[Today is the release date for the debut album--! See superheavy.com and order it thru Amazon.]
A true a meeting of legends and musicians at the top of their game-- my geeky self would compare it with something like the Avengers Assembling or the Justice League team-up of musical talent.
The supergroup that composes SuperHeavy are Mick Jagger, Dave Stewart, Joss Stone, A.R. Rahman, and Damian Marley. It was the most diverse and talented pooling of folks I had ever heard of and a real pleasure to be a involved in this first release single.
I met with the director Paul Boyd and Dave A. Stewart of Eurythmics fame and worked out of his offices to knock these boards out in a big hurry. Again, more comics related references-- but I had heard of Dave's work in comics (not the also talented colorist 'Dave Stewart') but as scribe for the quirky black comedy graphic novel, "Zombie Broadway". I still have to check out his other her dip into comics with "Walk-In" which I was recommended. I gave him one of my 'Sunless Circus' comics I tend to have on hand.
 |
| Perks to working on-site-- Dave Stewart strumming live awesomeness |
The SuperHeavy logo was a design by Shepard Fairey and that indeed was a real tattoo of it that Dave was getting in the vid. Now that's dedication to the project~ Here I was complaining about getting non-toxic marker ink all over my hands at the art desk...
Since the video required a crowd on set, a pal and I got treated to a free concert as extras and met a couple of the legendary performers. The violinist Ann Marie Calhoun was also amazing to hear perform live.
I also got a copy of my hastily drawn storyboards signed by Sir Mick and Ms. Stone, which was quite fantastic.
If you do a search for it on eBay...... you won't find it~
All the talent and crew were a fine class of people and great to work with.
[Drawing Process]
Though I usually use digital color/toning, this one was rushed through (totaling 100+ frames of drawings in about two days) so I opted for my quick-and-speedy COPIC marker rendering. You can kind of see where I ran out of cool grays to switch to a warm tone in some of them. I've found this much faster and a better indicator of how to improve more confident linework. I personally like using the chisel tip Sketch markers that can handle both details and wide shadow areas. Especially for on-set sketching, I should really have a set of gray values handy for storyboarding on the fly.
The director was stellar and seemed happy with probably some of my most rushed drawings. It was a treat to see what parts of the sketches made the final cut. See here--
[Storyboards and screenshot comparison] :
