Tag Archives: Irene Gallo

Spectrum 20 Award Finalists

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Spectrum 20 Jury & Directors: Tim Bruckner, Mark A. Nelson,
Irene Gallo, Michael Whelan, Cathy Fenner, Tim Kirk, and Arnie Fenner.

The Spectrum 20 Award jury members Tim Bruckner, Irene Gallo, Tim Kirk, Mark A. Nelson, and Michael R. Whelan evaluated over 6,000 entries before selecting 40 finalists for this year’s edition of the Spectrum Fantastic Art Annual.

Founded in 1993 by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner, Spectrum: The Best In Contemporary Fantastic Art is among the most respected art showcases, covering a wide range of disciplines. It is the only “art annual” with categories devoted to comics, concept art, and sculpture.

Judging was completed March 2. Their selection of the year’s best fantastic art will appear in Spectrum 20, scheduled for October release in both hardcover and softcover from Underwood Books. Gold and silver medal winners in each category will be announced at the awards ceremony during Spectrum Live, a weekend long celebration of fantastic art, in Kansas City, May 17-19. The Spectrum Grand Master Award will also be presented during the ceremony, which will be held in the historic Midland Theater.

The gold and silver finalists are:

Advertising

  • Craig Elliott:ForestAwakening
  • Michael C. Hayes: Procession
  • Android Jones: Ganeshatron
  • Greg Ruth: Three Outlaw Samurai
  • Dan DosSantos: Dragon Empress

Book

  • Brom: Wipi
  • William O’Connor: Wargriffin
  • David Palumbo: Fed
  • Shaun Tan: Never Leave a Red Sock on the Clothesline
  • Charles Vess: Tanglewood: I Didn’t Know She Was a Bottle Witch

Comics

  • Jennifer L. Meyer: Aesop’s Ark,Ch. 2, P2
  • David Petersen: Mouse Guard Black Axe #4, Page 19
  • Paolo Rivera: Daredevil #10
  • Paolo Rivera: Captain America #1
  • João Ruas: Fables #121

Concept Art

  • Daniel Dociu: Guild Wars 2, Norn Lodge
  • Theo Prins: Southsun Cove
  • Paul Sullivan: Franken-animal
  • Justin Sweet: Marauders 2
  • Allen Willams: Tree of Tales

Dimensional

  • Dan Chudzinski: Turbulence
  • David Meng: Sashimi
  • Virginie Ropars: Mothra
  • Virginie Ropars: Acanthopis III
  • Katya Tal: Blanket Fairy

Editorial

  • Sam Bosma: Stability
  • Chris Buzelli: Book Monster
  • Sean Andrew Murray: He’s Gone Full-Bird
  • Victo Ngai: Best of the Best
  • Sam Weber: Cancer Monster

Institutional

  • Ed Binkley: A Cob of Chiseldon-Brimble
  • Lucas Graciano: Dragon Swarm
  • Tyler Jacobson: Ruric Thar, The Unbowed
  • Kekai Kotaki: Stampede
  • David Palumbo: Taken

Unpublished

  • Cory Godbey: The Fish Master
  • Lucas Graciano: Guardianship
  • Kekai Kotaki: Ride
  • Andrew Mar: Tell-Tale Heart
  • Tohru Patrick Awa: Sudden Shower

Second Breakfast at Tiffany’s

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Giant dwarves, unlike jumbo shrimp, is not an oxymoron among New York’s advertising painters.

In ”This Is How You Paint 150 Foot Tall Hobbit Dwarves”, Tor Books Art Director Irene Gallo returns to the topic of painting movie ads on a Park Avenue building. It’s a sequel to her interview with Dan Cohen of Art FX Murals about the ad for Batman painted on the same building (see Paint By (Big) Numbers).

Don’t miss it!

[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the story.]

Paint-By-(Big)-Numbers

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While on her way to the office Tor Art Director Irene Gallo often sees painters covering the side of a Park Avenue South building with the latest movie advertising. When she met one of them at the Illustration Master Class she was able to learn “This Is How You Paint a 150 Foot Tall Batman”

The process is clearly physically taxing but there seems to be real joy in being able to work so loosely and so large. At the distance the viewer is seeing the work, the giant brush strokes all tighten up, making the image look crystal clear. Still, Dan says that portraits do require special attention and are reserved for the lead painters on the crew. I asked Dan who he has painted most often and it was, as I had guessed, Johnny Depp. (Did I mention that I have been obsessed with watching this wall over the past two decades? Cripes, Alice in Wonderland looked like a lot of work.)

