THE WILD BUNCH

This illustration began as a drawing for a tattoo a friend of mine wanted me to design for him. The tattoo was meant to show one of Sam Peckinpah's most famous frames from his film The Wild Bunch. But then the graphic designer inside me (ah, that little annoying bastard!) started messing with it, and that's the final result of it. I tried coloring this illustration, but I finally decided to keep it black-and-white to give it a more serious look.
[The Wild Bunch is a Warner Brothers film directed by Sam Peckinpah]

SCOTT PILGRIM

For this illustration I used photoreference, as I wanted Scott to look like Michael Cera (who's portraying the character in the upcoming Edgar Wright movie). Apart from that, the illustration is all digital. Even though it's a black-and-white book, I always imagine the Scott Pilgrim universe as a colorful place, and that's what I wanted to show here. The use of crazy elements in the image (like pink letters or shinning orange stars) contribute to create that surrealistically pop atmosphere too.

I've been a fan of Scott Pilgrim since I bought Volume 2 at Jim Hanley's Universe in 2004, during my first trip to New York City. I had read some reviews and had seen some preview pages from Volume 1, and although I didn't know who Brian Lee O'Malley was and didn't know anyone who was reading the book, I just got the feeling that I was going to like it.

[Scott Pilgrim created by Brian Lee O'Malley]

100 BULLETS - MONEY FOR NOTHING

This 100 Bullets illustration (kind of a fake cover, too) is a strange mix between photos and digital drawing. I liked the idea of composing the image the way you can either understand the girl is a potential victim of the gunman or his superior. When coloring it I decided to avoid using greens on the bills and turn them red, to have a more limited palette and also to symbolize the relation between money and crime (red is the color of blood).

My wife and my father were the models here.

[100 Bullets created by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. The Vertigo logo is a property of DC Comics]