Burning City Website Update

Okay, we've got a whole new design over at the main Burning City website. New bio, new graphics, a timeline of projects from 1983 to today.

Go check it out.

http://burningcity.com.

Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Two of my favorite artists work together again in a Chanel No. 5 advert.

Conceptart.org and Massive Black Symposium

Hell, ya. Sweet news for all of you artists out there:

ConceptArt.Org International Art and Design Workshop: DALLAS TEXAS - March 28-31 2009

Stay tuned for registration details and other stuff coming out this week. The Symposium in Seattle last January was inspiring and mind-blowing. Check these videos of past events.

PLUS: The Massive Black Concept Art book is out.

This video of the Seattle Revelations Symposium from last January gives you an idea of what you are in for.

Bookshelf Envy

If you are going to be me a present for my birthday, this will be the one you will buy.

The Revenants Poster

I just completed the graphic for our upcoming zombie play, The Revenants, by Scott T. Barsotti. The show opens April 20th, 2009 at the Angel Island Theater in Chicago. This intimate, dare I say, claustrophobic production will be directed by WildClaw company member, Anne Adams.


Poster by Charlie Athanas

Making of The Dreams in the Witch House Poster

When I started this blog, it's intent was to expose my creative process as I wrote my vampire story/play, The First Fear. (More on that in upcoming posts.)

During the making of the play The Great God Pan earlier this year, I documented that play's poster design process pretty thoroughly. Now that The Dreams in the Witch House is up and running and getting good reviews, I thought I would expose the guts of that poster. (Go see the play!)

The play's director and adaptor, Charley Sherman, wanted the poster to feel dark with blues and grays and the feeling of metal to express the city of Arkham. Arkham is H. P. Lovecraft's infamous city of nightmares where the play takes place. I had done a teaser graphic that was photo manipulating via Photoshop filters, but it was a rush job and not what I wanted ultimately.


The Dreams in the Witch House teaser graphic

So when it came time to produce the final graphic, I pulled several photos I had taken at various places and chose three to work with. I often pull from my random photo files to either place them into designs completely unrelated to the topic or to use as reference for a drawing. I learned from Sparth (one of my favorite concept art artists) at the Massive Black Revelations Symposium this past January in Seattle, that he does this all the time in his concept art designs. He will even take old finished concept art pieces and use them for textures and design elements in newer pieces.

Here are the three photos I choose to work with:


A cool dilapidated iron fence in my neighborhood


A view from inside Northwestern Evanston hospital


A church steeple down the block from my house

I combined the three of them in Photoshop layers and composed and cropped to get this:



I used the Plastic Wrap filter on the two non-steeple photos and adjusted Levels on all of them to get the contrasts I wanted and the textures suitably creepy.

From there I started playing with some type ideas for the title -


In the end, I realized that something needed to be in this landscape and I initially had a hooded, vague shape with a rat's tail sticking out from the cloak to hint at the character, Brown Jenkins. After showing it to the director, we realized that it wasn't strong enough and I went to a clearer rat image. This turned out to be for the best, because rats play a large role in the play and Arkham. After hours of trying to find the right way to fit in Lovecraft's name and his very long story title, this is the final image for the poster:


The Dreams in the Witch House poster graphic


Poster detail

Artists - Who We Are

The New York Times has just done a report on a report on artists. Very interesting.

Ray Frenden - He's Everywhere

Ray Frenden is exploding. And now he has gone and won the 2007 Threadless Bestee Select Award for his "Medusa" t-shirt design. Congrats, Ray!

Happy Birthday Chicago Artist Forum

Chicago Artist Forum in action

A year ago, Denise Dorman put some ideas into the head of one, Kevin Sandstrom of Dick Blick Art Stores. Next thing you know, a place for artists to gather, show off portfolios, and generally talk shop and fun was born in Wheaton, Illinois. It has now grown to a nice little event that brought out about 30 artists in 0º Chicago weather this past Saturday.

The artists range in experience from 30+ year veterans to folks in their freshmen year in art school. But all of them love to draw and respect the craft, which makes for great discussions and plenty of learning and networking opportunities.

