Commission B

"Cinemascope Number One"

This one started as a request for a recreation of the cover of Cerebus #1. We were offered a very good price, but when I sat down to do it, I realized that I was pretty much burnt out on the cover of Cerebus #1, having done a recreation for Greg Hyland's Lethargic Comics and another one for our 2004 Christmas Card, I didn't have anything left to say. Having never done it as a painting before I thought I would sit down and do a thumbnail watercolour really quick (took about an hour) just to see if there was anything in the colour scheme that I could interest myself in. It's always interesting either trying to draw or paint flames. I can't say I was thrilled with the result. As always, when working on the cover to number one, I remark to myself on the ridiculousness of it. How did Cerebus get that high in the air? Are the flames in the background and he's just jumping in front of them or are the flames underneath him (in which case, why isn't he cooked?). And why isn't there any sense of illumination? Obviously I was dealing with that this time out by using various values of red. I even drew the logo in such a way that it looks as if the firelight is pouring through it but it's still, basically, an idiotic idea for a picture. That was when I thought that it looked like a storyboard for a movie in a way, just because of the shape. Like the old Cinemascope concept when movies were fighting a losing battle with television back in the 1950s

So, I decided to go with that and basically do a multi-image "widescreen" series of storyboards with the Cerebus logo coming into being in the background, progressively larger. Of course, the final image would have a much larger logo and the character more centred in the "widescreen space" than my first quick colour sketch. But at least it answers the question I always had: yes, Cerebus is jumping over the flames.

Of course, before I even got this far Patron B had had second thoughts so I think it's only fair to say that the finished piece will be his if he's interested but obviously we aren't going to hold him to it since this only vaguely qualifies as the cover recreation that he requested. We haven't really had to address that one yet. What happens when what we choose to do just isn't what the guy wanted? I think at that point all you can do is call it a loss and then see if someone else is interested.

Patron B gave us a "high ball" and a "low ball" offer. So, this is one of those good news bad news things. The good news is, for his "high ball" offer he gets two 11 x 17 pieces (one featuring the lead-in panels and one the cover "recreation") as well as these preliminary colour sketches. The bad news is it won't say "No. 1" or "$1" or "DEC" or "Collector's Edition" or "Aardvark-Vanaheim Presents" or "First Issue" on it.

I hope everyone agrees that this is the fairest way to go about this. Ger and I are still working full-time most weeks which is more than a little irritating considering that we're both supposed to be retired. As I say, if our workload diminishes, we might be able to go up to three pieces a month which would give more people a chance at one of them and probably bring the price down on them but I have to say that we've been waiting for nearly three years for our workload to diminish and that just hasn't been the case.

Thanks to all of our art Patrons who have been supporting www.cerebusart.com over the last year or so. We welcome any suggestions as to how we can improve what we're doing here. The most common suggestion we've had is that we should do prints of the various pieces. Right now there doesn't seem to be any way to do that economically with the cost of shipping going up all the time and most of Ger's time taken up just with maintaining the website as it is. If you sell 50 prints, you have to wrap and mail 50 prints and that is not something that makes Gerhard smile to think about.

That's another one of those "when our workload diminishes" things. Maybe 2007 won't be as hectic as 2004, 2005 and 2006 have proven to be and we can look seriously at it around then.

Dave's "commission diary"

Okay, here’s our experiment. Ger’s gone out to pick up illustration board and grab some lunch, so this is the only time I have access to the computer on a day when he’s in working, so I will basically attempt to describe what I’m doing on Commission A—which is the modified Cerebus No.1 recreation—in the time that it takes Ger to get back so he can put this on disk along with the photocopies and be able to take home an “in progress” report that he can post to the website.

The idea is to try to do a Hollywood-ized version of the cover of Cerebus No.1, so what I wanted to start with was the classic logo used on the first 50 issues and draw it in a sharp forced perspective, which is a very Hollywood thing to do, with the idea being that the logo comes into being behind the Cerebus figure over the course of the 4 movie widescreen images ending with a widescreen image that invokes the cover issue of No.1. So what I’m doing is to start with the full logo and then shoot enlargements of it at regular increases in percentage. This will create the illusion that we are closer to the logo as it begins to burst into flames and we are moving back from it very quickly. I want to deal with the logo as a separate element rather than trying to incorporate the Cerebus figures at the same time as the logo. One thing at a time. Since Client A was a very good sport and just gave the go-ahead, I have decided to do the four images on three sheets of illustration board, the first three images as proportional as possible to the Panavision quality of the late 50s and early 60s (roughly half a sheet of illustration board per image) and the final image a little taller and conforming more to the proportions of the original wraparound cover. Okay, let’s see if I can get that copying done before Ger gets back.

All right, as with everything else in this game and at my age, that took way too long for what it was, but at least Gerhard isn’t going home empty-handed. I now have a nice smooth transition on the logo from an extreme close-up to the complete logo slightly off-centre on the “screen”. I was going to add some more illustration room to the bottom of the fourth one, but I think I’ll work out the first three with the Cerebus figure incorporated and see if it doesn’t work better if all four images are the same size. Still no sign of Ger so keep your fingers crossed.