 Welcome coming into our 80s den. Thanks for continuing on this journey with us. Who would have thought we'd get to Episode 5 and yet here we are. I've been pretty confident that we're going to go all the way. All the way to Episode 6. All the way to Episode 100 plus. Yay! Hope you're all having a good week. Hope you jam packed your lockdown week with plenty of... Sunbathing. Films. And sunbathing. And sunbathing. Britain certainly is. Wanted to give a shout out. SFX magazine. Little Flash Gordon spread. Little mention of life after flash. Not so little to be honest. He's pretty impressive. They spoke to Sam, Melody, Richard O'Brien, Mike Hodges, Brian Blessed, Howard Blake. Pick up a copy. If you are not in the UK and can't get to a supermarket, I'll put a link below of where you can buy it. Check it out. What do we have on the show today? It's an exciting one today. If you are into Marvel, comic book, drawing, superheroes, all that amazing imagination, we have an interview with the incredible Alex Ross. We met Alex during life after flash filming and he was a fabulous person. So excited that we have him on the show today. Stay tuned to the end of the show as well because we also have Bob B Cave with another great prop and the winner of last week's competition. So do not be skipping forward. Stay with us. The competition will be announced later, but before, let's get stuck into an interview with Alex Ross. Life after flash, I was lucky enough to interview the fabulous and intimidatingly talented Alex Ross for the documentary and Alex has so kindly joined me today for the web show. Alex, how are you? I'm doing very well. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. So you have done some incredible work. I mean, ridiculously incredible work. What are some of your early art inspirations that you had? All the things I was seeing in comic books were on television. So I was looking at Spider-Man on TV when I was a kid and that led to all the other superheroes I would get to see, you know, Superman, Batman, all the superhero groups you can remember and then, of course, eventually Flash Gordon. Now we've mentioned it. Flash Gordon was obviously a huge inspiration and I could have talked to you for hours on the subject. How did the inspiration and what you took from Flash, how was your future art inspired by that? Well, in a really weird way because I saw Sam as kind of like my ultimate male model kind of face type. He had those arched eyebrows and, you know, dramatic, strong features, very strong jawline and I incorporated him into my art as kind of my male avatar. So the characters I was making up personally that were superheroes of all different types, he was the lead character. So, and I made the character Burnett as I was back then. So it was really more like what Sam naturally looked like without the dyed hair in Flash Gordon. But he made such an impression on me with that one movie that he stuck in my head throughout the rest of my teen years. It was informing the way I was drawing faces around the age of 11 because that's 1981 for the year. The film was still in theaters after it came out in Christmas of 1980 and I was drawing everything to look a little bit Sam influenced at that stage of my life. And that would grow and change over time where I would start to slowly break off of that but I was still thinking of him specifically. I wasn't going towards photographs to look at him at that time. I was mostly just going by memory. So it would take another 10 years for me to get in the habit of looking at photo reference as the basis for how I would illustrate things in a more realistic fashion. But in all that time before when I'm just drawing out of my imagination he was there in my mind. And as far as a lot of the professional work I've done I didn't use his face indiscriminately on a lot of other characters. So I made a point of thinking of his face for a couple specific people. They're really odd references. The character in the Kingdom Come series is a kind of vaguely hard to understand who he is character, a man who has dark hair who's wearing a business suit. And if you interpret his Arabic name he's supposed to be the legacy of the classic comics character, Raisha Ghoul. But his name actually means son of the bat. So it's a thing if anybody gets it interpreted then they understand oh that's Batman's grown son in the story. And then it doesn't get very explained. It's just thrown in there. But I was basing the likeness more upon Sam. And when I was doing my first work with Marvel's and Marvel Comics I didn't get a chance to do this but I did sketches before based on Sam's likeness as if he might have been the handsome guy that the villain Dr. Doom was before he had his accident to become covered in a big metal mask. Were there any other films that you grew up with as a kid that inspired you as much as Flash Gordon? A lot of things would make an impact in my art in one way or another stealing things like I stole a soldier costume design from Escape from New York and turned it into a whole character that I built up a lot of stuff around when I was a teenager. You know of the films at that time they still have an effect on me like I'll still bring things from the film Tron into design work because it's always interesting to imagine costume elements that are luminous and that film introduced that concept