Thursday, about 4:30 pm, my office phone rang and it was my good friend TC. I hadn't heard from TC in a while, and it was a surprise to hear his voice. Unfortunately I had a meeting I was running to and we were only able to talk about five minutes. We hung up however with the promise that we would connect the next day. It didn't happen though. Friday passed and I didn't talk to TC again. Saturday afternoon Hammer Six called me and gave me the news that TC was dead, He had died on Friday from a heart attack. I don't know if I was the last of TC friends to talk to him or not, I certainly hope not. Sunday night I wrote something on GL's forum about TC, but I decided that I wanted to do something on our site as well. You know they say a picture says a thousand words and so I thought I would share just a few pictures that Tim shared with me over the years. His last great project was his MARS saga. It was more art than it was 1:6th, but so much of Tim's stuff was art. Tim was a storyteller and an artist and that is how I will always remember him.
I would write Tim long emails like I do everyone else. I would rather write than talk on the phone, alway have been that way. Tim, however could out write me any day of the week and then he would call me as well and we would sit on the phone and talk for a couple of hours at a time, mostly him talking and me listening. We would talk about fine art, mixing 1:6th and art, comics, animation and commercial art projects that we were working on. He was always encouraging me to achieve some new lofty goal with my 1:6th comics.
I was in awe of his talent. He had done some rather neat effects over a period of time, but this new project that he was working on, the MARS thing, it went way beyond standing figures up and taking pictures. What he was doing was art. The figures were really just the starting part for a world that he was illustrating and his techniques were so far beyond anything anyone else had even tried. He would talk about the things he was trying, the challenges, the successes and the failures and I just couldn't believe the new territory he was exploring. It was all pretty amazing stuff. The other night GL put up a bunch of Tim's stuff on the site so if you go over there you can check it out if you have not seen it before.
If you haven't seen his work, I highly recommend that you do take a look. You may not like it, but it is really pretty amazing artwork. Tim and my approach to telling a story is very different. I know that people think I lean pretty heavily on photoshop and I do, but essentially I use photoshop for effects and backgrounds, leaving the figures unchanged. Tim felt like nothing in the photo was beyond his brush. He would redo eyes, mouths and even add individual strands of hair. If he didn't like the way the clothes fit on the figure, he would simply repaint them. He was a tremendous artist, pure and simple.
He knew that nothing on earth was going to look like what he envisioned Mars to look like, so he simply painted his backgrounds in, rather than trying to find something suitable from real life. His imagination was boundless.
For one of GL's contests he even created a box for his MARS troopers figures. That was a while back and you could still find 21st product on the toy shelf. This box artwork of Tim's really captured the look and feel of the type of boxes that 21st was doing at the time. Yes, there is a 1/6th figure there, but it had been heavily repainted to create a very artsy illustration for his box cover. It is beautiful work.
Every time I felt like I had reached a new plateau with some experiment in one of my stories, Tim would totally blow me away with something new he had tried. Yet, even though I knew I could never be in the same league as he, he never made me feel that way. He could always see past the flaws and find something creative in what I was doing. I appreciated his humbleness and his spirit. I will miss Tim a lot. I will miss those long conversations that we would have about art and the hobby. I will miss his sense of humor and his insight. He was one of the most talented people I have ever known and I counted him as a brother. Tim, you will be missed.
TC did a tutorial a number of years that really demonstrated all the different techniques he used and explained the rational behind them. It was really good and I would like to put it on the site eventually, maybe as a TC Gallery. Even though most folks here never met him face to face, he was still a member of the SSCC and I would like to do something to remember him. His own art seems the best way to do that.
Well, that is all for tonight guys, until next time, have a good one!
Every time I felt like I had reached a new plateau with some experiment in one of my stories, Tim would totally blow me away with something new he had tried. Yet, even though I knew I could never be in the same league as he, he never made me feel that way. He could always see past the flaws and find something creative in what I was doing. I appreciated his humbleness and his spirit. I will miss Tim a lot. I will miss those long conversations that we would have about art and the hobby. I will miss his sense of humor and his insight. He was one of the most talented people I have ever known and I counted him as a brother. Tim, you will be missed.
TC did a tutorial a number of years that really demonstrated all the different techniques he used and explained the rational behind them. It was really good and I would like to put it on the site eventually, maybe as a TC Gallery. Even though most folks here never met him face to face, he was still a member of the SSCC and I would like to do something to remember him. His own art seems the best way to do that.
Well, that is all for tonight guys, until next time, have a good one!
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