Shoo, Fly

Just a silly, ah, ah, drawing, for my, ah girlfriend, ah.

8 Bit Champions Poster

I'm very excited for the 8 Bit Champions show so I could not have been happier when I was asked to create the poster for it. I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do with this poster, so there was a lot of playing around to figure out what looked best.

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and a big part of that is because it's so design-heavy as opposed to just straight illustration which is what I usually do. It's good to know that I can still bust out some graphic design skills when I need to.

For some weird reason I enjoy the visual problem solving of figuring out how a three dimensional object will look when drawn in 2D, (something I first realized when I took some drafting classes in high school,) so I had a lot of fun planning out exactly how all the different planes and angles of this imaginary pixel-shape-thing would fit together. It took a while but was satisfying knowing I completed it by hand.

8 Bit Champions

Here's my piece for the upcoming 8-Bit Champions show in Paris, France. My first international show! I also designed a poster for the exhibition, so once I reveal that I'll post all the details.

I've been playing a lot of Zelda lately as I unwind in the evenings, so it was the game I chose to illustrate. There's a lot of funny stuff you can point out about Zelda games, and one of my favorites is how there's always an amazing amount of side quests to undertake while you're supposed to be saving the princess from imminent danger. The dialog in the game usually reflects this, with lines like "Hurry, Link, was must head to the next temple! There is no time to waste!" And yet if you want to get a few extra goodies to aid you in that temple you'll need to spend a couple hours at the pond leisurely fishing. All the while Princess Zelda is presumably suffering at the hands of Ganon.

So I tried to illustrate that idea, showing link more interested in finding money than saving the princess. I also tried to work in the fact that it's funny to me how Link goes around breaking stuff in people's houses and stealing what's inside.

Since this is intended to be based on the first Legend of Zelda game, I wanted to stay somewhat true to that visually. (Also the name of the show is 8-Bit Champions and it bugs me when people call any older video game "8-Bit," like Atari and 16-bit era games for example.) I thought it would be cool to make Ganon a giant detailed beast, yet keep true to his simple sprite appearance in the game. Ganon never seems to have a consistent look from game to game, so this was pretty easy to get away with. I also like the more cartoony, Mario-proportioned Link from the first game, (especially as seen in the manual illustrations,) as opposed to the fantasy art-inspired guy that he's become in the later games. So I mixed that original Link a bit with the Windwaker style and put my own spin on it.




Fly safe, little package.

Strange Kids Club T-Shirt

This is a shirt design I created for a cross promotion with Strange Kids Club and 8 Bit Zombie. Rondal gave me the general idea and I just ran with adding all the crazy stuff in the background. The shirts should be coming in soon, so when the details become available I'll let you know!

Terminator 2

I'll spare you the business details, but by recommendation my work for Front magazine has led to some work for FHM magazine. They commissioned me to do this piece, and here's hoping they'll send more gigs my way!

The article is an anniversary tribute to Terminator 2. I hadn't seen any of the movies for quite a while so I went back and watched them while I worked on this assignment. Not that anybody needs me to say it, but T2 is easily the highlight of the series. The large graphic above is for a two page opening spread, and I also completed two spot graphics:



I'm particularly happy with the background in the larger drawing; I've never had to draw an apocalyptic cityscape before.

Grabage Pail Kids

This is my piece for the Garbage Pail Kids' art show that opens early next month at Gallery 1988. As soon as I get all the details I'll be sure to post them here. The show is officially sponsored by GPK and is one of the largest collaborations the brand has ever participated in. I also hear that pieces they like may get to become actual cards!

Artists were asked to look through the fifteen original series of GPK cards and do their own interpretation of their favorite. It was amazingly tough to pick just one card, and even harder to feel like you could improve upon such classic images. I finally settled on Handy Randy because his card was gross in a really creative way. A large chunk of the cards, perhaps even the majority, are variations on puking, so I liked that this was a gross out that I'd never seen or even thought of before.

Here's the original:


The instructions were to keep the pieces in recognizable card format, but part of me feels that I didn't stray far enough away from the original image. I guess I feel like there must be some super creative way to interpret these cards, but they're so gross to begin that it's hard to top. I'm sure there will be a ton of amazing pieces in this show!

Dr. Sketchy Promo Art

I have about a million projects going on this month and that means lots of new art that has yet to be posted. Before my schedule filled up I was able to take some free time and make this general purpose promotional artwork for the Charleston branch of Dr. Sketchy's burlesque show and figure drawing class. Like I've said in past posts, I think it's awesome that we have such a cool event here so I'm trying to do my part and support it!