and that's one of those 80s films that still has a strong impact both upon the way I felt at the time I saw it and what I think about today I'm going to collect any toys they make of that film because it still has that sweet spot for me. Did you see the most recent Tron? It has a lot of strengths and it has actually some of the same exact failure points which is that at a certain midpoint of the movie energy sort of just comes to a dead stop in the storyline but I love the film plus also they tried that graphic thing with Jeff Bridges younger face that didn't quite pan out and I wish they had the deep fake technology back then. I saw a video that you had spoken about Justice League being superheros you specifically connected with as well why is that? I mean the most obvious thing is that it was the most in your face if you're growing up in the 70s and 80s you would have only had one superhero group on television and that was the Super Friends and of course that's the Justice League of America in their most kind of limited form but when as a kid like I was you've been watching it for season after season and then they finally did a season where they brought in more of the characters than just the lineup that had you know four or five heroes you suddenly had ten and it had these oddball characters I knew from the comics that are now being seen by a greater number of people like Hawkman, Green Lantern, Flash that was super exciting and that bored into my brain more than say the availability of concepts like the Avengers or the X-Men who just seemed like they were so far away from ever getting that embrace of popular culture because they didn't have the marketing it's not their fault they had great comics but they just weren't being seen by the general public in the same way that DC had gotten that huge step forward I would love to talk to you about your creative process so you get commissioned hired you get a project to work on ask to work on a project what happens then what is the characterization process do you come up with the creative look for it is there input from other people how do you work? the way I approached comics from my youth of looking at the people I admired a lot of the things that were created were projects they themselves had crafted or created so I wanted to be that kind of craftsman who was pitching things who was telling them what story I wanted to create instead of being told what they would manufacture internally so a lot of things I'm most known for are projects that I pitched they just happen to utilize the most well-known properties that we all know so when I did Marvel's or Kingdom Come those were things that you know were utilizing those characters I didn't create but the story lines the presentation was something I had to talk the companies into and that would carry me through the first several years of projects I've worked on and it's only been in the last 20 years I've got a 30-year career in comics now like I've only had the last 20 where I've played around with things that maybe I was talked into myself and just to see how well that would be nothing I've done in the last 20 years competes with stuff I did in my 20s really and that's just the nature of how life goes is that you know you could be I'm officially a has-been at 50 everything I've done for the last 25 years has not competed with stuff I did when I was 25 years old Is that because you felt like you were a bit more adventurous creatively maybe in your early years? There's such a thing as having something to prove you know I was young and trying to do something that would be breaking some kind of ground if not for me then even for the art form it was unique to have painted comics 25-30 years ago it's really not unique now so when I was bringing my form of illustration into more the mainstream of comics it wasn't that it hadn't been published there had been lots of painted comics there just hadn't been as much of an embrace of painted realism with the traditional mainstream superhero content and also somebody that was really into it somebody that wasn't just hired to do a job but was doing something they were passionate for and I certainly had a lot of passion for that I still do thankfully How has the advent of digital technology changed how you work if it has it all? It means that I have to know some of the terms so I can have some of the conversations about saving files and DPI and I have absolutely no understanding and retention of how this stuff really gets done so I've never learned how to use a computer I don't write emails I don't type I do all that through dictation and all the work that gets done with my paintings is scanned by people I work with so that I send the work to them and they scan and then color correct and all the things that I on average the modern artists works with all those tools knows how to tweak things in Photoshop and I just never bothered to do that because I wanted to keep my hands immersed in the tactile reality of paint on paper as much as I can doesn't mean that fixes don't happen digitally they do they just don't become something I lean on whereas contemporary artists are very adept at all these modern tools which I completely respect I just figure I wanted to make it to my grade to learn anything new it was one thing I really was envious when we met you when we found out how little technology