9, 10, Never Sleep Again...

It's actually just coincidence that I'm posting this on the day that the Nightmare on Elm Street remake is being released, but it's a happy coincidence so I'll take it!

I don't really have any plans to see the new film, because even as someone who isn't a big horror movie buff I know that there is only one guy who should play Freddy, and trying to replace him is just silly (especially since they replaced a guy with a very prominent, villain-like chin with a guy who has absolutely no chin...and seems to think that Freddy should sound just like Rorschach, but I digress.)

This is one of the characters I had to draw for my second assignment for Front Magazine, but I liked the way he turned out so much that I singled him out and made a quick background. I'll post the rest of the artwork for the piece soon.

Johnny Boy on TV tonight

If you live in the Huntington, WV area turn your dials to channel 20 tonight (April 29) at 8 or 11 pm to see the feature film Johnny Boy. It's an action flick made by Brainwrap Productions, a group comprised of my friends and I. Seth wrote, directed and starred in this flick; the same Seth who is the star of our new project Seth Martin and Friends. (He's the best actor out of all of us.)

It's pretty darn cool to see it getting some air time on local TV. You can watch the trailer here.

New Prints For Sale!

First up is the 8-Bit Bikini print, 11x14 for $12.95. I have received numerous requests for this one so I'm very happy to offer it.


Spider-Man Print, 11.7x16.5 for $13.95


Cereal Monsters Print, 11x14 for $12.95


And finally the I Brain Zombies sticker for $1.50 All these things are available at Splitreason.com now, so click on the title of each item above to purchase.

Second Piece for Front Magazine

Here is a small preview of what I'm working on now, another two page spread illustration for Front Magazine. I particularly like this preview because it is very confusing out of context.

Facebook Fan Page

After quite a bit of wrestling and experimenting with the new "Like" button functionality that Facebook added this week, I finally made the leap to creating a Facebook fan page. If you are reading this via a link you followed from Facebook, chances are you've already joined up and I thank you! If you would like to follow me on Facebook please click the "Like" button in the bar to the right.

Also when viewing my blog you will notice that each post now has a Like button underneath it. Clicking these buttons will automatically publish a story to your Facebook account, for example "Bob Smith likes New Art on AlbinoRaven.com" I guess I'll see how useful this feature proves to be, though from my experiences so far I would say that Facebook has A LOT more testing to do.

I tried to import my blog posts directly into Facebook, which I also tried to do several years ago as well, and I remembered why I ultimately decided against it...it doesn't work. It will bring in about twenty or so of your old posts, which is nice, and then just never find any new ones. It says it should take three hours for new blog posts to show up on Facebook, and after 15 hours this one still isn't on there. Looks like I'll have to do it the old fashioned way! Not that copying and pasting a link is all that strenuous.

Count Shirt and Resident Evil Wallpaper

My Count shirt is up for sale on Splitreason and Front Magazine's website has just added a wallpaper version of my Resident Evil illustration from their gaming gore feature. You can buy the shirt here and download the wallpaper here!

And once again just remember that Front's website is a bit NSFW.

OctoRAWK

A new shirt design up for voting here. It features an Octorok, probably the most classic of baddies from the Legend of Zelda series, rocking out on some headphones. The pun in the name of the shirt is what gave me the idea, but I thought I could pull it off with a simple yet strong design. I'm particularly happy with how the headphones turned out because they look like I might have just traced a photo but I actually designed and drew them from scratch. Making an object look realistic using only large areas of a dark color is not something I'd list as one of my strong points, so it was good to go in a bit of a different direction.

SMAF logo

Here is the logo I created for our show Seth Martin & Friends. Once again, if you want info on it please check out the Facebook group!

Nintendo le Magazine Officiel

My Mario's Closet drawing was featured in this month's official Nintendo magazine of France!

This is the text as I can best translate it using Babel Fish and common sense:

"Nintendo planet

The dress code of Mario in question

What does one find in the dressing room of Mario? This is the question raised by American Glen Brogan. Upon reflection, he imagined a superb illustration where one sees the plumber choosing his clothes among all the costumes he carried in the hundreds of plays in which he appears."

I'm sure that's still a little off. I took Spanish, not French. And I got a D.

Apparently it is going to be used again soon as part of a "suits of Mario" feature. I can't think of a more fitting article.

