And so, around my senior year in high school, I began to approach very talented friends about illustrations. Several offered to try, but none could deal with sketching very well-known people (Chris Lloyd, Michael J. Fox, etc). And although I thought their quick sketches and attempts were fantastic, they lacked the patience and drive to follow through with commissioned work, even for a pal. So I had all but given up... and then the Internet came along.
Throughout the tales you will find the artwork of a few talented artists, with very distinctly different approaches and mediums. And so, alphabetically:
Artist Jennifer Dawson works in a pencil media, with fantastically detailed line drawings. (I am seriously blown away that she can draw Fox. His is a hard face to do.) Currently her work can be seen in "No Place Like Home." Jennifer has a [BTTF-themed] web page with more of her creations (artistic and otherwise) at: http://www.backtothefuture88.com/. In her own words, here is a bit of info about her:
Hello, my name is Jennifer Dawson and I was born on November 16, 1988 in Boston Massachusetts. I've been drawing ever since I can remember and first attended the Cohasset Art School when I was eight years old. Writing and music are two other big factors of my life, and I'm also a huge Back To The Future fan. I first saw the movie when I was in second grade and really started to get into it right after I began junior high school. That was also around the time I started learning more about the Internet. I experimented with scanning some of my artwork at first, then undertook the much bigger task of building my website. I put up new pieces of my artwork whenever I get the chance, and have a lot of fun doing so. I know that over time, I will further develop my skill in this area, as well as in my writing. That's definitely something to look forward to!
Julie Esris' work is rendered in black and white line sketches. Some of her work appears in "When the Future Meets the Past," "Tremors in Time," "The Ripple Effect," and
Kristi Miller, renders her work in full color illustrations, using a computer to give her work added depth and detailing. Some of her work can been seen in "The Pair O' Docs", "The Summer of '69", and "The Curse of Great One"*, so far. In her own words follows information about herself:
Until I was a teenager my artwork was a relative family secret. Then I saw
Back to the Future on TV and the part of the film that would change my life. The scene was when Marty was talking to his father in the high school
cafeteria in 1955. When I heard that George never showed anyone his work andsaw the miserable existence he lived (in the beginning) something clicked. Soon I began showing anyone possible and have yet to receive any negative feedback. A few years latter I got into the art class in my high school and met the person who would refine my raw talent, Clay Verge. Today I'm teaching myself and things are only getting better.
I invite others who can sketch and feel like it to feel free and doodle out anything you want to with my stories. Certainly the tales can always use some more, and I'll more likely than not post it in the tale and credit you over here if it works and fits. :-)
Hi, I'm Julie. I've been drawing since I was two and have wanted to be an animator since I was six. I am equally interested in writing and I hope to direct my own animated features someday. I've been a fan of BTTF and time travel ever since I saw Back to the Future Part II in 1989. I am also interested in running -- I ran track in high school -- foreign language, psychology, computers, animation, world travel, and philosophy. I currently attend college at Pratt in Brooklyn, New York and now consider New York to be my home, although I was born near Philadelphia in 1980.
Hello, my name is Kristi, I'm 20 years old and I'm a native of Florida. I've been drawing since I was old enough to know that crayons weren't a snack. My earliest memory, that holds great importance, happened when I was about six. My mother (she and Dad are my first fans) told me I couldn't color Donald Duck's nephews gray, black and brown. Since then I've paid meticulous attention to color.
This sketch, done by Julie Esris, was for an entire story I ended up cutting when revising my older stuff. "Adventures on the High Seas," which had come between "Tremors in Time" and "Return to the Past," had a lot of problems to it, was written originally off of one real vivid mental scene when I was about 14 and... well, the tale just bugged me. I knew no amount of rewriting could save it. I was surprised by the amount of e-mail that I recieved when I cut it from people who liked the tale -- it involved Marty and Doc going back to the 1800's to investigate the McFlys coming to America -- but thus far I've got no plans to revise it or rewrite it or even use it. Kind of a bummer, too, since this illustration -- from a scene where Doc found a wounded Marty on this deserted island -- was so nifty.
Another work of art by Julie Esris, this was cut from "The Pair O' Docs" for a technical reason -- when I did the rewrites, Doc didn't stitch up Marty with thread, he did something with lasers instead. Yeah, yeah, nitpicky detail, but I can be quite particular with that sort of stuff, as the artists who've drawn for me know. I did toy with editing the picture to fit, but I really don't like to mess with other people's stuff. So here it resides.
This was done by Kristi Miller and it wasn't from a scene I cut -- she just decided to illustrate a "Pair O' Docs" Cliff Tannen, even though the guy is mentioned by name only, once or twice. I found it quite amusing, personally, and was kind of bummed I couldn't use it in the story. So here it be.
Another scene-that-never-exisited-at-all by Kristi Miller that I thought was a kick -- no pun intended. It was one of the illustrations she had sent me when introducing herself and her work and it's fairly self explaining, I think.