Max Riffner

Pinups

July 2006

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Notes: Here’s Miss July 2006. Nothing really too new here as far as colors or style are concerned: those aspects have been pretty consistent the last few months, and I feel more comfortable with them. Flat color seems to suit my art better.

I really just wanted to challenge myself in a couple of different ways that can’t be seen by you all. First, I did this illustration entirely in Adobe Illustrator CS. Normally I sketch out the rough in my sketchbook and scan it in. This time I just roughed out the idea in Illustrator, just to see if I did any better or worse than normally. I think it ended up consistent with my existing work. I don’t know whether that is good or bad, but it was an interesting personal challenge.

Secondly, I wanted to change the perspective. Usually I draw these illustrations straight on. I wondered if I would handle the subject matter differently if I drew it upside down. Again, the end result was consistent with my existing work, but it certainly got my brain firing off in different, exciting patterns.

There you go! Like I said, imperceptible to the end user, but it was certainly different for me. Happy downloading!

June 2006

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Notes: Woo! Two pinups in as many days! Nevermind that I finished Miss May 2006 on May 30th. No, my friends, you should believe that you are somehow… lucky.

All joking aside, I really wanted to get this month’s pinup done quickly after botching May’s entry so bad (though not entirely my fault – see the entry for details). I’m very happy to be back on schedule and I hope you all enjoy Miss June 2006 – I know I did. I feel like this style is a good fit for me, so I may stick with it – I’m not sure yet. We may have to wait until July to know for sure! Happy downloading!

May 2006

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Notes: Okay, okay, this one is a little late. I apologize. I had this big site to redesign. It’s done now, so its time to catch up.

This pinup took awhile actually. I originally was going with an “Outer Space” theme. I had about 4 solid compositions put together when I finally scrapped the whole idea. I may come back to it sometime… but not in the foreseeable future.

Miss June 2006 will be here in a few days, I promise. The roughs have been scanned and she’s ready to go.

April 2006

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Notes: Ugh. It seems inevitable that the closer April gets, the more likely I am to get a cold of some kind. Sure enough, I caught some bug last week, and it has had me down for awhile.

Since I was laid up with this cold, I didn’t work on this month’s pinup until yesterday. I enjoy working under a deadline like this, because it forces me to work up a sketch completely, rather than doing three or four other warm-up or sub-par sketches to get what I want. I kept working this one, building the layers of lines until I started to see the form I wanted.

When today hit, I was again aware of the deadline, so there wasn’t much fooling around with colors or new techniques. All that existed was a desire to complete this as well as I could, and I think I did that well. I’m really happy with the color scheme (if only my Color Theory professor could see me now!) and how the piece harkens back to more of a vintage look, where the background isn’t as important as the illustration of the girl. Miss April is probably the most nude of any of the pinups I’ve ever done, though nothing is exposed except for her bum. I think that is well enough. Hope you all enjoy it!

March 2006

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Notes: Well, here we are one year later. I introduce to you Miss March 2006. The main challenge with this illustration was mastering the all-powerful Illustrator tool, the Gradient Mesh. It’s hard, and I wouldn’t say I’ve completely mastered it. Nevertheless, the results are promising, and I hope to continue to master this tool for softer, photorealistic effects. If you want to learn more about Gradient Mesh, visit master Veerle’s tutorial.

Also, I’ve updated the trade dress (so to speak), going with a retro line art look for a logo of sorts. Anytime I get to use Univers, I get all aflutter, so it made me happy to implement it here. Go forth, and download!

February 2006

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Notes: February is here, bringing the last unseen pinup online from the Pinups 2006 Calendar (which will be no longer be for sale by the end of the month – buy now!).

February is a hard month, because you don’t want to do the obvious. When I think of Valentine’s Day, I think of intimacy and sharing in whatever form (sexual or not). Sharing a bed with anyone is pretty intimate, so I pictured this pinup waiting for someone, either a lover, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend… whatever. Color-wise, I wanted to have rich coffee and chocolate hues to offset the pinup’s red hair and undergarments. I think it all works pretty well together.

Next month is March, bringing us a whole year of pinups here on the site! I’ll have to think of something good!

