Thursday, May 14, 2009

Pipu's Eye

Page from the upcoming issue of Pipu, "Pipu's Eye".
Pipu's Eye
Something weird is going on with Pipu where my art is starting to look like Shigeru Mizuki's. In other news, the local comic shop has a million old "Heavy Metal" magazines from 1978 to 1985 all priced at $1.50 & i'm having a hard time not buying too many of them.

ALSO, i gave my long-running button business a name & put it up online. Check it out!

BLITZKRIEG BUTTONS

13 comments:

Uland said...

I don't have any Mizuki comics, but damn I want some. You could do a lot worse by aping his style- it's near perfect. I see nothing wrong with following that as well as you can..
The buttons are pretty cool too. They remind me of stuff you'd see in the last head-shops in the 80s/early 90s'. They were my favorite places as a kid, even though I'd get kicked out of them now and then. You could find Heavy Metal there too!
-I had to stop buying those mags, btw. If I happen upon them, I'll probably buy, but I was scouring Ebay for $3 Epics and Heavy Metals and it ate up all my time. Even the bad stuff is pretty good in those mags...Sometimes, anyway.
Do you worry at all about copyright issues? It's a weird line for me; If I saw them on a table at a flea market, I'd not think about it at all, but when I see them online, it somehow seems different..

SEAN said...

Luke, yeah, i'd seen Shigeru Mizuki's stuff in mags like Newtype & Animage back in the 80s all the time but i didn't find any of his comics until 1999 or so when i went hunting for them. I love the mix of super-rendered stuff with the emotive cartoony brush-work. Plus the horror plus the cartoony stuff... he's a master for sure.
I tend to like about 15% of Heavy Metal's content, but yeah, even the bad stuff is better than most stuff being published today, so they are well worth it. It's making me nervous!
As for copyright issues, the buttons i make are all super-low runs of like 5 or 6 & then i discontinue them, so it's not like i'm making a hundred of someone else's design. I have a few hundred designs running at any given time & cycle them in & out depending on my mood. I agree that it seems more obvious online & i fully expect to have some lawyers tell me to cease on some of them, which is fine, but i don't have any personal issues of doing 5 buttons using someone else's imagery. Seems like fair use to me.

Uland said...

Legally speaking, it probably isn't fair use , I'd bet, but yeah, 5 or 6 of them? Who cares..

SEAN said...

Yeah, yeah, what i meant was, "it's probably under the radar." Either way. Hey, thanks for sending the ROM art show dude my way.

Human Mollusk said...

Wicked page Sean!
I didn't write any comments, but all your recent posts (Goblin and otherwise) have been really ace.

Human Mollusk said...

Oh, and Luke, that's a cool new avatar!

Uland said...

Thanks Fufu. Good to see you around here again. I might have to rejoin one of these days.
Sean- I thought of you immediately when the Floating World guy solicited me for a ROM page; 'Sean would do a killer ROM..'

zeke said...

This panel looks more like Jeff Gaither/Ric Sloane to me!

SEAN said...

Thanks Fufu. Zeke, it's totally there too... both of those guys do linework that i just want to fuckin' eat.

Aeron said...

You ever mess around with woodcuts Sean? I think your style would work good with a sharp carving tool.

And I love me some eyeballs!

SEAN said...

Aeron, i've never done wood-cuts before. One of my teacher friends is pretty damn good at them & teaches wood-cuts, so i've definitely been toying with the idea... at the same time, starting up another new thing besides this air-brushing seems daunting. BUT, i think it's going to happen this year. So yes.

Gaspard Pitiot said...

You're a punk!

SEAN said...

Well, i WAS a Punk, but not anymore. Now i just have Punk in my bones.