Vulcan, Leonard Nimoy and R2-D2

Good dad that I am I took the day off from work and made my daughter skip school so the two of us could drive out to Vulcan to witness the homecoming of Mr. Spock/Leonard Nimoy. It was all so nerdy of me, but hey, that's because I'm a nerd, or is it geek…whatever.

So we drove the two and a half hours out to Vulcan and it was pretty cool, it's always cool to do something with my daughter (insert awwww here). As we motored along we got passed, periodically, by news vans and other vehicles that were decked out in Star Trek accoutrements because, as far as things go, this was a big deal. You may not remember this but Mr. Nimoy campaigned to have the new Star Trek movie premiere in the town of Vulcan…and they don't even have a theatre.

All in all it was a lot of fun, and it was a very sweet gesture on behalf of Mr. Nimoy. And the citizens of Vulcan are a good group of people in my book.

Me in my Spock/Obama designed homage shirt in front of the Vulcan starship landmark.

So here are some of the things we saw.

 

Leonard Nimoy exiting his vehicle to go into the Star Trek museum in Vulcan. I managed to get a series of "action shots" as he made his way into the museum. The first was him getting out, the next was him raising his hand to do the traditional Vulcan salute and then, of course, him lowering his hand after completing the traditional "Vulcan" salute. Everyone else in attendance got the hand gesture but me. For the record, I gave myself my own little mental finger gesture for having missed this photo opportunity.

The museum. For a limited time they have the last known pair of Leonard Nimoy's original series ears on display (they are from Mr. Nimoy's own collection). He went into the museum with a select group of people and everyone else waited outside, and it was pretty cold that day, for Mr Nimoy to re-emerge and lead the parade to the unveiling of a Spock bust.

The local Enterprise float. And YEAH BABY – IT'S A HEMI.

Mr. Nimoy in the lead vehicle that drove the few blocks to the grand stand where he delivered a very nice, heartfelt speech to the citizens of Vulcan. The town council sat in, or walked beside, the smokin' hemi float that was pictured above

A parting shot of the starship that welcomes visitors to Vulcan.

One last item of note. Someone showed up at this event in Star Wars costume. Now this will sound mean but bear with me. Do you remember the final episode of Seinfeld where they got arrested for seeing something and doing nothing about it…now that you have that mental picture, here is the story. My daughter and I were waiting along the parade route (so there is our alibi), and as we were standing there, waiting for Mr. Nimoy to drive by, we saw R2 descending the gradual slope. At one point, R2 lost footing and fell. I was immediately reminded of the line from A Christmas Story - "Randy laid there like a slug… it was his only defense" (a minute twenty into the linked clip). As R2 flailed about like a turtle on it's back I looked at the multitude of Star Trek fans looking at the incapacitated unit and doing nothing and, YES, I admit it, I laughed. Then, as I saw that no one was going to help, I decided to get off my perch (which was perfect for viewing Mr. Nimoy, so you know what I was about to give up here) and go help. By the time I finally decided to do this I saw a few people approach R2 and help out, thus saving the droid™ and allowing me to keep my prime spot.
So you can go ahead and judge me now, but I think one really has to question the motives of someone who comes to a Star Trek event like this dressed up as a Star Wars character…I think they were looking for trouble.

The Calgary Expo

So this is the post I should have done ages ago, considering the Expo was back in April. So here it is.

We, my daughter, my two brothers, my niece and nephew, and I went to the Expo and had the opportunity to meet some of the coolest guests yet (every year seems to get better with this event, and next year promises to be even bigger).

Here are a few of the photos, some of them are a little blurry but I never claimed to be a photographer.

The one and only Malcolm McDowell, one of the nicest people I have ever met. He signed the items I had brought and then we talked briefly about Stanley Kubrick and films in general and he even directed some of the conversation to my daughter, who was probably rolling her eyes at her fanboy dad. She has seen Time After Time but is not ready for some of his other films. I'm sure I sounded like a gushing idiot to him, but he didn't say anything, the shoulder in the photo is mine but the look on my face is scarier than anything I saw at the show, so I  cropped myself out, I'll photoshop a different expresion someday and then only my hairdresser will know for sure.

Mr. Leonard Nimoy. The signing had an assembly line feel and he didn't personalize anything, but if you saw the line you would understand. I'm pretty sure out of the 20,000 fans who came to the show about 19,993 came to see Leonard Nimoy. I can't imagine the writers cramp he must suffer after each and every convention he goes to.


