FAMOUS UMA MONSTERS & COLLECTORS

[typhooforme]

"Nothing says monsters like purple and green."  Gary, that's one of The Great Monster Truths!  Outsiders would guess orange and black.  But for us monster kids it's so often been purple and green.  I love these images, and this time around, I love your explanations of your thoughts behind them.  Very very cool.

[Gary D Macabre]

And Ironically I just finished editing out some of my personal reminiscing as i felt it was kind of uninteresting to anyone but myself. 

Max's cover (well month really) was also the inspiration for the "Many faces of the Frankenstein Monster" image site I've been developing.

[Gary D Macabre]

OK a couple more for today.

#8   Headlines were determined by a couple of criteria. 1- primarily how heavily discussed was the topic or thread.  A lot of discussion shot it to the top.  2- the discussion had to remain somewhat on topic or follow a logical transition. or 3- if it was somewhat personal to the reigning OOTMAH's term. or 4- a significant post or essay that stood out as a highlight among threads regardless of follow up.

Rob had some great conversations during his month, and a couple great essays as the headlines attest.  In fact it was hard choosing which headlines to go with and omitted a few based on the fact the cover was already getting crowded.

Rob was the second victim (I was originally planning to knock off 13, and cast 13 ghosts, but as I had stated before I dropped the idea, and ended up ending the run at thirteen.)   Here he was portrayed as the ghost of a lab subject in a sanitarium, still wearing a straight jacket, electrode implants in his brain, and a faint skull underlay beneath his face for that dark haunting look.  In fact The building behind him is the Waverly Hills Sanitarium of Louisville Kentucky which is  reported to be one of the most haunted buildings in the US.  Whether they did any unethical experiments on the infirmed in the basement I honestly can't say.  But hey it's good horror.

Rob also keeps a couple pet snakes, so I added in a milksnake for a bit more personal touch.  In fact I believe his snake is a California Kingsnake and not a milksnake, but my Kingsnake will poop all over you if you take it out, so I used my milksnake instead.

This cover was also the first I did completely in Photoshop, and the UMA banner didn't come out quite right, which I corrected on subsequent covers.

[Gary D Macabre]

#9  Special Edition

General Terry has done his time as OOTMAH twice, and was originally going to get a mad scientist cover.  However in the end I decided that his legacy as creator of the UMA was bigger than as honourable OOTMAH.  Thus I chose to mimic FM#1 for him.  In itself an honour in my mind.  Although this is still a Famous UMA (the vertical headline still says Famous UMA) his main title was changed to The Universal Monster Army, as that really is the heart of this cover.  The Base red of the cover was taken from a photo of the FM#1.

Some might argue that Terry is actually morphed into Frankenstein, which was against my rules and I actually struggled with that.  Rather you will notice the arrangement of head clips  in that he is rather morphed into the Don Post mask being worn by Bill Warren on the cover and not the monster.  He is the Famous Monster of Minnieapolis. 

The biggie here was what was I going to do about the blonde.  Well Maxie helped out there in reminding me of an old post of Terry's, a letter to Helen Chandler (Terry's most loved actress if you weren't aware). I felt this was an excellent suggestion and that it really helped make this cover a bit more personalized.  The quote on the bottom of the cover is from that post.  Well problem solved except that I had to find a stock image that worked for the composition and in good enough resolution and then colorize it.  Call it divine intervention if you will but it all worked out pretty well.

General you certainly did create that Army, and I for one am proud to serve in it.

[fmofmpls]

Dear Gary. You sure know how to make me tingle. Seeing that beautiful cover of Helen and myself sure makes me smile. I am honored to be featured on this incredible cover of yours. Thanks again for sharing these fantastic covers with us. They are every bit as enjoyable as they were the first time around! Perhaps I could persuade you to be our new Ootmah resident artist? Our Ootmah bit will resume on January 1st 2008.

[Gary D Macabre]

General, PM me

[Gary D Macabre]

#10
Man it's easy to do covers when the OOTMAH is dressed for a publicity still.  Usually I had to completely dress an individual for example, Craig's cloak, Terry's tux, Rob's straight Jacket, Max's body. A sharp cover in short order.  The fonts started getting a bit more funky and the backgrounds started making things a little more slick from this point.

[Gary D Macabre]

#11
Then came this project.  Likely my most ambitious. With Jane's handle being that of the voodoo queen it was a natural direction. Max enabled me with a choice of pics which really helped.  But beyond that, dressing Jane in the quintessential Mz. Laveau voodoo queen outfit took a ton of work.  This Image not including text was 26 layers deep, 11 of those were on Jane and her outfit.  Fortunately this was the last time I had to dress someone.

