80's Toy Show Poster

As with the 90s show, I was asked to take my entry for the 80s Toy show and turn it into a poster for the event. It was actually kinda hard to come up with design elements that looked more 80s than the ones I used on the 90s poster. In some ways the 90s is a hard decade to imitate design wise; I'm just not sure if we're far enough away from it yet to have a sort of caricatured view of it's design sense, if you will. The 80s were just so loud and neon and in your face that they still kind of absorb the 90s, much in the same way that you could argue that 30s and 40s design is hard to tell apart, with the 30s being the more dominant decade.

Anyway, enough of silly art theories! If you are in the Philly area you should go check the show out!

Mario Marathon

I've been watching the Mario Marathon as I work on my art this weekend, and this was my hastily-done entry for their coloring contest last night. They provided several scans from a Mario coloring book for people to color in and submit. (I didn't win!)

The marathon is pretty amazing; it's just a group of guys in a living room who play Mario games for hours on end to get people to donate to the Child's Play charity. You watch them via a webcam, interact with them via a chat application, and the more money people donate the more levels they play. The Child's Play charity, if you don't know, is a charity that gives video games and toys to kids in hospitals. The guys who do the marathon aren't even remotely affiliated with the charity itself; they are literally just some guys with a Wii and a webcam which is what makes it so amazing. The marathon is still going on as I write this, and they started on Friday at 11 am. That's over 105 straight hours of video game playing that has raised over $75,000! It's so cool to watch the people in the chat get attached to the different players that come and go (who are all family and friends of the guys putting on the marathon.) They treat them like characters in a TV show; becoming fans and asking when a specific person will return. There are randomly set donation goals that are very entertaining, such as "donate another $1,000 and we'll all dance to the Mario Super Show theme song" ...and they do! No matter how sleep deprived or out of it they are, they take a break from playing the insanely hard levels over and over to do silly stunts so people will give more money to sick kids.

I could write much more about how surprisingly engaging and funny it is to watch a group of strangers play video games, especially because of moments like when one of the friends accidentally said his address on camera, or when Will Wheaton and Felicia Day called in, but I have already said plenty! These guys do a great job, have amazing endurance, and I hope they do it again next year.

Extra Terrestrials

A new shirt design up for voting now! It's been a little while since I've completed a shirt idea; I made a promise to myself that I would get one done this month in spite of all the other projects I have going on. Go vote on it here!

80s Toy Show

My piece for the Autumn Society's 80s Toy show. 'Nuff said!

Ernie Gets Published Again

The book We Are Paper Toys was released earlier this month and there is a section on Cubeecraft featuring the Ernie Cubee I designed. Ernie from the Black Lagoon is an original character created by myself and friend Tyler Parsons.



The book has tons of paper toys by prominent papercraft artists, as well as a CD full of models for you to print and assemble.

FestivALL weekend

This weekend was a ton of fun. It was so nice to be able to take a break and see the end result of so many things I've worked hard on for the past month or so. The photo above is me being interviewed at the Buswater art show. The segment is going to air next Friday, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to bring myself to watch it. I'd much rather remember it as my friend Carrie has captured it here in her photo; me looking somewhat professional and viewers unable to hear all the goofy stuff I said, hah.



This was most of my stuff from the Buswater show. The print of my Billy Bob drawing got a lot of attention, five different people tried to buy it while I was there. Lesson for next time: bring a stack of prints!



Here is my letter being pulled in the art parade, which was a lot of fun to watch. I was told that Beeper himself might pull my letter which made me ecstatic, but he ended up having to stay with the WSAZ car. Oh well. I am still grateful to the young lady here that they forced to lug this hunk of wood down the road!



Here are all the letters on display together at the Capitol Market as several musicians performed.



This is the final version of the brick I designed. It's transferred, glazed, and ready to be installed in Washington Street with all the other artist's bricks. Hopefully they last hundreds of years! Photo by Mark Wolfe.



Here is the original drawing of my brick design being auctioned off in the sweltering heat on Saturday evening. Ted, the fabulous auctioneer, told us to "deal with it" if he started to melt, as drag queens and 94 degrees don't mix.

I sincerely want to thank everybody who thought of me and asked me to participate in these events, everybody who worked behind the scenes for the benefit of artists and the community, and all my friends who came out to see everything.

Tequila

This is it, the big one. I've been working on this piece forever and I finally put the finishing touches on today. It's my entry for Crazy 4 Cult, one of the most highly regarded pop culture art shows in the country. Soon I will be mailing it off to California, then reuniting with it when I head to the show next month.

Kim Pine Wallpaper

I haven't stopped being excited for the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie. It's a good time to be a fan, since we've also got the final comic volume, a video game, and merchandise coming out soon. As far as I can tell the video game is only coming out on XBox 360 and PS3 via their download services, which is a bummer because I own neither of those systems. It's a 16-bit era brawler which is amazing, and really the only way to do the source material any justice. I hope we at least see a PC version, I need to play it somehow!

Anyway, here is a wallpaper version of the Kim Pine drawing I did a while back. I'm still getting comments trickling in from people who agreed with me that they made her way too frumpy for the movie.

Octorawk Shirt For Sale

I'm really happy with how this one turned out, I think the design looks right at home on a shirt. You can buy one here!

Streetworks Brick Project

I've had this finished for a little while, but since it's part of an event I wanted to make sure to reveal it at an appropriate time. It's my design for this year's Streetworks art project hosted by East End Main Street. The project features art that celebrates the east end of Charleston, WV. Last year we designed banners that hung all along Washington Street, and this year we designed bricks that will be permanently placed in the same street. The designs needed to be fairly simple considering that they're going on such small objects and will ultimately be a single color when applied.