Bill Sienkiewicz came to the show and did a fantastic Batman drawing for me, he also signed my Venture brothers DVDs that he did the cover art for. I grew up reading his Moon Knight books and I followed pretty much everything he's done from Elektra Assassins to the conspiracy theory trading cards. The best part about meeting him was when he was about to hand me my sketch and then he said "wait a second", took the drawing, set it on the floor, grabbed a brush pen from his tool box, removed the brush and proceeded to splatter the drawing with ink. My initial thought as he was about to do this was "Noooooooooo" but DAMN! That just made the drawing a Bill Sienkiewicz.

Brent Spiner was there. Coolest story I have for him doesn't involve me or my daughter. There was a little girl and her dad ahead of us in the line, the little girl was clutching her Master of Disguise dvd for dear life, I can only assume it's her favorite movie. I guess her dad didn't realize there was an autograph fee until he got deep into the queue, so when he and his daughter got to the front of the line the father explained it all to Mr. Spiner and said that he just wanted his daughter to say hi to him. Mr. Spiner looked at the little girl, asked if she really liked the movie Master of Disguise, then asked if she wanted to hear his evil laugh (for those who haven't seen it he always farted at the end of the laugh). She said yes, he started to laugh, and then he said he had to stop because he didn't want to finish the laugh in public. Then he asked to see her dvd, which he then signed, gave it back and told her to treasure it forever. Very cool.

Billie Dee Williams, it was kind of anti climactic for me, to tell the truth. Probably because we, everyone in the line up, had been kept waiting about an hour/hour and a half longer than his "I'll be back at" sign said we would be waiting. As the volunteer kept coming back to adjust the time I got to the point of saying "10 more minutes and I'm out of here". When he did arrive he seemed a little grumpy and when I asked him to sign "may the force be with you (I know, I'm lame) on my Empire Strikes Back British quad poster (Drew Struzan's artwork was the only thing good to come of the "special edition" re-release) he just gave me kind of a squint eyed look and the signed his name and wrote "Lando" under it. I talked to my brother, who came to Calgary with his kids for the show, and he proceeded to tell me about his son's great experience getting his Lando mighty mugg signed. Which made me think I just happened to catch Mr. Williams at a bad time.

Super Punch - Red Sonya Contest

John Straun at Super Punch ran another contest that was a lot of fun to be a part of, Red Sonya. Again I busted out the watercolour paints, worked on what I thought would be a typically defiant Sonja type pose and away I went.

My family thought I was having too much fun drawing boobs - like I've said before, I just need to practice…

Super Punch - Kick-Ass Contest: Hit Girl

John Straun ran a contest some time ago on his site Super Punch and all I can say is - this is why I need to practice on my illustrations.

I would have to say that John's contests have inspired me to break out of the rut I was in creatively. I'm one of those types who needed a reason to do something (it's a lame excuse but it's the only one I have). So whenever he would have a contest (and this started over a year ago when he had a nose art competition) I would enter, not because I wanted to win, but because it was fun to do.

To tell the truth I forgot how much fun it is to just pick up a pencil and draw. For the most part, when I do something for John's contests, I like to use traditional methods (watercolour, pencil, etc). Although I did go digital for the Knight of Wands piece I did for his Tarot Card project but that was because I wanted to create something that looked like an airport information card.

The Calgary Cinematheque - Metropolis

Okay, when I first got the call from the Calgary Cinematheque that they would like me to help out, I was given a brief list over the phone of the upcoming movies. The third film on the list was Metropolis - complete and uncut, and as the rest of the list was being read all I could think about was the line from Jerry Maguire when Renée Zellweger says "you had me at hello".

A tough movie to do a poster for, in my opinion, because there have already been some amazing, iconic posters created. I wanted to do right by this film. I worked on a few graphic treatments that looked a little design-ee and then I thought that what I would really like to see is something like what Ludwig Hohlwein might have done. I also wanted to homage to the original poster with the rays of light behind the false Maria. So there you have it. I really need to bust out my paints and practice.

The film is being shown on November 18th at the Uptown in Calgary. It will have live musical accompaniment  by the world famous Alloy Orchestra, and it has been fully restored with scenes that have long been thought lost. 

Below are some of the early poster drafts I did too.

The Calgary Cinematheque - Ikiru

This was a movie I had never seen before. I picked up the Criterion Collection dvd to watch so that I would get a sense of what it was about. All I can say is WOW. Crushing bureaucracy and beneath it all a little hope. On top of getting to design posters I am being exposed to films I have either not seen or, not seen in a while.

Here is Roger Ebert's review of the film.

