August 18, 2010

Runner's World


Important lesson: If you use your spouse as a reference model, do not make her LOOK fat.
Especially for a magazine she and all her friends subscribe to.

The magazine was Runner's world which is an honor to work for because it's always chuck full with great illustration.

Subject was mental grief over injuries and how to recover faster. Marc Kauffman was the AD.

Rough ideas. Marc picked my favorite, but I knew the comp needed major consolidation.



Color studies, and now I start to get into trouble....

My wife posed for this, and she thinks I made her look fat. I totally disagree. She was convinced the magazine would make me repaint the figure thinner. Surprise honey, they didn't.

But I still can't convince her, and she may never pose for reference again. Perhaps you all could help.

Here's the main piece in print.
Lucky for me the other one is small on the turnpage.

2 comments:

bw said...

Alex...

Saw your handsome & moving NYTimes World Trade Center illustration this ayem--twin rectangular pools and a tear-drop. Missing is the third pool (which would be a trapezoid, I think) representing the always-missing WTC #7, a 47-story steel-framed skyscraper (also known as the Salomon Bros. Building) which was brought down, or "pulled," as the leaseholder, Larry Silverstein put it for a PBS crew the next year--at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11/2001.

Probably the majority of Americans who do not live in Manhattan do not know that three WTC buildings came down on 9/11. (see the website BuildingWhat.org (should be BuildingWhat?!.org but for the limitations of the internet URL naming conventions). WTC #7 is the key bit of evidence giving the lie to the whole official story of 9/11. Though WTC #7 was mentioned five or so times in Phil Zelikow's novel, The 9/11 Commission Report, never was the fact of its collapse on that day mentioned. From the "thorough report" this skyscraper's demolition was thoroughly omitted. Curious minds want to know why.

And of course your illustration, with only two of the three buildings depicted, furthers Zelikow's novel, which presents the "official myth of 9/11" and in no way addresses the Building 7 collapse, use of explosives, high-tech demolition techniques, and at least 1,000 additional et ceteras.

You might want to post an amended version of the graphic on your blogspot here when you post the published version, to include WTC #7 and its "mere" 47 stories.

WTC #7 went down in about six seconds, classic demolition style: central supports in the sub-basements blown away, the roof "cracked" and then carefully timed explosions, from the top down, cutting away the support columns every other floor, symmetrically, so as not to damage the neighboring buildings and incur the damage expenses (and lawsuits) to render them whole again. The building collapsed "into its footprint," as demolition folks call it--meaning it collapsed neatly into its own basement, a well-done, "classic" "implosion style" demolition job. Because the explosions in WTC #1 and #2, blasting almost everyone and everything to smithereens and hurled tons of structural elements, as if they were no more than pub darts, these two demolitions are not called "classic" demolitions, or "classic implosions".)

Everyone had been evacuated from WTC #7 (some never went inside, although it was the NYC disaster command center and had other illustrious federal tenants (CIA, FBI, IRS, SEC, etc., if I recall aright) and/or had been warned to clear the area, as "this building is going to collapse, too". (How'd they know that, those 1st responders warning folks to clear out?) Curious minds want to know, as folks say).

bw said...

PS: And as to your spousal unit being made to look "fat" in your reference illustration, only this: Is anorexic the "new thin"?

Perhaps we'll one day discover the gene which seems to be carried only by women, which so alters their perception mechanisms that they think they're staring into a vertically convex (bowed outward along the vertical axis) fun-house mirror.

If you were to survey 100 women, including your spouse, maybe you'd find more than 1 willing to go for "looks fat"--because of the aforesaid perception flaw gene. Ask 100 men, 10,000 men, 1M men, you'd not find a one willing to go for that description. So you're fortunate to have a gorgeous wife, but unfortunate in that she has the American female misperception gene and is unable to acknowledge or even see her own pulchritude.

You've my sympathies, dude.