Charles Apple

Oh, Ryan Huddle. You and your peeps at the Victoria Advocate done it again.

You’ve given us a faux Prophet edition to tie in with a Harry Potter movie and you’ve given us a working game board that looks back on the 1980s. You even gave us an online musical for Halloween.

But now your little paper — a 33,549-circulation daily in Victoria, Texas, roughly equidistant from San Antonio, Houston and Corpus Christi — has given us the definitive treatment for the new teenage vampire flick Eclipse. A good five days before the movie even opens.

You wrote last night:

I thought I would give you the first look at our Twilight special M3.

…M3 being your weekly entertainment section, with which you’ve had so much fun in the past. You continued:

We did the section this week because we the movie releases on Wednesday, June 30 and our entertainment tab doesn’t hit the curbs until Friday. And I just hate to be behind on the news.

Plus, if we are handing it out at the movie like we have done in the past, we had to do it a little early.

That sounds like a good plan, Ryan. Interest among the teen bloodsucking set is high. My wife and daughter already have tickets in hand for a midnight showing next Tuesday.

As opposed to the tab pages you usually send me, though, you sent me lavishly photoillustrated, ginormous doubletruck graphics. Here are what you called pages one and eight (with your M3 nameplate there on the right)…

…and here is what you called pages three and six:

Naturally, you can click on either of these for a larger view.

You wrote:

I tried something I have never done before: To combine four broadsheet pages to make a giant poster. When the two pieces are combined, the ribbon acts like a guide to a Who’s Who of vampires.

And, sure enough, dude, it does:

You continued:

Aprill wrote all the stories but one, since the Associated Press was a little slow on moving any stories about Eclipse. She wrote them in her normal brilliant fashion for the issue, so she is a little tired right now.

Ryan, you’re on the right in this picture. Your cute, comics-fanboy-dream-of-a-wife Aprill Brandon is on the left. But you probably knew that.

Here was one more page you sent — this one tied in to HBO’s Real Blood TV series. Again, Ryan, you can click for a larger view:

You continued:

All the normal stuff [calendar items, for example] is in the section, too.

And I just found out the pressroom is going to print it on high bright paper. That should look good.

If you’d like to download readable PDFs of, y’know, your own pages, Ryan, click here. Aprill’s stuff is a scream so it’s definitely worth a look.

You’ve sent me so much cool stuff that I finally had to create a blog category just for you, called Victoria Advocate. You can find it there in that right-side rail. Or you can just click here.

Truly, Ryan, you guys rock. You rock so much, in fact, that you have me writing in the second person. And that’s just weird.

Anytime I see a message in my in-box from Ryan Huddle of the Victoria Advocate, I know there’s something interesting and fun waiting for me.

Aprill Brandon and Ryan Huddle of the Victoria Advocate.
—

That was the case last night. Ryan — the Advocate’s design director — wrote:

I have tonight’s entertainment for you.

We are doing an 80’s edition for our M3 [the Advocate's weekly entertainment tab, which inserts on Fridays] and thought you might like to play a game.

I had two timelines left over. I didn’t want to do the same ol’ thing, so I decided to make a boardgame out of them.

And the best part is you can really play it.

Click for a larger view:

Ryan designed the page while his wife — features reporter Aprill Brandon — wrote it.

I hope the public has as much fun as I did when I played it. This brought back way to many memories for us here at the Advocate.

There’s a lot of fun stuff here. A few vignettes:

Yep. The first Batman movie. That was in 1989. Did you ever think they could find a better Joker than Jack Nicholson? They did, of course, but it took ‘em 19 years to do it.

Ah, the metal bikini. Who could have guessed what the princess had under those robes she had worn in the first two Star Wars movies?

Heh. I graduated high school in 1980 — 30 years ago this week, in fact — so I completely missed out on this trend.

Heh. I have it on CD and in my iTunes, of course. Not only that, but I also have “One Way or Another” and “Rapture.” The former gets a lot of plays. The latter, not so much.

I never had a “rattail,” but Sharon and I were so poor right after we got married in 1985 that we probably had our share of real rat tails rummaging around the apartment. If you know what I mean.

Click here to download a much larger, PDF version of Ryan’s Totally Wicked Awesome ’80s Board Game.

Average daily circulation for the Victoria Advocate is 33,549, but you’d never know it from this piece and others I’ve posted over the the years. The Advocate is one place that knows how to use its visual resources to great effect.

Previous cool movie-related stuff from Ryan and his crew:

• A blueprint treatment for this year’s Iron Man 2 movie.
• The teenage-themed vampire movie New Moon.
• Last summer’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
• A page-topper for last summer’s Star Trek movie.
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (scroll down a bit).
• Also from two years ago, The Dark Knight. (Scroll down for that one, as well. And then click here for more.)
• For Halloween, the Advocate produced a musical starring reporter April Brandon: Chupacabra: The Musical.
• Find a lot of additional movie treatments from Victoria here.

Today, the new Iron Man 2 movie opens.

I, however, won’t see it until next week: I have a Monday afternoon date with my good friend and former staffer Bob Voros.

To tide me over, I thought I’d post a big batch of Iron Man pages, illustrations and other cool stuff that folks were kind enough to send me.

Click nearly any page here today for an ass-kicking by Tony Stark for a larger view…

—
CLAY SISK
News-Press
Fort Myers, Fla.
Circulation: 79,901

Clay Sisk writes:

Here is my Iron Man 2 page. It was a full page in our entertainment tab.

I am also working on a big Iron Man 2 graphic for my portfolio.

The page ran today.

The cool thing about Clay’s piece is that we’re not seeing the same angle here — the same exact studio handout — that we’re seeing everywhere else. Clay gets bonus points for digging a little deeper to find a fresh(er) visual.

