Rest in Peace Ron Cobb

 From The Conan Completist Forum comes this obituary. 

It can't be overstated what Ron Cobb gave to the Conan movies, mythos, and fandom. Please go to RonCobb.net to see a sample of the artist's work.

Mr. Cobb was an artist on Disney's 1956 classic, Sleeping Beauty. He designed well-known aliens from Star Wars in 1977. He also gave many movies and franchises their specific looks and provided concepts for Alien, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Total Recall, Firefly, Leviathan and The Abyss, and many more.

Another great has left us.

More Riddle of Steel Pix

It's framed now so the photos are a bit glare-y.

Update: prints are now for sale in the Etsy store!

CROM!

Thanks to Mikeyboy for posting a link to YargCade at CROM! Go there NOW for all your Conan Fandom goodness.

The Riddle of Steel

The Riddle of Steel is complete. Prints of the full-sized version (24x18) are now available for sale in the Etsy store.

Closer

Well finally I had some time to do a little more work on this. It's getting closer to done.

Conan Montage pt.6

The little drawings in the poster are simple by themselves but collectively should add up to a neat poster, I hope. I'm taking liberties mixing quotes with visual elements, and at first they might not make sense together. The finished product should bring it all home.

The Tree of Woe

Wheel of Pain Necklace

Studies for Conan as King. 

Too many details in the first one but my wife digs it. ;)

The layout of the second one is shamelessly ripped off from Patricia Smith.

Conan Montage pt. 5

The shape of the Doom symbol should be easy to correct now, and there's a lot more ink down. The Wheel of Pain necklace is now on the left. Look closely at the rod of the right-hand tapestry and you can see the animal faces from the wheel. I might not incorporate the anvil idea.

Conan Montage pt. 2.1

Taking mountainous Anvil of Crom from pencil to ink is testing my grasp of light...and I need to study Japanese clouds a bit (or not do them that way).

Conan Montage Pt. 2 - The Anvil of Crom

I repeat: "Never show a work in progress!"

"The Anvil of Crom" was a piece of music composed for the 1982 Conan movie. Most likely it's the one you are thinking of right now, if you saw it. It inspired me to design some element for the montage.

At first I was thinking that the entire poster would be only calligraphy and silhouettes, and though an anvil does have an unmistakable shape, it's not that imposing by itself. So I tried to design something worthy of Crom.

The one above was what I'd settled on, as it echoes the mantra of flesh being stronger than steel. An idea for a hammer also came to me:

And I thought great, awesome, ready for ink. But then I got inspired by this incredible photograph: http://www.flickr.com/photos/natgeo-/6124449390/in/photostream

And now my little anvil man looks a tad puny. Nevermind that in real life few men would be strong enough to lift it, this has to be an anvil worthy of Crom! So now I'm thinking something more like this:

Except that will be a difficult thing to simplify into the very plain sort of shapes I had in mind for this montage.

What to do, what to do.