This week my super Saturday kawaii offering is Ultraman. Not the hero of Japanese TV and manga fame (although I loved watching those shows as a kid) but the DC villain from Earth 2’s Crime Syndicate. Briefly, the Crime Syndicate was an evil version of the Justice League from another dimension and Ultraman was their version of Superman. There have been a number of costumes for this guy over the years but my hands down favorite has to be the one by Frank Quitely. It captures the elements of classic Superman’s costume but strips out all of the unnecessary detail. The kicker for me is the U logo. Other artists have used a stylized letter U or replaced the S with a U in Superman’s normal logo. Quitely flipped the pentagon shape and stylized the U to the extent that it also works visually as an arrow. Flipping the pentagon is a nice visual representation that this guy stands for the opposite of everything Superman supports. Pushing the letterform into a stylized version that serves double duty is just icing on the cake for me.
Category: Artwork
Thor’s Hammer
I’ve been wanting to make some art based on various cool Thor’s hammer pendants that I have been seeing around the web. (This one and some of these, for example.) I have started and stopped this project a number of times always ending up unhappy with the results. This week I think I finally have it. The base design of the face is mostly a riff on the first link above although I added a good bit of knot work into the mix along with the lightning bolts and one of Thor’s magic gauntlets. I’ll have to leave it to another week to go back and add some better colors and texture to it.
The Red Scare
No, we’re not talking about politics and that little era of insanity certain elements of the United States went through – we’re talking about the guy from Villains, Inc. In The Tick comic universe there was an organization called Villains, Inc. This was obviously a consortium of evil super villains bent on taking over the world, right? Wrong! (You have read The Tick, haven’t you?) Villains, Inc was basically a rent-a-villain shop. If you were an aspiring hero looking to make a name for yourself you could pay to have a costumed crook wreak some havoc and then allow you to defeat him in an epic staged battle. The Tick would never stoop so low, but a hero-wannabe named Fast Guy was more than willing. Unfortunately for Running Guy, The Tick came across the pseudo Soviet first and proceeded to beat him up pretty good. There are a number of great lines in this comic but one of the best has to be when Running Guy shows up to find the Tick battling the bad guy he has paid for and reacts like this:
See you next time!
The Dwarf King
I have been playing around with some ideas for a project I have on the back burner. While I have produced a whole lot of artwork that I hate, I did manage to put this piece together. While I think it still has some weaknesses and needs a lot more work on the knots, it feels like I’m at long last heading in a good direction. What do you all think?
Princess Verdena
This week I headed out into the world of indie comics to find my inspiration and I found it in the G-Man universe of writer/artist Chris Giarrusso. I will be honest that I don’t know anything about the story behind this character other than the small blurb I came across. But I am digging the art style and intend to order a copy of the graphic novel when I get a few extra bucks. There are some cool all-ages/family comics out there and they deserve our attention and support. See you next time!
Thor Fan-art
I usually post my own superhero art on Saturdays but this week I am instead going to point you in the direction of the Project Rooftop blog. They invited their fans to submit renditions of the god of thunder and the fans responded with over 50 different versions of the Norse god! Go check it out.
The Return of Freya
I have another version of Freya for this week’s Norse-inspired artwork. Yeah, I just did a version of her a short time ago, but after all, today is Valentine’s Day so it is only proper that we offer up a little tribute to the Norse goddess of live, right?
Puff Adder from the Serpent Society
Tomorrow is the Chinese New Year and kicks off the Year of the Snake. So for this week’s super Saturday drawing I have plucked a character from the ranks of Marvel Comics’ Serpent Society. I’m featuring Puff Adder. Yes, he is kind of lame as a super-villain, but how could I resist this guy? Just look at the detail on the costume. And he’s already wearing a kawaii kind of animal hat! Plus it is especially fun to take the rough and tough bad guys and give them the cutesy treatment.
See you next time!
A Norseman in Love
Valentine’s Day is only a week away and I used that as my inspiration for this week’s Norse-themed artwork. I started off by searching the net for any links between Valentine’s Day and the Norse. As with most things on the net, I found stuff out there but I’m not sure how much of it I can trust. There are pages saying the holiday is actually named after a Norse saint named Galantin and the G is pronounced like a V. Other pages say the name is a corruption of Vali, Odin’s son who was an archer god (shades of Cupid?) The best part, and I am using the word ironically, is that these pages hardly ever back up their assertions with references.
However I did come across this page which talks about a 12th century weaving tool that had the following runic inscription carved onto it:
Think of me, I think of you. Love me, I love you.
Isn’t that sweet? The piece was found at the Bryggen site in Norway and you can see a little more information about it here.
This was the perfect springboard for me and helped me decide that this week’s art should be something a little more useful than what I normally do. So I put together the below graphic. Save the graphic to your computer. Print it out on a sheet of stiff 8.5×11 paper and then simply fold it in half and you have your very own Norse-ish Valentine card to share with someone you love. I went with a black and white graphic so you can color it yourself or just leave it plain. (I know the knot-work is a bit more Celtic than Norse. I’m still working on developing more of that free-form feel of the Norse knot-work into my art.)
I hope you all enjoy this.
Acroyear, Warrior King of Spartak
I’ve talked about drawing more characters with hair to push my skills but this is one character I couldn’t resist. There are a number of reasons why the character appeals to me. Part of it is nostalgia since I have fond memories of the first two years of the old Marvel Comics edition. Yeah, it was about a set of toys, but Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden created a really epic adventure from the thinnest of premises. I owned maybe two or three of the toys. They weren’t the main attraction for me. I just liked reading a nicely drawn epic adventure
I also dig the armor. Yes, it is kind of silly. Just think of the neck muscles you would need to hold that thing up all day long, not to mention how easy it would be for your opponents to grab it and pull you off balance. But I don’t care. I’m willing to suspend disbelief up to a certain point and Acroyear’s design edged up to that point without going over it for me.
That’s it for this Saturday. See you next time!
The backstory was pretty cool too. Basically, the prince of an entire, sentient world is betrayed by his own brother and cast into prison of a prince of an entire world of reading the old Micronauts comics from the very first issue up through the end of the f to get my muse fired up. But the second reason why I figured it was time to draw her was the hair. I have tended to avoid drawing characters with hair but Delirium has hair that is wild enough and strange enough that I figured it was a good choice to ease myself in to the world of kawaii styling. See you next time!
Mark Neumayer 