Month of Art Stars: Artist’s Choice – Toby Cypress

Every day this month I’m going to feature the work of a great artist, only instead of me picking the artist to feature, they will be picked by their peers, fellow professional comic book artists who are picking out artists (from the past and present) who they think deserve special attention. Do note that most artists I asked about this gave me multiple answers and I picked out one choice out of a number of suggestions, so these are not definitive answers, like “Artist X likes Artist Y and he thinks all other Artists are terrible!” Here is an archive of the artists featured so far!

Today, we have the pick of Jae Lee, the amazing artist who has spent the last few years drawing Stephen King’s Dark Tower series for Marvel.

Jae’s pick is Toby Cypress!

Toby Cypress graduated from the Joe Kubert Art School in 1997 and since then he has worked for a variety of comic book companies, bringing his dynamic, personality-infused art with him.

He did an excellent job on Brian Wood’s original graphic novel, The Tourist.

Cypress has a real Paul Pope style to his work, which is, of course, heady praise, as Pope’s work is extremely stylized while remaining filled with an ability to tell the story wonderfully. Check out this beautiful piece by Cypress specifically done in the Paul Pope style based on Pope’s Batman Year 100.

Cypress finished Killing Girl for Image Comics after the great Frank Espinosa bowed out, and did a good job, but Espinosa was certainly a hard fellow to follow (beyond strictly talent-wise, also style-wise, as Espinosa is a rather unique artist).

For the last year or so, between various gigs (design work and some stories for Boom! Studios), Cypress has been working on his own creator-owned graphic novel, Rodd Racer.

And it is stunning (so far).

Here are some pieces from the work.

First, character designs…

Here’s what looks to be the cover…

And here are some pages and panels…

Amazing stuff, right? Besides the Pope influence, there’s also a real Tony Salmons feel to his work, as well.

The way he works reference work with extremely stylized art is quite striking. And the storytelling is top-rate (just like Salmons).

I can’t wait until Cypress finishes the project!

Here is a work blog for Rodd Racer, with even MORE sample pages!

Thanks to Jae Lee for the recommendation!