Large, painted outdoor ads apparently are rare in New York. Out here, Hollywood entertainers and superstar athletes still vie for attention and prestige on immense outdoor advertisements but hardly any buildings have paintable sides. Although billboards on Sunset remain important, they’ve been upstaged by “supergraphics” made of plastic or vinyl that can be stretched across the side of a building.

The Cream Rises

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All five nominees for the 2010 Best Professional Artist Hugo are strutting their stuff at Tor.com this week. Art Director Irene Gallo has lined up screensavers from Shaun Tan, Dan Dos Santos, Stephan Martiniere, John Picacio, and Bob Eggleton. She’s posting one each day.

Gallo led off with Shaun Tan on Monday:

To celebrate AussieCon’s (home of this year’s Hugo ceremony) artist Guest of Honor, Shaun Tan, we decided to kick-off the week with this lovely “Eric” drawing from one of my favorite stories in Shaun’s short story picture-book collection, Tales from Outer Suburbia.

This example makes it easy to understand why the sig line reads: “Irene Gallo is in love with every piece of paper Shaun Tan touches.”

She followed with Dan Dos Santos’ contribution on Tuesday, an incredible portrait of an elf painted during the 2009 Illustration Master Class.

I’m looking forward to seeing more breathtaking art at Tor.com as the week progresses.

Logo Logic

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Jeremy Kratz Hugo Award logo

Jeremy Kratz' Hugo Award logo

Jeremy Kratz’ new Hugo Award logo design seemed good at first glance and I like it more and more as time goes by.

Kratz’ design was the winner in a contest arranged by the Worldcon’s Hugo Marketing Committee. Out of the hundreds of entries, judges Chip Kidd, Irene Gallo, Geri Sullivan and Neil Gaiman settled on a simple icon, one that will hold its own on a busy paperback cover or on a banner hung in a convention center.

The use of the four-finned rocket in the logo was mandated by the contest rules. That’s what the award looks like, after all. But think how preferring a rocket must have complicated the judges’ task. They not only had to make an artistically sound choice, they also had to avoid selecting a logo that was likely to be confused with others already in use. There are a lot of sf-themed businesses and organizations using logos with rockets in them – Tor.com, the Science Fiction League, and many, many others.

One thing that amused me about the choice – prompted me to joke “We needed a contest for this?” – was its unwitting resemblance to an idea I’d had back when fans first started talking about having a logo.

I’d immediately visualized the Hugo nominee pins we used to get. They were little silver rockets with tiny vanes at bold right angles to the hull. (Mike Resnick has so many he wears them on a bandolier and looks like he’s about to say he doesn’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges.) I always thought the design looked straight off the drafting board, one that easily could be turned into an attractive graphic.

The rounded fins of Kratz’ logo show his inspiration was the rocket trophy rather than the pins. That said, isn’t it subjective reactions like these that drive a blog?

(And lest we forget, “World Science Fiction Society”, “WSFS”, “World Science Fiction Convention”, “Worldcon”, “NASFiC” and “Hugo Award” are service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society.)

Hugo Award Logo Contest

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It’s time the Hugo Award had a signature bit of art to strengthen its identity in all media. That’s why the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee is offering $500 in cash and assorted other prizes to the person who submits the winning logo design between now and May 31.

The selection will be made by Chip Kidd (Graphic Designer/Writer/Editor), Irene Gallo (Art Director at Tor Books and Tor.com), Geri Sullivan (Fan & Graphic Design pro) and Neil Gaiman (Hugo Award winning writer).

The cash prize is being provided by SCIFI, the group which ran the 2006 Worldcon.

The committee hopes to announce the winner at Anticipation, the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, in August.

The full press release appears after the jump.

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Tor.com: New Online Community

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The opportunity to read a lot of interesting posts by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Beth Meacham, Irene Gallo, Alison Scott, Bruce Baugh, Jim Henley, John Scalzi, Jo Walton and others is reason enough to visit Tor.com’s newly-launched community site, but another of the band of contributors, Consulting Editor Moshe Feder, also wants everyone to know there’s a load of freebies at the site: 

To celebrate the launch of the new Tor.com website (a participatory community website as opposed to our corporate face at Tor-Forge.com), we are offering a whole bunch of our books for free download in your choice of PDF, HTML, or MobiPocket formats. I’m proud to say that the very first book on the list is one of my own acquisitions, Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

Moshe adds this caution: Note that these are download links. If you try to visit them, you’ll see gobbledegook. Instead, right-click on them to “download linked file.”

The links and other details appear behind the cut.

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