Seth Martin & Friends: The Coachman

This is a peek at a 20 part illustration series I just finished for Gone Campin, a short that my friends and I are shooting as an installment of Seth Martin & Friends. The show is a parody of a kids' program involving puppets and all sort of craziness. You can read more about the show in my post from a few days ago.

Also, some people pointed out that I "shrank" Samus' bikini in the drawing I posted not too long ago, but I've found a place that did me one better. They shrank her bikini to non-existent and are selling stickers and shirts of a tiny nude Samus! ...albeit still in pixelated form. You can check out the items at the High Score Society store. Be warned that Nintendo nudity is involved.

Kill Screen

Recently I received the first issue of Kill Screen, a new magazine about video games that had a short feature on the Autumn Society show 8 Bit and Beyond. They used my Mario piece for the article, which you can see in the lower right corner of the image above (and a larger version here.)

Of course I was excited to be included in this volume, but once I started reading it I found that it was no ordinary video game magazine. Some game magazines claim to be aimed at the now adult-age video game demographic, but this one actually hits the mark. No reviews, no features on upcoming games, no wacky cheats and codes, just intellectually stimulating video game articles (and a lot of cool art.) It's not like anything I've ever read before, so I hope people check it out, and I am especially proud to have been included in it.

www.killscreenmagazine.com

101 Nintendo T-Shirts

CotyGonzales.com is site that reviews T-shirts. He just put up a list of the 101 Ultimate Nintendo shirts and I have eight on the list! Check it out here.

Seth Martin & Friends: Day One of Shooting

I haven't talked about this stuff for a while, so I feel the need to reintroduce myself as a member of Brainwrap, a film making group comprised of my friends and I. Most notably we have done some shorts and an award winning feature-length movie Johnny Boy.

The latest project we've been working on is Seth Martin & Friends, a program that parodies a children's puppet show. It's not exactly for children, but it's not raunchy adult humor either.

Preparing for something like this is a long process, and we've been at it for months. And when I say "we," I don't mean myself as much as a few key members of the group, hah. Kyle, who had never built a puppet before in his life, took it upon himself not only to learn how to build puppets but build them well, and the job he's done is beyond amazing. Oh, and he also built the set. Ian is head writer and has come up with scripts that are always very funny and smart; Mike has produced music for the show and will provide all voices and do the editing, Seth is well...Seth (our star!) and Max is sorta like me in that he contributes to a little of everything with some technical expertise thrown in. My expertise is in graphics, but like everybody else I've contributed to whatever I can, coming up with ideas, jokes, puppet designs, etc, but I mean to stress that everybody who has a specific job on this thing has done a ton of work.

Since the pieces of a project like this take a while to come together, I suggested to Kyle that we do a short film featuring the puppets so that we have can have something to show off and enter in festivals and such, and I'm sure the other members had already been thinking about this possibility. So the script was written, and this weekend we had a twelve hour day of shooting that couldn't have gone better and included help from friends Josh Edwards and Nicole Lawrence. Josh is a professional camera and production guy so his help always proves invaluable.

Here are a few photos from the shoot, but if you want to see a ton more you can join the show's Facebook group:







There is a scene in this short where Seth tells a scary story around a campfire, and I had the idea to illustrate this story with a series of on-screen drawings, so that's what I'm working on currently. I'll update more as we progress and of course when it's done!

Thanks

I wanted to say thanks to everybody who stopped by the site recently to check out my 8-Bit Bikini piece, but I also wanted to express my excitement that artist Katie Rice left a comment with kind words about the piece, which absolutely made my day.

I first got turned on to Katie's work through Ren & Stimpy and I've followed her blog for quite some time now. I'd be lying if I said her amazing art didn't influence my more cartoony pin-up stuff.

Here is Katie's own take on Samus that was published in the book I am 8 Bit:



Please check out her blog here!

Cartoon Network Adventure Time Art Show

This is a video of a gallery show at Cartoon Network Studios in honor of the premier of the new animated series Adventure Time. The show featured actual production and concept art from the show, as well as tribute art by the Autumn Society members, including yours truly. It kinda gives me chills to see a video that opens on the giant Cartoon Network sign and features my work! My piece is at 1:24, but of course check out all the other great work, and thanks to Chogrin for posting the video!

Samus Tours the Interwebs

Looks like people took notice of the Metroid piece I posted yesterday!

