing.

These illustrations are post-lettering. Again, I went with logos that might have been found in the 50s and then added the SLG logo for fun. I switched some of the ideas around after consulting with Dan and Bryan at SLG and these became the final pieces. The woman is still upset, but it's because she wants to eat the brains of an attractive man. The teenage boy has already eaten the brains of another girl and now he wants more. He's running out of girls to date! I tried doing some versions in watercolor and gouche, but I found that the color studies I did in markers ended up looking the most like the 50s versions. 

Zombie Afterthought:

In one of the Treehouse of Horror episodes of the Simpsons, Bart and Lisa raise the dead with a book from the local library. Homer grabs a shotgun, goes outside, and meets the zombie Ned Flanders. Homer shoots him dead. 

Bart Simpson to Homer: "Oh my god, Dad! You killed the zombie Ned Flanders!
Homer: "He was a zombie?"

Anatomy of a Wedding Invitation

When I was told by Tara that I would be creating our invitations, I started thinking about making an illustration with us in it. I wanted something that would look like us and maybe be a little old fashioned. Something that you wouldn't normally see as a wedding invitation. I was very influenced by this illustration from Dicken's Christmas Carol. This was from the Fezziwig Christmas party that the Ghost of Christmas past brought Ebeneezer to. I really enjoyed the festive atmosphere and wanted to bring that to our wedding invitation. I was also curious about what I would look like in knee socks. I love the fiddler playing in the left corner. 

I started off with some simple sketches and even watched Gone with the Wind to see some dancing styles. I paused the DVD player a few times and tried to catch some dancing moves from that time period. This was the result. Then I noticed how much my butt stuck out. The two images below are without the background. B+W and color study. I wasn't crazy about the shadow cast over Tara's body in the color one, and although I like the idea of two people dancing alone, we were going to need some background friends. 

I changed the light source to the back of the image to take the shadow off the front of Tara. I added some fun dancers and even managed to keep the fiddler in the background. The couple to the left are Fezziwig and his wife.  I saw in Gone with the Wind some garlands that were used as streamers in a dance number, and I thought they would be useful to occupy the upper space in the image. I then did more color studies to get the right faded background that the Dickens' illustration had.  

These were the final images. You can see that the light source becomes more of a yellow tint. I darkened the bottom of the image and lightened more of the back. When we took it to the print shop, they cropped it with an oval shape. That became the final image. We complained that, after cropping, they had cut out the fiddler in the back. They took the piece back and moved the the fiddler, digitally, to fit. 

"A small matter, " said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of gratitude. "
"Small!" echoed Scrooge. 
                                             -A Christmas Carol