Kentucky’s Frank Peak is Having it All

In Elizabethtown (south of Louisville) Frank Peak is cranking out some amazing stylized illustrations. The work is enough to make your head spin and even the hardest Nickelodeon fan drool. I worked with Frank at Northrop Grumman, better known for building military ships and satellites, and we made online training as Army contractors. Just to give you an idea about Frank’s work ethic let me describe what one might see when ascending into his space. Our office was a typical cube style office and when you round the corner 4 guys sat back-to-back working on 2 large monitors creating, usually, 3-d imagery and/or rigging Army characters.  The two ends of Frank’s cubicle had a chain that was 10 or more post-its long of sketches and just as many napkins with cartoons littering the adjacent walls. Lunch… cartoons on the napkins and receipts. Meetings… cartoons scattered among random notes. He cranks out these characters by the hundreds. Each one recalls a specific passer-by that he stored away in memory to mock and ridicule in a caricature fashion that is determined whenever he has 2 seconds to put pen, pencil, blood, urine or anything that leaves a mark to paper.

He’s a great guy on top of all this. The real beauty of it is that Frank attended Murray State for fine arts at nearly the same time that I did (we never met there) and moved on to California to attend the California Institute of the Arts or CalArts School of Film and Video. The school is fairly legendary and this is where Frank honed his skill as an illustrator. Flash forward a few years and he comes home to Kentucky to live in an area ripe for hunting and fishing. In my mind he walked away from a dream. In his mind he traveled back to reality. Given that this transition didn’t stop him from doing work for Family Guy, Star Trek, Quicksilver and numerous other noteworthy institutions I think Frank is making it work out okay and eating his deer meat too!

Anyway, Frank had a giveaway on Twitter a couple of months ago and sent me a package as well. Every winner received a package but none were similar. 

Here’s the envelope front and back alone.

One of 2 drawings included.

The awesome button pack. I also received an unbent copy of the print for my poster rack.

“I was asked by Royal Buttons last minute if I wanted to do an illustration for a button pack promo that’s headed to the Comicon this year as a promotion. I gladly accepted and this was the result. Turn around on this was about 36 hours from concept, to finish. They liked the monsters I’d done previously and were looking for something interesting as an advert to get people to flip the pack and look at the back. This is a topper so it will be folded and stapled with the bag.” -fp

If you want a set stop in at Ultra-Pop on Bardstown Rd. and get one. Paul might just let you pet his dog and put on a Rock Band show for you! A little birdie told me to also look for an art show by Frank some time around December at the shop!