COWBOY & ALIENS? HOW ABOUT LAWYERS & CROCS?

Okay, with a headline like that you can fill in your own joke. 

This mash-up of ideas came about back when David E. Kelley's uber popular ALLY MCBEAL was on TV and a feature Kelley wrote, LAKE PLACCID, had just hit movie theaters -- a feature that featured, yes, a giant gator.  Kelley's work was so amazingly hot at the time I figured I should be the one to combine the airwave and box office power of both! 

This was the result.

NOTE TO INTERESTED PARTIES: This was colored, like almost everything else on his blog, with Corel Painter 11.  I've never worked with Photoshop but have been told the programs are similar.  I don't work with photos or illustrations other than my own so as an artist PAINTER works great for me.  It's intuitive, it has lots to offer (I discover new cool things all the time) and, if recent research still stands, it's FREE if you buy a a Wacom drawing tablet (also very cool) -- even a little bitty tablet.  Okay.  That's it.  End of unsolicited plug. 

DISNEY THEME PARK RIDES - THE ARCADE GAMES!

Vestiges from my advertising days.  One of the more prestigious (which is to say the only prestigious) clients we had at my first agency job was a software company with a contract to do video arcade games based on Disney theme park rides.  Rudimentary stuff, very Pac Man-esque, back in the day of APPLE IIs, when Donkey Kong was king of the arcades.  As seen above my design for the Matterhorn game was pretty close to the final product sold in stores.  The JUNGLE CRUISE game however, that one never saw the light of a cathode ray tube.  Old timers may recall the basis for my illustration -- from the original version of the ride... where the jungle boatmaster actually shot the hippo in its gaping maw, much to the horror of the kiddies aboard.

You can check out actual MATTERHORN SCREAMER game play at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAEyiDCN6jY

HARRY POTTER... MEET HENRY PORTER

Before the KIDSPACE MUSEUM moved to their new and current location in Pasadena, it was located in the gymnasium of a former grade school.  Every October volunteers converted the place into a big, snazzy haunted house and busloads (literally) of kids from all around LA would come to see it. 

Each year had a different theme and one October -- after the HARRY POTTER book series had started but before the first film had been released -- the theme was Harry Potter... sorta. No one wanted to risk copyright infringement so Harry became Henry, Dumbledore became Stumblemore, etc.  They asked me to do the haunted house poster but I had no clue what the books were about (my own kids were pre-HP).  I figured it's about kids in a magic private school, right?  I worked off a cool fortress/castle in a HELLBOY comic and drew the accompanying students with the requisite magicical hats.  I never clarified but while it might be assumed Henry is the boy with the glasses, I always thought he was the pudgy Asian kid.  

HOLY PICKLE SPEAR, BATMAN!!

Coming up with an original superhero is never easy.  Muscles are free, but inevitably a suit, a cowl or a logo are copyright protected somewhere.  So when we had to devise  a comic book hero for an episode of the WEIRD SCIENCE tv show -- CAPTAIN  INVINCIBLE -- I devised a few options.  This isn't what the showrunners finally chose  but I thought it was kind of funny -- especially a big muscled guy waxing philosphical with a big ol' ice cream cone in his hand.  What the headphones were for -- or what the insignia stood for, I have no recollection.