The Background here was also really deep with the head totem using previous cover images (Craig made a great Baron Samdi) including my one and only cameo.  One of the personalized touches in this that is likely to go un-noticed is the three Tarot cards.  Each one was specifically chosen for her and placed in order (although not visable as the voodoo doll obscures them). They are the Fool (infinite possibilities, exuberance, a new start) the High Priestess (symbolizing knowledge and intuition... and secrets), and the World (success, completion and happiness).

[typhooforme]

Gary,
Again, the background info is tremendous!  I love reading about the choices you made, the difficulties you encountered, and how you reached a successful (VERY successful) finished product.  It gives such added depth to the art.  The special Tarot cards in Jane's cover art, the Baron Samedi tribute...it's fascinating to study all the details.

I'm honored to have been the first member honored with a cover!   I'm amazed at the vast amount of work you put into all these covers, each successive one becoming more complex as you proceeded.  Just great stuff. 

[Wich2]

Ditto - really enjoy the "Making Of -" Special, Gary!

-Craig W.
(aka "The Cloaked One")

[Gary D Macabre]

Well then maybe we'll keep going then shall we?

#12
The beginning of the end.  This is the point where I started asking myself how can I possibly top or even match the last.  As much as I love certain aspects of the different covers,  this one compositionally is my favourite.  Again a fantastic source photo goes a long way.  Ray in the Coffin Joe outfit against the flames in the background mimics, blends and compliments the Coffin Joe Poster perfectly.  The poster image provides context, acts as a back ground, a counter point and even appears to be Ray's shadow.   I actually I took a hiatus after this one because I didn't know if I could top it in my mind.  As happy as I am with the last two I'm still not sure I did. 

[raycastile]

Wow, #12 is the most awesome, incredible cover I've ever seen.  You just can't beat fantastic source material like that.

[fmofmpls]

#12 is very nice! Darn it all, I say we start up a new magazine! Gary's our cover artist. We need help from our resident monster magazine editor Jim Clatterbaugh with this project. The proposed magazine would focus on monster pop culture and it's community. That is what would make it different. Too many other magazines already do a fine job of covering the films, we would expose the toys and the pop culture that surrounds it. What do you guys think? Where's Jim?

[Gary D Macabre]

Working with Jim on a Mag would be sweet.  But seriously Joe Schovitz's covers are absolutely amazing. Not just in the artwork, but in the layout, theme and font choices and palate selections. His Rondo proves that.  And on top of that Richard Olson does special projects.  They're out of my league.  I don't think Jim would have me on staff.

[Gary D Macabre]

OK here are the last two. 

#14 Although I felt that perhaps Famous UMA  had run it's course, I still held to the idea I wanted to do thirteen of them, and I was only one shy.  When  Penny (properly Penny Dreadful the thirteenth) got the OOTMAH chair it seemed just too perfect.  I kind of  liked the idea of doing one more simple back to basics cover to finish the run, But Penny's cover was getting beyond that.  While I was doing her cover I had another background I liked that I had put together, but rejected as it didn't work for the direction I wanted to take hers. (You may notice the colour scheme carries over to her title headline). Enter Bob Morris.  With a great expression and a head shot, this was the back to basics cover I wanted.  I have to say this cover may have been the hardest one to get background source material for...because I ended up sitting through "Manic" start to finish to get different screen grabs to fit the theme.  Ouch.  This was the only cover to use a screen grab in the background.  Although the spiral really makes the text largely  incoherent, there are some great words that pop up in the right places, and the text isn't too busy or distracting. 



#13  Because Bob's cover came together so quickly, it was completed and  released before Penny's, thus making #14 the second last, and conveniently preserving my intentions to complete the series on #13. 

Again with great source material, I didn't have to do much work on her profile pic other than get rid of the original background that didn't work for what I wanted..  So what do to do with an attractive picture of an attractive lady?  The answer was simple, I framed it and hung it on a wall.  Penny Dreadful XIII is not just a name, she is actually the thirteenth of something, and that something is Famous UMA Monsters & Collectors.



Well that's all of them.  Thanks Elder Robert for asking about these and sitting through my long winded commentary.  There are some great people here and it was fun to do mini-tributes to some of them.  With the archives still intact perhaps someday I might go back and do a couple more.