BRAIN PLUCKER

Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Metallic Mechanical Cylinder Coming Out of Uranus (Oh, that's bad!)

Did you know there’s not only life on Uranus, but it comes as a cylindrical metallic device that lives in a hole (with a small Oscar the Grouch inside). And it’s just possible that it has a vibrate mode.

Okay, I’m done with the double entendres. These images are from the back covers of Fantastic Adventures magazine from the first nine issues that started in 1939. They’re all by Frank Paul the first of the original SF pulp artists. They’re a bit quaint now, but I’m sure they were viewed with awe-inspired sense of wonder in their day.

Here at Brain Plucker we are way too cerebral to talk about sex, right? As some of the regular readers of this blog knows, I design most of the art work for Wonder Publishing Group by re-purposing older artwork in the public domain. WPG is publishing a story as an eBook called Lorelei of the Red Mist by Ray Bradbury and Leigh Brackett. There’s a wonderful painting by Frank Kelly Freas that graced a magazine called Tops is Science Fiction.

Tops In Science Fiction, Fall 1953

This was actually the second printing of the story. I would of repurposed this art if it wasn’t already reused for a excellent Leigh Brackett collection by Haffner Press called Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances. I didn’t want to create any confusion between that title and my own published version. So decided I needed to look elsewhere. Lorelei of the Red Mist first appeared in the Summer, 1946 issue of Planet Stories. The cover to that issue left me uninspired. I knew I could find something better than that. I then found an eBay auction that had a photo from the interior art from the already mentioned Tops in Science Fiction magazine. The interior was also by Frank Kelly Freas. Let me stop here to say that I think that Frank Kelly Freas was an exceptional artist in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. He most famously known for his paintings, but I love his interior illustrations for the old SF mags. So back to the picture from the eBay auction. I bid and lost on that issue. I bid and lost another auction for that issue. I decided to colorize the image from the auction. Now this is the first thing interior artwork that I colorized. But I still consider myself a dilettante as a colorist. I can’t look at a black and white drawing and really visualize its completion. In a sense this really exciting when the work starts taking shape. The first thing I did was to make the image more symmetrical.

Interior Art from Tops in SF. Image was found from an eBay Auction picture.

I copied the layer and flipped it, did some cutting and cloning and merging to create the  final B&W image. I then started colorizing it. The female represents Rann, an ivory colored Venusian with aquamarine hair. As I cleaned up the image I noticed how phallic the post she was bound to looked. Yes that ring she bound to makes most body piercings seem mild (ouch!). I had the art just about nailed down when I showed it to a friend. I pointed out the phallicness of the art. And he noticed that the base was very vagina-like. In fact the phallic was going right through it. What have a created? By making the base symmetrical, I created one f**king awesome cover. Well before writing this post I had to figure out what the opposite of phallic is called. I have to admit to wondering this before. The best word I’ve found was “yonic”. Which means anything that can be described as vagina-like. Who knew?

Black and White and Symmetrical

Colorized- (ouch! that ring had got to hurt)

The Final Cover (coming March 2010)

Look for the eBook in March!

More brain art for you and this one’s a dozy. We got Brain Bats and we got Zombies! Basil Wolverton had a one of a kind style. This story comes from Mr. Mystery #7 from 1952. And if you prefer it, here’s a CBR file.

[via: Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Stumbled upon this site the other day, Poulpe Pulps, and thought “what a wondrous thing this world wide web is”. Well actually I thought how silly and cool. Nothing here but lots of Octopuses on pulp covers. That an interview with Robert Silverberg which is pretty cool in itself.

Planet Stories - Summer 1944

Why do Earthmen think that blue humanoid aliens are such an easy mark? They’re just ripe for exploitation, appearently. Even back in the 50s Earthmen were trying to exploit the native.

Earthman's Exploitation of Blue Alien

This cover did not illustrate a story, but was used like a single panel comic strip. There’s so many things wrong with this cover.

Let me spin an interpretation: Here is a coat of dead animals that I will trade for your services and/or precious resources. Never mind that the climate is mild and you will never need this coat. And these animals gave up their lives all for the sake of my “big score” with you. Let me appeal to your materialism and take you away from the peaceful utopia and corrupt your culture. With my knowing wink (which makes me look deformed), I shall conquer you and then your world!

