i’m away at a festival for the next week or so – which means that i wont be able to take or fulfill any orders until i get back (which should be around the 10th sept)

i am hoping to have email access while i’m away – so you can drop me a message here [link] and i will endeavour to get back to you when i am able. or, get at me via my facebook page here [link].

many apologies for any inconvenience caused!

cheers, chris z

i was asked if i’d do some artwork for the cover of good vibrations magazine – which is a liverpool based alternative culture magazine. they put out  a monthly mag, and have a lively website [link].  after some discussion with the editorial team we ended up going with this as the brief:

GIANT MONSTERS doing battle in the city of Liverpool!

if you know the city, it’s not as silly as it sounds.. as both are long standing icons of liverpool! if you’re not familiar with these creatures let me enlighten you a touch..

more info here: superlambanana [link], and the liver bird [link]

[NB the lambanana photo was a googlefind, but should be credited back to http://penguinsparade.blogspot.co.uk/ as it was borrowed entirely without permission. soz!]

anyway, there can certainly be deeper meanings discovered within the politics and significance of these icons doing battle, but i’ll leave that for others to discuss.. my only concern is GIANT fucking MONSTERS!!   raaaAAAAWWRRRR!!!

so i started out with quite a simple sketch – just trying to give a bit of life to the statues and mess with composition..

but tbh it was a bit tame. not really big shit kicking beasts tearing into each other and destroying the city as a consequence. indeed, i think they look pretty cute!

so with that in mind, i reworked it…

much better, no?

so there are more progress shots over on my facebook [link] but rather than reposting them all here let’s just skip to the finished piece!

SUPERLAMBANANA vs THE LIVER BIRD

[acrylic on A3 canvas]
by yours truly, chris zombieking!

it was essentially a ‘draw off’, wherein artists put forward characters, and they then draw them having a bit of a scrap. the audience who were following the fight then voted for a winner.  the beauty of this system meant that it wasn’t always the better artist who won – entertaining the crowd counted for a lot!

my character was tellyhead..

well.

here’s another couple of old pics from the fightclub days.

this first one was the result of quite an epic battle with a character known as electrobob by an artist called evil robot. you can see the whole fight as it unfolded over in this thread here, and does demonstrate the unscripted flow of the fight as each artist tried to maim the other’s character and put on a good show for the bloodthirsty audience!

“tellyhead vs. electrobob” [p/shop, wacom. july 2009]

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this next one was a challenge set as homework for all fightclub members. “pick a fight, and lose!”

rather than fighting against another real artist, we could pick any character from fiction and lose a fight to them. i decided to use the rather fab calvin & hobbes by bill watterson. i adore these characters, so wanted to use watterson’s style and calvin’s perspective on the world as the backdrop for my fight.

ideally, you should click the image to see it full size, and read it panel-by-panel…

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