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...
I was asked to do a design test for Marvel Animation recently and while my designs were not ultimately (ha-ha!) choosen, it was a lot of fun to do! I tried taking a very cartoony approach, pushing my designs in a more Sean "Cheeks" Galloway direction. I thought it might be appropriate, since Joe Madureira was about to take over The Ultimates, and in my experience, big simple shapes always work best in animation. Unbeknownst to me, Sean was doing his own design test! His are a lot better than mine! I'm not sure whose designs ultimately (ha-ha!) got choosen, but it wasn't either of us. A friend of mine remarked that my designs were very "Michael Avon Oeming," so I'll take my compliments where I can get them! So there!
