Wednesday, June 18, 2014

"Good golly, I'm brooding!"

I've been lucky enough to do another illustration for Podhouse 90.

(click for larger)

Podhouse 90 is a scripted anthology series of radio plays by Frank Conniff (Mystery Science Theater 3000, Cinematic Titanic, Invader ZIM) This is for Episode 03 - "Dracula Has Risen In the Polls", another musical comedy extravaganza! As a lifelong Mystery Science Theater fan, it's always an honor when Frank asks me to illustrate for him. This one however was an especially big thrill as it stars one of Frank's fellow MST3K alumni, Trace Beaulieu who played Crow and Dr Forrester. cThis episode also features the spectacular comedy talents of Eddie Pepitone, Julie Klausner, Dana Gould, Laraine Newman, Emily Maya Mills,Joe Keyes, Leite Preto, Rachel Lichtman, Olana DiGirolamo, J. Elvis Weinstein and Mark Thompson, plus vocals from Karen Lloyd and stellar guitar work from Larry Saltzman. 

For this illustration, I looked to the old pre-code EC comics for inspiration. Those things were just the best. 

I even spoofed the EC logo by changing it to Frank's initials.

I made an alternate version that had a bit more of a worn "distressed look". I grabbed the folds and textures from an old worn copy of Mad Magazine. Frank decided not to go with this one since all teh texture doesn't read when the image is scaled down small in iTunes and I'd have to agree. Check out the image full size to see all of the texture. 
(click for larger)

As with all of my illustrations, I always notice what I did wrong or what I could have improved on after the fact. I'm not too happy with Dracula's proportions. I think his head is a bit too big here. Oh well, I'll just try to keep that in mind next time.