Feenman's Birthday today!

Okay, I lied, I'm not exactly sure when Rotten School's Feenman's, one of Bernie Bridges' friends/henchmen, birthday actually is. But I did love drawing him enough to wish him a happy birthday if it fact today was his origination date. Here's a look at how he appeared to me the day he did come into black and white reality, and a start to finish for one of the page illustrations from Book One, The Great Blueberry Barf-Off. I loved his hair most of all; a sort of quasi-rasta do that was a cross between a bowl cut and pasta noodles. It was as thick as a helmet - which sort of explains why he hasn't even noticed a pencil that he launched into the ceiling above silently piercing his cranium as it fell back down to earth. Sniff! I can still remember when he was in diapers and size 8 booties (men's size 8's, that is).

Rotten Kindle

But I say that in a good way - as I just saw all the Rotten School books on Kindle now, and while I loved how the B&W images looked in print - they really translated back into digital watercolor images nicely. Thank you Painter. These would be great things for kids going to Summer Camps people (- I'm just sayin')!

This was Book 2, or The Great Smelling Bee. Sherman Oaks' robotic pet cat takes on Headmaster Upchuck's left leg in a, well, cat fight. Here's a look at the pencil.

Then the final in watercolor, well, Painter watercolor. The pin stripes were a stumbled-upon fun trick - I painted a layer of gray with all the shading - dried it, then added a solid darker layer of gray all over. A white, thin brush in the (still) wet layer stripped away all the stripes, revealing the lighter layer of shaded gray below.

Punked & Skunked

One of the more busy challenges from The Rotten School books was this cover for Book 11, "Punked & Skunked. The story was hilarious, and the visuals were a fun mess of contraptions from these kids' own inventive minds...of course, they really came from the twisted and genius mind of R. L. Stine himself. This cover needed Bernie Bridges with a contraption on his back that (in reality, this scene never really occurred in the book itself) was going quite hay-wired. I loved putting his dog, Gassy in wherever possible - and here he's getting his own auto-wash...and if you look at one of the shocks closely, you'll see that Bernie's own arch enemy in the series, Sherman Oaks, owns and makes these very shocks. Typical, he owns everything else.

The pencil had to be done quickly as this was one of the last books done in the series (before they were extended to another four more).

A first pass of color, although always ugly, just lays out the palette of colors with which to work. Knew this might be a bright yellow cover, so I needed highlights of that.

And the nice addition of the "construction/warning diagonal stripes" in black and yellow were a fun touch here and there.

I always loved how the art broke out from the boarders of the books' frame. This was no exception.

Row of Bravado

One of my favorite Rotten School spreads was this scene with Bernie Bridges bringing his very pathetic football squad into a huddle. It was fun assigning specific numbers that had hidden meaning to the players (for Jennifer Ecch - in another scene, she was a weight-reflective 125 - as in lbs.). One such number in particular was the bench-warming character "Nosebleed," who always gets nosebleeds. We gave him the number "O+." As in O positive... I also love how Feenman's helmet is never on the correct way - facing forward!

Watercolor for these was always done in Painter with a variety of spatter water brushes, colored pencils for touch-ups, and simple air brush tips.

Rotten Cast

While a lot of what on which I've recently worked can't be posted as it hasn't been released yet, here's a look back at the cast, practically in its entirety (apart from some random fart clouds and familiar cyclone, funnels of vomit - yes I just wrote that) of the Rotten School characters. The point of the full-color ones was to have them featured on the backs of the books...whereas the rest just weren't quite ready for prime-time yet.

What a Rotten Series!

It occurred to me that after 16 of these R.L. Stine Rotten School books, I never thought to post the covers I did. Digitally is a great way to show them as they were picked out to be the most vibrant (blindingly-so) colors on the shelves so they'd stand out just from their spines alone. See if you agree:

Bernie Bridges in 3-D!

Oh, you knew it had to be...Bernie. Rotten School's favorite bad boy. I made a sculpt of Bernie then had copies made, and painted each one. I think I only had six or so made, and I'm down to just a few left. The toughest thing about him was his darn head's so top-heavy - in the beginning I had to sculpt an arrangement of wires clumped together for his head, then had them supported by some huge, strong support wires that went through his neck. He still looks like he's about to fall forward with the slightest breeze. Perhaps I should just stick to illustrating...

Beastly Character

Beast, from Rotten School, definitely went through a nice exploratory. While he turned out looking like the one below, we went through a range of possible looks.

He was described as dog-like, always wearing a dog collar, with an optional leash attached. Starting with a bit of a hunched-over look, we then put him up on two feet. He also needed to be hairy, so we tossed a bunch of nasty bed-hair types on them. I had one I liked where we never saw his eyes...but in the end, we bulked him up and went with the one above.

Rotten Game

It's called Feed the Beast! Beast was a fun, Rotten School character to create, and this game makes it fun to feed him. There were a lot of versions to Beast before we got him right. He's big, he's hairy, and you don't want your hands near his mouth.

New Underwear

In this Rotten School book #4, "Lose Team Lose," (probably the best and most funny in my opinion) Bernie Bridges has two wars going on - one fighting the girl of his nightmares hunting him down, and the other a series of huge, monstrous opposing football teams. To him, they're just as bad. But I loved depicting this character with practically no shoulders in huge pads, and it brought his Hershey's Kiss-shaped body into a neat, opposing triangular shape.

(Here's a secret - I'm not very organized, no really, not at all) But I make myself get that way or things get really messy. With every book, project, etc. I break out a binder and sleeves, shown here, and just keep every tearing, every shred, and piece that makes it into the scanner, 'cause you just might need it later. Here you can see the pieces that went into this page alone:

The first issue here was the player behind Bernie, although menacing, he looked too old. Note several tries at it above.

A smaller chin helped, and I went overboard a little by giving him an almost babyish look and added big, puffy cheeks. The only thing not really babyish here is the tough, lower lip. You teach yourself things at the strangest times...

Although I loved the big guy's build, I was willing to sacrifice most of his presence by making him bleed off the page with his huge shoulder pads. So my suggested layout was below. But in the end, we went with keeping his whole silhouette within the crop. Still worked.

One of my all-time favorite tools in Painter is the Digital Paintbrush Splatter Water tool! It's rare you get a chance to really pour it out there, but with this guy, the great thing about it being in B&W was that while it gave the impression that he was covered in splashes of mud and grime, it also gave the creepy impression that it could also be blood from last week's game.

Chipmunk

One of the more curious Rotten School characters from the book series was Chipmunk; a character so shy we barely see more than his eyes above his collar; turtle-like. But in book 12, Battle of the Dum-Diddys, he gets a big break and imagines his alter-ego as a mighty knight warrior.