Undercard Productions

I am sorry

I have been a real schlub about updating this. I have a few freelance project going on currently, and most importantly, I am making my blog a little sexier. Well...I like to think so at least. Above you can see a comp of the current site's content coded in. Much cleaner, easier to read, and it even has tweed to boot, which is extremely manly.

I hope everyone is patient with me and sticks around. I have a few new posts planned for as soon as the site launches...which hopefully will be this weekend!! Hooray!! 

Big John Buscema Show

My wife Stephanie, me, and her family will be flying over for the exhibit. It would be great to get the word out about this as much as possible. This is the first expansive gallery showing of John's work in a in recent memory. Private collections spanning the artist's entire career will be on display publicly for what very well maybe the first time.  

I will be documenting as much as possible and posting to Flickr as soon as well get back but please help spread the word, and get as much interested generated as possible. Thanks so much.

Marvel Visionaries | Redesign

'...books needed to look attractive in order to encourage shops to display them to advantage, they must be sold beyond the traditional outlets such as bookshops, and, to keep the projected price low(sic), the sales of each title must be large because the profit margin would be so small.'

Sounds quiet apropos doesn't it. Sounds like someone has stolen the first chapter of in the Book of Woes | Comics. They didn't. This is from the introductory chapter of Penguin by Design written by Phil Baines, describing the gut feeling the Lane brothers followed in founding Penguin Books in 1935!

This is exactly how I feel about the state of Comics and their design. I am not talking about Indie and Small Press. I am talking about the big boys, namely, the Distinguished Competition and Marvel. 

Every chorus around comics is sounding with versus pertaining to market penetration. How do we break out of comic books shops and into big box retailers and book stores outside our regular circulation? Prior to that past two weeks events, which I won't talk about cause they have been covered by far more educated men and women, I think Darwyn Cooke in an interview with iFanboy put it best, "why the hell would you make a book that looks like a comic(in more or less words)." His goal behind the design of Parker was to basically trick to the stock boys into putting it in with Crime Fiction. I think it worked. It's been on/was on the Times Best Seller list for a few weeks. 

If the founders of one of the finest publishers in books, and one of the smartest men in comics agree, then well, I think we might have a good sense of direction there. 

If I take visual stock of my shelf now, I see madness. If I was not already a comic fan, this would be incredibly intimidating. There is no visual organization or hierarchy to guide me.

Jonah Hex fights 2010!?

I just saw the Jonah Hex poster, I guess a teaser poster, for the movie coming out in 2010 and starring Josh Brolin. I like the eerie color scheme, almost Supernatural, like Jonah himself. It all looks pretty good to me, predictable, repetitive, but who would notice but me. And then I saw the logotype, and my heart sank a little. 

(Original via Geek Tyrant)

Wikipedia's Jonah Hex entry, which sums it up well, reads:

Jonah Woodson Hex is a fictional character, a Western comic book antihero created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga and published by DC Comics. The right side of his face is horribly scarred. He was an officer for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, fought at Gettysburg and is normally shown wearing a tattered Confederate States Army jacket. Hex is surly and cynical, but bound by a personal code of honor to protect and avenge the innocent and is in many ways similar to Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name or The Outlaw Josey Wales.

How tremendous does that sound!? And it is. Jonah Hex, week in and week out, in it's modern format, is easily one of the best comics produced. Well colored, extremely well written, and consistently amazing art. So, I guess the point I am getting at, is Jonah is a dude's dude.

How does a cowboy, who regularly battles awful things in the world, get a weird, futuristic type. I'm not sure. Maybe this is a possible sequel?

(digitally enhanced version)

Same effect. Same color scheme. Same actress. Seriously, Hollywood needs a kick in the creative bone. This designer is calling them out. Hollywood needs some new art directors in a GD hurry. 

As I said though, I have really really high hopes for this project, I'm not writing it off cause there are some great forces behind Jonah. I hope it is nothing but fantastic cause it is such a great comic, with a really clear message and direction. Let's hope it shines through. Personally, I would have had Basil Gogos paint a beautiful study of a gnarled Jonah's(Josh Brolin) face and take it in more of a classic direction like below (and left out Megan Fox, I could not care less about her or her lack of acting chops).

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The Saga of "E"

First and foremost, happy 10th birthday to the Iron Giant! This part still makes me cry.

On to The Saga of E
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Study of E from Rob Harrigan on Vimeo.

Last night was my last class with the esteemed Ed Benguiat. Seriously, the stories are true. The man has eyes on his fingers. He can do three little things to a piece and make it a 100% better. It's amazing. Our final assignment was to create a "dimensional E." Take that for the vague open-ended statement that it is. The entire class then voted on the projects round robin until the best was voted down to. 

I did not win. But I did finish strong. Top 3 is not a bad place at all. Ed said my project was hip. For a jazz drummer to describe your project as hip, he must like it somewhat. The other top two people( the girl who won had cut out numerous E's out of foamcoare(?) and presented them as you would bug or animal specimens in a glass case ) in the top places had really really strong pieces as well. Chris Beesley (he consistently did really strong work in class. he has a very clean style) was also in the top three and he has a really strong piece based off of time elapsed photography. Check his blog out, I'm sure he will post it. Some of the other notables were an E drawn on a face with marker, freshly made sunny-side up eggs with an e burnt in the yolk, & some serious paper cutout action for an E.

