The Time Machine

One of my favorite novels is H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, and I've always liked the version of the time machine as depicted in the original movie from 1960!  So here is my illustration of "the time traveler."

RETRO SCI-FI...

 

Moon Base

 

Saucer Attack

A couple of fun illustrations that were inspired by the artistry found in old pulp magazines!

More Frankie...

Another version of Mary Shelley's classic Monster of Frankenstein.  This was drawn using the Wacom Cintiq with Manga Studio.

Monster of Frankenstein Family Portrait

A portrait of the Monster of Frankenstein.  A practice sketch for the upcoming graphic novel I'm illustrating from Sequential Pulp and Dark Horse Comics, written by Martin Powell.

Frankenstein's Night Out!

The Monster of Frankenstein just can't have a pleasant night on the town; it's like he just attracts trouble no matter where he goes or who he's with! 

Coming in 2012 from Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics.

"The Monster of Frankenstein" is set to return!

In celebration of Mary Shelley's birthday, we've waited until today to officially announce Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics newest graphic novel. The Monster of Frankenstein returns! Written by Martin Powell with Artwork by Nik Poliwko.

 

Tara the Jungle Girl!

A few years back I had the pleasure of writing and drawing an adventure of the classic jungle heroine from the 1940s: Tara, for AC Comics' Good Girl Art Quarterly #18.  The Tara story will be reprinted in the trade paperback FemForce Rarities #1, available in September. 

"Star Gem" was actually a re-write of an unpublished story I had done years before called "Eye of the Beholder" featuring a male protagonist named Grimace, and it was fairly easy to adapt the original story to suit Tara.  Here are a few of the Tara story pages followed by the original version.

 

CURSE of the VESSEL

I'm guessing the best place to start would be with the project that brought me back to working in comics, and that would be the Curse of the Vessel.  Back at the beginning of 2010 I joined Facebook and was delighted to find a great community of comic book artists and writers!

One artist whose work I really enjoyed was Danny Kelly.  I loved his simple yet powerful style, and he was very prolific... posting tons of great material daily.  What caught my attention was Danny's pencils of one of my favorite characters, The Phantom!  He indicated that if anyone wanted to ink the piece, to go ahead -- so I did!

As luck would have it, inking that piece led writer Michael Leal to contact me.  Michael was working with Danny at that time on Curse of the Vessel, to enter into the then annual Small Press Idol Contest from Dimestore Productions.  The big prize of the contest was that the winner would see their book published.  And Michael and Danny had just lost their original inker on the project, so Michael asked if I would be willing to take over the task.  Always one to take calculated risks, I agreed.

Danny would send me hi-res scans of his artwork, which I would then print out and ink on a lightbox (I didn't have my Cintiq tablet yet) using a Gillot steel pen nib, #3 series 7 Windsor-Newton brush and various Pentel markers (mostly for background elements and borders).  I would then scan in the pages and make minor corrections as well as add blacks and then send them along to the 4th member of our team, colorist supreme Michael McElveen.

The good news is we went on to win the contest and see the book published.  And here are a couple examples of Danny's original pencils along with my inked pages.

Password: QUALITY

This cartoon was originally created in 1991 as a sample for a potential series of motivational videos for corporations. We managed to get a video distributor who dealt with the corporate market interested, and then went on to create this sample cartoon.

We enlisted the aid of Larry Theobalds to design the characters; Larry has always had a cool and funky warped cartoon style, and we thought it was a good fit. Master animator Olun Riley did the character animation based on Larry's designs; we were lucky to work with Olun at the time, for he went on to animate for Don Bluth Studios shortly afterward.

Gord Davis and myself translated all of Olun's drawings to computer by retracing his originals on the Easyl drawing tablet. We were using Amiga computers and Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint III to create the finished animation. Gord and I also created the backgrounds and titles.

We had allied with local sound production studio Evolution Sound and James Pirie Productions for the professional soundtrack and voiceover; in fact, it was in talks with James and Diane Pirie that we came up with the idea for this whole project to begin with, and Diane also provided the script.

I can't recall what happened but the project never took off - even though we could create the product cheaply and quickly (about 3 days start to finish - GREAT for 1991!).

We dug it out of our video archives, digitized and cleaned it up and present to you: "Password: QUALITY". Enjoy! :) - Nik Poliwko

COMIC BOOKS : The Bruiser!

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An exclusive to the Neuralnet Blog, we present this rare tidbit: An unpublished cover for The Bruiser.

The Bruiser was originally created by Angelo Furlan and published by Catfish Comics in the mid-1990s. This cover features Bruiser in battle with King Solomon (Bruiser's at the bottom of the page, BTW); with artwork by yours truly! (click on the image for larger version) - Nik Poliwko