Craig:
How closely did they work with you? Did you have to do revisions?
Bill: The art director
Willy, worked very closely with me. We communicated by
phone or email almost every day till the
job was done. He was in New York where the Sly Magazine
office is located. The job actually started on March
5 and was completed around March 18. Specifically,
my job was to do
three illustrations to accompany the section of the Rocky
6 screenplay in the magazine. Since the work had to do directly
with Rocky 6 and Sly's vision for it, I spoke
to Sly through the
art director. They first sent me the script and told me pretty
much what they wanted. They asked me to read the script to give
them
any input. Which I did. On the copy of the script, there were
very
rough sketches that Sly did with his ideas for the illustrations.
It was very interesting.
From there, I did some preliminary
sketches for the three illustrations and did a few
revisions on each
one. All the revisions were sent as email attachments after
I scanned them so that made things very easy.
Once the drawings were approved, I then got started on the paintings
around March 7 and decided to work
in acrylics to ensure the paint would be dry in time.
I normally work in oils so I had to adjust, plus you
are forced to work faster with acrylics since they dry
faster.
I might add during this whole
creative period, I had to rely on photo references that I found
in my vast collection of Sly stuff. I ended up using
several different photos and combined them, since of course,
there are no photos yet of Rocky 6. I also even used
the Rocky DVD's as references by putting a scene
on pause and taking a picture of the screen for a certain expression,
etc. I did this a lot for an illustration
of Paulie. I even went so far as to take pictures of
myself by pushing my face in on one side to somewhat simulate
a face being punched and how distorted it would be. So, in a
sense, that is my face being
punched by Rocky in the painting. As you can see, I am
a stickler for detail and accuracy. I did the full
page opener (fight scene) first and would send Willy
photos (from my digital camera) of my progress
so he in turn would show Sly. I would get all kinds of
input from Sly for things to change or add. Like
for instance, in the opener, Sly wanted more blood and
sweat flying with more cuts and bruises on
each fighter to make it look like these guys have been through
a real battle. The other two illustrations consisted
of Rocky and Paulie in one and the young Champ
who Rocky fights in another. They are both
half page illustrations in the magazine. It was all a very fun
process but hard work at the same time
because of the time frame and me being a very detail oriented
artist. Having good communications
with Willy was a plus too.
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Page 3
- Craig
