Header Picture Project: Featuring Erin Zingré!

Did ya’ll notice the awe­some new head­er at the top of the page? For the month of April, I’m so pleased to intro­duce Erin Zin­gré’s awe­some trashy hor­ror movie illus­tra­tion as part of the Head­er Pic­ture Project. Each month, I ask a new and tal­ent­ed cre­ative to craft an image that revolves around the brown paper bag.

I absolute­ly love Erin’s work! As always, it’s avail­able in a full image as a petite 4″ x 6″ pic­ture print. Check it out in the Head­er Pic­ture Project store, where you can also pur­chase work by Perrin.

Below is a short inter­view I did with Erin. She pro­vid­ed me with some in progress shots, which is always a treat to see.

Name: Erin Zingré
Loca­tion: Dal­las, TX
Web­site: www.erinzingre.com
What was your dream job when you were 7 years old? When I was 7, my dream job was a total toss up; I always waf­fled between want­i­ng to be a car­toon­ist and an archae­ol­o­gist. On the one hand, I loved to spend evenings draw­ing car­toons of this weird crea­ture named George Elk. On the oth­er hand, I loved learn­ing about ancient Greece and Egypt, and even spent a few weeks build­ing a life-sized paper repli­ca of King Tut’s death mask with my dad. To an extent both of those inter­ests have def­i­nite­ly shaped where I end­ed up today. I still love mak­ing sil­ly, car­toon­ish images, and fos­ter­ing knowl­edge about ancient civ­i­liza­tions and their mytholo­gies have def­i­nite­ly informed the char­ac­ter design I do today.
Your pro­fes­sion now: Cur­rent­ly I’m a graph­ic design­er at the best design firm evar, Trac­tor­beam. It’s such a fun place to work; has real­ly diverse, chal­leng­ing projects; and the peo­ple there are so great. We also have an office Razor scoot­er cir­ca 1997 on which we all have races around the office. So, ya know, can’t beat that.

What’s your favorite thing to draw? I def­i­nite­ly love draw­ing sil­ly crea­tures the most. I tend to be pret­ty OCD is most facets of my life, so I find it real­ly cathar­tic and excit­ing to lose myself draw­ing what­ev­er mon­sters spring forth as I’m sketch­ing and then imag­in­ing a nar­ra­tive around that par­tic­u­lar creature.
What was the inspi­ra­tion for this piece? The inspi­ra­tion for this piece actu­al­ly came as I was doing the dish­es a cou­ple weeks ago. As I was clean­ing the kitchen, I found a half-eat­en bagged lunch that had been sit­ting on my counter for over a week… suf­fice to say, the half-eat­en sand­wich had turned pret­ty gnarly. When you gave me the illus­tra­tion prompt “…And It Came from Inside of the Bag” the visu­al of that gross, half-eat­en sand­wich imme­di­ate­ly popped into my head. I start­ed to imag­ine the sand­wich being the vil­lain in a trashy, B‑horror movie.

How did you cre­ate your illus­tra­tion? Was it any dif­fer­ent than your reg­u­lar process? I start­ed this illus­tra­tion by research­ing a lot of vin­tage, campy hor­ror movie posters. I want­ed the illus­tra­tion to feel grit­ty and the col­ors to be real­ly obnox­ious and abra­sive. I did a lot of ink sketch­es of gross sand­wich mon­sters (which was a total delight!) before land­ing at one that felt appro­pri­ate­ly scary and a lil’ der­py. After scan­ning in my ink draw­ings, I start com­posit­ing and col­or­ing every­thing in Pho­to­shop. This process dif­fered slight­ly than some of my oth­er illus­tra­tions, which start out as vec­tor illus­tra­tions that I then fine-tune in Photoshop.

The moldy sand­wich is great. How do you think he became pos­sessed? Haha thank you! I like to imag­ine that the hor­mones and preser­v­a­tives inject­ed in the turkey meat fes­tered, caus­ing the sand­wich to become radioac­tive, mutat­ing into a sen­tient beast. Enraged and feel­ing aban­doned that he was the only food stuff not eat­en for lunch, he seeks vengeance upon the per­son who left him to mold. Only when he is eat­en will the sand­wich be at peace.
Do you enjoy watch­ing campy hor­ror films? If so, what’s your favorite? Yeah, I def­i­nite­ly enjoy a good campy hor­ror film. Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show will prob­a­bly always be my favorite. As a young’n, I also real­ly liked the movie The Man with Two Brains. “Get that cat out of here!”

Thanks Erin! Now, go buy her print!