Illustration

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The Monday Challenge: Here Comes Summer!

April 19, 2010 in Cartoons, Illustration, Sunday Challenge | No comments

Well, I completely missed the challenge last week, but Jason continues to plug along doing some very cool experiments in visual style for his comic. I was so full of shame for failing to complete a page for the challenge that I haven’t responded to his last email (sorry, Jason!). Anyway, this week I didn’t have time to put together a page of Age of Elytra because I had to get the summer reading record finished for the Huntingdon County Library. I have been making a record for our local library system to help them save a few bucks and because I like to help the library in whatever small ways I can. Plus, I’m married to someone on the library board. Anyway, this year’s theme (I think) is “dive into reading.” At least, I hope it is. If it’s “drive into reading” I sorta missed the mark with this one. Here it is for your consideration.

2010_Reading_RecordFor those not in the know, kids get a sticker for each hour they read (older kids) or how many books they read (younger kids). When they reach 12 books or hours they get some fabulous prize. Those on a the time track can mark their progress by coloring in the little 15-minute fish along they way.

Sunday Challenge

March 14, 2010 in Comics, Family, Illustration, Sunday Challenge | No comments

SundayUpdate_003

I managed to complete another page of Age of Elytra for this week’s Sunday Challenge with Jason. His web comic is going to be a lot of fun and I can’t wait until others get a look at it. Here is a panel from my new page showing Lucy and Professor Bombardier strolling through the streets of New Coleopolis.

Godzilla Saturday

March 13, 2010 in Animation, Family, Illustration | 1 comment

We have a few valued traditions in the Hosler household.  Every Sunday morning we have angel cream donuts from Weis Market, once a month the boys and I make a trek to the comic book shop and every Saturday night we watch a Godzilla movie and drink Orange Cream Soda. We’ve seen all of the Godzilla flicks we could get through Netflix and a few we came by  through other means. One of my advisee (Hi, Paul) loaned us Godzilla versus Biolante (a giant killer…Rose?) on VHS.

Since we have almost reached Godzilla saturation, we’ve now expanded our movie choices to include Mothra (including all three of the Mothra reborn trilogy), any movie with giant insects (Them!, The Deadly Mantis, Beginning of the End) and most recently a giant octopus (It Came form Beneath the Sea!). Not sure what we will watch tonight, but I do have a few illustrations for your consideration. The first is one of two Godzilla pictures I drew for the boys (still playing with that gray marker). The second is Max’s full color battle royale between Godzilla and his greatest foe King Ghidora.

godzillaMax_Godzilla

And last but not least, we present our own Godzilla masterpiece Godzilla versus The Giant Spider in full quality Youtube-a-rama.

Sunday Challenge

March 7, 2010 in Comics, Family, Illustration, Sunday Challenge | 1 comment

Lisa’s cousin Jason and I have started a Sunday Challenge designed to motivate us in our ongoing comic endeavors. Jason is developing a webstrip and I am trying to finish a story about beetle that I started almost seven years ago. Jason is in stil in the development stages, planning the look and feel of the strip as well a the personalities of the characters. So for it looks great and he has terrific character touches that will make for a funny, interesting comic. As soon as he’s ready for other people to see his stuff I’ll let you know. In the meantime, check out some of the work he’s done on his blog.

SundayUpdate_002

My beetle project is called Age of Elytra and I am really excited about it. I will be posting one panel from my weekly page challenge. I have removed the text because I really don’t want to give anything away. Perhaps this will whet the appetite of the 3 people reading  this post! I would be interested to now what you think.

The Earwig’s Tail

September 29, 2009 in Books, Illustration | 5 comments

It was my great pleasure to have a chance to work with eminent entomologist May Berenbaum last year. May has a new book out called The Earwig’s Tail. It is an A-Z bestiary of insect myths that May dispatches with a great deal of wit. I was lucky enough to be asked to do the illustrations. The publisher used two of my illustrations on the cover.
earwig

I tried to do the illustrations in the style of a Medieval Bestiary. You can judge how successful I was. Here is the original illustration featuring the earwig (it’s teeny tiny of the cover).

B_Earwing_web

For those interested in the process, I would read May’s essay and then generate 2-7 rough sketches and post them on my website for her to consider. She would tell me which one she liked and I would ink it. On a few occassions it was “none of the above” and I would head by to the drawing board. Follow this link to see the seven rough sketches I did for the Headless Cockroach essay. The final illustration is below.

H_roach_web

A little something weird.

September 28, 2009 in Cartoons, Illustration, School | 2 comments

Over the last five months or so I have been writing a book called Evolution: The History of Life on Earth for Hill and Wang. It has been an exciting process working with my editor Howard Zimmerman and the artist Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon.

The only down side is that I don’t get to draw it. Consequently, it has been a while since I put pen to paper. So,I decided to give myself a few hours to make the following illustration for my Invertebrate Biology class. It is the life cycle of the liver fluke and it includes poop and mind-control.  What could be better?

LiverFluke_small