Double Scoop cereal box - making the fictional real at Curio & Co.

The best part of doing my work for Curio & Co. is when things come together, specially when I too get fooled by it.  Every-time I work I constantly ask myself "Do I buy that?", not in financial sense but visually and conceptually; even though in this case if there really were Double Scoop ice-cream cereal in the store I just might have to give it a try.

I'm happy that I was able to pull together the elements for the cereal box: the Sunnington Morn logo, the Double Scoop logo, the illustration of the kid, and the digitally painted (from scratch) ice-cream and the cereal.  I get to laughing when at the end I give things a last pass with aging, then things really fall into place.  The aging pass is multiple layers of painted creases, textures, and stains.  Rather then taking existing ready made element I tend to paint these details individually so that I have more control on the design.  It took some years to get the handle on what works best, but I got the process working for me, and as I keep on learning more about printing process and studying original prints with every project I'm able to add a little more to the image.

Below is the box without vintage aging layers.

Now, onto the Double Scoop ad for the Spaceman Jax comic.

Double Scoop (ice cream cereal) by Sunnington Morn for Curio & Co.

Work in progress.

I've been busy doing an ad layout with the assets (logos of Sunnington Morn and Double Scoop) I've designed.  At the moment I'm illustrating character, painting ice cream, and cereal flakes for the fake ad that will be on the back cover of the Spaceman Jax comic (debut at San Diego Comic Con 2014 - Curio & Co. booth #2102).

Double Scoop of Sunnington Morn by Curio & Co.

Double Scoop the flash frozen ice-cream cereal by Sunnington Morn, I'm presently designing the advertisement that will feature in the Spaceman Jax comic.

ROOTY-TOOTS candy by Oberfaffendorfer of Curio & Co.

Yet an other product that is joining the Curioverse, this candy is allegedly produced by Oberfaffendorfer. I presently working on an in character add for the candy that will be part of the Spaceman Jax comic debuting at SDCC 2014.

Spaceman Jax Illustrations

Here are some fun illustrations, based on my studies of old 1960's comic books.  I scanned, and I looked and researched, and studied.  I figured it was about time I got to have some pencil fun.  I thick there just may be some new Spaceman Jax prints at Comic Con 2014 July 24-27.  Curio & Co. will be exhibiting at booth #2102

Sunnington Morn Logo

SPACEMAN JAX AND THE GALACTIC ADVENTURES was first broadcast in 1961, sponsored by Sunington Morn Breakfast Cereals.

Well its a joke, like everything we do it's pure and simple fiction, but we make it real creating the ads and products that help materialize the Curioverse.  In this case Sunnington Morn was originally mentioned when we first introduced Spaceman Jax and the Galactic Adventures back in December of 2010, and now we are making thing more real.  The new comic of Jax which Curio & Co. will debut at SDCC 2014 will include fake advertisements in particular one of Double Scoop an ice-cream cereal produced by our Sunnington Morn.  More to come on the Double Scoop ad and the comic book in the works.

Spaceman Jax Comic Book Cover in the Works

Here is the work in progress for the upcoming comic of Spaceman Jax and the Galactic Adventures which will debut at SDCC 2014. 

Obviously the 12¢ price is to stay in character with the idea that the comic was published back in the 60's. 

And here are some sketched from the story.

Ringer Comics Joins the Curioverse

Ringer Comics is our (Curio & Co.) fake publishing hose for the Spaceman Jax comic that we are developing and we'll be presenting at SDCC 2014.  It's part of the same corporate family of Ringer Publishing and a sister company to Ringer Publishing Paperbacks which "published", in the Curioverse, our Frank and His Friend Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 (2013, 2013 Curioverse), and Time for Frank and His Friend (2012, 1979 Curioverse), the only difference is that it's an early division or Ringer, hence I had to reverse engineer the logo, and we had to expand the Ringer back story (that is always loads of fun).

As always we keep on making fake products and every fake needs the partnering graphics to make things look seamless.  So, I designed the necessary 1960's Ringer Comics logo for this project.  Fortunately I didn't have to start from scratch.  Developing a brand is time intensive and developing a fake brand is just as tedious, we approach it just like we when we design for a client.  We think of the adjectives, the emotions, the corporate goals the history, the size of the company, ext… but we have to build the back story along with it, it's corporate history and why they would produce the product in questions.  Loads of work, but loads of fun.

As as designer, I find looking for the right font time consuming and in most cases a compromise, so I tend to prefer making my own fonts when designing a logo, plus it's more fun and the image is unique in every way.  So, here is the progression.

The initial sketch I started with.

 This is the vectorized font for the Ringer Comics logo.

And here is the final logo.

These are the prior logos I did of Ringer Publishing, my starting point for the design 

I figured I'd include two Ringer Publishing Paperbacks covers I illustrated in this post, to show how we are looking at graphical integration with the subject matter, and style.  Plus, I never got around to posting them, so here they are.

Comic Book Colors of the Silver Age.

The new project I'm working on, the Spaceman Jax comic book, is a comic that we (Curio & Co.) will be presenting at SDCC 2014.  It will look like the silver age comic from, size, colors and paper quality.  Since the 60's is the time period that we are going for, I've had to do some research on the coloring process and the tools of that time, so that I can better obtain the desired look and feel for the product.

Back then the coloring palette was quite limited.  Comic book colorist used a 64 color palette obtained by over imposing Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow using a combination of 0%, 25%, 50%, and 100% of each color and the 4th plate of 100% K (Black).

If you are interested there's a better summarized description of the process here: http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/comics_color.htm

When I started doing the research I was looking for a photoshop palette that would meet the silver age coloring palet, but it seemed that it wasn't out there or I wasn't able to tell google exactly what I was looking for.  So, I generated a Photoshop Swatch Pallet with these 64 colors plus 100% black, and is available here:

http:www.curiocorp.com/freebie/64CMY_Comic_Book_Colors.zip

To add the color pallet go to the Swatches pallet on the top right of the pallet click and select "Reset Swatches…" or "Load Swatches…" or "Replace Swatches…" and navigate to where you've stored the pallet file you downloaded.  The file should have the ".aco" extension so if your downloaded file didn't self extract you'll need to unzip it.  As an aside If you are using this pallet, and planing to go to press with the file, I would suggest you work in a CMYK Color Mode, it makes things much easier specially for the use of 100% black.

Well, I hope that this file will be helpful for those of you who are creating images with a specific nostalgic feeling.   Have Fun!

UPDATE:
Here is an other link to Comic Artists Direct that expelling the coloring process quite well. http://www.comicartistsdirect.com/articles/coloring.html