He suffered from bouts of depression & paranoia, towards the end. And despite heavy medication,-- I think it's why he ultimately chose to take his own life? It still saddens me.
To read more about him & view examples of his artwork, you can follow THIS link!
Every once in a while, I'll be digging thru an envelope filled with old artwork of mine.. And I'll be reminded how Rod had reacted to it, and/or what he'd said. Sometimes he absolutely LOVED it.. At other times, he had no shortage of advice on how it could've been improved. Oh well,-- I guess I probably offered the same service to him, come to think of it..
The other day, I found this old photocopy that Rod gave me.. To my knowledge, it was our sole collaboration together!
This "CatGirl" illo was something I'd done for Lisa Petrucci.. A West Coast artist, that managed a vintage collectibles catalog, called: 'The Pussycat Catalog'. It specialized (then) in back-issue Men's magazines & weird 50's/60's videos, etc.I'd worked out a trade for some stuff with her.. In exchange, I agreed to create for her some artwork, that she could use inside her catalog.. Dave Stevens had worked out a similar arrangement with Mike Vraney & his "Something Weird" catalog. And if memory serves, Lisa Petrucci was married to Vraney? I'm not sure..
Anyways, as is usual with me.. Despite getting a good jump on the pencils, I unduly procrastinated on the inks.. When I mentioned to Rod that I was hoping to eventually re-use the illo in a Sketchbook I planned to publish.. He immediately offered to do the inks, himself. And within a week, it was complete!
I think I disappointed him a bit, with my cool reaction. Though I admired parts of it, it just wasn't what I'd had in mind. So I eventually finished my OWN inking on it.
In retrospect, I thought it'd be fun to post Rod's version here.. As a way of commemorating him, I guess? Hope you likey...
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5 comments:
Hi Rich, I wanted to thank you for writing this nice memorial to Rodney, I hadn't realized that this was an anniversary of his passing, I found out months after the fact.
I had the pleasure of working with him once on a small training manual (for shipping comics out to stores) and he did a bang up job. Wish I still had a copy for myself, it probably doesn't exist any more.
all the best,
jim
Is this Jim O? Or Jim W? Can't tell from your Profile..
If this was a manual for Ron VanLeeuwen's defunct 'Andromeda Distribution' company.. I'll assume you could even be a Jim B. that I once worked with?
Rodney certainly "got around" in the local comic-book circles.. So I'm not surprised to hear he worked on that with you.. Love to see a copy, if you can ever unearth one!
Thanks, for dropping by!
Did Rod work in design at Nelvana for awhile? I kind of knew him if so, and remember being impressed with his drawing, and had no idea he'd passed on; I'm so sorry to hear that.
Yeah Clive, Rod did TONS of Design work for Nelvana. So I'm sure you would've seen him, or run into him..
He used to chastise me for "stealing" the last Layout position on the BEETLEJUICE series, from him. And I think he began doing Design work, shortly thereafter.
Right around '89 or '90? Something like that..
Hi Rich,
No flies on you man.
You assume correctly - but as far as unearthing you a copy, I'm sure the receivers would have just trashed the file copies in the warehouse.
A shame.
It was a blast working with you back then btw, ...and Kevin too.
jim b.
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