you have in your life because I feel like everyone is so bogged down with technology that it kind of takes away from like you say the magic of even someone who writes a letter as opposed to an email and you with painting and with your pen do you feel that are there many artists that still have that kind of user term old school the approach to art or do you find that majority people have gone towards the kind of digital artist approach certainly would be the majority sure but there's plenty of people who do like to work with natural materials and then I believe from the friends I've talked to working digital illustration they still like to get their hands into drawing on paper occasionally and shift back and forth so I see it as something that it's flexible for everybody working in it's just that professionally a lot of people working on stuff like video games I know many people doing that it's just not going to apply to their world as easily as it might in mind and they have to make corrections in their work that's one of the big differences from doing the stuff I do in comics where I have I'm kind of a known quantity and I'm working with people that give me a certain amount of latitude I don't get a ton of fixes on my work whereas if you're working on a video game that has a huge budget and loads of different people collaborating you have to expect revisions and those revisions are most easily done through layers on computer and you don't stop and start a physical painting with that grade of ease what what that might be the answer to my next question but what are your biggest challenges that you face with how you approach your art I in way I've removed a whole lot of them so it can come down to just simple satisfaction of whether or not I like what I've turned out and that everything still is an experiment nothing's 100% going to work out the way I intend I can plan something out with a very tight sketch and then once I'm putting paint on paper even if I did which I rarely do a color sketch beforehand to test out the color scheme I have in mind it's all the way that the paint might soak in I could be fighting the painting there's all different kinds of things where I can put in many hours of time and feel dissatisfied and I've learned to move on very quickly so it doesn't stay with me and kind of bring me down in a way where I don't feel like doing the next thing I always like to attack my problems by trying to go and take on the next challenge out of everything that you have done incredible career thus far what are you most proud of? I mean in the broad sense it's the fact that I did create original works that I was a co-creator of and of those a lot of things I love like I'm most known for Marvels and Kingdom Come the one that's gotten overlooked in my body of work is the one I did right after Kingdom Come called Uncle Sam which was kind of a reflection upon American history and politics and I did a lot of work that had nothing to do with the genre of superheroes in fact it's the only project I've done that's been outside completely of the genre of superheroes and it reflected more of illustration history and I think it actually is kind of a better product and it's also the one that's out of print Two young artists out there that want to be doing what you're doing what would your advice for them be? Well be more open minded than me obviously you can't turn your nose up against working with a computer the way I've gotten away with basically I've been getting away with murder and I'm in a privileged position everybody else has to learn to adapt to where where the work is and what that work will demand you to work with to get paid but you can still enjoy working on paper working with paint if you get to a stage where you can control more the kind of work that you make yourself generally everything is going to get photographed or scanned into a digital file that from that point it becomes the play thing of whoever you're handing it off to and that's all they need is that file so how you got it to that stage that exists in that file doesn't really matter so if you were able to make it through hand-done artwork you know instead of spending all your time on a computer trying to make something look like it was done on paper or with paint on paper you know you can do that for real except again when you're working in a commercial sense where you need to make alterations I get it you're going to probably want to stay completely on a computer but again if you get to the stage where you can be less redirected in the work you turn in where you're less edited then you could probably do what I've done which is embrace the real as I like to think of it you did that amazing Flash Gordon piece which we came to see you when you actually were in the sketch stage of it and you had said at the time that was one of the things that was on your bucket list to do this kind of definitive Flash piece is there any piece or character that you haven't done that is on your next bucket list you know a weird one that I've sketched out before and I haven't produced a painting because I haven't got the direct license approval for it is I figured I'd do a piece of Queen and as you got into involvement with trying to get around licensing approval with Brian may directly no such approval has come through and if I ever do make the painting it'll