Organic Tales staring Beanman. Organic Tales is a fantasy comic strip about a teenager who inherits a strange suit from outer space to become the superhero Beanman. Beanman was created in 1976 by William Mitchell and Kimball Thorpe. All material © William Mitchell and Kimball Thorpe. All rights reserved.
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It is hard to believe that almost 50 years has gone by from when I took on the endeavor to illustrate an entire James Bond novel.
The term graphic novel was not around at the time The closest things were the Classic Illustrated comics we used for those book reports. I worked from the books text and penciled, inked and lettered all 26 pages. I swiped many but not all images from comics and remember reference material was very difficult to find at the time. 50 years ago inking tools were limited to pen and ink, brush and sharpies. When I rediscovered the art I saw I had about 25 un-inked and unlettered panels. I decided to finish what I had started when I was 16 years old, In finishing, I chose not to redraw the panels, but to be respectful to my teenage self and simply complete them. It was great fun working on the story again and it gave me some time to reflect on my artistic roots. BM 1/2023 |
Star Trek’s 50th Anniversary by Bill Mitchell now available at Blurb for $12.99 This 92 page softcover book was a labor of love! Order by clicking the link and preview below.
Star Trek celebrated it's 5oth anniversary in 2016.. Created by Gene Roddenberry and starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard McCoy aboard the fictional starship USS Enterprise, the show ran on NBC from September 1966 to June 1969.
This has been a three year mission for me; to illustrate each of the 79 episodes of Star Trek. The task seemed very ambitious at the start, but one by one the images were researched and completed. It helped doing the artwork in the order of the episodes, eliminating the task of figuring out what needed to be done next! From my memory, I tried to come up with key points from each episode and to make each drawing fresh with a special twist. One of the goals for the project was to work in black and a single color, reminiscent of advertising art syles from the early 1960’s.The three colors for each seasons art, gold, blue and red, reflect the color schemes of the Enterprise crew’s uniforms. Every week I would post on my web- site the drawing for the episode that came out that week 50 years ago.
I have always been interested in comic art and a fan of Star Trek and I feel as an artiist, you should be true to yourself in exploring what is important to you, or as is this case, has entertained you. I am sorry to complete this project because it was a lot of fun. Enjoy my efforts! - Bill Mitchell- March, 2019
This has been a three year mission for me; to illustrate each of the 79 episodes of Star Trek. The task seemed very ambitious at the start, but one by one the images were researched and completed. It helped doing the artwork in the order of the episodes, eliminating the task of figuring out what needed to be done next! From my memory, I tried to come up with key points from each episode and to make each drawing fresh with a special twist. One of the goals for the project was to work in black and a single color, reminiscent of advertising art syles from the early 1960’s.The three colors for each seasons art, gold, blue and red, reflect the color schemes of the Enterprise crew’s uniforms. Every week I would post on my web- site the drawing for the episode that came out that week 50 years ago.
I have always been interested in comic art and a fan of Star Trek and I feel as an artiist, you should be true to yourself in exploring what is important to you, or as is this case, has entertained you. I am sorry to complete this project because it was a lot of fun. Enjoy my efforts! - Bill Mitchell- March, 2019
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