Tag Archives: Benjamin J Grimm

Say Cheese (Thing & Franklin) [Art: Mike Deodato] Colored

Another piece I started a while back and never got round to finishing. I loved this grey scale drawing created by Mike Deodato of Ben and Franklin the moment I saw it. It really captures the family feeling that Fantastic Four comic exudes when well written. Anyway this was basically coloring over a grey scale image to get the basic blocking, and then creating additional multiple/overlay and screen and gradient fill layers to give the color the same depth that the greyscale image had. Once I was happy with the coloring I flattened the layers and then applied a brush strokes filter to give it a more messy look. Most of this was done way back in 2004 however I never posted it then. I had another look at it today and tidied up some of my masks and edging and tweaked some of the coloring as I wanted Ben to be more orange than the original stone color I had. Anyway hope you folks out there enjoy it. And thanks again to Mike for making a great image in the first place

Fantastic Four with Black Panther and Spiderman [Original: Fred Hembeck] Colored

Fred Hembeck‘s work on character recreations is just so much fun to look at and fun to color. Here is another from my expansive hard disk collection. Not sure where the black and white art was downloaded from (if anyone recognises the commission source please let me know and ill add details here).  I particularly like how the effects work on the background turned out – real images of fire overlayed over a room created with a circuit board texture and gradient filled squares, skewed to give a 3d effect.

 

Fantastic Four #167 Redo [Original: Fred Hembeck] Colored

Another coloring using PSP X2, this is me trying to get back into doing a bit more art again. Found this on the web some time ago and it caught my eye, just as a fun piece (as all of Fred Hembeck’s art is) that was done as a commission for someone. It looked like it would be interesting to color and it was. You can see an example of the original cover here Jack Kirby FF #167 and of the uncolored Hembeck image here at Chris Ryall’s Blog

F4 Concept: Ben J Grimm AKA ‘the Thing’

Just an experiment in PSP8 using masks (which I hadn’t used that much in the past). Ben is weight training while Johnny annoys him as usual. The base model is body builder Greg Kavaks, who already had pretty big arms, but I cut these out, enlarged them (and the bar bells) and blended them back into the base pic. The background is made of a few different textures including galvanized zinc and black ceramic tiles. The flame was done using a custom gradient fill smudged into a flamelike trail. an additional softened gradient fill used to give an orange glow to the rest of the background. Thing’s head was based on a mask I saw. USed this to get the basic shapes which were made using the pen and various flesh tones from the base pic. The rock texture is one of my stock and was put on a multiply layer. Edited various mask layers to reveal the sections of the base pic and arms/barbells I wanted to show. The logo was made from one cut from a comic cover, with additional texturing and the rest of the text is done in Fantastifont. The ‘4’ logo is from the teaser pic I submitted previously.

Battle for Beyond: Hulk Vs Thing

The hidden battle from Secret Wars. What we didn’t see was Hulk and Thing going toe to toe on a mountain top as the Beyonder looks on in the background through his rip in space. The latest in my digitally colored works began as an inking by Bob McLeod. The basic coloring is done using a version of the texture on a color, and one on a multiply layer. Additional highlighting done. In order to get some depth to the colour I used added some noise on an overlay layer. The logos were altered from the Marvel Versions by use of additional colour and texture. The background is cut from an image called Celestia III by Gene Martin (signature done in vectors from original). I liked how this turned out so much.. I signed it myself too rather than just putting my logo on it.

Nostalgia Is An Incredible Thing

A closer look at an element from yesterday’s image. Another digitally colored and textured Tom Derenick piece. This began as a page layout for the Avengers Vs Fantastic 4 i think, but I thought it would work well as a standalone snapshot style image. I like the dynamic feel of Tom’s work, and Jarvis rushing the staff out of the room in the background is a great touch. I thought it would be funny if this was Ben sending Bruce a little hint that he was up for a rematch, hence the handwritten message.

From the Desk of… Benjamin J Grimm

Well I guess this could either be the sequel or prequel to my ‘Ben baiting Bruce’ pic. I think it works better as the sequel, given the newspaper article.

The Bugle front page was created from scratch using a black n white sketch of the hulk i downloaded ages ago which had a news photo quality to it. (I have realised this was by Jim Sweet). The banner (no pun intended) line logo was cobbled together from a couple of pics. The article text made up on the spot. The desk also shows a couple of my Derenick/Hulk related pics. The small corner visible on the right is an Alex Ross recreation of the first Fantastic Four cover. An excercise in perspectives, but fun none the less.

1st Pic Redo: Invisible Woman

Well, it’s been about year since I found this site and began enjoying the artwork everyone posts to the DCG. While I know it’s not a year since i started posting art myself, I was at a loose end today so I thought I would have a go at the first pic i submitted.


This time we see Sue Richards and everyones favourite ever-lovin’ blue eyed Thing in a corridor on a Skrull ship. Starting with the same grainy 50s/60s cheescake drawing, first thing I did was smooth out the face, and the edges of her existing underwear. Her eyes were a bit smudge so I made some new ones. The costume was created using a faux-suede texture on various multiply colour and burn layers. The seams added using white lines on an overlay layer and a black line, together with a black line gaussian blurred on a multiply level for depth. The 4 logo was done from scratch using vectors. To create the gloves, collar and belt (or bottom hem.. was never quite sure) I desaturated areas of the texture multiply layer.

The background was found via Google, resized and cut to fit the dimensions i was going for. The Thing was from the gift i did for Squedge (using Squedge’s own Thing sketch). I created a deeper rocky feel by adding additional rocky texture on a multiply layer. The shadow on the floor was created by flipping Thing, selecting the area, filling the shape with a gradient and applying a blur. this layer was set to overlay. I think the combination works with the angle of the background image. Suzies invisibility was done by using a graduated irregular mask to fade out the layer she is on. The font for the logo was downloaded from http://www.ffplaza.com/ check it out if you are at all interested in Fantastic Four.