just be me doing it for the sake of posterity so the sketch is what it is and I figure that they slowed down licensing for a while because of the upcoming movie that we didn't know was likely to happen the way that it did happen and I'm grateful that did happen but maybe I'll never officially make any artwork of Freddie and the band but at least I'm within my rights to create whatever kind of thing satisfies me and I recently got a chance to do a Bowie piece with the estates approval so if only Brian may had enough input into his own band to actually give me direct approval but somehow we can't get past that Marvel's 25th anniversary edition just came out in March your rise of Ultraman cover was just announced out in September is there anything else that people can expect from you well there was a press release also that's come in the last week I think regarding me being the new cover artist and designer of the newest armor for Iron Man so that's a series I'll be on hopefully overlapping with the time I've not been fired yet off of the Captain America book but I'd like to think that I could keep both gigs going simultaneously I've been working on them for months simultaneously but I regularly do covers for Hulk, Captain America and Iron Man and it's only now that people are learning about this new run and the design I did do you tend to just work on one project at one time and blank it out anything else or can you multitask well I plan things in groups of what I've got to get done for the month so whatever number of covers I've got to do I will sketch out all those concepts within 24 hours or so and submit them all to the editor get reactions and then quickly go into my photo research to match my drawings so I'll be likely taking poses and modeling the various things which you've seen around my house I've got all different matter of toys and life size figures, heads, things that I can use as a reference and of course a deep reserve of photos I can look at for different people so I'll assemble all that stuff together and then one by one go through each cover but each cover is taking me on average about two days to execute so each thing is closely buttressed to the next thing that's of a similar well they may all be different subjects but a lot of them fall into certain groupings I was expecting you to say each cover would take about three months given the detail and quality of them all so I'm I bow down to your talent Alex I really do you're incredible so thank you so much for humoring me and being part of this web show it's been absolutely fabulous to talk to you again and I'm so excited that you'll part of life after Flash and of course 40th anniversary of Flash Gordon this year it's all coming back out so thank you so much and I really appreciate you being on the show thank you so much for having me a fabulous conversation with Alex Ross now when we finished the interview we had a little chat casual chat where he started talking about a couple of things that I had stopped recording my camera but recorded his still so I just wanted to finish this interview by saying if anyone's seen Life After Flash hope you have if you haven't you know where to go and see it you'll see a scene where Peter Duncan discovers that he is not in the Flash Gordon poster so here's a little clip from Life After Flash and then here is what Alex had to say about it oh I did the wrong way take it off I'll set it up pull that down nice where are you Peter if you be anywhere you'd be in here with this group right should have been in here right space I think space around here would be good I didn't talk to you about this I don't think but like I had to learn by watching the documentary that Sam's showing it to the other actor in the film the one guy who I didn't illustrate and it's the humiliation of oh where are you like oh you're not in here and that poor guy actually has lines in the film and I didn't bother to draw it because I couldn't foresee that possibly ever happening that so do you know what I didn't think to ask you about that but I remember at the time thinking I wonder if Alex will see this and realize that he didn't put Peter Duncan in it I felt terrible because it would have been so easy to get him in there it would have been I mean heck I'd be willing to you know paint him over and we'd reprint the whole thing just to get this poor guy in the shot but you know I don't see that anybody's going to care for that effort yeah he was fine about it he was fine also after I finished recording Alex's I stopped recording Alex's camera we were still chatting and he mentioned one thing that I wanted to talk about just briefly nice little fun fact keep recording next time I know I'm always going to keep recording he was talking about using Sam's face as inspiration for artwork he also used the face of Davy Jones who is not from Pirates of the Caribbean the lead singer of the monkeys so quite an unusual one I wouldn't have thought like a hybrid of Sam J Jones and and Davy Jones the Jones twins so I just wanted to mention that little fun fact because I'm a massive monkeys fan turns out so with Alex so super cool very good well we should jump over to our partner in crime Bob for a look at what fantastic prop he's got in the B cave I love movie art so much besides posters original art pieces and a few replicas no art gallery would be complete