Jose Emroca Flores is an illustrator and a senior concept designer at Activision/Blizzard Highmoon Studios in California who has done work for companies like EA, Vivendi Universal and Nike and whose work has been featured by Spectrum, Computer Arts and the Society of Illustrators, among others.

Since I last wrote about him back in 2007, his website has been revised and updated with new material, including sections for professional and personal work as well as a “process” section that features sketches and concepts.

His professional section showcases his game work, which is often kinetic and action packed, sometimes with a bright palette but often with controlled colors punctuated with brighter, more intense passages for emphasis and focus.

My favorite pieces on his site, however, are found in his gallery of personal work. These have a loopy eccentricity and are often imaginatively whimsical, as well as having a playful drawing and rendering style.

I spent some time trying to select the right images for this post. I found the top one particularly appropriate; if there’s any artist that I associate with magic coming to life from the pages of a book, it’s French comics artist, illustrator and movie concept artist Jean Giraud, more commonly known by his pen name, Moebius.

I was saddened to learn that Giraud died today, March 10, 2012, at the age of 73.

Of all of the fantastic artists and illustrators who have worked in the medium of comics, from the Golden Age newspaper greats to the present era of “graphic novels”, Giraud is my favorite. He is also one of my favorite illustrators, and for that matter, one of my favorite artists of any kind.

I’ve often said that he demonstrated more imagination and creativity in a few of his offhand sketches than many professional comics artists and illustrators will display in their entire careers.

Prolific, inventive and restlessly experimenting with variations of style while following his own individual path of artistic exploration, Giraud left us with a wealth of extraordinary images, from the outrageous to the sublime.

Unfortunately, he isn’t as well known here in the US as he should be, partly because he didn’t (with a few exceptions) draw spandex-clad superheroes or saucer-eyed manga girls, and partly because the publishers here didn’t quite know what to make of him.

Admittedly, his own writing style, which at best could be called “stream of consciousness”, didn’t lend itself to coherent stories as much as flights of wild visual fantasy. He worked best as a storyteller when he put his brilliance in the service of more straightforward writers, notably collaborating with filmmaker and author Alexandro Jordorowski on a long science fiction series called The Incal.

As much as I admire his fantastically imaginative science fiction illustrations and comics (for which he adopted the name “Moebius” and made well known contributions to the original Metal Hurlant anthologies in France), I actually think Giraud’s best comics work was his most restrained, in the service of the superb western series Blueberry, set in the post-Civil War American west and written for most of its run by Jean-Michel Charlier.

Giraud lent his imagination and artistic and character design skills to a number of well known films, including Alien, Tron, Willow, The Abyss and The Fifth Element.

Giraud’s impact on other comics artists, illustrators and concept artists can’t be overstated. Even if not a household name to the American comics reading public, his impact was widespread among the artist community.

In France and Belgium, and the rest of Europe for that matter, he is much better known. France named him a “national treasure” and his work was recently the subject of a major exhibition at the Foundation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain in Paris (also here).

Unfortunately, Americans who want to purchase books of his work are at a disadvantage. Though Marvel Comics published a good series showcasing his work in various areas (including a nice run of Blueberry) in the 1980′s, and their Epic imprint followed with a nice hardbound series of art books in the 90′s, and Dark Horse Comics published a nice series of black and white titles in the 90′s (though in an inexplicably small format), these are out of print and in many cases unreasonably priced from used book sources.

Here are reviews of some of the titles available on Amazon. American readers might try to order through an importer like Stuart Ng Books, where a few Moebius volumes can be ordered for reasonable prices.

The official Moebius website, though worth a browse, unfortunately does not do a very good job of showcasing his art.

The best source I’ve found for his work on the web is an unofficial Tumblr blog called Quenched Consciousness, that has posted numerous files in a wide variety of his work. It’s not particularly organized, as explained here, but wonderful to look through nonetheless. (Frankly I’m surprised it’s still up. My advice is to enjoy while you can.)

There are also smaller galleries on Contours, Comic Art Community and Comic Art Fans (also search).

[Note: some of the images to be found on these sites, and perhaps in other sources of Moebius images, are distinctly NSFW and not suitable for children.]

Another way to get a glimpse of his work is to simply do a Google image search for Moebius or Jean Giraud.

There is a three part BBC documentary on him on DailyMotion (part two and three), a brief video of him drawing on a Wacom Cintiq at a 2009 convention in Angoulême and a 1987 interview in The Comics Journal.

I had the pleasure of meeting Giraud at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention in 1991. He was a delightful, soft-spoken and modest gentleman (in the best sense of that word), and was generous enough to do a wonderful convention sketch for my wife (above, second from bottom).

I also had the pleasure at the time of looking through a small sketchbook that he carried with him. He used it, along with pen and a portable watercolor kit, to do beautiful color drawings of scenes he encountered on his travels.

I think what impressed me most about that meeting, in which he was doing numerous (free) sketches for those who asked, was the almost casual way he seemed to draw, as though he had simply connected his unconscious mind to his drawing hand and turned off everything in between.