I had built an electrified zoe-trope. Animated inside the zoe-trope was a custom designed italic E (based off of Behemoth and ITC Bookman see below) spinning is space. The video is above.

Regular and Italic Version

A dimensional E. Get it? It was a lot of fun, I'm a bit wistful to watch the class go. That man is an absolute legend and it was humbling just to be in his presence. He even signed my type spec books from Photo-Lettering.

My second plan, which I was going to do but I figured Steph would kill me, was to tattoo an E on my leg and make it "dance" like Petunia from Pete & Pete. As aside:

I at one time tattooed a Bouncing Souls logo on my thigh. Didn't hurt that bad, figured I could pull it off again.

But I digress, if you are in/around NYC and have 500 bucks to spare, don't go buy any computer parts, go take his class at SVA. It was one of the best investments I made recently. 

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth saves GM!!??

Bring back Ed "Big Daddy" Roth from the grave and get Detroit to listen. Thats how! 

no Ed Roth piece would be complete without this.

So I am playing catch up this week in class and trying to make up my missed work from Comic-Con and finishing up my final assignment. Last week's assignment that I am making up is redesigning GM for the new age. I guess I have an advantage cause I saw what the other kids did, and I felt like a lot of them didn't push the envelope at all. It was lots of Gill Sans and Helvetica. Not that there is anything wrong, but come one. Look at the beautiful history of car culture. There is soooo much to pull from.

I decided to pay homage the one of my favorite people of all time, Ed Roth. Ed would have saved Detroit, if we wanted to. He didn't want to. Instead he did what he always did. In the 60's this man was making cars got incredible gas mileage, were compact, and were amazing. Mind you they were trikes and what-not, but he saw where it was going. He was doing it before his time. Everyone thought he was crazy. The Surfite was basically a smart car that carried a surf board. How genius right!?

surfite model kit

Sure many people have paid typographic homage to Ed. House did it, tons of people have ripped him off, but I though it would be awesome to draw out the whole wordmark of General Motors if Ed Roth was running it, by hand, like he would have. 

Seconds (1963) | Cover Design

One of my favorite new pieces I've been working on are book comps. I know, I know. Books are dead...Kindles...blah blah blah. As long as books are beautiful and well done, people will buy them.

SECONDS | 1963 Thriller
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Seconds, was & is both a book and a movie. The book was written by David Ely and published in 1963. The movie was released in 1966 starring a fantastic Rock Hudson and directed by veritable genius John Frankenheimer. I watched this for the job and I have found a new top ten favorite movie.

I was extremely taken with the story, acting, & cinematography. Rock Hudson easily gives his best performance of his career, bringing real depth and emotion to his character. I don't want to get too much into the visuals but it is breath-taking.

When I start a job, I always avoid seeing this, I instead prefer to hear about them and experience them. I'm always afraid that when I see things I will absorb it and merely design on top of it. Instead of reading the book, I worked from the movie. But designed a book cover. I know, an abstraction of an abstraction. 

This is the original 1966 cover

My 2009 versions

 

The two pieces I created are 180 degrees from this one. I went it two directions, a play of young and old, reversing of time. And in the movie and novel, our Protagonist is blackmailed into agreeing to this. He is blackmailed with a video. I got the feeling that it was the fulcrum of the story really. If it wasn't for that, he would have never agreed

Wednesday Comics | Design Crit

FOR COMIC WEDNESDAY | A DESIGN CRITIQUE OF WEDNESDAY COMICS 

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I was/am/is/still really excited about this idea. I’ve seen/or heard about other companies doing the newspaper angle before(Fantagraphics I believe did one) but they were mainly one-offs. And the idea of giant editions have been around since what the 70s or 60s?

 

image via giantsizemarvel

However, combining them together was a great idea. You get the great large format of the old funnies and you have an “edition” that doesn’t blend in with all the others on the racks at your shops. You also get the collectible aspect, with many recent collectible editions: Kramer’s Ergot, Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz, George Sprott, you have an oversized appeal. Can you imagine these collected hard-bound & oversized? The DC “Absolute Edition” Wednesday Comics. 

 I’d pay for it now.

 This project combines amazing art, amazing writing, and superb art direction. It has been put out with a purpose and a vision, whenever you do that, people will respond. 

  

I want to take a look at this from a design perspective, most notably, the mastheads, typography, and feel. I will not be putting whole pages up. You wanna read it? Go and buy it. Support your local comic shop. I will by putting up snippets and things I believe are notable or wish to discuss. I think this is one of the freshest things I have seen from the big two in a while, and I am really anxious to see what comes next, coughmarveli’mlookingatyoucough...I’m sure they have something up their sleep. Healthy competition shakes off the cobwebs.

Super secret project paste ups

Super secret project paste ups, originally uploaded by robharrigan.

Working on a super secret new project. These are some early paste-ups. As you can see still a lot to figure out.

Everyone should draw letters. Everyone should exercise their mind without a computer. I feel like I've used muscles I haven't used in years. Now

I just need to clean up the mess before my wife sees it.

Bobs from Brazil

They have been cloning me for years in Brazil. You wanna know what happened to Steve Guttenberg? He found out. We had him taken care off.