Juan C Walls' Portfolio

Hiding from the Queen of Hearts

jedikalimero — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:08:53 GMT

Hiding from the Queen of Hearts

Part of a series inspired by Alice in Wonderland for GX Magazine. This image depicts Alice watching for the Queen of Hearts procession and the gardeners trying to paint the white roses red. Their faces are those of silent movies stars Harold Lloyd (2 times) and Stan Laurel.

I went all around Madrid public gardens looking for a high tail rose tree without success, so I took photos of several bush roses and collaged them to make the type of rose tree I needed.

Photographer is Antonia Peña. Model is Ailén.

Attack of the 40 feet Alice

jedikalimero — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:33:01 GMT

Attack of the 40 feet Alice

Part of a series inspired on Alice in Wonderland for GX Magazine, this image was the cover of issue and depicts Alice crushing the card soldiers of the Queen of Hearts. The cards labyrinth is inspired by a painting I once saw in a book but made of real cards. We bought 4 decks and used all the hearts and diamonds that were not figures, but even so, the labyrinth looked very poor, so we took several pictures from different angles and then I combined them in an endless perspective.

Photographer is Antonia Peña. Model is Ailén.

Through The Rabbit Hole

jedikalimero — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:20:41 GMT

Through The Rabbit Hole

This is part of a series based on Alice in Wonderland. The rabbit is a cuddly toy I customized myself. The floating cards, although not appearing until later in the tale, were added because the client (GX Magazine) wanted a series about the Poker game, so the cards motif is present in all the images.

Photographer is Antonia Peña, Model is Ailén.

Lorena Sánchez

jedikalimero — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:37:28 GMT

Lorena Sánchez

This is a photo by Antonia Peña of model Lorena Sánchez that I retouched for Interviú magazine. Antonia and me worked together to obtain that "Sky Captain" feel on the studio image and then I added the rest with texture, curves and use of darken/lighten tool. The plane tail is painted over the image but preserving the real aluminium wall texture and colour so studio lights, shadows and reflections get intagrated in the plane tail.

Lorena Sánchez

jedikalimero — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:23:18 GMT

Lorena Sánchez

This is a photo by Antonia Peña of model Lorena Sánchez that I retouched for Interviú magazine. Antonia and me worked together to obtain that "Sky Captain" feel on the studio image and then I added the rest with texture, curves and use of darken/lighten tool. The helmet is a real soviet pilot helmet (provided by makeup/stylist Agnes Vagujhelyi) and the plane cockpit is painted from photo reference.

The Birth of Venus

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:30:16 GMT

The Birth of Venus

This is again model and sister Rosanna Walls. This is not really a picture of mine. The background is a composition of several oil paintings by my father Juan Zerép, so everything you see here was created by him except for the sky and the oyster.

Rise of the Dark Lord

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:22:47 GMT

Rise of the Dark Lord

-"Lord Vader"
-"Yes. my Master"
-"Riiiiiiiiiisssse!"

This is a more poetic version of the rise of Darth Vader directly from the molten lava pits of Mustafar.

This was originally a design for a premiere day T-Shirt for "Los Lores Del Sith" Mail List but it still needs a little more "life" in that lava (like a few splashes) and if you have your monitor correctly calibrated, you can see a straight line between the lava and the background.

It is evident my monitor was too dark when I painted it, so here is a trick: add a Levels adjust layer over your picture and increase gamma a lot so you can see every little fail in the dark areas and correct it. then remove the adjust layer and now you're sure nobody will notice any fail you didn't notice because of a dark monitor.

Madelwoman

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 21:36:53 GMT

Madelwoman

This is model and sister Rosanna Walls transformed into a female MadelMan (the original spanish action figure that inspired the Gi-Joes, Action-Men and the like).

The skin in the photo was given a treatment to resemble plastic and joints from a photo of a MadelMan were adjusted to fit the model's proportions. The composition was completed with a car scale model from "2 Fast 2 Furious" and a Scalextric.

A curious note: The Mazinger Z (aka Tranzor Z) she is holding was originally a Great Mazinger figure but I transformed it because in Spain Great Mazinger is much less known that the original Mazinger Z.