The CAF will have a website soon that will list the upcoming presentations and events. I just did a slideshow/talk on what I learned at the Revelations Symposium in Seattle and coming up are Ray Frenden demoing Manga Studio techniques, Joe Lester on sculpting monsters, and Dave Dorman on traditional painting. Plus, live models!

In the meantime, check out their CAF MySpace page.

Happy New Year 2008!

To all three of you who read this blog - Happy New Year!


My much better half, Julienne, and moi.

2007 was quite a treat in Burning City's life:
- San Diego Comic-Con
- The Devil's Candy Store
- Los Angeles Movie Studio Trip
- My father's 90th birthday
- My 50th birthday (and Sputnik!)
- Many family visits!!!
- My sister's wedding!
- Sue's wedding!
- WildClaw Theatre company
- Many, many great new friends
- My new Electra bike
- Working out with a freakin' trainer
- Regular pickup basketball games in the park with the Comix Revolution guys
- The official start of The First Fear comic book production
- And much more... all worthwhile.

2008 should be quite the rollercoaster. I'm starting it off with a bang at the Conceptart.org Revelations Symposium in Seattle this week. And to help start your year off right, I'm going to remind you of the one-day Comicraft Font sale that only happens on January 1.

Sketch Porn

Gizmodo has a review - "Simply Amazing"

Revelations Symposium

I'm excited! I'm going to the Massive Black/ConceptArt.org Revelations Symposium in Seattle this January. Four days immersed in making art and watching some of the best in the business doing it. Can't wait. Gotta go, there's a pencil and sketch paper waiting for me to come over and play.

Burning City Redux

I am planning, designing, researching, and mostly thinking, thinking, thinking, and taking notes of said thinking on the revised business model for The Devil's Candy Store. Since I often think better while performing a mundane task, I am also rearranging the Burning City World Headquarters. Wise? Hmm, maybe not, but people who know me will recognize this as a creative exercise I do with maddening regularity. When in doubt, change your surroundings.


Chaos


My new view from my biz desk

24 Hour DUX

This week, Marc Rettig and I hosted a Tutorial for the DUX 2007 Conference entitled, "24 Hour Comic Session". DUX stands for "Conference on Designing for User Experience" and my connection to it comes from my days at HannaHodge as a Business Strategist. Yes, a Business Strategist.


It was my big shoulders and Marc's big shoulders that they counted on.

This was suppose to be a literal 24 Hour session ala Scott McCloud's challenge, but turned out to be 7.5 hours. Go figure. Marc and I made some adjustments and were very fortunate to get 8 people attending who were of good heart, sound minds, and full of energy and creativity. They finished a ten page comic book that they wrote, designed and produced. Very cool.

The Great God Pan WIP 10: I'm Happy

Thank goodness the director, Charley Sherman, speaks his mind. We got to a good place in this poster for the play. Up until now we had several posters, but none of them were quite right for this upcoming production nor the style of the theater company. A change in background, fonts, text placement and we were able to fit everything in and capture the mood of the play.


Here's a much bigger version.

The Great God Pan WIP 9: Director Is Happy

Okay, we are closing in on an image that is close to the intent of the play. I like the feel of it now in relation to the play, because it is more like a dark, Italian, Dario Argento poster at this point and I like that.


See a really big version.

The Great God Pan Poster WIP 9: Another Tack

Well, the director wanted something different than the direction this piece was going, so after some delay at working on the poster (a new company to plan, out of town guests, etc.) I have returned to work it some more.

The Great God Pan WIP 8: Cleanup Stage

Okay, time to cleanup the image some more. I'm happy with the overall piece, although it will help to get away from it for a bit to see if my eyes have just fogged over. After taking out the rough spots, I will incorporate the logo with some hand drawn lettering. Hope it turns out.


You can see it larger.

The Great God Pan WIP 7: Darker Gods

While still not polished, here are versions of the poster taking darker, more iconic tones. They actually look much richer and full of detail . They were made at 300DPI at 12"x17" and have been reduced to 72DPI and 400 pixels wide.

These first two images will seem identical, but there are subtle differences in color, contrast, and detail.




See this one larger.

This one is nice, but I'm not sure about the lack of green in the bottom half of the figure right now. The last two shots are detail from this version.




See this one larger.

The Great God Pan WIP 5

Okay, we've got all the major monster tentacles.