ROOK by Josh Burcham
There are a lot of phenomenal artists doing the colour dance for official Transformer product these days, but Josh Burcham has earned the Colour Crown (via seniority, if nothing else) and done a damn fine job of establishing himself as THE go-to colourist when it comes to our favourite robots in disguise. What many people don't realize is that Burch is also a very unique artist who has been able to rope in a few comic covers under his arm on an off day. Burch's artistic approach to line art is a uniquely stylized (and dare I say, 'dirty'?) take on the look of Transformers which is wild and refreshing without alienating the design aesthetics that make our favourite characters so recognizable. I personally interpret an amalgam of Geoff Senior and Derek Yaniger influence in his original artwork that I would love to see fleshed out in a full issue some day. At any rate, Rook here is the first (of possibly other) character pieces submitted by Josh for the our original artwork archive here at the Rusting Carcass. Rook was a unique character who was primarily used as a behind-the-scenes plot reference with a lot of possible potential that never got fully utilized in the G2 comics. I rather liked him a great deal. You can learn a little more about Rook by going here and here.
ABOVE: Burch's final piece that he sent over. Love the little G2 'word bubble' reference tabs.
ABOVE: Burch also sent over a 'dirty' version of Rook because he likes to play around in photoshop.
ABOVE: When Josh and I first talked about Rook, he sent over these pose sketches. The bottom right is closest to what we ended up with, but the bottom left would be the source of an unused sketch seen below.
ABOVE: Burch pulled this out of his pen while working at his day job and sent it over to me. While I like it, the point of view was a little out of context with the other pieces we'd gathered over the years and so we went with something else.
ABOVE: Here is the preliminary idea Burch and I agreed upon which lent itself to the final image and the inks that you see below.
ABOVE: A colourist without his colours.
See you next time!
There are a lot of phenomenal artists doing the colour dance for official Transformer product these days, but Josh Burcham has earned the Colour Crown (via seniority, if nothing else) and done a damn fine job of establishing himself as THE go-to colourist when it comes to our favourite robots in disguise. What many people don't realize is that Burch is also a very unique artist who has been able to rope in a few comic covers under his arm on an off day. Burch's artistic approach to line art is a uniquely stylized (and dare I say, 'dirty'?) take on the look of Transformers which is wild and refreshing without alienating the design aesthetics that make our favourite characters so recognizable. I personally interpret an amalgam of Geoff Senior and Derek Yaniger influence in his original artwork that I would love to see fleshed out in a full issue some day. At any rate, Rook here is the first (of possibly other) character pieces submitted by Josh for the our original artwork archive here at the Rusting Carcass. Rook was a unique character who was primarily used as a behind-the-scenes plot reference with a lot of possible potential that never got fully utilized in the G2 comics. I rather liked him a great deal. You can learn a little more about Rook by going here and here.
ABOVE: Burch's final piece that he sent over. Love the little G2 'word bubble' reference tabs.
ABOVE: Burch also sent over a 'dirty' version of Rook because he likes to play around in photoshop.
ABOVE: When Josh and I first talked about Rook, he sent over these pose sketches. The bottom right is closest to what we ended up with, but the bottom left would be the source of an unused sketch seen below.
ABOVE: Burch pulled this out of his pen while working at his day job and sent it over to me. While I like it, the point of view was a little out of context with the other pieces we'd gathered over the years and so we went with something else.
ABOVE: Here is the preliminary idea Burch and I agreed upon which lent itself to the final image and the inks that you see below.
ABOVE: A colourist without his colours.
See you next time!
