[ f f t a ] - from the vault

hello. it has been a while. i've missed you.

last week the .com turned six whole years old, although the twisted, thorny sinews of my sundry and oft-interrupted ventures into the blog-thing extend back very nearly eight. wow. i am getting old.

so, to commemorate this inauspicious occasion i've finally dragged these pieces out of the vault. cave-dwelling animals, they blink their disused eyes at you and, for the first time, feel the warm light of morning on their cold frog skin. they bristle.

anyway.

the top piece was the capstone on the period of my "career" spanning mid-high school through college, in which my favorite practice was taking manga-style art depicting video game characters and rendering it in a more realistic fashion. there are a number of examples in the /art gallery, from sources like Dragon Warrior II, Skies of Arcadia, Pokemon, and so forth. this last drawing honored my clan from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, an impossibly fearsome Krewe of pipe-hitting juggernauts that helped me maintain some semblance of sanity across a particularly troubled stretch of my life. i worked on it extremely intermittently across a year and change. please look at it, wonder why the scan quality is crap, and then read below for the tragedy.



i never properly scanned the original art, instead settling for a quick photo. and then. and then. i moved to Florida and realized that this precious parcel - the art, tucked into the game book - had not made the journey with me. before i could return home to claim it, my mother threw it out: the art, the book, even the bloody game itself, in loathsome fulfillment of the inevitable fate of any dork's possessions.

at this point, i was done. i've not drawn anything similar since, and it was my crowning achievement with pencil and paper. i switched to a wacom.

this was also the only piece for which i drew a detailed cartoon beforehand, working out composition, poses and gear.



back to work. there is more art on the horizon, between commissions for Phil and the first, almost imperceptible, black light tongues of Hallows Fire licking at the periphery of my soul.

it comes.

[ P A R I A H ]

i invite you to this year's Halloween event, PARIAH. i would be honored if you would attend.



in many ways, PARIAH completes the cycle of the Halloween projects; now five strong, with Sigil as an outlier to the arc. it is a tale of love and loss, fear, flight, closure and redemption. it is a true story, a confession and a call to hope. i hope you have enjoyed the ride. as i wrote earlier [below], certain unexpected events over my birthday in Portland - featuring as its side acts the Oregon Brewers Festival and Ground Kontrol, a unbelievable 80s arcade - swept burdens from my back that i'd carried for far too long.

Halloween is delicious as ever. this weekend saw a cold snap and a number of ghoulish excursions. upon visiting my home at the end of September, a New York Times bestselling horror author declared, amazed and delighted, that my Halloween decorations "are phenomenal." more on that next time.

plate 5 from PARIAH was planned to be a roughly rendered, dark, quickly executed affair. as you have seen, it proved to be something rather different, taking on a life of its own. it's unanimously the public favorite, so i've included the high-rez original below. thank you for the kind comments.



Phil has offered to drop PARIAH in his feed, so a number of humans may actually end up seeing this thing. he is a good and generous brotherman. stay tuned for more from the two of us soon.

this is Halloween. live it.
/.n [while listening to Dethklok]

speaking of...

re: Portland, the last topic header proved eerily prescient. hmm.

for the first time in many years, i think it's going to be ok. details come October [below].

as always, this extended period of absence come autumn time (at last) means that i'm industriously laboring on the Halloween project. i think it will be something special this year - the first plate illustration is probably the prettiest thing i've ever painted.

this is not to say that its subject matter is beautiful. you know me better than that. need to redo the website design too... this one has worn quite thin on me. if nothing else, my photoshop kung fu is definitely getting stronger. Phil has promised outlandish and draconian demands on my art for The Asherah.

Walgreens rolled out a small portion of their Halloween sundries this week. some of the rest remains boxed as the Ark of the Covenant, complete with orange, casually displayed manifests proclaiming the grisliest confessions of wholesale markups and other sins.

now if only it would get cooler.

off to hang out in Chicago for a few days and sojourn over to my ancestral lands in Indiana. Clay has promised a bug petting zoo and giant pumpkin weigh-off at the state fair.

yes.

/.n [while listening to Jack Johnson]

on the subject of redemption

scrambling in prep for bailing hard to the conference in Portland over my birthday (coincident with the Oregon Brew Fest... YES). the week thus far has been so inexplicably rife with BS, both transpired and eagerly anticipated, that it's almost breathtaking. i called a mulligan as of 1030 Monday morning.

and then this happened and largely salvaged my sanity.



arrived in tandem with Real Ghostbusters season 1. here comes a smile.

it's been truly epic seeing this thing out in the real world... people happily posting photos of their own unboxing and commenting on the cover, or seeing it in newspapers and magazines and at the top of the Amazon charts. the chart rush was successful - Phil pulled down #1 in Movers and Shakers, #5 in Horror and #52 of all friggin' books on Amazon.com.

shiny.

/.n [while listening to Phil Rossi's Crescent Original Soundtrack]

[ h a r v e y ]

this Thursday, a week before Crescent's print debut on the 9th, Phil's dropping the first chapter of his new podcast novel Harvey. the man is a pleasant slavedriver, so i had to knock out another cover in wildly short order. the final version:



this one had an unusual twist in development - Phil gave me literally five or six keywords via text message and said "go." as it turns out, that was insufficient and i ended up producing what i thought was a cool cover but apparently doesn't capture the spirit of the tale. he provided the first chapter of Eden way back in the day to help inspire that cover, and the same apparently worked here - he is a big fan of MkII, above. here's the rejected prototype anyway:



long, long day.

/.n [while listening to Michael Jackson]

[ c r e s c e n t ] - video trailer

here is a thing we put together.

it didn't resize well for the blog, so it's a bit cut off to the right. here is an external youtube link.



the original art was downsampled and cropped by necessity (although Phil did a solid job), so i've included some larger versions below.








had to knock all these out in the space of a day - it's nigh on conference season which means that in doing research nonstop i am becoming increasingly estranged from sleep.

this was fun.

[ c r e s c e n t ] - cover, sites, etc

it is true. stuff has gone down.

pretty much all of my recent creative endeavors were executed in the service of Crescent's impending launch. that would be July 9th - rush the Amazon charts at 1pm EST, one and all. Phil unveiled the front cover art (one of two variants - won't be the print cover but rather used for marketing) on the fourth. sorry for the delay in getting it to you.



reactions on the intertubes have been thrilling and humbling. one of my favorites was passed along by Phil, reproduced here in all its convoluted Twitterese. "Good shit almighty! @PhilRossi just dropped the cover art for Crescent! Honestly, it makes my skull hurt from the awesome." sweet. one dissenting voice takes strong exception to symbolism - or is unfamiliar with the concept - and did not get it. can't make everyone happy.

other related artworks are out there, produced in the last few days. clicky where appropriate. did a new header for CrescentStation.net, various accoutrements for Phil's Twitter page, the soundtrack cover, and so on forever. may run up to DC early next month for the book launch party, which would please me beyond all reason.

other than that, it is finally summertime and a couple minor maladies imposed themselves upon my person in the last few weeks. one was caused by an attractive hip hop dancer [accidentally] kicking me square on the ear. another, more scarring, encounter was perpetrated by Sol.

getting older sucks. since that raucous 25th birthday in Montreal, i have been compelled to come more to grips with mortality - if not morality. on those notes, go see Up and The Hangover, respectively.

/.n [while listening to 50 Cent]