Influences on Seth: a couple more Moebius

I think Seth learned a lot from Moebius. I didn't realize how much until I started looking (recently) for Moebius pictures here on the internet. The picture at the bottom from Moebius shows a couple of effects that Seth used definitively in his work.
In the top illustration, from a Cicada magazine story, Seth has set the point of view well below the eye level of the protagonist in the picture, so that we look up to see his face and the ceiling above him with its futuristic structures. This picture, like the Moebius one below, has a very non-organic, mechanized world look, to go with the story which is set in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone lives inside, never seeing the sky.

Another trick he learned--and I presume this is where he learned it--is to use details--not just dots or lines--to create grey space, in order to show depth, create visual interest, and make sense of a complex scene. In the second image, from Flash: Time Flies, Seth has put the Flash on top of a building whose architectural ribbing makes (not really rectangular) rectangles, and whose tiled floors make small squarish shapes. He has used all these things to give a sense of depth to his picture, as well as making some white space and some grey space. It's the same thing Moebius did in the picture here. If you look at the picure quickly you see white and grey spaces. If you stop to examine it, you see all the details that make the space grey.

Backpack Alarm book, last picture

"Hello Future!"

That's the title for this page. The text is actually about how in the future people and things may all have chips imbedded in them that tell who you are, and you may not need to carry money or a key.
Seth has chosen instead to illustrate a child's toy image of what the future might look like, with a grinning space craft exiting the earth, and, in the inset, a boy with a similar grin, wearing a helmet made out of what looks like a colander with a little pencil eraser sticking out of the top as an antenna. You can picture little electricity lines coming out of his antenna, and going "bzzz!" Seth could have done a realistic sort of astronaut in his Michelin Man suit and bubble helmet but his drawing has much more charm, don't you think?

I started to write that Seth's picture was of a 1950's style image of what an astronaut might look like, but looking for a picture to support that, I found a great blog called Paleo-Future, full of predictions about the Future from old magazines and other popular media. A little research there showed that in the 50's in general they had a much better idea of what space travel might actually look like than I would have thought. I mention it here only because the blog is something that I think Seth would have gotten a huge kick from. It's definitely worth a visit.

Backpack Alarm book, More on Electricity

This picture illustrates a section called Conductors. "Some materials make it easy for electricity to flow...."

Seth's son Tofu--who with his mother, lives with us--has a kit that is full of great experiments using a battery, some little plastic coated wires, and other oddments that you might find around the house.

In Seth's picture the three-inch tall man in duck slippers is doing projects very similar to the ones Tofu can make with his kit. Somehow that makes this picture particularly authentic. The little man is also doing his experiment in a safe way, wearing his duck slippers and thick mitts to prevent himself from conducting electricity through his body should he make a mistake and touch a live wire.

Backpack Alarm book, Electricity

This page is subtitled "What is electricity?" and it makes a valiant attempt to explain to kids in a couple of paragraphs about how electrons move from one atom to another.

Seth pictures a curly-haired scientist in her lab coat looking wide-eyed through the lens of a curving microscope at an atom which is doing its little atomic dance there on the base.

Backpack Alarm book, Airports and Homeland Security

The heading here is about protecting against terrorist attack, but this picture illustrates a sub-topic: "Bees, Making the World a Safer Place".

The paragraph explains how researchers at the University of Montana are training bees to locate landmines. Safer than using dogs, whose weight can set off the mine.

I love the big-haired lady paratrooper, her arms loaded with honey, stepping up onto a rock as she follows the bees to the mine.

The dot-eyed bees look a little like Bob the Slug, don't they?

Why is the soldier stepping on a rock instead of around it? I think it is to give her body the same curve as the line of bees has.

Incidentally, in the book, there is one more close-up bee at the top right, its body coming from outside the border of the picture, as if it were arriving at work from another job site.

Backpack Alarm book, Protect Yourself

Protect Yourself!

