Commissioned Work - 1 of 3

In the wake of my Woot printing, I was contacted by a rapper from the west coast. He liked my work and wanted to know if I could do some illustration work for him. We settled on not 1 but 3 illustrations! Well, this post is all about the first of those 3 pieces.

Original Concept Presented to Client

This piece started as a simple enough concept. Upon hearing his lyrics, I heard him rap about things like "smoking blunts for breakfast." So in honor of his praise of marijuana, we decided to do an Alice in Wonderland themed design.

One of the unifying themes of the work I'm doing for the rapper, is the Asian themed dragon. It's part of his logo and symbolic.

This shirt is being DTG printed which is totally different from what I usually do. There are no limits on numbers of colors in DTG as it is full digital. This has allowed me to have some cool textures and lighting.

The following are a series of progress shots so you can see the design process that took place. More than 20 hours of work went into this piece.

Zombie Starbucks

Shirt.Woot! shocked and excited their artists this week by announcing this weeks derby theme to be zombies! Zombies have become a pop culture icon. I really wanted to make a statement this week instead of just drawing a generic zombie shirt, and I wanted to show off my skills for character design and gritty art.

Zombie Starbucks - Original Pencil Concept

The statement I wanted to make is an Anti-Starbucks stance. I'm a coffee guy, OK? As a Graphic Designer in a production setting, I inject coffee directly into my veins. For those of you who wonder, I prefer Tim Horton's coffee to all of the competitors. I think Starbucks has the worst tasting cup of coffee on the market. It tastes charred and bitter and requires far too much cream and sugar to make remotely drinkable. I'm making a statement here against the zombie culture of consumerism. I wanted to portray the morning zombie line of corporate folk lining up ready to fork over $4 for a cup of burnt tasting Joe.

Zombie Starbucks - Finished Inks

I really got to use the new Wacom Cintiq in this derby. From pencils to inks, everything was done entirely digitally. It amazes me how much these pieces really look like the medium they are supposed to represent. The versatility this equipment provides is unbelievable. Wacom should really start paying me to brag about their equipment, because I can't say enough good things about  their products.

This style is really typical to my kind of artwork. Yes, I try to do simplified cutesy designs to sell tee shirts, and you could call me a sell out, but I wanted everyone to know that this is really what I do and what I'm capable of. I'm very proud of the raw gritty sketchiness I brought to life in this piece. There was one problem however. I am a terrible colors. Fortunately, my friend Tony Odysseyroc Avina, who is a professional comic book colorist, offered to color this piece for me.

Zombie Starbucks - Tony Odysseroc Final Colors

What's most important to me is that this is my first collaborative piece I have ever done. I am very used to doing everything myself from start to   finish. There has been no bigger thrill for me than to see a true professional's take on my artwork. Currently, this piece is in 67th place in the derby, but that's with my crappy slapped together colors. Tony and I plan on shopping this design around and selling it to a website that appreciates what I'm trying to say, and our artwork. Let me know what you think of the APSketches, Odessyroc collaborative zombie coffee shop piece. 

Been a Little While...

It's been a little while. I have been drawing a lot though. Last Saturday I received my new tablet, the Wacom Cintique 12WX. Let me tell you, if you're an artist and you're still using an Intuos or a Bamboo tablet, put the funds together and pick up a Cintique! This thing is freaking amazing. It's like drawing directly on paper thanks to the LCD screen, but much faster and controllable thanks Photoshop, Illustrator and Painter! It's helped me feel more inspired and look forward to drawing all over again. I've got a few projects in the works to show you all in the next coming week or 2. In the mean time, I do have something new to show you.

I was driving home today when I noticed a robin on the side of the road greedily digging a worm out of the ground. This made me immensely happy because it means winter is over and spring is finally here. Any way, I got this image in my head and couldn't wait to get in the door and get it on paper. I've received some good comments on it, but also some crits I may need to think about. For instance, I was told animal lovers may hate this concept. I can't control what gets in my head and what makes me giggle. I don't care, I'm determined to finish this. I think my favorite comment was from my girlfriend Natalie, "Why?" The answer is I have no idea.

I look forward to finishing this illustration and the other piece I'm in the middle of coloring. Let me know what you think of it so far or if you got any critiques. Thanks as always and have a good one!

It Would Be Epic If...

Well, the hard work is over! My octopus tee-design is done!!! I have submitted this guy to the staff over at Woot! with hope that it will run as one of their daily tee's. I thank those of you who have been with this one since day 1 following me from sketch to finished product. And if you haven't, then please read back in my previous several blog posts to see get a glimpse at my design process. Maybe you'll get a clue as to what makes me tick since I sure as hell don't know what does.

This shirt has been a special project of mine. This was an idea for an illustration I had a few years ago. I did like a 6x9 ink and water color sketch and filed it away forever. I never knew I would be resurrecting it in this forum. I'm so much happier with this final design.

