NCAA Preview for LA Times

I was very excited to created this year's NCAA Preview cover for  The Los Angeles Times! This was a large scale project for me, and I enjoyed putting a lot of hours into it. My wife? Not so much :)

The premise of the image is about how LA's "local" teams of Arizona and Gonzaga will have to face powerful teams from the Big East conference during March Madness. The big teams this year are Kentucky, Virginia, Duke, Wisconsin, and Villanova.

(click to enlarge)

Roughs (the AD actually considered these as sketches and sent back a layout with his favorite)

(click to enlarge)

Final sketch from selected rough (went a little nuts with this one)

I'm SO happy they liked the idea of using the mascots (Kentucky Wildcats, Virginia Cavaliers, Duke Blue Devils, Villanova Wildcats, Wisconsin Badgers). A requested alternate version with the smaller teams as mascots (Arizona's Wildcat wears a hat and that bulldog just looks so silly):

You may notice that the small figures changed in the final art; it was a requested revision that the reader be able to see the team names on the players' backs. I much prefer the twisting figures in the sketch, but I totally understand and was happy to do the revision. Also both team numbers are "2" as a way to reflect the teams' seeds (college basketball jargon :)

(detail)

Thanks for reading!

Enjoy the Day,
Chris

Soccer Dream Team

I recently completed a project about a soccer dream team, and they needed an image involving all of them (including the coach!) After some discussion over the phone we settled on the idea of the "team" running onto the field, and I added some dust and ambiance for mood :)

Sketch (took about 20 hours including shooting ref):

The final art took around 55-60 hours as I'm pretty slow when it comes to digitally nailing a likeness; I find it hard to translate the sketch into shapes when it has to look like a specific person (generic faces out of my head are so much easier to light). So I sit there for hours per head: 

Tweak this. Tweak that.

Raise this. Lower that.

Stretch this. Squash that. 

(Repeat 1,256,489,364,497.7325 times.)

A helpful hint in likenesses is to nail down the triangle formed by their pupils and tip of the nose; I read this somewhere and it really does help; I suppose its because that is the area we look at the most on a person's face, and it is subconsciously filed away in our minds (face-recognition technology: in your brain).

The bodies go much quicker, although with this particular group, everyone needed VERY specific uniform patches, logos, etc. In the initial final art, everyone was wearing a generic Puma shoe based off of my own pair. Well, that is a big no-no, ladies and gentlemen. I had to revise all the shoes so that SI wouldn't have the players' sponsors calling them up with complaints! ( It had happened to the Craig, the AD, before!)

Spread-layout (close-ups of players are below):

As a bonus (literally), they decided to run the art on the cover!

And finally, here is a diagram I also did for the same issue. Not shown here, each player was featured on a page with bio/photo, etc; included on each page was this little diagram (about 2x2) with that player in color and the rest silhouetted. Here you get to see them all in one tiny image.

A very generic sketch (since it was to be so small, we weren't worrying about details at this point):

Thanks to Craig for hanging in there on this beast of an assignment! While it was a ton of work, it was a great project to take part in, and I look forward to future collaborations with a magazine I worshipped as a kid. 

Enjoy the Day,

Chris

Reading Pitcher Body Language

Boy oh boy, am I excited to share this artwork with everyone! I assume it is cool to share this as it has been published, and I have tearsheets so here goes!

Back in September, I was very fortunate to get an assignment about how some players can "read" a pitcher's demeanor on the mound. In doing so, they can predict the next pitch to be thrown. With the article being interesting and fun to read, I knew I would have a blast doing sketches for two spots and a full page image. In speaking with the AD, I decided to pitch some images that could also work as a spread with minimal extra effort on my part. 

Spot and spread sketches:

 

I gotta be honest and say I fell in love with the yelling back concept; I felt it captured the pitcher's body betraying him (a prominent aspect of the article). The crystal ball and stoplight were also favorites of mine as I thought they would challenge me in new ways. In the end, they actually asked for a spot sketch as the full page illo and a spread sketch as a spot. Works for me!

Final Art (spread cropped because I like it that way):

I'm not going to lie: this project was awesome! I got to try a lot of new things in my work, I had a great art director, and I love the tearsheets.

Enjoy the Day,

Chris

Footwork!

Hello again! Featured in this post is some sport-based artwork.

The article is an instructional section of the magazine that helps kids and teens improve their tennis game. This particular article addresses a player's footwork. To me, the main emphasis was on constant foot movement and small steps at a high volume to maintain control and get to the ball. Here are the submitted sketches:

Dennis liked the extreme perspective version, and I was more than happy to take it to finish! With this piece, I tried to open up my color palette a bit as I have been getting numerous requests for the red/gold or red/white limited color work. I am pretty happy with this piece, and I think it is exciting for both grown-ups and kids to view. The final art in context:
Enjoy the Day,
Chris

The Very Useful Esc Key

Here is a new editorial. The subject of the article was about unexpected uses for the Esc key. Apparently, that key can be a lifesaver! Apparently, its more than just...escape.

