NEW WEBSITE

Finally put a proper website up:

www.blackmocco.com

I'll still be posting artwork here but needed something more polished in the end.

RESPECT THE BADGE - FEAR THE GUN

He is the... etc., etc. And some close-up detail seeing as I worked so hard on it...

HAPPY 30th M-E-T-A-L-L-I-C-A

Unused playbill for Metallica's 30th anniversary shows in San Francisco. (Shows were AWESOME, by the way.)

"HONESTY IS MY ONLY EXCUSE"

There's a few days that stick in your mind as "greatest day ever". This was, without a doubt, one of them. Pre-Metallica show, October 1992. Took six days to draw. If you drank in Bruxelles and you're not in here, it's because I ran out of time/interest/sanity. Sorry. Maybe you'll turn up if I ever get back to this...

"HOW TO MAKE A MICK..."

Family Guy's semi-regular art show and silent auction. The theme is 'Origins'. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, this idea came easy. This is just the sketch done on the Cintiq. The original's hand-inked and way too big to scan...

Somewhere in there are subtle and not-so-subtle references to Mad Max, Metallica, 2000AD, Star Trek, Ray Harryhausen, Raquel Welch's boobs and wanton alcoholism.

SUICIDE DONKEY...

Shirt design commission for the brave men and women of CJTF Paladin Southwest, Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

FUNKY GIBBON

"Tá grá ag d'athair duit."

Michael Raymond Cassidy. 1938 - 2011.

Here's a tale:

When my father passed away, my older brother and I took upon bringing the news to the patrons of his (far too) regular drinking haunt - my father had fallen outside the pub and it had landed him in hospital. Of course, it being a local pub in Ireland everybody had already heard (deaths are big news in Ireland) and before we knew it, pints of stout were being hoisted in our direction and people struggled to find sympathetic things to say. (The Irish are generally an open and empathic bunch but not so much here. A dusty web of regret, resentment, repression and finality hung over everything. This was a place where older men, in towns all over Ireland no doubt, of a certain temperament and generation came to wait out their lives. An elephant's graveyard.) We sipped the pints (well it would have been rude otherwise, right...?) and eventually myself and the brother noticed a collection of maybe ten to twelve walking sticks hanging above over the bar, looming. The barman noticed and - almost proudly - informed us that these were the walking sticks and canes owned by previous customers who had passed away inside this bar over the years. We scoffed in disbelief. "No," says the barman, "sure if you look closely you can see the names on the side there."

To use an apt cliche: A chill filled the room. My brother and I glanced at one another. We sank the pints as quickly as humanly possible and left...

In more mundane ramblings, this piece spewed from me over a weekend back in Los Angeles not long after the funeral. I was always struck that for my father, he didn't want company when he went to the pub. He wanted to be alone, drinking his pint. It practically drew itself.

In even more mundanity, I love Eduardo Risso's art for 100 Bullets. Stark blacks and whites and wanted to do something in that vein.

GIRL. STREET LAMP. Etc.

This was supposed to be sorta Gorillaz/Jame Hewlett looking. I dunno. Whatever. I like her feet.

FAMILY GUY GQ/STAR TREK

I've worked on a LOT of FG-related side-projects over the last few years. Not going to show them all as I want to concentrate more on personal work but there's a few worth posting to get out of the way...The 'GQ' one's from a FG charity art auction.
The Star Trek piece actually predates the bigger one further down by about a year or so and is in the custody of the inimitable Mr. MacFarlane himself.
(Star Trek ©Paramount. Family Guy ©20th Century Fox)

COCO LIKES 'LEMMY'...

...so will you!!!! DVD and Blu-Ray February 15th, folks with tons of extras! Champion.

'EL FIN DEL CAMINO...'

In full and in case you're too stingy to track down and buy a copy of the almighty Hot Mexican Love Comics which features more fantastic art and artists than you could shake a wiener at...

MORE UNTITLED PROJECT...

Lest y'all think nothing's being produced. Still got some serious work to do but been working very hard to lay out a 60-80 page book anytime the day job and its various entanglements allow me. Guess I wouldn't be able to work for Marvel at this speed though.

Here's some random (and VERY loose) layouts...

"METALLICA DIMENSION PORTAL"

Copyright Mick Cassidy 2010
Page 5 of So-Far-Untitled project.

This was a fair representation of my bedroom in my long-suffering parents' house in the late 80's/early 90's. No doubt a fair representation of any budding young metaller's bedroom, no doubt.

I don't think I can tell you much about what's in this just yet. The only things I can give away are the following:

- Ireland
- Metallica
- dangerous amounts of irresponsible and foolhardy drinking and sex (it IS Ireland!)