January 2006

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Notes: Happy New Year, everybody! Here’s hoping this year sucks less than last year. Plus, it means it is only 4 more years until VH1 can do I Love The 00’s. That crap has been on all weekend, and it sucks me in everytime. Why, God, why?!

For those of you who haven’t purchased the calendar (which will only be available until February – you have been warned), this was my previously unpublished entry for January! I was going for a vamped out look, sort of like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago. I cast everything in a blue transparency, because, well, it’s winter. Winter makes everyone kind of blue, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be sexy! Hopefully this will kick off 2006 right!

December 2005

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Notes: Holy crap, it’s Christmas time! And I hope to have a little Christmas announcement here shortly, but for now, here is December’s pinup! Nothing too fancy here, although this is the first one of these that I’ve used Photoshop to finish (versus Illustrator). I made use of Twinsparc’s Wet Floor actions on this piece, just because I thought it might be nice to pare down the background for once. To simplify. An important rule for everyone I think during the holidays: cut out the background noise and simplify your life so you can get through to the new year!

Happy holidays to all of you! Thanks for coming back month after month to download these pinups. Now that I’ve started to track them, it is pretty amazing how popular they really are, and that is incentive enough for me to keep doing them! See you in the New Year! Be sure to come back next week for that announcement (or sign up to the e-mail list, or my site feed – whichever floats your boat).

November 2005

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Notes: This pinup was sketched out during a cartoonists jam session at Krypton Comics. I had Saturday morning cartoons on the brain that day. One, well, our jam was actually on a Saturday. Two, I had been listening to Danger Doom constantly that morning, particularly one track with Talib Kwali and Doom tripping some Saturday morning cartoon nostalgia. Three, both of these things got me thinking about how I kind of thought Josie and the Pussycats and Daphne on Scooby Doo were hot. So I decided to draw a hot girl that one might see on a Saturday morning cartoon, but, you know, not for kids. It would be on Adult Swim, maybe.

The best way to make the pinup look similar to those toons was to keep all of my lines and eyes black. Compared to some of the other, more illustrative linework and color building I’ve done for these pinups, this felt a bit strange to me. I think the toon effect was achieved though, even if I felt like I hadn’t done enough work! The background is straight out of Super Friends; that was my favorite cartoon when I was a little guy.

October 2005

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Notes: As these pinups keep gaining in popularity, I’ve been putting more and more effort into them. Unfortunately, the amount of effort I’ve been putting in has not exceeded the end result, I’m afraid. October is a hard month, especially if you are a monster freak like me! I ended up doing about 20 to 30 sketches before settling on what would become this month’s pinup. I wish I could have spent as much time polishing the end result as I did sketching!

October’s pinup runs a little tame to what is typically expected, I would guess (my bet is that everyone was waiting for a sexy vampiress). Then I hit on maybe doing a bit of a tribute to Bewitched, and both my friends Ben and Kenneth agreed that would be a good choice. I’m pretty happy with the end result, especially the crazy ass cat.

September 2005

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Notes: Man, this was a tough month. Again, I was so busy with keeping Quick Step on schedule because of our vacation that I had forgot about doing this month’s pinup. Plus, once I had an idea, I ended up doing 3 different versions! One never made it past the sketch stage, and this one had several different color treatments and some new techniques that I am still trying to get a handle on. Anyway, here you go for the month that takes us back to school – this is kind of in the “hot for teacher” vein.

When I was younger, I was always annoyed with September, because it wasn’t quite cold and fall-like enough for my tastes. I’ve since come to find September to be one of my favorite months exactly because it is warm still, without the humidity, and every so often you get a hint of winter air in the mornings. So, the color scheme reflects that with some summer colors mixed with some subtle reds and browns carrying the weight of the linework. Enjoy!

August 2005

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Notes: This one snuck up on me! I can’t believe it is August already. Usually I start working up these pinups around the 15th of the month. I’ve been so busy that I realized Friday that the month was ending!

Ah, the beach pinup – long a standby favorite for artists everywhere. For mine, I decided to use a color scheme that reminds me of how awful the dog days of summer can feel. Which got me thinking… dog days of summer? Dog? Quincy! I had to do it!

So, let me dork out and tell you that since we have plenty of shots of the ol’ Quincers in iPhoto, it wasn’t too hard to find one with him chewing on some toy. I just changed the toy out with a bikini top. Instant Pinup Magic!