Go here and then scroll down a bit to check out a cool Valentine’s Day page Clay put together two years ago.

—
JAMES MOLNAR
Toledo Free Press
Toledo, Ohio
Circulation: 25,000

James writes:

Here is our Iron Man 2 content, published May 5. As lead designer, I did the treatment for the cover and center spread. The index page is also my creation, but it’s more of a template. Kudos to Michael Miller, editor in chief, for the pithy headlines.

Here’s the cover. I love the two-fingered iron hand and the interactivity with the nameplate:

Here’s the index page…

…and the center spread:

In particular, I like the bit on the right with the vintage comic books:

Some of you guys might recall the Simpsons Movie treatment that James and his colleagues masterminded, three years ago. I still use that in the pop quiz in my Art of Being Brilliant slideshows.

—
CASEY ROGERS
The Daily Herald
Provo, Utah
Circulation: 30,910

Casey writes:

Here are some of my Iron Man 2 pages.

The first is from our summer movie preview [from last Sunday] where it also shares the page with Toy Story 3.

The second and third pages are from our new, redesigned entertainment section we launched back in February. On the cover is a big teaser for the review which appeared on page two of the section.

These next two pages ran yesterday:

And here is page two:

Casey has sent us a number of cool pages over the years, including ones themed for Halloween, Valentine’s Day and the last Indiana Jones movie.

—
TRENT KOLAND
RedEye
Chicago, Ill.
Circulation: 200,000

This one ran yesterday on the front of RedEye, which is the Chicago Tribune’s free commuter tabloid:

RedEye’s Trent Koland tells us:

Yeah, it’s totally an action figure. From Burger King if you can believe it. We hated the art from the movie studios and thought we could make something from this action figure that we got in the mail a couple of months ago.

So Christopher Smith (our photo editor) and I went into the studio and just started playing around, trying to figure out an interesting way we could present the movie.

The background is an LED board that the figure is standing in front of. I had to hold two lights mere inches away from Iron Man so we could get the lighting right. We took a picture of the setup, it was pretty hilarious.

There’s not a whole of Photoshop going on in the photo. We toned up the light and I added a couple of extra shadows just to help make the guy a little more three dimensional.

But I’m super happy with how it turned out. We totally made something out of nothing with this one.

And then Trent added, a few minutes later:

Oh… and the eyes were Photoshopped, of course, to get the glowing effect.

Very cool stuff. It’s nice to see a toy featured on the front of a major metro paper, as opposed to the same ol’ studio handout pictures. Trent and Christopher made this work, and very well.

I’ve posted a lot of Trent’s work over the years. Here’s one. Scroll down to find his Alice in Wonderland page here and his Michael Jackson page here.

—
MARTIN GEE/LESLEY BECKER
The Boston Globe
Boston, Mass
Circulation: 264,105

The Globe’s Dan Zedek tells us:

Martin Gee did this for us from Portland. His first
day here is Monday.

The design is by Lesley Becker.

This is the cover of the Globe’s entertainment tab, which inserts today:

Martin says:

I also gave them a full Iron Man face for teasers and whatnot.

Here is the raw illustration, along with an all-Iron Man version.

Brilliant stuff, as usual, from one of the most inventive and exciting designers in the news business. And kudos to the Globe for sucking him out of the magazine world and back into newsprint.

—
BLAIN HEFNER
Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake City, Utah
Circulation: 112,585

The amazingly modest Mr. Hefner writes:

My boss, Colin Smith, suggested I send you my Iron Man 2 page for [today's] paper. Hope you like it.

Oh, I do indeed, Blain. I liked it so much that I searched for your online portfolio and sketch blog and I added them to my blogroll, on the right side of this very web page.

In particular, I like the hand-drawn section mast. Yeah, I’ve seen this idea done before. But rarely have I seen it pulled off so well.

—
RYAN HUDDLE AND COMPANY
Victoria Advocate
Victoria, Texas
Circulation: 33,549

When it comes to movie pages, treatments and illustrations, Ryan Huddle has been one of our most frequent contributors. I’ll give you links to his previous stuff in a moment.

The Advocate runs its movie previews in its Friday M3 section. Occasionally, Ryan and his staff produce wraparound covers. Today was one of those occasions:

Ryan writes:

My favorite one is the blueprints. It was pretty easy to do once I figured out how to do it. I think I like it because it’s not just the same old thing where we use the canned art work from the studio.

That one details Iron Man’s new suit. This next poster page gives the history of the suit, as seen in the movies and in the comic books:

Ryan continues:

I think the best things are Aprill’s Articles. Of course I may be obligated to say that now.

That’s because Ryan married Aprill Brandon last month (when else would you marry a girl named Aprill?). She wrote a Q&A superhero geekfest and a really funny guide to superhero facial hair:

Ryan did all the design work on these. The “Best casting” story at far right was written by Robert Zavala, the Advocate’s multimedia editor.

I realize perfectly well that you won’t be able to read those. So click here to download high-rez JPG readable copies.

As usual, the tiny Victoria Advocate has hit yet another movie premiere out of the park. There’s some great info here, and it’s presented very, very well.

Not only is it spectacular, but it’s also fun. And that’s important for a story like this. After all, this ain’t no oil spill.

Previous cool movie-related stuff from the Victoria Advocate:

• The teenage-themed vampire movie New Moon.
• Last summer’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
• A page-topper for last summer’s Star Trek movie.
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (scroll down a bit).
• Also from two years ago, The Dark Knight. (Scroll down for that one, as well. And then click here for more.)
• For Halloween, the Advocate produced a musical starring reporter April Brandon: Chupacabra: The Musical.
• Find a lot of additional movie treatments from Victoria here.