without a few Alex Ross pieces I actually worked with Alex Ross on this piece to create it for my DVD commentary and speaking of DVDs I don't know if you guys have ever seen this one before but this is an original painting that Alex sent me for Christmas one year I think a good trivia question would be where have you ever seen this painting before hey Ashley I'm really excited this week because we figured out a way to feature one of the things in my collection that I truly love and I'm a super huge fan of Alex Ross did this painting a couple years ago for the metal edition DVD release of all the universal famous monsters and of course my personal favorite universal monster happens to be Creature from the Black Lagoon so with that we thought it would be cool to link Alex's artwork up to a couple of artwork pieces that I have here from the creature and also maybe show you my full size creature I think in order to do this properly though we need to go all the way back to when pictures were in black and white so with the movie's oldest Creature from the Black Lagoon nothing has really survived prop wise from the film usually there's been a couple screen used masks or feet that have flown around the internet and it's really hard to authenticate something so old so my Creature replica is a super limited edition a couple years ago huge Creature fan just like me sculpted this amazing full size Creature from the Black Lagoon and offered several up to different collectors at the time they were being sold as completely painted Creatures and were obviously like really expensive finally through a series of events which is not very interesting I was able to get a hold of a raw casting of the Creature from the actual artist and that started a six month journey on assembling and fixing the Creature and patching holes and stuff that goes into actually building one of these things was the first life size prop that I actually was attempting to build the biggest challenge with doing a Creature replica is nobody is sure exactly what color he was the film was done in black and white and most of the vintage photographs are also in black and white so you can only get kind of the tones of him there's Life magazine article at the time and they published several color pictures of the Creature if I remember this correctly and those pictures are all done with super old 50s, 60s film stocks so the colors even there were definitely open to interpretation in making my Creature one of the things I did to make sure he looked just right was I would paint a section of him and then I would take a photograph of it and turn that photograph black and white so then I could tell if the at least the values were correct so my Creature I did something obviously I think is cool I removed the sculpted eyes from the casting and I actually put in taxidermy fish eyes that you can buy for you know like big fish trophies that people hang on their wall or whatever he sits here in this little alcove and the way I set it up which I think is pretty cool we've got a spare bathroom that we've named you know the Creature from the black bathroom and essentially you can go into the bathroom and you close the door when you're done you come out the door opens right to the Creature and it's such a treat because so many people get startled by having the big green guy turn at them when they come out of the bathroom you know along with Alex's amazing piece of art from the Creature from the black lagoon there's just so many artists that have done a version of the Creature he's just so iconic and so I've been chasing artwork around for the Creature forever and I mean you can just bury yourself in it so I've really tried to like the classic pieces that I love thanks everybody for watching that does it for this episode of The Bee Cave we're working on some really cool stuff for future episodes if you have a thing that you want to talk about drop us a line and we'll see if we can get you on the show if you want to share some of your cool stuff take care guys so our competition last week was to win a Blu-ray copy of this which is the fantastically titled Cleaning Up the Town the Ghostbusters documentary which is amazing if you didn't see last week's episode where we interviewed the filmmakers here's a card go and check it out it's interesting to talk to other filmmakers that have been on this journey just to see the similar stories they've had in bringing these films to life so if you haven't seen it check it out but we asked you in order to win a copy signed if you were going to write a ghost related title of the film what would it be? and we had some good ones really good ones the winner was by Andy Buckland and even other people were commenting that they should win Polter Heist it's pretty good bank robbers that get killed midway and I think continue the Heist as ghosts pretty impressive so Andy email info at lifeafterfilms.com and this will be coming your way next week we will have another competition very exciting and if you like horror and sci-fi you might want to tune in next week don't forget to subscribe comment below what you like about the show what you don't hopefully not too much that you don't like what do you want out of the show this is for us everyone as a group we want to make it what people want so I can't wait for next week's show it's going to be Marvel us sorry