We take back everything bad we were just saying about The Internet. This Flash-based New York Times tribute to Mad’s Al Jaffee and his amazing fold-ins is the greatest thing EVER this week.

This has been up for a while, but we’ve never linked to it. Reknowned fantasy artist Charles Vess has been designing a fountain themed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for Abingdon, VA. In this post on his blog he offers tons of photos of the design and construction process of what will be an incredibly lovely piece of public art.

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In more NPR comics news, they present Adrian Tomine’s ‘The Donger and Me’, an examination of the character from John Hughes lovably racist Sixteen Candles.

You just can’t. Check previous entries for even more breath-taking Wyeth goodness. Ah, far Selidor!

Alex Robinson’s next book is out this July, a graphic novel entitled TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN; it’s the cmedic tale of a sorty-something man who is transported back to his high school days and gets a second chance to ask that girl in math class out.

BEASTS art director Jacob Covey has linked to a Flickr page of submissions for his open call and the results are super tasty. Above, Mario Trigo.

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Penguin’s well-received line of classics with covers by comics-type illustrators (such as Chris Ware, above)has won the Design Museum’s Brit Insurance Design Awards :

The category winners of the Design Museum’s Brit Insurance Design Awards have been announced with Penguin’s US Classics Deluxe editions winning in the graphics category and Haque’s Burble London installation taking the interactive prize

The category winners were decided by a judging panel consisting of Vitra’s Rolf Fehlbaum, publisher Lars Müller and architect and designer Antonio Citterio.

[Via Blog@]
Designer Paul Buckley is interviewed here.

Is it time for another one of our Gustaf Tenggren-inspired panegyrics? Yes it is, courtesy of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Seriously, you should just read that blog every morning and skip everything else. In this installment they talk about the evolution of the Golden Book illustration style. (Tenggren went from working for Disney to drawing The Poky Little Puppy, one of the most influential children’s books of all times.) How did Tenggren go from this:

to this?

All is shown in the link; illustrators take note.

But halfway through Tenggren’s Tell It Again Book comes a huge breakthrough in design. Instead of the full page plates, Tenggren begins to float his characters over the white of the page, wrapping the text around the compositions. Background elements are reduced to small islands on the page, rather than extending out to the edges of a square bounding box.

Technorati Tags: Gustaf Tenggren

New illos up. [Via Meathaus]

The comics industry and blogosphere has been overflowing with tributes to the late Dave Stevens, who died Monday. His work influenced many people — more than you might think given the relative scarcity of his output. A couple of news notes:

– Stevens’ mother has requested that in lieu of flowers, people make donations to the Hairy Cell Leukemia Research Foundation.

– Arnold Fenner wrote to tell us that THE ART OF DAVE STEVENS (above) will be out in Spring ‘09 deom Underwood Books. The book is 90% completed and the editors will finish the rest from interviews.

And now some links to particularly notable tributes:
Stevens interview in Comic Book Artist Magazine #15
Bill Wray (This one is must reading.)
Craig Yoe
Scott Dunbier
Lea Hernandez
Colleen Doran
Elin WInkler
Kiel Phegley (A particularly funny story involving Billy Campbell.)

We’re reasonably sure that the highly erudite folks who read The Beat get this joke, but just to give a little background, Bass was the immensely influential and highly imitated graphic designer whose logos, movie posters and, most importantly, animated film credit sequences created a whole strain of drastically pared down modernism, minimal yet elegant. Influenced by the Bauhaus movement and Russian Constructivism, his titles for THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM were considered shocking at the time, focusing on the jagged image of an arm to impart the pain of drug addiction. (The movie featured Frank Sinatra as a heroin-addicted ex-con and musician.) Bass would go on to do more groundbreaking work with Alfred Hitchock, Stanley Kubrick and Billy Wilder, among others.

Okay, hilarious right?

The Emerald City ComiCon is not, strictly speaking, an indie comics show, but it takes place in Seattle, so it sorta is by default. Anyway, they have a new “Indy creator ad” by Jeffrey Brown, above.

The A.V. Club recently spotlighted some painters who take pop culture characters and paint ‘em up in the style of Ingres or Rembrandt. Yeah, it’s cheap. But it’s fun.

Check out Brandon Bird as he reimagines both Noam Chomsky and Michael Landon. (The complete image is in the link.)

Plus, his Law and Order: Special Batman Unit.

Also, Isabel Samares.

And Monet’s Haystack/Sleestak series by Monte “Monet” Cook.

The winners in the 15th annual Spectrum Awards for the best uin Fantastic art have been announced, and James Jean was once again the big winner, with a Best in Show, and #1 in the Comic’s category. John Jude Palencar won the Grand Master Award, The complete list:

ADVERTISING
Gold Award: JOHNNY YANOK (”Resurrection of the Blood-Zombies From Beyond²/
client: Headless Spectre Records / art director: Doktor Viktor Von Kreep)
Silver Award: BROM (”Hellbent” / client: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. / art
director: Brom)

BOOK
Gold Award: SAM WEBER (cover to THIRTEEN ORPHANS by Jane Linskold / client:
Tor Books / art director: Irene Gallo)
Silver Award: STEPHAN MARTINIERE (cover to CITY WITHOUT END by Kay Kenyon /
client: Pyr/Prometheus Books / art director: Lou Anders)