Sirenas

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 21:01:52 GMT

Sirenas

This is a composition of a big bunch of photos by photographer Carlos Bernal. The sea images are from the Madrid Zoo and the two models where photographed in a studio with a powerful fan to simulate the water-flowing hair. The mermaid tails, bubbles and other details were entirely painted in Photoshop.

Twi'lek

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 21:56:08 GMT

Twi'lek

This is a picture of a member of the Twi'lek race from Star Wars. The image is a mixture of Photo and painting and is really a sort of "Frankenstein monster" composed of body parts from 6 different models, being the bigger part from model Stephanie Seymour. You can see a Makin-of in my web page intro.

You can still see part of the original pencil sketch in the lekuus (head tails). This was the last part of the image i was going to create, but I liked the effect of the sketched tail and I'm currently using this pin-up as my trade image.

Ultraviolet

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:51:08 GMT

Ultraviolet

This is a painting made in Photoshop on a scaned pencil drawing based on Milla Jovovich's character Ultraviolet. As in "Poison Ivy", I bet for a cartoon style as a little homage to the origin of the character, but at the same time trying to keep the realism of the shape and the likeness in the face of the actress.

Kill Bill

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:06:51 GMT

Kill Bill

The bride is looking for Bill with a vengeance. This is a picture made in Photoshop based on Uma Thurman's Character from "Kill Bill". This is not exactly fantasy genre, but he holds a sword and her eyes throw sorcery spells to my heart. [U]

Lindsay Lohan, Fully Loaded

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:58:18 GMT

Lindsay Lohan, Fully Loaded

This is a picture of Lindsay Lohan based on the latest Herbie movie.

She, Woman

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:55:21 GMT

She, Woman

I'm sure Asimov never imagined Dr. Susan Calvin would look so sexy.

This is a painting in photoshop on a pencil drawing of Bridget Moynahan's character in "I, Robot" sitting on the concept car by Audi also seen in the movie.

Back to the 80's

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:52:30 GMT

Back to the 80's

This is a painting of Elisabeth Shue inspired by Drew Struzan's poster for "Back to the Future" Saga. I tryed to give the image a Struzan look with an eighties twist. The Calvin Klein panties are an homage to the main character of the movies, Marty McFly. If you watched the first movie, I'm sure you know why.

Dead End

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:44:45 GMT

Dead End

I wanted to place a real girl in a cartoon environment, as opposed to Jessica Rabbit and a photo of model Aroa Gimeno gave me the oportunity.

I tryed to depict a Ripley type character that comes to a dead end after running throug the corridors of a derelict spaceship infested by unseen alien creatures and instead of surrender, she prepares to take some bugs with her before ammo is gone. (by the size of that gun, this may be a big bunch of bugs!).

The girl is real and the blouse. The B.F.M. rifle is a combination of painting and a car exhaust tube she was holding. The boots and hair are also painted as are all the background elements.

Catwoman

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:36:07 GMT

Catwoman

This is a painting made with Photoshop of Halle Berry's character of Catwoman featuring the most inopportune cat in History. I took fair liberty on breast size, but the rest of the body is based on Halle's real body. The batsignal corrects a notable absence in the motion picture.

Tuned Woman

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:30:20 GMT

Tuned Woman

This picture was painted over a photo of model Nina Moric and used as cover to a tuning magazine called Maquetuning about tuned car scale models (hence the Bratz car she is holding and the flamed background).

Lupino

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:19:11 GMT

Lupino

Lupino is a production design of a creature for the upcoming movie "Raíces de Sangre" by Tinieblas González. This painting is based on a pencil sketch by Superman artist Kano. The eyes, hair color scheme and forehead spot are inspired by the iberic wolf.

Poison Ivy

jedikalimero — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:14:57 GMT

Poison Ivy

This is a picture made in Photoshop of Poison Ivy inspired by Uma Thurman's character but not pretending to portrait her exactly. This picture has a more cartoony style than my former pin-ups like "Kill Bill" or "Catwoman". These were too much photorealistic and this time I wanted to paint something more oriented to the comic book style except for the ivy leaves that are real photos.

When artists like Adam Huges, Alex Ross or Greg Horn tend to paint hyperrealistic covers, i just go the opposite direction and tryed to paint a wannabe cover more related to the look of the inner panels [:P].