Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Elves Wanted


A visit from the Ghost of Christmas Cards Past.

This one goes back almost 20 years – it was my first greeting card sale. The landscape version was a postcard I sent out as a direct-mail promo. I was contacted about a week later by a greeting card company wanting to buy it. I was pretty psyched to make the sale, but then I found out I would have to reformat it to portrait – it drove me crazy trying to recompose all of those elements (Elvises), and took longer than the original drawing. The greeting card company got a cease-and-desist from the Elvis estate, but fought back, reached a compromise, and the card stayed in print for about 10 years. I only have the inks, but the printed greeting-card was in color. I thought about re-colorizing it, but my style's changed a lot over the years... maybe it's time to just redraw this one.

Have a Hunka Burnin' Holiday!

©1992 Barry/Right-Hemisphere Laboratory

5 comments:

Pascal Kirchmair said...

Very cool!

. justin segal said...

great story, thanks for sharing that! I gotta agree: it's always easier to just start from scratch than try to "fix" things! Good work!

josh pincus is crying said...

What's that they say about great minds thinking alike.....

mike r. baker said...

Fantastic cartooning! I love the zombie Elvis.

Josh (musarter) said...

It is great to see your old pen & ink days. Great concept and drawing. I am glad the greeting card company persisted to your benefit.