COMICS
Gold Award: JAMES JEAN (cover to FABLES #66: The Good Prince/ client:
Vertigo/DC Comics / art director: Shelly Bond)
Silver Award: ADAM HUGHES (cover to CATWOMAN #75 / client: DC Comics / art
director: Mark Chiarello)

CONCEPT ART
Gold Award: DANIEL DOCIU (³Defeated Dragon² / client: ArenaNet/Guildwars /
art director: Daniel Dociu)
Silver Award: DANIEL DOCIU (³Carnival Season² / client: ArenaNet/Guildwars /
art director: Daniel Dociu)

DIMENSIONAL
Gold Award: A. BRENT ARMSTRONG (”The Mummy Revisited” / bronze)
Silver Award: AKIHITO IKEDA (”Heart of Art” / mixed media)

EDITORIAL
Gold Award: PHIL HALE (”Interpreter² / client: Playboy Magazine / art
director: Tom Staebler)
Silver Award: KURT HUGGINS & ZELDA DEVON (”Singer² / client: Polluto
Magazine / art director: Adam Lowe)

INSTITUTIONAL
Gold Award: ROBH RUPPEL (”Hot, Dry, & Deadly² / client: Broadview Graphics /
art director: Robh Ruppel)
Silver Award: LARRY MACDOUGALL (”Rainy River” / client: Underhill Studio /
art director: P.A. Lewis)

UNPUBLISHED
Gold Award: OMAR RAYYAN (”The Apple²)
Silver Award: BROM (”Black Coast² / art director: Arnie Fenner)

BEST IN SHOW
JAMES JEAN (cover to FABLES #67: The Good Prince / client: Vertigo/DC Comics
/ art director: Shelly Bond)

GRAND MASTER AWARD (presented by the Spectrum Advisory Board)
JOHN JUDE PALENCAR

This year’s jury consisted of Daren Bader [artist/art director for Rockstar Games/San Diego], Tim Bodendistel [art director/Hallmark Cards], Frank Cho [artist], Kelley Seda [artist], and Justin Sweet [artist].

If you do not have a few hours to spend looking at art, whatever you do DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK, a directory of concept artists.

Andreas Rocha

Benjamin Carre

We warned you. Oh, we did.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories deserves study each and every day. Recent gems:

NC Wyeth’s Charlemagne illustrations in three parts:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Original covers illustrations for Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series. Above A Princess of Mars by Frank E. Schoonover. Amusing to see these books with a Pre-Raphaelite spin.

During web surfing we came across a blog by Steve Heller at Print Magazine. Heller is the former art director of the NYT Book Review, and his blog in turn led us to this page of Art Deco ads collected by illustrator Bob Staake. Many other treasures to be found in the links.

It seems that Hot Topic has stated selling a t-shirt which is a dead ringer for one created by cartoonist Jess Fink. She isn’t taking it lying down.

I’m sorry but I really don’t think this design is coincidentally or simply inspired by clip art. Things right down to the pose of the character and the look of the feet and hands are the same, even the color. I do not know if you know this guys, but most soap is white. Why not make your rip off soap blue or white? I am not trying to give any ideas to any further assholes, I am trying to point out how blatantly similar this crap is.

Fink’s original t-shirt was sold on the Threadless site, and she reports they will pursue action against Hot Topic. A friend of Fink’s created the above banner which many sites are posting in solidarity.

More info here, including mention of another t-shirt designer we can’t talk about here.

Well we’ve run out of room and time yet again today, so we’ll leave you with the link to the most excellent new art blog of Roarin’ Rick Veitch which we’re told has enough material to run for YEARS. Above, the one and only Miracleman.

Technorati Tags: puppy, Rick Veitch

Lea Hernandez posts a picture of a tattoo based on her Cloud Monkey art.

:

Arena Studios presents…
Demimonde: The Art of Molly Crabapple
curated by Audacia Ray
on
Friday, February 8th, from 7-10 pm
Work hangs from February 8 to April 4
@
Arena Studios
407 Broome St, Suite 7A

In the 19th century, the term “Demimonde” referred to the world of the theatre, of bohemia and of high-end sex-work: where style was traded for money and class transgression was possible- though often at great personal cost. As the American safety net falls apart, we’re once again turning to the Demimonde for consolation.

The idea of a series of Ivan Brunetti banners lining the streets of Las Vegas sounds like a fever dream.

But it’s true.

Comics rule.

Rick Veitch has printed up a new batch of t-shirts based on his classic superhero noir, BRAT PACK. To promote the shirts, he’s created a whole gallery showing how classic images might have been improved by the aaddition of a Brat Pack t-shirt.

See more images and find out how to buy your own shirt here.

§ Kate Hudson will star in Big Eyes a film about the painter Margaret Keane . Keane is credited with developing the seminal style for sentimental big-eyed waif and animal paintings — a style that was so popular that her husband actually took credit with it for a while until she sued him — and won in court by painting right in front of the jury.

Above, Tiger Prince ©2008 Margaret Keane

§ Also, Toho is planning a trilogy of films based on manga maverick Naoki Urasawa’s 20th CENTURY BOY. The story is about a convenience store clerk who uncovers a science fiction conspiracy. Toshiaki Karasawa stars.

Technorati Tags: Big Eyed Waifs