Work Shirt

Super quick design I came up with for my company. Sadly, it didn't win the competition, so it'll just find a home as an unused design here. Enjoy!

Digital Artist Magazine

A few weeks ago (maybe it's months?) I was asked to show a Photoshop tutorial for Imagine Publishing's Digital Artist Magazine. They requested an image with a boy, attempting to fly a kite, or with a strange contraption (the magazine said it was housing too many pieces with a female as the main component). The task was to explain what "makes successful concept art" without going into the physical step-by-step process of Photoshop tips. It was more about good composition, lighting, researching clothing, etc. Anyhoo, if you purchase the magazine, you can see the step-by-step process through screen shots. But you can view the final product here:


Enjoy!

EXPOSÉ 8

I was contacted a few months ago to be informed that my illustration, Duck 'n Cover would be included in the very awesome EXPOSÉ 8 put out by Ballistic Publishing. SUPER EXCITING! I'm still baffled as to how it got in there, I figure they like choosing more...rendered images over the flat-color look, but HEY. I'm not complainin'!! Here's how it appears in the book:


They asked that I take a photo with it for the site and to shed light on what the artists look like. They requested that each artist go somewhere famous, and important to them. SO. Here's me, with the great view from the roof of my apartment, overlooking the side of San Francisco that generally gets neglected (because it doesn't include the Bay).



Enjoy!

Chicks In Crisis

I was contacted by Alison Leaf from Pixar to contribute to her Mother Hen Project which will have a charity art auction for Chicks in Crisis. This is my contribution piece! It focuses on the notion that both children and adults do things together that can take us by unexpected surprise.

If you live in the San Francisco/Novato area, the auction will take place:

November 20th
The Galleria

135 Tunstead Avenue
San Anselmo, CA
4-8pm

Come out and help raise funds for Chicks In Crisis who helps facilitate the placement of an average of 30 babies per year in open adoptions!

Alabama Social Studies

Two illustrations I've done for Pearson Publishing, out of a set of six. These will be used in 4th and 5th grade Social studies books; these illustrating the Creek War of the early 1800s (also known as the Red Stick War). Apparently they'll also end up being animated some when they're viewed on a website. Kids these days don't just get illustrated text-books, but they're animated to boot! We really live in the future.

Apologies for the lack of updates, more to come soon!

MCGINNIS! - sketch

...Did I seriously just sit down and sketch...Terry... McGinnis real fast?

From Batman Beyond? Okay. So... there's a story that comes behind this. It wasn't just, 'oh I'll scribble Terry from Batman Beyond randomly." No no. A friend of mine commissioned me for a Batman illustration (which I still intend to do) and his rule was it could be anything 'from the Batman comic time-line.'

Understand that the majority of my knowledge for Batman comes from the awesome Batman: The Animated Series from the early 90s (where they didn't even NEED to put the title of the show in the intro, it was THAT good of an opening sequence animation). I did dabble in a bit of the comics but found I couldn't handle the hilarity of them from the 1960s and 70s (like the Batman papa-spank thing). Or his strange relationships with all of his Robins. I do still love Batman though. Which is why I read up on the current DC timeline (I am majorly geeking out here). And that led into a co-worker asking me, 'HEY, remember the Batman Beyond opening? That was the best ever!' and suddenly I was immersed in Wikipedia and found all these crazy cross-overs and things and discovered every Robin (all...3? No wait, now there's 4) has basically gone insane at one point. But now I'm all caught up in the Batman world up to 2010 within the span of two days...aiya.

However, today I found myself looking up an episode of the Justice League cartoon because Terry McGinnis appears in it as an older adult and I cringed at his facial design. I finally settled: lets give a small nod of the head to the younger Terry because he looked great and why oh why did they have to mess with his face...

...Or because I think I secretly had a crush on him. And I really should have no excuse as Batman Beyond came out when I was well into the midst of High School...

WIP - Drain

Just a piece I'm in the middle of. I have a ton of work I'm doing, I swear! I'm just not able to post any of it until it gets published, probably in October and then further on. 'Til then, enjoy this sketch.

I like the idea that someone can become so despondent, their very skin turns on them.

3G SHOW PRINTS!

AVAILABLE AT GALLERY 1988!!!

These are super, super high quality Giclee prints, a limited edition of 10 prints, for Ghostbusters, Goonies, and Gremlins.

Also, huge thanks to Regretsy for featuring my Darth Vader BBQ print on their facebook page. There were at least a ton of people clicking the 'Like' button to make me feel not-so-awful for creating such a fun/absurd image!

Girls on Film

FINALLY. FINISHED. A PERSONAL. ILLUSTRATION. This took how long?! Aiya! 'Girls on Film' for those who love taking photos. ...Or Duran Duran.

Many things are happening. I'll be in a show with the Autumn Society as I mentioned. If you're in the LA area September 3rd, head over to Gallery 1988 from 7-10pm for the amazing 3G show premiere! I will hopefully have prints available for sale there as well.

Thanks goes out to Chris Ellis from the SF Station. He hooked me up with a promo job - a super-quick design I did for Chrome Bags. One lucky subscriber will get this image sewn as the panel of their Chrome Messenger Bag. I originally had the talented Rick Kitagawa try and screen print a design I had done onto the bag. We quickly discovered that water-based inks + water-resistant bag material = not gonna happen. Soooo, I ended up going over the panel one night with acrylics and sharpies to come up with this:


A bit different than I'd intended, but really, nothing wanted to stick to that panel. Chrome makes some mean bags and I didn't have any vinyl paints on hand. Ahh!!

In other news: I may be doing some album artwork for the very talented group Tangents in the near future. They're currently talking to Sony. Fingers crossed!

Sorry about the lack of updates. Silent nod of the head/thanks to stumbleupon and a slew of other sites that are posting me, including geek-art. More posts to come soon!

"...We'll All B Flat."

PHEW. Last piece for the Autumn Society's 3G show! Goonies finally make their appearance on my blog. Out of the three films for this show: The Goonies is by far my *favorite* of all time. I still find it hilarious, and I still want to go underground, travel through caves, dodge 'booty traps' and save my skin by ridiculously awesome inventions even in my late-20s. Needless to say, Data is my favorite and gets to be in the foreground of this image ("Guys, they are coming, they're coming and they look really, really pissed off!")

While I had originally wanted to come up with witty images for this show, I couldn't help but feel there should be a feeling of evoking memory. There's got to be reason why we can keep watching these films over and over into adulthood. I took scenes that really let me think about the film's characters, that grabbed hold of me and shoved me into the character's point-of-view. But zooms my consciousness back in time, planting me down with my memories to when I first saw them. Probably with my brother and sister, actions and things we said when we were really little. Maybe jokes and quotes my parents passed back and forth that went waaaay over our heads because we just didn't understand any of them yet. Either way, I hope you enjoy!

If you happen to be in the LA area on September 3rd, get yer butt to Gallery 1988 and check it out! Here's the poster by the freakin' awesome and all powerful Tom Whalen: