Get a Life! Or a Blog...

Get a Life was one of the funniest shows you've never seen. It ran on Fox for all of two years before getting cancelled but not before cementing Chris Elliot as a comedic genius in the mind of one young Aaron Sowd. So you can imagine my excitement when I got hired to do a promo poster for The Swinger, Chris Elliot's short film for Showtime. Chris Elliott plays a world famous minature golf champion and Bob Costas and Maury Povich are interviewed in this mockumetary. Costas' best line: "Sure, Tiger Woods is great, but has he ever won a free game?" It's directed by Mark Feldstein and Brad Roth, the guys behind Stun Creative. They wanted to do the poster in a comic book style and parody the Superman Returns posters since the title was going to be The Swinger Returns: Hmmm... Chris Elliot, comic books and Superman? Would I be interested? Hells yeah!

So here's the poster, in six easy steps. First the thumbnail, just a small quick sketch to get the concept approved. Chris is looking heroic in the Superman pose, holding his golf club and flying above the earth which I made into a giant golf ball: Once the basic thumbnail concept was approved, I did a tighter pencil sketch, working on getting the Chris Elliot likeness correct: When the pencils were approved I went to inks using a black Pentel marker and .01 and .005 Pigma pens. The Pental works like a nib and dries twice as fast which is perfect for advertising gigs when time is of the essence: Then I scanned in the inked Chris Elliot figure and colored him in Photoshop: The golf ball was created in 3-D and composited in Photoshop with the glows and stars. I know some people consider it cheesy, but I can't resist a good lens flare: Then the logos, tag line and text were dropped in to create the final poster. Ta-daa! Can you believe I actually get paid to do this stuff? I'm the luckiest guy in the world...