Sketches:
Sketch #1 was to show how powerful the key can be; its exploding off of the keyboard. Sketch #2 was a play on the multi-function aspect of the key. Sketch #3 was a exploration of the key's helpfulness; I portrayed it as air-dropped relief. They chose the third sketch, and I went to finish.


Completed Artwork:
I wanted to keep this artwork very warm and bright. I stayed away from a blue sky as I was simply using blue skies in several pieces during that time. This illo also ran in the same issue as the IMAP mailbox image from a few post back. That image was mostly blue as well so I wanted to make the two image look completely different since they would be in the same issue.

As I said before, it was a pleasure to do this job, and I even got a compliment from another AD on the images. Good stuff!

Until next week!

Enjoy the Day,
Chris

Big Labor

In this instance, the AD was looking for some eye-catching artwork for their cover. It had not been decided which article was going to grace the cover, so we worked on ideas for the two possibilities. One feature was about Unions/Big Labor and the other is about the military heroes of Small Business. Here are the sketches:

The first sketch for the "small business soldier" was a very simple man-in-suit with stars on his lapels and a striped tie, looking heroic and patriotic. Although I enjoy the sketch as a drawing, I feel this was too subtle.

The second sketch has a better feel. They wanted a superhero-type image similar to the Blue-collar football image I had done a few months back. I feel that a patriotic superhero costume has been perfected, so I alluded the the amazing Captain America.

The second article dealt with the effect of labor unions on small business owners. In today's tough economy, some already suffering businesses are on thin ice because of union-enforced regulations that may or may not relate to their business and employees. For the first, sketch I went with a laborer's gloved hand squeezing a small businessman.

My second sketch played off a "boxing in" phrase used in the article in reference to government and labor unions trying to make small businesses fit a generic mold of what all businesses should be and how they should perform, what they should provide, etc.

We were surprised when the higher-ups decided to run the Unions/Big Labor article as the cover; the AD was almost certain when initially contacting me that they were going to run the Soldier article, and I thought the best sketch was the superhero concept. It was decided to go with the squeezing sketch while dropping the suit (yes!) and adding a female. With this type of work, it is always a consideration to portray multiple nationalities and both sexes. I got into the revision and even added a third figure for a better balance and composition.

I submitted two versions, and the AD chose the limited color palette. I always enjoy her type layouts over my images. With this illustration, I tried to plan for her use of white text and as such limited my own use of lighter values. All in all, I think we collaborated on a striking cover that grab's attention (no pun intended).

The article is a pretty interesting read, especially when taking into account union effects on businesses with only a few employees that have to meet these "large business union" demands.

Enjoy the Day,
Chris
chris-whetzel.com

No Justice

Here is a process from a recent cover.

They had an idea of what was wanted so I sent two quick layouts to choose from (I used a frame from another assignment's sketches as an indicator):

After layout approval, I worked up a tight sketch. While doing so, the AD ran the layout by the other art directors and wrote me with the feedback that it seemed very "farmer" with the pitchforks and such. I made it more urban by replacing them with pikes wrapped in barb wire. I thought it might be too much, but I guess not:

And I submitted two versions of final art. Initially, I was working the piece to emulate images on my website that the AD had mentioned. However, I really wanted to explore this as a two-color image, and he responded to that as the direction to move in:

After some discussion, we settled on this final version:
The difficult part of this assignment was creating a suitable composition that would work with all of the papers' mastheads. The AD allowed me some leeway and said that overlapping the logos is fine and actually encouraged in some cases. Good news for me! Here is a sample of what most of the other mastheads look like:
Needless to say, I am SUPER-PSYCHED to have this artwork coming out this week! It's one of those days where you can't stop smiling and whistling, and people look at your weird.

Many thanks to all the ADs for such a great opportunity as well as the great exposure. I hope to work with each of them again in the future!

Enjoy the Day,
Chris
chris-whetzel.com

Athletic Portfolio

An AD contacted me with an awesome assignment: the athletic portfolio. I was thinking "what on earth is that?" After the AD's description and reading the article, I was eager to start. It was to be a full-page action-oriented image based off one man's integration of kickboxing philosophy into investing. The editors were looking for a kickboxing-based image. I was super-psyched to do this assignment as I was really wanting to do some action-oriented work.

Here are the sketches I provided:
A kung-fu image where I was trying to nail down the feel of old kung-fu posters and movie box covers. I was considering a layer of Japanese text around the figure but thought it might be too candid.

I got the phrase in my head "punch up your portfolio." I think the sketch explains itself. POW!

With the last sketch , I really kind of went nuts and really wanted to push the action. Its kind of like a comic book spread. All of these were really fun to draw, and I was happy taking any of them to finish.

The AD enjoyed the sketches as well, and he decided to go with the "punch up." I think this was the best choice as well as it can be seen as a representation of either boxing or mixed martial arts; its not as limited as the other two sketches. It was the best choice to represent the general phrase "athletic portfolio."

Final Art, approx. 8x10:
I really enjoyed this piece, and I was happy to add it to the website. It was also feature on the ispot's "news" blog and Altpick's "news" section. Thanks for the opportunity to flex my action-drawing muscles!

Enjoy the Day,
Chris
chris-whetzel.com