Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Mathieu Martin the Zombie

When I worked for AbsolutelyNew as a storyboard artist me and my co-workers would play a game called Fluxx at lunch. Fluxx is a card game where the rules and goals are always changing and shifting. There are different types of Fluxx games including Monty Python Fluxx as well as Zombie Fluxx, my friend and co-worker at the time Mathieu, who owned the Zombie Fluxx game, Wanted to add some custom cards one being a zombie version of him. He asked me to create the image and here is what I made. I tried to copy the style of the zombies on the cards in the game, I'm very happy with the end product.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Styrofoam Block Print

During Spring term, Laura was a teacher's assistant for the Museum Studies class where she helped curate a show of a series of Ukiyo-e prints that were commissioned after the 1923 Kanto Earthquake now on exhibit at the Mills College Art Museum. The show ends on the 2nd of August every one should check it out before it's gone.

Laura lead a seminar teaching the techniques used to create Japanese wood block prints for families. She did a great job teaching the class, if I do say so myself. After the seminar the families were invited to create their own Wood Block Prints out of a type of foam called Prestofoam. This is the print that I made. It was a great art project and it made me want to create some actual wood block prints.


Thursday, June 25, 2009

Lady Skull Face

I was sitting around one day watching too much Dexter, and I got to thinking of morbid stuff to paint. This was one of the ideas that came to mind. I originally wanted to do it as an acrylic painting and I still might, but at the time I felt like creating the image in Photoshop and trying to make the image look more like a painting (similar to concept art that I've seen other artists do).
Here is a sketch I came up with.


















I went about this differently then I have with other drawings. Usually I out line drawings, then color and shade them then add texture if that is what I think will compliment the work. This one I wanted to look a little more painterly so I blocked out big groups of color and worked with very few layers. Final product below :

Monday, June 1, 2009

Wandering Monk Ale

My friend James Berkheimer said that he was into making home made beer and needed a label and asked me if I would be interested in creating a label for him. I said of course, and I'll do it in exchange for free beer (a very nice way to get paid, also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the government can tax you on bartered trades) he said the name of his beer was "Wandering Monk", and this was the sketch I initially came up with.


















I also sent him these sketches that I did a year ago for a animated short I was working on for a while about my friends and me as vikings traveling the world raiding monasteries and having mythical adventures etc.
These are sketches of monks that the viking crew were going to attack. I liked the round one on the mid right, he was going to be a drunken monk who stows away on the viking boat and follows them around trying to get drunk the whole time. None of the vikings can understand him but he can hold his liquor so they respect him.


















James liked the first sketch I did so I went with that one. I brought the sketch into Photoshop and started to outline and then color the monk, then sketch out the background elements



















I brought this image into Illustrator to create all the background and text elements.























Here is the final logo with all the background elements, the text elements, shading and some texturing.
But I still need to collect on my free beer!