By the way, if you have ever worked for government, there is a scene at the beginning that made me laugh out loud (I don't know if that was the intent, probably not, but I thought it was funny anyway) in which a group of women are trying to get a park built and they get told, and I am paraphrasing here, "not my department. That scene is as true today as it was in 1952.

The Calgary Cinematheque - Easy Rider

Up next for the Cinematheque was Easy Rider.

I wanted to create a different look for this poster than what had been created in the past. Usually the artwork focused on the road, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda or Jack Nicholson. I wanted to focus on the symbol of their freedom, the bike, and in particular, Captain America's bike. It has such an iconic shape to it that I thought those who know and appreciate the film would hone in on it. And aside from the black and gray bits I wanted to keep the overall look very red, white and blue.

The Calgary Cinematheque - Rashomon

This year, on top of volunteering for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo,  I decided to volunteer for the Calgary Cinematheque. I have always wanted to design film posters and the Cinematheque runs classic films at local theatres. So when I contacted them they were willing to give me a shot.

My hope is to create a poster that I, or someone like me, would rip off of a construction site wall and put in a place of honor in my own office.

First up: Rashomon. I'm very happy with how it turned out. I think what I need to do though is grab my paints and practice illustrating again because I'm too used to trying to create things in the computer and I really wanted this to look like an old 50's era painted poster. I think that compositionally I captured that feel but I need to work on it.

The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo continued

Here's the ad I mentioned in my previous post. I never claimed to be a copy writer but I kind of liked the headline and sub head that I came up with. Simple and directed at a specific group. We wanted to make Malcolm McDowell the focus on this ad because Leonard Nimoy had been getting most of the attention for the show and we just wanted Alex DeLarge to have his turn.

The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo

I volunteered to help out with some of the design elements for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo this year, it was through the Expo (thanks Kandrix) that I was given the honor of working with the town of Vulcan (thanks Dayna) on the Welcome Home project for Leonard Nimoy.

With the Expo I got to work on the program, develop badges, T-shirts, some advertising components and some of the booth materials. I also developed some propaganda posters that didn't see the light of day aside from my blog here.

It was afantastic event that allowed me to meet some very cool people that I have idolized since I was a kid. Leonard Nimoy was fantastic (I still remember tracing, then drawing freehand the image of Spock off of his "Leonard Nimoy Presents: Mr. Spock's Music From Space" album), Billie Dee Williams was pretty cool (he wrote a whole bunch of stuff on the box of my nephews Lando Mighty Mugg, and he signed my Empire Strikes Back poster). But in my book Malcolm McDowell is the coolest guy on the planet, he signed my Clockwork Orange and Time After Time posters and my Stanley Kubrick Archives book and my daughter and I got to have a nice, but brief, conversation with him (my daughter hasn't seen Clockwork but she has seen, and liked, Time After Time).

Iron Man (the first one)

I can't believe I never uploaded this poster I did a while back. This was before the first Iron Man movie came out (which I liked better than Iron Man 2). The type is something I played with in Photoshop and the background is made up of about 5 stock images.

I was, and am, pretty happy with the end result. I wanted to show the original image I grabbed off of Allmoviephotos.com (the photo is by Jamie Bivers) so you can see I played with the colours quite a bit to make him really shiny. I have another one that features big floating heads but I'm not too happy with it so I let it sit out this dance.

Anyway, it's an oldie but a goodie.

Final Spock Welcome Home Image

When Leonard Nimoy came to Vulcan in April I was asked to come up with an image that would appear on T-shirts and posters. I originally did a rough Shepard Fairey imitation which I was happy with (see "Welcome Home, Spock" post) but it was nixed. So I did my Andy Warhol impression and come up with the final.

Here are some of the other attempts as well as my final Shepard Fairey homage which I made into a T-shirt for myself (and I got quite a few compliments, especially regarding the stardate).

Old Dutch/Fast and Furious promo

I was given the opportunity to work on a cross promo a while back for Old Dutch Potato Chips and the movie Fast and Furious.

It was a lot of fun and could have been even more so. My original idea (I guess original is debatable) was to create character specific bags (kind of a collect them/trade them sort of thing). Five flavours, one for each actor and a fifth bag for either the car or the final key art (I thought the car would be pretty cool since it was featured so prominently). This idea met with some favourable response from the powers that be, but when it came down to the wire it was decided to tie in only to the key art for the film (created by Concept Arts).

I understood and I was looking forward to getting the full size, layered artwork for the poster but the only thing provided was the key art for the CD, and it was the flat file to boot.

So even with those challenges I think the end result worked out quite well. They were eye catching in the stores and it was one of the more popular promotions that Old Dutch ran (maybe the film had something to do with it too).