Skatedecks...

I've been working on skatedeck designs for a few months now. A few are available in the store.  The eyeball one has been spoken for, but I'm making another similar one to put in the store that will be available next week. You can reserve Eyes2 for $200. First come, first served.

Here's one I'm working on now. She will be available in the shop pretty soon. I'm pretty excited about this android lady. I've used Molotow liquid chrome on her eyes as well as tubes and circuits (not shown). I'm adding duochrome paint to her hair that will change colors depending on the viewing angle. If she strikes your fancy, you can reserve her for $250. First come, first served. 

Ecosystem part 2 - Deciduous Forest

It's been a while since I updated the blog. Despite the radio silence, I've been incredibly busy these last few months.  To that end, it is only right that I begin with a new set of ecosystem illustrations. This deciduous forest and creatures will be part of an online interactive on the food web. I reused the algae and the frog from the prairie scene, but added quite a few more critters.

Yes, I know the E. coli looks like little poops. Here's the final composite:

Deciduous Forest

Ecosystem interactive update

I've been creating illustrations for an interactive on ecosystems for my day job at The Center for Global Environmental Education. Here's some of the finished artwork for the prairie ecosystem portion of a learning module. (You can see a prototype built in Adobe XD here.) The deciduous forest is next. With that, I get to draw a bear. Huzzah!

Critters

Backgrounds

Doodles into comics... Gary

The original doodles that inspired these comic pages were done several years ago and a year or so apart. Since they seem to go together quite naturally, combining the two into one cohesive narrative was easy. 

Finished Pieces

Original Doodles

Sentient Cactus Dudes

Lately, I've been playing with the idea of expanding on old and new meeting doodles. (The first of which, Zombie Ants, can be found directly after this post.) Friday, I happened to make channel my unconscious mind during a short office meeting, and what came out was this strange cactus-type thing with mouths.  

Original Sketch

It didn't take me much time to decide that this strange idea needed to be fleshed out right away. After a weekend of sporadic work it was complete. My plan is to continue to create these comic-art style pages and gather them together in a non-linear comic book-style anthology. Drop me a line if you think you'd be interested in a copy of something like that.

Final Image

Process Shots

Zombie Ants

Sometimes nature can be the most bizarre of places. Take for instance the mind control fungus that attacks ants. These strange lifeforms can be found in tropical forests in Asia and South America, as well as in some temperate forests of the USA.  Once an unlucky ant is infected, the fungus sends chemicals to its brain. This causes the ant to change its behavior. It climbs up to a leaf at the right height and with the right humidity levels for optimum fungal growth. Then it clamps down onto the leaf stem. Once this happens, the fungus consumes the ant from the inside, using the energy to create a fruiting body to shower spores on more unsuspecting ants. How fascinating is that?

Very fascinating, that's what. Much more fascinating than some meetings, apparently. I recently came across this old meeting doodle in the archive. I thought it would be great to expand on the idea, maybe make a comic page. In fact, I plan to do a few more comic pages from old doodle ideas, maybe put them together in a book. But for now, here's a look at the Zombie Ants!

The original meeting sketch

The final image

The process

Devil Girl Vinyl Micromix001 - After Effects fun

Here's a little bit of After Effects fun. I made a super short dj mix a few weeks ago. During the long Labor Day weekend, I put together a short video to go along with it. 

Video Description

A few bite-size morsels of vintage artisanal techno, straight from the bodyfarm to the tables. Aged gently for full flavor. 
*Disclaimer: This mix is exquisitely handmade in the time-honored tradition of vinyl techno selectors from the golden age of MW rave culture. Without a sync button, natural blemishes in beat matching may occur, and do not affect the quality of the tracks. 
P.S. Don't get your mustaches in a twist, ladies and gents, the track listing is in the video.

The Devil Girl logo

In this day and age, DJ's need logos. Or so I told myself, after I was booked to play during the Ladies on Vinyl showcase at the Headspace Collective dome at Even Furthur 2016.  Really, though, it was just an excuse to do a fun project. 

After a few false starts, it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to do the logo justice. "Devil Girl" needed something unique, unlike the sleek-futuristic or gritty-industrial style logos popular with the current crop of DJs. I wanted METAL.  For that, I turned to my friend Josh Decker. He's made some killer logos for metal bands, and does phenomenal art as well.

This was what I told him I wanted: "Evil. But tongue in cheek evil. Like the difference between Army of Darkness vs. Hellraiser, but in logo form... Maybe blood maybe batwings maybe webs... Legible with old English overtones... But. That said, I'm totally open to suggestions"

And boy, did he deliver! Here's the progression to finished logo.

 

 

Once Josh put the logo into my grubby little hands, I made business cards and a small web presence. I used a set of vintage retro devil images for the backgrounds and changed the color.  The business cards were printed at Moo. Stickers just might be next. 

 

 

And no self-respecting project would be complete without some After Effects motion graphic experimentation. 

In Progress - Ecosystem Interactive (pt. 2)

When working on interactive interfaces for a very small team, I have to wear a lot of hats. One thing I find useful is developing a UX prototype concurrently with illustrations and graphic design because doing an illustration for a book and doing an illustration that functions as an interface have slightly different workflows.  Here's another prototype with more detailed, though still rough, artwork. I'm using the Adobe XD preview to test whether what I'm doing is on track before sinking a lot of time into a detailed illustration and having to change things because of UX considerations.