Author: Mel Dale

My column over at Monster Popcorn updated today with some of my memories and thoughts on the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. To say that I loved the Turtles as a child would be a tremendous understatement. Aside from owning every single Turtles toy Playmates put out, my brother and I would role-play as the Ninja Turtles everyday with the neighborhood kids using our own homemade ninja weapons. The first thing I remember seriously trying to learn how to draw was a Ninja Turtle. I would sit at our kitchen table and try over and over again to draw Raphael (my favorite Turtle, BTW), working at it tirelessly until I could draw him without a second thought. I drew the same image of a Ninja Turtle so many times I can still see it in my head over 20 years later. Check out my column on the movie here, and if you haven’t seen it in a while, I highly recommend you go back and rewatch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ’cause it’s pretty awesome.

This week I rewatched The Incredibles for my column over at Monster Popcorn. Man, I really love that movie!  Check out my column on The Incredibles here, and while you’re at it check out the rest of Monster Popcorn. My friend Ben does a pretty awesome job pulling together the entertainment happenings of the week.

This week my column over at Monster Popcorn is talking about my absolute favorite movie, The Rocketeer. The film is an adaptation of the comic book of the same name created, written, and drawn by the incredible Dave Stevens. To simply say that Dave Stevens has influenced me as a cartoonist would be a tremendous understatement. Stevens’ artwork inspires me in a way few other cartoonist have. His absolutely beautiful line art and brush work are rivaled by none, and is this impossible vision to which I aspire with my own artwork (to which I fall embarrassingly short).

This week I attempted to draw Dave Stevens’ creation, The Rocketeer, for the very first time in my life with better results than I expected.

If you get the chance, check out my column about the film here. If you’ve never heard of Dave Stevens, or his comic that inspired The Rocketeer, I strongly encourage you to check it out for yourself. It’s available in collected form from IDW Publishing.

With the release of Your Cold Felt Heart Issue No. 0 today it’s fitting to finish my post involving the process behind it’s creation, as well as officially debut the final cover. After completing the pencils, finished inks, and coloring, the final step was the inclusion of type and graphical elements to the finished design. The crease marks and rubbing effects were all created by actually creasing and distressing a piece of paper before scanning it in and applying the effect to the finished cover. The tagline included on the cover originally read “Frank’s North Side Adventure” which was my little nod to the second volume of Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer, “Cliff’s New York Adventure”. But, the reference to Stevens’ work seemed too obscure to forgive the inaccurate use of “adventure” to describe Issue No. 0’s content (despite my deep love for The Rocketeer). All together, I’m really happy with how the cover, and the issue, turned out. Now it’s time to start the next one.  Issue No. 0 of Your Cold Felt Heart is available as of today in my store. Check it out!

Leading up to the release of Your Cold Felt Heart I’ve been going over the process involved in the creation of it’s cover. After completing the pencils and finished inks the next step in the process was coloring the composition. The goal for the finished colors was to resemble a painted Film Noir poster from the 40s, which was something above and beyond my skills set. In order to achieve the final painted appearance my friend (and one heck of a colorist), Chriss Cornish, used her amazing talents to add an incredible dynamic to the illustration. Although I don’t know the exact details on how long it took her to finish the colors for the cover, I can say that she finished them way faster than I expected, because she’s awesome like that. The logo for Your Cold Felt Heart was added to the composition before the colors so that Chriss could include them in her pallet for a more cohesive appearance.

Leading up to the release of Your Cold Felt Heart Issue No. 0 I wanted to go through some of the process that went into the creation of it’s cover. After completing the pencils the next step in the process was applying the finished inks to the illustration. At the time I was using Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pens for all of my finished inks, but have since started using Pigma Micron Markers. The illustration took me about 2 hours to ink, and I somehow managed to only make a few mistakes (but I’m not going to point them out). Early on, when I was figuring out of my style for Your Cold Felt Heart, I decided to use a cartoonish, heavy line around the outside of my characters to distinguish them from the backgrounds of my illustrations. My backgrounds tend to have a more flat, ligne claire appearance which I think plays nicely against the more dynamic line I’m using on my character drawings. All-in-all I’m really happy with how the inks turned out on this illustration, which is rare for me because I am not a talented inker.

