Spaceman Jax: "The Mantagons vs. Modern Society"

Here's a quick illustration I made on Monday for the Curio & Co. blog entry "The Mantagons vs. Modern Society"  that my partner Kirstie Shepherd manages.  

As we are getting ready to launch our new Spaceman Jax comic it's only fitting that we talk about some of the nemesis of our hero Jax. The Mantagons.  Jax, his niece Dekkin, and their trusted and sometime rusting (he's a robot) friend Artie are thrown in some crazy screwball adventures that fortunately for Jax, always seem to pan out well.  Let's hope that his luck holds up on future adventures… well, at least we know for sure that both Artie and Dekkin are there to remedy the situation.

Since the back story of Spaceman Jax, in the Curioverese, is that it was a TV show, from the 1960's (produced by Pud Film), I've been making images that would suit that feeling.  I.e. snap shots of animation cells or the animated show and of course creating the logos that would would fit the time period and its production company Pud.

Her's a couple of Curio & Co. back story links on Spaceman Jax:

Spaceman Jax - TV show back backstory

Brought to You by Sunnington Morn - Sunnington Morn the TV show sponsor

Ringer Comics - The comic book publisher

The Rocks in Bloom - The  fauna on the TV show

Fan Club Fanatic - The fan club

Spaceman Jax: Born Hero

The Spaceman Jax Family

In Praise of the Bad Guys - some more info about the Manatagons

Other related:

Brigadeer Bafalo - Pud film other show

What Do Mickey Mouse, Spaceman Jax and “Carrie Ann” By the Hollies Have In Common? 

We also tend to put more back story info in the products descriptions as well, in the case of Spaceman Jax the animation animation production drawings descriptions have some little easter eggs hidden in there

And a couple of images to go along with the spirit of this post.

Double Scoop by Sunnington Morn - Created by Curio & Co.

And, Ta Da!

Here is the fake ad as it will appear in the Spaceman Jax comic that we (Curio & Co.) will debut at Comic Con 2014.  It took a while to develop all the assets necessary to make the ad, from the logos to the cereal box and the character, and rendering the ice-cream and cereal.  I love doing these type of projects I always get to learn new things, and challenge my skills.  Rendering was never one of may strong points but I think I can hold a digital brush fairly now a days, Kirstie printed out the ad in black and white to check and rewrite the final copy, and it really looked as if it was a photograph of ice-cream cereal.  That was a good sign.

Cudwoth-Hooper Memo - By Curio & Co.

We take our "real" fakes seriously at Curio & Co. and if we can help it we build supporting material to go with our publications in order to make things even more real, and establish more to the back story of the products.

Some time back we met with an agent for one of the major creative agencies worldwide, and we were asked to put together a package for Gadabaut TM 1050 Time Machine.  We pulled all the production sketched I made for the manual, gave them a quick aging look, and created this Cudworth-Hooper (C-H) memo to go along with them.  For those of you who aren't familiar with C-H, they are the manufacturer of the Gadabaut TM 1050 Time Machine in the Curioverse.

We went for the look of old stacked drawings gathering dust, held together by a thin rope with a paper tag, and stored in an old archive for more then 70+ years.

Needless to say I had a blast designing the letterhead, the signature of J. P. Cudworth, and with my partner at Curio & Co. (Kirstie Shepherd) developing more of the back story for C-H.  Kirstie is the one that oversees text while I handle the visuals, we work really closely and we constantly go back and forth with the material during production.  The end result is always a level or two better because of our collaboration, we definitely work well together Curio & Co. would not be able to produce what we do without her.

Hope you enjoy the memo.

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 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.

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.

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.