I saw this posted at Bubblegumfink! – a cool site – and it was mentioned in the comments as being noted elsewhere, but that’s not going to stop me from doing my own take on it since it covers two of my passions: art and zombies!
Yeah doggy!
This also kinda ties back to an instructor I had during the decline of my adult education at PPCC (Pikes Peak Community College). He USED TO work for Hallmark and he USED TO work for Disney, so OF COURSE he knew best. He and I got into a bit of a head-to-head fight over the idea behind copying.
One of our assignments was to take a photocopied picture that he passed out and blow it up to at least twice the size and then add details or something like that. It’s been over ten years, and I really just remember the outcome.
When it came time to do the group critique he tore into me for actually redrawing the picture, rather than use the wall projector or a photocopier to get it done.
I argued that illustrators needed to know how to draw and he said that was bullshit. The majority of illustrators that he knew couldn’t draw to save their lives. They knew how to use their tools to do the work for them, far faster than anyone could draw and if I wanted to be a professional I would do the same.
Needless to say, I resisted his stupidity, no matter how right he might have been.
What does this have to do with zombies, you ask?
Simple. One day I had all I could take and I leapt upon him and stabbed him to death with my sketching pencil. While waiting for the cops to arrive, to my utter horror his perforated corpse unexpectedly rose to its feet and started munching on the other students while moaning, “Coppppyyyyyyyyy!”
I kid. In reality I finished out the class, took whatever grade I had – B or some-such – and avoided taking another one of his classes for as long as possible.
The zombies really come in with the following DVD cover. The illustrator obviously belonged to the same school of thought as my former instructor.
Here’s the cover:
click for full cover
If you look closely at one of the central zombies, you might recognize someone:
That’s right. It’s none other than George W. Bush during his wacky drunken college days!
Oh, wait, no it’s not. It’s Simon from the old, and awesome, Tales of the Zombie magazine. Just flipped and chilled. See:
click for full cover
You may be thinking, Why that no-good thieving illustrator! How dare he take a well known zombie icon and use him to make that DVD cover! Sure, he made his hair a bit more wispy, but he left the medallion!
Wait, there’s more. Notice this villager that Simon has just flung aside like a flailing, screaming native tissue:
He also made the DVD cover, only as a full-fledged zombie, flipped and chilled like Simon:
So not only is the illustrator stealing zombies from other work, he’s bringing in scab zombies!
I would be willing to bet that if you had access to a large enough image database you would find that there isn’t a single original image on the entire DVD front cover. Because, really, if he was willing to snag a villager rather than draw his own zombie, why would he bother to draw any of the rest of them?
And that, I’m told, is how the pros do it.