This page is on identity theft. The bad guy here has Seth's own hairstyle, but he also has a mask, the same kind of mask, incidentally, that Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern wears: one that seems to be painted or stuck on to his face.
The innocent victim has hair, a goatee, and a mole, an ordinary jacket with a smiley face on the sleeve. The sneering thief, wearing a collarless jacket and a wide belt, looks a little like a refugee from a BeeGees concert. Is that part of his problem? His own identity is out of sync, so he tries to steal someone else's... I don't know if that's what Seth had in mind, but I wouldn't put it past him.

Backpack Alarm book, next page

This page--as you might guess--is called Cyber Crime. You can tell that the guy sticking his head out of the computer and into your life is a Bad Guy because he has on a mask AND has stubble, hair, and no eyebrows: a bad sign. (Seth himself had a lot of eyebrow.) He is also sneering at you.

One of the things I found in Seth's website when I first got hold of the numbers to get into it was a letter he had written to the people at Becker & Mayer! when he finished the work. He signed it--as I remember--"Seth, artist and good guy". Indeed.

Backpack alarm book: High Tech Security

This illustration is from a page titled High Tech Security. What I don't know about these pictures is what guidelines they gave to Seth.

He has the woman pictured at the entrance to some sort of top secret institution, with an automatic gate that--if she fails the identity test--you know will surely send out both alarms and some sort of shield so that she can't enter. It's all very industrial and technical looking. He has put an eyeball identifier, a palm identifier, and a keypad on the gate for her to pass. She is wearing a uniform and standing militarily straight, as befits the employee of such a place. The whole ambience of the picture speaks "High Security", but of course, a little tongue in cheek.

Backpack Alarm book

Yesterday I got a fabulous gift in my e-mail!

On May 25, I posted a picture from the children's book/packet that Seth illustrated called BUILD YOUR OWN BACKPACK ALARM. I had that image because a friend of Seth's sent it to me; I didn't have any of the other illustrations: either the paper copies or the digital ones. But when I wrote to Becker & Mayer! to ask them if they could send them to me, they went to a lot of trouble to hunt them down, and gave permission to post them here.
At the risk of sounding like Blanche DuBois, I have been astonished and moved by the kindness of strangers toward me in regard to Seth. I truly don't know if people are always like that and I was always too muddled to notice, or if it is Seth that brings it out in people.

But here is the second illustration from the backpack alarm booklet. This page is titled "Sound the alarm!", and it gives a short lesson on the use of various sorts of theft alarms. In Seth's picture, the visitor is avoiding the dog, stepping over the electric tripwires, and touching the keypad in order to enter the house without being crushed by the fall of a nail-studded board overhead.
For a small, clean drawing, this one has a lot of information. Seth was more tempted to add too many details than to leave things out. So, though he simplified his work for projects like this, he didn't leave out the humor, the perspective, the engineering.

Rocks and Flowers

Seth stored all these little rocks and flowers squares on his computer separately. He probably wanted to move them around to find the best way to put them up all together as a whole. They exist in two incarnations. One is a cover for Cicada magazine with 20 squares, and the other he did as a poster with 40 squares (which a dear friend had made up for us, and I suspect we could get more of if anyone is interested).

Each of these disarmingly simple squares is a moment in the relationship between a flower and the world around it. The flower is at by turns tender, bemused, wise, gallant, ethereal, and sometimes sad. He isn't emotional, but he watches and wonders.

Backpack Alarm book

Seth illustrated a kids' book that was part of a package that you could use to make your own backpack alarm. The book was a child's history of locks. I had forgotten that I never saw the originals of those illustrations until a friend of Seth's sent the above picture to us. It is one of the illustrations in the book.
He finished these pictures right after Big in Japan. In fact, I am pretty sure that finishing this set of illustrations was what he had gone out to celebrate the night he died. After working for so long on Spiderman Unlimited, Big in Japan, and then this, he had his own projects he wanted to do.

He used a simplified, boneless style for the people. He developed that rubberleg look for Vertigo Pop (as you can see in the upper black & white page), though it was subtle there. It became more overt in Big in Japan, when Reed lengthens his body (the lower page really shows it) in order to do some special moves as Mr Fantastic. Having developed that as a look, it became one of the tools in his arsenal that he could haul out when the subject called for something humorous and not realistic.