I attended a press event for the project today, where local media came to watch and report as some of the artists transferred their designs onto the bricks. The transfer process wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it might be. I stole the image above from Mark Wolfe's Facebook page; a local graphic designer who also designed a brick and helps organize the project itself. You can see my piece in the photo as well as my friend Staci's, which is the one closest.

The original pieces of art used to make the transfers will be auctioned off this Saturday at 5:30 pm at Frütcake, located at 1599 Washington St. East.

Some Press Mentions

I need to list some of the press stuff that I've come across if for no other reason than to remind myself that I need to add them to the site when I have a minute. A few of these were found by my friend Dave, who is much more on top of where I am mentioned on the internet than I am!

First is several of my shirts being featured in a list of "42 great video game shirts you can wear in public" by Gamesradar. I'm glad I made this list and not the list of most awful ones!
Gamesradar.com - 42 great video game shirts you can wear in public

Next is a Blog for the Charleston Gazette that wrote about the big letter 'L' I made for Festivall. It's nice to get some press for this, maybe somebody will show up and want to buy it!
The Charleston Gazette - Beeper Lives

And Finally, Bloody-Disgusting.com did a feature on the Twilight Zone gallery show I participated in at Gallery 1988 in LA, and they used my art for the article.
Bloody-Disgusting.com - Works of art inspired by Twilight Zone.

Thanks to the people who brought these to my attention and the people who wrote the articles!

Gone Campin' Title Cards

We are getting into the final stages of post production on our short, Gone Campin'. If you missed my post explaining what this film is you can check it out here, otherwise just know that it involves a grown man out camping with his puppet friends.

We're trying to get a good cut of the short finished so we can screen it at the Filmmakers conference in Sutton, WV this weekend. An early idea I had was to do a cartoon-style title card sequence for the beginning. You guys know what I mean; the little bit of music and art that plays before an 8 minute cartoon letting you know the title and who worked on it. It's something that's been used on everything from older cartoons like Looney Tunes to new stuff like Spongebob.

The good thing about working with Brainwrap is that when I have an idea they usually let me run with it however I like, so I came up with what you see here, as well as the rest of the credit design which you can see in the final film!

Come check me out at FestivALL

I've been talking a lot about FestivALL on here lately, which is an arts festival in Charleston, WV that I will be participating in. So consider this the big "when things are happening" post. To any of my friends reading or anybody else who lives in this area, I would love for you to be able to make it out to some of these events!


June 18th

10:00 am - Festivall Large Letters Project
Nine local artists were each asked to design a giant letter, which when all put together will spell FestivALL. I was lucky enough to be invited to design the letter L, and the letters will be on wheels all day, rolling around to different Charleston businesses to be displayed.

6:00 pm - Buswater opening reception
1520 Kanawha Blvd. East
Buswater is an art exhibition held at regular intervals in a big ol' house by the river. I have several friends who normally participate and this will be my first time joining them. I created fresh prints of some new and old work for this show. It's usually packed and a lot of fun.


June 19th

10:00 am - Art Parade
The route starts at Court Sreet, then follows Virginia Street and ends at Capitol Street
This should be a pretty awesome thing to see. It's my understanding that the letters from the Large Letters Project will be featured in the parade.

5:30 pm - East End Streetworks Art Auction
Frütcake, 1599 Washington St. East
This is my second year participating. Last year artists were asked to design banners that were hung along Washington street, and this year we were asked to design bricks that will be permanently installed in the street. The original pieces of art used to make the brick transfers will be auctioned off here.


June 27

3:00 pm - Large Letters Auction
BB&T stage, 226 Capitol St.
The giant FestivALL letters will be auctioned off to the public!


These are only the events that I will personally be involved in and present for, which is just a tiny fraction of all the stuff going on at FestivALL. The event goes from June 18th to the 27th, check out the full schedule here!

90's show

Chogrin wrote to tell me that the 90's show went really well. This was the Autumn Society's first of three summer shows at Brave New Worlds comics in Philadelphia.




I stole these photos from the gallery on Brave New World's official Facebook page, so you can check out more if you'd like. There were a lot of great pieces in this show, some of them had me saying "Why didn't I think to reference that?!" such as Pete and Pete and Beavis and Butthead. It's harder than you'd think to come up with stuff from the 90's, because your head instantly wants to say "early childhood" but that's not really correct (if you're my age, anyway.) I did two pieces for this show but I wish I would've had time to do more; it took the show actually hanging on a wall for me to realize just how amazingly huge this theme could be.

Something's gotta be done about your kids!

Here's the finished drawing for the Back to the Future II article in Front magazine, pending any last minute changes. (Click the image for a bigger view.) Most everything included in the drawing is to illustrate different points in the article which is about technology in 2015, hence why some things may seem a little out of place. I took great care to be as accurate as I could. I think most of the extra time on this piece went to the full background, which I don't usually do. I'm pretty proud of this background, though, because the layout of the buildings is actually accurate to the movie! If this had been for any other film I probably couldn't have thrown in as many details as I have here, but luckily for them they picked the trilogy of movies that I know the most about.

Beeper Photobomb

Today there was an article in the Charleston Gazette about the Festivall arts parade. You can see the top of the letter L that I designed. I also caught a glimpse of it on the local news this morning!

This is Heavy

To say that I've been busy lately is the understatement of the year, but when Front magazine offered me this new, short deadline assignment I couldn't refuse. It's all about Back to the Future II and how we're quickly approaching the futuristic year of 2015 that we get a glimpse of in the movie. Some of the movie's technological predictions are here, while some haven't quite made it yet. Flying cars could become common place in five years, right? Anyway, my friends know that Back to the Future is my favorite movie of all time (and I don't mean that lightly, just ask the replica Flux Capacitor on my wall) so there was no way I could turn this down.

This is a small preview of what I have done so far, I should hopefully have it done by the end of the week.