With the release of Your Cold Felt Heart Issue No. 0 right around the corner I wanted to give some insight into the process of creating it’s cover. As far as illustrations for the book go, the most time and effort was spent making sure the cover of the issue was as eye-catching and detailed as possible. Before composing the final image I worked out the poses and layout as thumbnails. Although I experimented with several different ideas the split cover with Frank and The Blind Scarf was my first, and ultimately my favorite, composition. This stage was completed with graphite pencils on an 11×14 piece of smooth bristol and took about  2-3 hours to complete (mostly because of the two point perspective on the brick wall). Despite my shortcomings as an illustrator, I have to say I’m proud of how these pencils turned out.

This week my column over at Monster Popcorn is talking about one of my favorite films, Hot Fuzz. In an effort to further push myself as a cartoonist, and to find some link between my writing for Monster Popcorn and this site, I decided to take a stab at drawing a character from the film. Nick Frost’s portrayal of Police Constable Danny Butterman is one of the main reasons I return to watch Hot Fuzz time and time again. When I told my friends what I was doing, everyone anticipated a more humorous drawing of P.C. Butterman (perhaps in his ill-fitted cowboy attire), but I really wanted to capture Danny’s thirst for adventure and “proper action and shit” so I opted instead for a shot of him firing two pistols whilst jumping through the air. If  you’ve never seen Hot Fuzz, I highly recommend you check it out when you’ve got the time, until then here’s my drawing of Danny at the height of his wish fulfillment from the action packed ending to this hilarious film.

I’ve been dwelling in the incredible world of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin for the past several days now. This recent obsession started after I watched Steven Spielberg’s big screen adaptation of Tintin for my column over at Monster Popcorn last week and has managed to linger well into this one. As a result of this I’ve been looking back at several of Hergé’s comics recently, which is something I haven’t done for quite some time. It would seem Hergé’s ligne claire drawing style must have made more of an impression on me than I recall from my first encounter with it. Looking back at it now, it seems glaringly obvious Hergé’s art helped inspire the look of the background and prop style I’m using in Your Cold Felt Heart. After realizing this, I felt compelled to do a drawing of Tintin to see how Hergé’s character style and mine would look together. I’m sad to say my first (and probably only) attempt at drawing Tintin ended up looking more like a poorly executed tracing of a Hergé illustration, though I swear to having drawn this from memory and freehand. Nevertheless, it was a fun exercise. Comparing my drawing to Hergé’s, it appears I took a few liberties with Tintin’s wardrobe (specifically his belt and v-neck sweater) which I hope all the Tintinologist out there can forgive me for. I’ve only managed to read 12 of the 23 cannon, Adventures of Tintin stories from Hergé so far, it seems I should probably fix that here soon.

My regular column over at Monster Popcorn updated today with some of my thoughts and memories of Steven Spielberg’s incredibly enjoyable film, Jurassic Park. While writing that piece, it became more and more apparent to me the incredible influence that film had on my life. After rewatching the film and posting my thoughts about it, I had to dig through my closet and find my old Jurassic Park collectors cards. I still have a near complete set of both Series 1 and 2 of the Topp’s trading card set with my one of a kind, exclusive, hand drawn cover gracing the outside of the binder they’re held in. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the first comic strip I ever created (at age 12) was about a caveman named Mundo and his dinosaur friends. I don’t know if I still have any of those comics, but if I do I’ll be sure to post something about them here. In the mean time marvel at the enormity of my childhood talent, and dream of such a beautiful and exclusive cover for your own 90s movie collectible trading card set.