Ready Player One Fan Art Poster

The novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a fun nerdy romp through 80's pop-culture nostalgia, but given that its target audience is comprised of the kind of people who would love related merchandise, there has been a surprising lack of tie-in products. This will likely all change with the release of the Steven Spielberg movie adaptation, but until then we have this great piece by Harlam Elam, who was commissioned to produce a limited edition screen print inspired by the book.

“I read Ready Player One shortly after it was published and fell in love. I really connected with the story and all of the incredibly nostalgic references so naturally I couldn’t resist creating this tribute piece.

I wanted the art itself to look like a 3 tiered game inspired by Monument Valley in order to reflect the core themes of the book. I had great fun stuffing the print with as many relevant pop-culture references as I could.”

— Harlam Elam

The piece is full of lovely little details and references, which fans of the book will pick up on, and each one has been signed by Cline himself. If you want to get your hands on one, head over to Elam's twitter.

Sketch to final piece

Ernest Klein signing the artwork

#DrawYourCity with Mischief

Comic cover by Esao Andrews for House of Mystery #37

Collage by Ashley Joseph Edwards

Illustration by artist Dasha Pliska from Odessa in Ukraine

The last few months Mischief the product I work on at The Foundry has been running a monthly themed drawing challenge. 

Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to knock up anything for them so far but this time I finally made an effort for the #DrawYourCity theme.

We’ve been putting out an ‘inspiration’ board for each theme and this time these images caught me: 

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I was born and raised in Central London and love living somewhere so charged and ever-changing. One of the best things about living here is being able to share the city with newcomers and show them your favourite sights. 

My rough idea starting out was to draw hands offering up the city at night and to have the hands and city lights coming out of the dark. I started my piece by drawing the hands without thinking too much about what I wanted to put in or around them. 

Once I was happy with the hands without really thinking about it too much I drew some of iconic buildings of London but also some of the ones that are less well known but I have a connection too, like the OXO tower that I associate with fire spinning on the full moon. 

I drew the buildings in a matter of minutes intending them to be a rough outline that I would then draw over. 

In the end I ended up liking the way it looked with the sketchy style buildings instead of rendering them in a similar style to the hands. The contrast between the styles and the loose lines give the city energy and life that I think would have been lost if I kept working on it too much more. 

At David's prompting I added some colour to it and this is the final version of the piece I drew:

PJMC Quade & The Mighty Quint

Brooklyn-based illustrator PJMC Quade has a catalog of geeky, pop-icon inspired art. The portfolio work on his website is primarily fan art and mashups of some classic pop-culture iconography, as well as some more obscure choices. Some of my favourites include True Romance and The Venture Bros. (pictured below). But my absolute favourite is the mashup of Quint from Jaws with Wolverine, and it seems appropriate at the 40th Anniversary of the great shark movie to give this picture some prominence.

Inspired by the similarity between Quint's sideburns and those of Wolverine, Quade pictures an adamantium clawed Quint, bursting from the stomach of the shark which eats him at the end of the the movie. In a homage to Wolverine, the artwork is designed as the cover of issue #1 of a Quint comic, which looks thrilling.

“Whenever I watch Jaws I am always struck by how dope Quint’s sideburns are. He really rocks the stuffing out of them. Always made me think of another famous fictional fella with killer burns - Wolverine! So I thought what if Quint was actually a mutant, had a healing factor and an adamantium skeleton with killer claws. He’d slash his way out Jaw’s belly, emerged from the blood reborn, ready to take the high seas by storm. I designed it as a comic book cover, an homage to Wolverine #1. At last - in his own monthly series! ”

— PJMC Quade