My long time fascination with his work bears out the overall impression I have of Giraud, that he was (similar to my assessment of Rembrandt) someone who drew and painted as naturally as most of us breathe.

Even those who are not regular readers of the magazine often find great pleasure and fascination with the New Yorker’s witty, clever, and often beautifully drawn and painted covers.

New Yorker covers are such a recognizable and distinct format, and have so much history of superb work by terrific artists, that they are practically an art form in themselves.

Many artists who are not New Yorker cover artists have playfully thought “What would I do with a New Yorker cover?, and perhaps indulged in some sketches, or participated in the magazine’s Eustace Tilly Contest (myself included).

Françoise Mouly, who is the New Yorker’s current art editor, has apparently been thinking playfully about New Yorker covers as well, though perhaps in a different context, and has launched a new personal blog, Blown Covers, subtitled “New Yorker covers you were never meant to see”, in which she is holding weekly themed cover contests.

The concept is based on Mouly’s book of the same title, Blown Covers, in which she features actual submissions and preliminary versions of real New Yorker covers that didn’t make the cut, sometimes for hilarious reasons.

Each Monday Mouly will suggest a cover theme, anyone who wants to participate can then indulge in creating their version of a New Yorker cover with that theme and submit it to the site through an online form or via email. Mouly will select a winner to be posted on the site on Friday, along with selected runners up.

This is not official and not associated with the New Yorker; it’s just Mouly’s fanciful take on the idea. She makes a point of saying that the selection is according to her own “subjective whims”, but of course the interesting thing is that these are the same subjective whims that contribute to the selection process for the real New Yorker covers.

Mouly also points out that she prefers sketches to more finished work (which is likely more in keeping with the real process for development of a New Yorker cover), and is more interested in a good idea than good drawing.

Deadline for each week’s submissions is Thursday at noon.

I’ve included some images above from the recent topic: “In like a lion, out like a lamb”, including the winner, Joan Reilly, and the gallery of runners up.

For those not familiar with Françoise Mouly outside of her current role as New Yorker art editor, she is an artist and designer who worked for a time as a color artist for Marvel Comics, and created the pioneering RAW magazine, which showcased cutting edge (and out-on-the-edge) comics and illustrated stories, along with the RAW Books imprint.

Mouly also created Toon Books, a publisher of hardbound graphic stories for kids (see my post on Toon Books).

Mouly is married to comics artist and author Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers. Her daughter Nadja Spiegelman is the co-author of the Zig and Wikki titles in the Toon Books series, along with Trade Loeffler, creator of Zip and L’il Bit (see my posts on Zip and L’il Bit, and here).

(Images above: Joan Reilly, Teresa Rodriguez, Daniel Hertzberg, Andre Slob, Chee Yang)

Born in Vietnam and raised in the US, Georgia based artist Tran Nguyen studied illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design (if I’m interpreting the info page of her website correctly, her name is pronounced “tron wen”).

Nguyen’s illustrations combine elements of realism, magic realism, art nouveau and perhaps symbolism, and frequently include geometric patterns.

Often employing muted, carefully controlled palettes and subtle textures, she creates works that invite contemplation, seeming to reveal emotional content in layers.

She frequently works “out of the box”, playfully extending parts of her images beyond the apparent bounds of their background, as well as suggesting dimensional qualities of her geometric elements as though some of them floated above the surface of the picture.

Nguyen is represented by Richard Solomon, Artist’s Representative in New York. Their website includes a brief description and step-through of her working process, which involves colored pencil and delicate glazes of transparent acrylics.

I’d like to talk (well OK, rant) for a minute about copyright and the principle of public domain.

“Public domain” is a term referring to works that have passed out of copyright, or have been deliberately assigned to the public domain on creation (for example when created for the U.S. government), and therefore now belong to the public, i.e. all of us.

This is an excellent idea and has been part of US copyright law from the beginning. Copyright laws vary, sometimes confusingly, by country, but I think most or all allow for works to pass into public ownership over time.

As a creator and copyright holder myself, I will be the first to say that copyright is basically a Good Thing, allowing legal protection for the creator of a work from unauthorized use and distribution of their creation for their lifetime — and some years beyond. However, the U.S. Founding Fathers viewed ownership of intellectual property as a kind of monopoly, and felt that it should be limited for the good of the public.

The basic idea is that once the creator of a copyrighted work has died, and his or her heirs (who did not actually create the work) have had a sufficient time to profit off of their relative’s efforts, the work passes into the public domain and belongs to all of us — to copy, rework, disseminate and create variations of to our hearts content, and much to the enrichment of the culture.

Some public domain characters, for example, would include Robin Hood, King Arthur, The Three Musketeers, Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk, Alice in Wonderland, and so on. Think of all of the inventive variations and stories we have from just those few examples.

Most artwork from history is in the public domain (though photographs of the artwork can be copyrighted by the photographers who took them or institutions to whom copyright for photographs has been assigned).

The copyright/public domain balance is a pretty good arrangement — the creator is protected for their lifetime, the relatives get to ride their coattails for a while, and then we all benefit from a richer public culture when ownership eventually passes to us.