Okay, I’m having a bit of fun. Overall I like the cover just fine. The artist is Mel Hunter who was stronger with depictions of outer space and desolate alien landscape. But this cover does not speak to the 21st like it did in 1956.

I came across a posting on the possible sources for the movie Avatar. Which set my mind upon the possibilities. There really so many possibilities because the ideas are rather trite, as far as the SF goes. But that’s okay in my mind. It’s the treatment of the ideas and characterization that matters to me. Although I don’t want to write a review, I have to put in my little snippet, or is that snipe, on the movie. For technical visual achievement, this movie set a new standard. For characterization it’s shallow. The central pivotal point of the plot is if the main protagonist will join with the native Na’Vi or remain loyal to the corporation.  Did I say corporation? I meant evil corporation. There’s no dilemma, it’s a no-brainer for the protagonist to turn to the side of the natives. The shallow black and whiteness of the characters was a major disappointment. But for the visuals’ sake, makes the movies worth seeing. I feel dirty for saying that. I have a friend that told me of a movie he highly recommended. He said it was great except for the plot. I thought: bad plot equals bad movie. Well I feel I’m saying the same thing about Avatar, except for saying bad plot, I’m saying shallow characterization.

A new year and new goals for 2010. The top thing on my list is to publish 100 eBook titles this year. That’s two a week, so you can expect to see two new releases every week. That’s pretty ambitious since this is basically a two person operation, working part-time at that (actually working a full-time job in addition to WPG is more accurate).  There is me and my wonderful freelancing proofreader (Hi, Junelle!). Why are we called Wonder Publishing Group if there’s only two people? WPG started as Wonder Audiobooks, then we started publishing eBooks, and print books; so you see, there’s a whole group of kinds of books. And speaking of print books and audiobooks, there will be more of those published this year as well.

There hasn’t been many posting here of late. But that was because I had to jump-start the year with getting a lot of titles going in the pipeline. You’ll be seeing a new release posting here tomorrow. Here are some of the titles coming out within the next month:

Death Quotient and Other Stories by John D. MacDonald – Several Science Fiction stories, many before reprinted.

The High Ones and Other Stories by Poul Anderson - Other 100,000 word anthology of 10 great SF stories from the 1950s. I’m planning on releasing a print book version of this title as well.

Double for Death by Rex Stout- A novel by Rex Stout, people. In fact he called it his favorite mystery.

Woman’s World and Other Stories by Evan Hunter – Four great SF stories from this mystery and SF master. BTW, Just watched the movie, The Blackboard Jungle, today. It’s based on Evan Hunter’s novel of the same name. What a great movie. Vic Morrow’s character really scared me.

That’s just a few of the titles in the works. Isn’t this exciting?

And I don’t like to do a posting without a visual. Here’s another future release. Sometimes a cover comes out a little more special than the rest. This one I tried something slightly new visually (new for me, that is). Compare the re-purposed art from the WPG cover to the original from Imagination. The new thing I tried was not erasing the sign behind the lady’s head, but cropping the hand and gun so it looks like it coming out of the picture frame. The art is by Lloyd N. Rognan.

Gateway to Darkness by Fredric Brown

My brother, Doug, has been taking some great wildlife photos for a several years now. He’s got a impressive portfolio of hundreds of birds and other wildlife. Besides skills with the camera, I’m impressed with the patience he must have to get these shots. He lives and photographs in the Saginaw Bay area of Michigan. For lots more photos visit his site at www.webwildlife.org.

Osprey

Canada Warbler

Red-shouldered Hawk

Holy laser blasts! Two brains in jars for the price of one. Came across this site, Webomator, and am greatly impressed. I love retro-future art. And artist, Bradley W. Schenck, totally gets it. He’s working on project called “Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual”. Not only is his art a knock-out but even his web design is perfect. Check out his store. I’m gonna have to spend me some Xmas money.

Art by Bradley W. Schenck

The very versatile artist, Ed Emshweller (AKA Emsh), did a series of Christmas covers for Galaxy SF magazine in the 50s and early 60s. They all feature a four-armed Santa. I wonder if the Santa is a cyborg, mutant, or an alien. My vote is for a Mutant. All that mutative radiation from the magic dust.

Two great things that go great together. Brains and Science Fiction. With a blog called Brain Plucker what could be better than showcasing some that art? This will be a series of postings as I gather more and more SF Brain art. If you have some great SF Brain art. Send me a file or link to timeshowhost [at] gmail.com.