Bob's Amazing Life

Have I posted this image before? If I have, no matter. This little book is being reprinted, and will be available sometime next week. Anyone who wants a copy will be able to purchase it for around $12. Write me c/o this website if you are interested.
The folks at Secret Headquarters had a couple hundred copies printed up for the show there, and they sold out. But a friend of mine, who has a store here in Coronado where she sells beautiful and unique things, fell in love with the book, and she ordered some to sell at her shop. When they sold, she asked Dave at SHQ if he could have some more printed for her. Bless his heart, he did, and they will be ready soon.

Seth put this little book together just before or after his son Tofu was born. While he was in utero, he was referred to as "Bob". So the book was written in his honor. It's about a slug who does most unsluglike things, like wear shoes and juggle. His father worries about him, but eventually Bob draws his father and others to appreciate his skills. It is all so very Seth!

More Cicada Illustrations

Here are three more illustrations from the same issue of Cicada (Jan/Feb 2005), from a story called "Going Harvey in the Big House" about a highly regimented post-apocalyptic world. Seth used flat computer shading in these drawings, which is one of the things that gives these pictures a very different feel from the gentler ones that I posted yesterday. He worked to make his illustrations fit with the texture of the story. This was true of his children's illustrations and with his comic book work as well.

When he drew for Cicada, usually they gave him two stories in the same issue to illustrate. When I commented on that, he said he thought it was their policy. However, I don't think that other illustrators had the same policy applied to them. I do think they felt they could trust Seth both to come up with pictures that fit the mood of a variety of stories, and to do it on time.

Cicada illustrations

These are two illustrations that Seth did for a story called "The Red Scarf" printed in Cicada magazine (Jan/Feb 2005). Cicada is one of the magazines under the publishing umbrella of Carus Publications, which puts out Cricket, and other literary magazines for children of all ages. Cicada is for the oldest youthful readers, approximately high school age. Seth had a relationship with the magazine for several years, beginning when he subscribed to Cricket himself, from about ages 7 to 9. He won an honorable mention from Cricket for a drawing he did when he was 9 or so. That gave him a permanent love for the magazine, I think, and so he was thrilled to be able to illustrate for them, even though the art director there gave him much less freedom in his drawing than comic book publishers did. But like most of the people he worked with, Cricket's art director loved Seth, and let him draw what he drew best. It was a relationship that was both fruitful and pleasurable for all sides.

Bob's Life cover

The folks at Secret Headquarters have had a stack of these books printed to sell at the exhibition. We in his family are thrilled; we wanted to see it printed, but didn't know exactly how to go about it. I thought we needed a publisher. But they just found a printer and DID it.

Cicada cover

Seth did this cover for the Sept/Oct, 2004 issue of Cicada Magazine. The man who was at the time the art director for the magazine told me that it was his favorite cover ever. Mine too.

Magician in the Tower

Here is another illustration for Cicada Magazine, for a story called "The Magician in the Tower", published in the Sept/Oct 1998 issue. Seth told me that they often asked the same artist to illustrate two stories in the same issue. But in fact, Seth illustrated three stories in that particular issue, the premiere issue of Cicada: volume 1, number 1.

More Chivalry

Two more illustrations for "Chivalry" by Neil Gaiman.

Seth took Cricket Magazine when he was about 8 and 9 years old, and always looked forward to reading all through it. Once he sent in a drawing to an art contest that Cricket sponsored, and won honorable mention. For his award he received a nice letter and a cassette tape of delightful stories and word games that we listened to over and over.

It tickled him to finally have his work published there. It was an affirmation that he had finally arrived as an artist.

Aliens A to Z

Seth loved to draw monsters. They were a subject matter where he could let his imagination go, without having to consider historical or physiological accuracy, though he was careful to give each of his monsters and aliens some way to see, eat, and move. He designed this ABC book of aliens, which he made into at least one prototype, though he printed it on the computer so the color ran when it was drooled on. He was hoping to have it published sometime.

Bob's Life, in color

One more page from Bob's Life, in color this time.

At home, in my garden, I hate slugs. But Bob the juggling slug has managed to change my view enough that even the personality-less, slimy ones that invade my strawberries and bell peppers have become less disgusting.

Seth would approve.