Unfortunately, copyright laws that were originally meant to protect creators can be twisted into tools for advancing corporate power and greed, and the legislators who create and revise our laws seem easily manipulated by those with money and influence.

The large international media conglomerates (the same ones who have been trying to push the U.S. congress into ceding control of the internet to them with travesties of legislation like PIPA and SOPA), are also doing their best to defeat the original intention of the copyright laws, and keep pressuring legislators into extending the “sufficient time” that copyright extends past the creator’s death, to protect and advance their corporate profits.

Originally “life of the author plus 50 years”, the provision was extended to “life of the author plus 70″ years by the 1998 Copyright Extension Act, not coincidentally just before the copyright for Disney’s Mickey Mouse was due to move into the public domain. Many referred to it as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”.

Those who are cynical about this process, myself included, assume that the time that copyright extends past the creator’s death will be extended again, not coincidentally before the profit making power of Mickey Mouse can be threatened with passing into public domain under the 70 year limit, with pressure applied to legislators by the same monied interests that extended it the first time (and it’s not just Disney that wants this, it’s all the big media conglomerates).

This would effectively mean that nothing that is not deliberately put into the public domain by its creator will ever again pass into ownership of the public, and that the principle of public domain as envisioned by the framers of the U.S. system of government has effectively been defeated.

There have even been a number of attempts by media corporations to claim ownership of public domain material, effectively stealing from us.

The history of the publishing, recording and other media industries is littered with cases of big companies stealing copyrights or copyrighted material from the original creators, or forcing them to give up their rights in order to be paid.

It’s another shameful example of wealth and power trumping the public good, and something that should always keep us wary of the intentions of these corporations (particularly when they’re promoting legislation to “protect creators” — cough cough).

That said, we still have an extensive backlog of material already in the public domain that we can share and enjoy; which, having had my little rant, brings me to the actual subject of the post, The Public Domain Review.

The internet (at least for the time being) is a cornucopia of public domain material; sites like Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, The Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg and hundreds of others offer a bounty of public domain material.

The Public Domain Review seeks to be a kind of curated guide to some of this material; its contributors offer articles on interesting finds and good sources of material. There is a page on the site about The Public Domain Review, that also talks about the principle of public domain.

There are sections for collections of topics, one of which is images. Though not yet extensive, as the site as just one year old, the collection is promising and will likely continue to grow. The selections are already nicely eclectic, as the examples above demonstrate.

(Images above: Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Eugène von Guérard, Rick Guidice (NASA), image from book by Frederik Ruysch (uncertain of the artist), Limbourg brothers (for Très Riches Heures), Arnoldus Montanus, Harry Clarke)

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Before the austerity imposed by World War II, produce in the US was shipped in wooden crates with colorful, carefully designed and illustrated labels, meant to set each producer apart from the others.

The relatively sudden advent of cheaper cardboard boxes left many of the crate labels unused and they have become collectors items.

A recent post on MetaFilter has pointed out several sources for images of some of the labels, and other sources of information about the market for them as collectables.

The Boston Public Library’s Flickr set has the best and largest images, along with the Los Angeles Public Library.

There are more, with smaller images, on BlueSkySearch. The Crate Label Museum is most extensive, though the images are unfortunately small (note the dropdown at lower right to select categories, and note that many categories go on for several numbered pages).

Kris Wiltse is an illustrator and gallery artist based in Washington State.

In her illustration work she favors the unusual medium of block printing, working in linocut, woodcut and scratchboard.

Wiltse also works in watercolor for her gallery art and personal sketching, as well as for a secondary speciality in interpretive signs — informative location signage that depicts birds and other wildlife and flora in and around the area of Puget Sound.

Her website has galleries of each. The sketches and more finished watercolors have a nicely informal feeling, with fresh color and a sense of immediacy.

Her vibrant block print illustrations have served clients that include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Wired and Atlantic Monthly, among others.

Her site also includes video watercolor demonstrations.

In addition there are galleries of her illustration work on the site of her artist representatives, Morgan Gaynin, as well as Workbook and Directory of Illustration.

Wiltse also has a Flickr set of sketches and location drawings that is more extensive than the selection on her website. It also includes additional selections of her block prints and photos of her block print process.

In a recent post to his always interesting column, J.J. Sedelmaier has written an article for Imprint on a fascinating promotional poster series in Chicago in the early 20th century: A True Visionary Gives Chicago A Landmark Branding Campaign Circa 1920-30.

With the help of Dave at Poster Plus, Sedelmaier has accompanied the article with numerous examples of these beautiful posters, most of which are linked to much larger versions.

In sharp contrast to many articles you might see on the web about older posters, these are not only credited to the artists who designed them, but arranged by artist within the context of the article.

Wonderful.

Also reprinted on Salon.com as Posters that rival the London Underground.

(Images above, pairs are by the same artist: Willard Frederic Elmes, Otto Brennemann, Hazel B. Urgelles, Norman Erickson, Oscar Rabe Hanson, Robert Beebe, Arthur A. Johnson, Willard Frederic Elmes)