Here is some of the press the piece is receiving:

nerdesque.com
gaygamer.net
gonintendo.com
kotaku.com
tinycartridge.com
4colorrebellion.com
superpunch
play.tm
gamefreaks.co
thephotostream.com
gamerblips.com

If you know of any other sites featuring it or arrive here via a site I haven't listed please let me know! Thanks to everyone who is posting it.

8-Bit Bikini

This is a piece I just finished called 8-Bit Bikini that pays tribute to the end of the first Metroid game for the NES. This of course was one of the famous moments in gaming (for people my age, anyway) where upon beating the game you had your mind blown to learn that Samus was a woman. This was at a time when female characters in games were still pretty much relegated to being rescued. If you worked extra hard at this already very difficult game you could get different endings, and the hardest to obtain rewarded you with an image of the tiny Samus sprite wearing only a pixelated bikini:



It seems funny now that we would have worked so hard to see this image, what with all the advances in video games graphics (and sexuality.)

I wanted to keep all the references in the drawing a secret to see if anyone would bring them up, but I'm also impatient so I'll explain them anyway. It'll be your reward for reading all this text in a post about a pin-up drawing!

The text at the top of the piece is the last line of the typical "you have beaten the game!" message that hovers above Samus right before she waves goodbye with an amazing two frames of animation. Scrawled on the rock in the background is "Justin Bailey wuz here," which is a reference to the famous Justin Bailey code. If you entered that name on the password screen you would start the game with all power ups and play as Samus in her jumpsuit (and with green hair.) Nerds still argue over the origin of the code and the meaning behind it, but it has pretty much been cracked that the series of letters are just a coincidence, as entering several more random sequences of letters can get you the same result.

And my signature is in a shape that should be recognizable...

I love it that knowing this stuff is part of my job. I'm hoping to turn this into a print.

Finished Front Magazine Layout

Here is the finished layout of the video game gore feature that I illustrated for Front magazine. As was the plan, characters were shifted here and there to make room for the text. The magazine is on newsstands now in the UK, and hopefully my copy has started to make its journey across the Atlantic!

Welcome to Warp Zone!

A shirt design I just finished, you can vote on it here. It's what I call a "cheat shirt" for all the warp zones in the three Mario games for the NES. It's a little different, but I've been surprised by what has taken off before. Plus I just really like diagrams, which makes me a special kind of nerd. I also like the strategy guides for video games where they actually draw out the levels by hand as I've done here; it just seems like so much work (which I can now confirm.) Click on the image for a much bigger version.

Sex Bob-Omb

This is a piece I did for fun after I got excited by the Scott Pilgrim teaser trailer. Kim is my favorite female character in the book, so I decided to feature her in a flyer-type design for the book's band Sex Bob-omb. And maybe it's just because she's my favorite, but I feel like she kinda got the short end of the casting stick in the movie so I decided she needed a little more justice. For the most part the casting in the movie looks fantastic, but with Kim they just seemed to make her very unappealing compared to the other girls. I mean, I know she's not supposed to be the girl that every guy is going crazy over, and I think that's part of why I like her, but they didn't have to dress her in frumpy clothes and give her a giant cheese puff for hair:



No offense to the actress playing her, who is normally pretty cute.

I tired to do a Scott Pilgrim drawing forever ago but I just couldn't get it to look right. I think what I realized is that I was trying to copy the style of the art too literally, whereas here I tried to combine Bryan Lee O'Malley's style with my own so that the piece is mine but still recognizable. His style may look simple, but his drawings are amazingly solid and appealing, not something that's easy to pull off.

I recommend checking out the book just because it's so different from anything else I've ever read. Think about if real life had video game elements in it like 1-ups and bosses while still maintaining all the normal complexities of getting a job and dating and you'll get the idea. I came pretty late to the game and didn't start reading until book 4 had been released, and back then it was pretty hard to track them all down, but now with the movie coming out there is literally an entire shelf of them at my local book store so you should have no problem.

Mario's Closet's Tattoo

An artist named Jules sent me this image of a tattoo design she did for one of her friends. Look familiar? As can often happen when coming up with funny video game ideas, we both arrived at the same idea independently of each other. In this version, however, you can see that Mario has a sweet castle-like closet.

Also I have become aware of a contest where you can win a free Plumber's Wardrobe shirt. It's sponsored by Cubed3.com and you can enter it here.