The Phantasmanaut Caught in the Tentacles of a Cosmic Paradigm

 

The Phantasmanaut Caught in the Tentacles of a Cosmic Paradigm

This is a piece I came up with for MIFFF (Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival), a genre film festival in Seattle, WA.
I really wanted to come up with something that not only captured the horror, sci-fi and fantasy aspects of the festival but also be eye-catching and feel more like an exciting rock-n-roll poster. I have also been very impressed with the style in which Fantasia Film Festival , Fantastic Fest, H.P. Lovecraft Film Fest and other genre film festivals have gone beyond the obvious in designing captivating festival posters.
I incorporated a number of elements that had been swimming around in my head, One-Eyed Alien pyramids, dead cosmonauts in space, third eye or inner eye.
I physically inked it and then digitally colored it in. In the past MIFFF posters and website, purple had factored into being a defining color scheme, and so upon the alien is where that color shows up. The original colored image is much brighter, but with some effects in Photoshop I was able to mute the colors to give is a slight aged feel. I'm definitely going to be revisiting these elements again with future projects, since they seem to resonate with not only me but other folks as well.
This image is available as an offset 22x14" print, for $20, email me at nickthehat@gmail.com if interested.

A (~BIG~) Fishy Menu

Illustration for the wonderfully curious story A (~BIG~) Fishy Menu by Joseph S. Pulver Sr. for Jan. Issue #21 of the Lovecraft eZine. A very tongue-in-cheek tale of two big players from the twisted minds of  H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Chambers sizing up the impressive yet troublesome new talent on the mythos fiction scene and how to go about his eventual demise. Quite a bit of fun and tomfoolery from Joe Pulver amongst he and his brethren in words of the weird.
I went a bit against type, at first wanting to keep to Pulvers description, but once pencil hit paper an all together different pair of mighty manipulators in the mythos took shape. And I went with it.
I've had many ideas in my head of how I might interpret The King in Yellow and Nyarlathotep. And I've come to realize I may never do them the same twice. Each being, so open to interpretation that it's pure fun to take the log-flume of creativity down a different vein of exploration.
I look forward to when again I can visit with these characters, together or by them selves, plotting, harbinging, provoking chaos and madness. 

Carnacki: The Parliament of Owls

 

An illustration I did for the story 'Carnacki: The Parliament of Owls' by the wonderfully engrossing author, William Meikle. This story appeared in issue #18 of the Lovecraft eZine. William also has an excellent collection of Carnacki tales called 'Carnacki: Heaven and Hell' from Dark Regions Press. Meikle really captures the tone and style of Hodgson's creation in the finest of fashions, puting our dear Carnacki in more perilous situations of daring and wondrous, with style and verve. 

For those not in the know, Thomas Carnacki is a supernatural sleuth created by fantastic fantasist, William Hope Hodgson. Most of his Carnacki tales deal with the supernatural though not all, yet those tales are just as interesting and well fashioned. Highly recommended reading for those interested in detective stories and Gothic supernatural flights of fancy.

For more regarding the life and writings of William Hope Hodgson I highly suggest checking out the very thoroughly researched, well written and informative blog run by Sam Gafford called William Hope Hodgson.

Amtopians

An illustration I did as a contribution (along with fellow Lovecraft eZine artists, Mike Dominic, and Steve Santiago) to a story that Logan Davis wrote. Logan is the 10 year old son of Mike Davis, purveyor of the Lovecraft eZine.

It is a fun and weird story and I am honored to have a piece of art to go along with his tale of dread.

Read the story here.

"I PITY THE FOOL!"

I was commissioned by the enthusiastically vibrant Sam McCanna, (purveyor of Skurvy Ink screen printing business south of Portland, OR) to design an image for celebrated Bizarro author and artist Carlton Mellick III's book 'Zombies and Shit'.

The image Carlton wanted was of the aggressively punchy T-2000, a cybernetic version of Mr. T. I'd offered a number of sketch designs but Carlton wanted T-2000 to be based on a action figure someone had physically created after Mellick's maniac.
After giving the action figure a look-over, decided to go with a Jack Kirby style exaggerated pose, with ridiculously large fists.

Evil Thread

 

Couple of commission pieces for the ever awesome Jason Emmett for his business Evil Thread Customs. Jason does fastidiously perfect custom stitching of patches, cloth, studing and other decorative touches for punk rock and metal style vests, coats, handbags, hats or what-have ya'.

Jason really wanted his logo to incorporate the Evil Dead font since his business name plays on that name. He had a couple of ideas and after he saw the various sketches wanted a stitched eyeball for his business cards and the stitched up Frankenstein's monster fella for promotional posters.

The punk rock Franken~monster is based on an image of Doyle from a live Misfits show, and I thought the position worked well to show off a vest covered in patches. 
Drawn and Inked by hand and colored in Photoshop.

Crypticon Seattle's De-Compositions 2012

I was commissioned by Blysster Press to do the second book cover for Crypticon Seattle's writing contest published anthology of winning authors, called 'Crypticon Seattle's De-Compositions 2012'.
In 2011 I did the cover as well, with no real guidelines, I came up with a dark and creepy cover.

This time around for 2012, I was giving the outline of the winning story and did a piece for the cover based on that. Pretty awesome for the winning writer to have their own cover art for a short story competition.