STAR TREK meets FAMILY GUY

Private commission.
(Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation ©Paramount.
Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show ©20th Century Fox)

LEMMY! And me!

Funny ol' world, innit?

Got put in touch with the directors of the forthcoming documentary (Cheers Artie!!!) about everyone's favorite handlebar-'stache-sporting, living (although how is anyone's guess...) legend about touring the mighty offices of Family Guy as the mighty Mr. Kilmister and his band are apparently big fans of the show.

Didn't realize two e-mails later I'd be involved with putting a face to the movie for the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. With the aid of the fantastically talented Kaya Dzankich, we came up with some ideas and threw them at Wes and Greg, the movie's directors, and eventually, the Big Lem himself.

Proud to present the fruits of our labor.




Lemmy's amp (sometimes known as Murder One. You ever seen Motorhead live, you'll know why!) and designed by Marshall doubles as a t-shirt design and fucking kickass skateboard deck.



The finished poster. Would've been too easy to find a pic of Lemmy being 'wacky' but we felt there's a man in there too, not just the bottle-of-Jack-a-day frontman of Motorhead everyone knows by heart. (Even my 76 year old ma knows who Lemmy is. Mind you, she's only twelve years older than the man!)
Personally, I think he looks appropriate in this pic for a movie about himself: Iconic and invincible and most importantly, looking down upon the rest of us because let's fucking face it: He's Lemmy and we're not...


'Lemmy' prepares to flatten Texas this Monday...



'Lemmy' goes fucking MOBILE!! (Sorry! I never played in a band so seeing artwork I've been involved with emblazoned upon the side of a tourbus is as close to that as I'm ever going to get!!!)

'Lemmy' trailer:




Can't tell you all how excited we were to be a part of the movie. Wes and Greg were the perfect clients and I've no doubt the movie's going to be excellent. We all seemed to be on the same wavelength from the start and as Lemmy and Motorhead might as well be fucking superheroes to me, this was a dream come true to land on our laps the way it did.
(Lemmy ©Damage Case Inc.)

B I B L E - Z O M B I E S !

"Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation..."
John 5: 28, 29

'SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING DARK SIDE'

Design for Family Guy promo piece at San Diego Comic-Con 2008. I didn't handle the color duties, just the art up to this point. Eternal gratitude to send to my good friend Burrell, Family Guy's prop designer extraordinaire, for some help with the AT-AT walkers and the Millennium Falcon...
Here's the colour version......and the original poster it's based on...
(Family Guy ©20th Century Fox. Star Wars ©Lucasfilm. Obviously.)

C R U S A D E R

Artwork copyright Mick Cassidy 2008
This has been sitting around for a while now. I have a colored and rendered version of it but to be honest, I prefer it in black and white. Please note the absence of any metal bikinis and sixteen-inch waist.

C A N N I B A L

Online Portfolio update

(Doctor Who ©BBC)

"Veh-ick-uls"

Let's start small.
A few extremely rough concept sketches for some post-apocalyptic vehicles ("veh-hi-culs" as they might be called in certain parts of Ireland...). I quite like them and their slapped-together feel but somewhere along the way I felt they were too far gone for the story I'm trying to tell.
Blame 'Chronicles Of Riddick'. I've always felt there's as much to be learned from watching bad movies as watching good ones. A lesson in how not to do something. 'Riddick' bothered me so much because it made me realize that if you've too much going on in your story and you haven't signposted it clearly enough and then you visually overdesign every single thing, your story's not going to work. I watch quite a bit of sci-fi but found myself bored and confused within the first ten minutes. I'd actually recommend it to anyone attempting a story of this kind of scale.
I'm really enjoying the new incarnation of 'Battlestar Galactica' but what really works for me and helps ground it is use of the recognizable technology and appliances. It means you can go as fucking buckwild as you want with your otherworldly stuff as long as you have something that a reader or viewer can work from as a base.

All artwork copyright Mick Cassidy 2007

I found myself looking at tons of images of old steam locomotives. Big and bulky...


All artwork copyright Mick Cassidy 2007



All artwork copyright Mick Cassidy 2007

I tried to make them somewhat functional as well as quirky and entertaining to look at. I assumed people wandering through nuclear wastelands are going to have to sustain themselves and the elements may not lend themselves to that so they should have some sort of hydroponics or botanical facilities on hand to grow food:


All artwork copyright Mick Cassidy 2007

These last two are like futuristic pieced together helicopter stand-ins. Once again though, they're too far ahead of what I think will work.


All artwork copyright Mick Cassidy 2007



All artwork copyright Mick Cassidy 2007

I don't usually feel particularly comfortable or adept at designing any sort of vehicles but these ones don't bother me too much. They still look a little too 'organic', I guess.