This design is also different for me in the sense that I'm not submitting it as a derby entry. Instead I'm sending it to the staff at Woot! directly in hopes that they'll love it and run with it. The pay would be greatly appreciated as well as any royalties if this design would sell. I know I would rock a shirt depicting a giant octopus terrorizing the Empire State Building... wouldn't you?

I'd like to thank Natalie for bearing with me as this design ate away of my time and attention, and for convincing me to change the color scheme last minute. She is my best critic when I get tunnel vision.

Here's the tee comp I submitted to Woot! This is really my "pitch" for them. Let me know what you think! As always, comments and shout-out's are welcome.

An Update on the Octopus!

I put a lot of work into the Octopus Disasterpiece design tonight. I finished the inking layer and even began to color! I've laid down my flat colors and am calling it quits for tonight.

I need to do all my fancy half-tone screens, background, transition back into the shirt and lay it out on a shirt before I submit it to the all-knowing art directors over at Woot!

to see if they would like to run it as a daily tee.

Here's where I'm at:

Right now we're at 4 colors, black, whitish color, pink and cream; all on a light blue tee. I may add 1 more color, a darker pink to screen into the shadows of the octopus for more depth.

As always, I want to hear what you think! Drop me a shout out! Let me know if you have an ideas for this piece also!

The Latest Project

If you know me personally, you know I love Octopi. I think they're very cool looking, very alien, and extremely intelligent creatures. On my back left shoulder I have an octopus drinking beer and eating sushi tattooed. It's my avatar image.

Any way, this design has been an idea of mine for years. I did a water color and ink sketch of it 3 or 4 years ago and sort of left it at that. Well, from out of retirement comes this:

My idea was to have the giant octopus attacking the Empire State Building much like King Kong. He will be encircled with attack helicopters and wreaking havoc on New York City.

I re-drew this pencil sketch yesterday morning. I took my time and used many references to get the anatomy right. There are a few anatomical issues that are getting corrected as I progress.

And speaking of progressing, I have some progress on the inking:

I've been inking this guy most of the weekend. I'm known for my love of crosshatching in inking. I'm looking for a certain edgy level of detail in the finished piece. I want the building to be un-deniably the Empire State Building. i also want to do a feathered skyline in the back.

I see this on a light blue tee. The building will be a cream color, the octopus will be a pinkish color. The image would dominate pretty much the whole front of the shirt. I think it's gonna be really cool when it's done and I would love to wear one. I'm sure others would too. What I'm really trying to say is I think I have a marketable design, and in my current financial situation, marketability is important.

As usual, click any one of the designs for a larger image with more detail. Drop a comment and let me know what you think, if you have an suggestions or if you would wear this shirt upon completion.

As always, thanks for reading and coming back. I hope I can post a finished piece this week! Till next time...

And They're Off! - Crossthatch Derby Entry

The Derby: - Derby #174: Crosshatch
Back in the g-, well, not really GOOD old days...back in the old days artists didn't have your fancy Photoshops and Illustrators and four-color printing methods. They didn't have much at all, really, which is why they invented hatching, also known as cross-hatching (we're calling this Derby cross-hatching so 50 people didn't immediately start sketching cracked eggs before reading this far). Using lines of varying length, angle, thickness, closeness, etc. artists could create the appearance of depth, volume, brightness, and color. Now we want you to do it. Using only hatched lines (no, cribbing from our line art Derby won't help), create t-shirt magic. For inspiration and more info, look up masters like Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer or our favorite, Edward Gorey. Now for the rules:

Designs must be one color only. Whatever shade that first line is, so shall all your lines be.

Line width must be a minimum 2 point. Otherwise we might have to reject it due to "un-printability."

No video games.

No Star Wars.

No text.

No depictions of things hatching. A totally random rule from a totally random Woot staffer totally-randomly named Randy.

And once again, a reminder about our new de facto print requirements. These are the new rules for submitting art from here on out, so we'll be posting them every now and again so everyone gets a chance to see them (even if they might not be relevant this time around):
If you're using Photoshop, make certain that your halftones are at least 30 LPI for a full-size design at 300 DPI.

If you're using Illustrator, please submit your final art with gradients. We'll create the halftones on our end.

I love this derby. Cross-hatching has always been my thing. I love to work in ink and cross-hatching is the name of the game. I especially love that this is a 1 color entry.

The image I had in my head was an octopus for some reason. I wanted to do something scratch-board like illustrating the light values only. Here's what I came up with:

Currently I'm in 49th place with 65 votes. It's kind of dis-heartening because I really fell in love with this piece. But, I'm glad to be as high on the list as I am. I guess at this point in the game no publicity is bad publicity.

I designed this entirely in Adobe Illustrator CS5 in about 3 hours. I had a blast working on it. Very little agony went into this piece unlike others I have done. Though I think it's too late to pull ahead and get in the top 3, I am proud to call this one my own.