IN THE CITY

NORMALLY I'm not much of a photographer, but recently I've really started to enjoy. I suppose it has some to do with my friend Fran and her love affair with it, and partly to me trying to keep my mind busy. Below are a few photos I took along the Mississippi river and the graffiti wall of downtown St. Louis. Expect more in July when I travel to San Diego and San Francisco. I'll also have more artwork up by early next week.

AWESOME PARTY SQUAD

QUESTION: Do you like to party? If your answer is "Uh, yeah!", then please keep reading. If you feel like you don't get into a party like you used to, welcome to my world. In what seems like an other lifetime, I played guitar in a band called "Step on it!". In that band the drummer, Dan Hill, would talk of doing a band where he would sing. Fast forward one year after saying that, and Dan gave us Cross Examination.

SOME would say Cross Examination is the ULTIMATE party band, a band that features a cross over metal and hardcore sound. As much as this band parties, they also produce a sound that is all their own and very well written. On their debut album, my friend Dan Z and I were asked to contribute a collaborated effort.

DAN went to work on a illustration for the cover entitled "THE HUNG JURY" which you can see below. Dan is an insanely talented artist and it's always a pleasure and honor to work with him. This is the first of two projects we worked on together, the other being the Humanoid artwork.


FOR the inside of the booklet (and vinyl version) I wanted to set a scene of a court room with a party atmosphere. A thought that was hilarious and yet a lot of imagining hours. When prepping the art, I fist had to gather the elements. Dan supplied a six pack of ROCK N' ROLL beer. I set up a mock photo shoot in my kitchen, crushing the empty cans and setting them up in various positions.


ONCE that was finished, I shot multiple images of plastic bags that I used to create the evidence bags and for the "herb" that was actually kitten litter. I then pieced together a document and water mark for "official party documents". The piece it self took about 25 hours of photoshop work and 3 hours of photo shoot time. In the end this is one of my favorite projects and pieces that I've worked on.


above is the 7" version of the insert

HUNTING THE SASQUATCH

MY good friend & co-worker Jimothy Conway turned 49 today, and in honor of his birthday I created a envelope in his honor. Why an envelope? Every year for your birthday, the golden condor makes an envelope showing off something of interest in that's persons life. This year, condor made me an excellent "dark knight" theme that really knocked my socks off.


FOR conway's birthday I sketched up a Sasquatch character in full basketball gear. Mr. Conway seems to believe in his glory days he had a vertical of just over 2". I've seen the photo a million times, a young, leaner & meaner version soaring over another player to rip down a rebound. So in honor of his basketball roots, I felt it was appropriate. Below you will find various rounds of sketches and conception for the envelope.




Happy birthday my friend. 49 years young and still having fun.

COLLABORA-BATION

WOW, long time no update. Things have been rather hectic with non-art related projects so I apologize to my two readers for my MIA. That being said, not being able to work on projects that you truly want to work on really drains your creative mind. So when you get a chance to work on something, it really feels refreshing.

THE current project that I've been spending a healthy amount of time on is a collaboration with my neighbor MATT GRANT on some CD packaging artwork for COLD BEAR SCOUT's debut album "Say Hello to the Moon and the Sun". COLD BEAR SCOUT features Steve Colbert, who is a radical person outside of his horrible love for Kobe Bryant, on a majority of instruments. Please check it out, as it's worth your time.


ABOVE you'll see Matt's conception drawings for the front cover. I believe Matt sketched with pencil and outlined with sharpie. The thickness of the lines, contrasted with the multiple "thorns" shows just how much time went into each panel. Once more work is done to the album, I'll update the post. But for now, you can see the original drawing the conception for the full color front cover.


THE idea around the color pallet features a blue soft edge to cause softness to what I've dubbed "cloud puffs". The inner "antlers" features a brown-ish glow to add depth to the edges of the piece. The "thorns" feature a collection of colors found in a bag of Skittles. The entire piece lays on a off-white background to break up the solid white areas.

ALSO below feature two of my fav. people in the entire world. Enjoy!

DOLLA! GET IT?! DOLLAAAAAAA!

WHILE listening to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", which according to several friends the B-side of the album is perfect, I began thinking about the process of client perception on your work. It's an interesting thought considering that what I do for a living is taking somebody's idea and making it happen in a functional form. Creating a logo is easily the hardest project for me to take on, as a client is very particular on how their company/appearance is preceived. As a society "looks" are so important that some people spend more time on perception than on the actual product.

RATHER recently as Switch we were awarded the opportunity to develop the new logo for St. Louis's Ad club. The project was pretty simple in theory; Come up with a new name and design around a name that the group had come up with, Young Guns. In a group of three, myself and two other art directors, began brainstorming names. With this recent surge in a "green" lifestyle, we wanted to try to focus on a similar feel. "Fresh Greens", "Fresh Mint", "Fresh Stock", etc. etc. were a few names we came up with.

AFTER a round of eliminations, as a group we decided on "Fresh Stock". My perception on the name was "Fresh" meaning fresh out of school, or new to the business and "Stock" as a type of paper. Most of the time "stock paper" is of a nicer quality and a little costly at times. My original concept was to create a leaf combining a stylized "F" and "S". After several failed attempts to make something work, I decided to scratch the concept and start over.

AS the second concept began to form, I brainstormed with a personal icon of mine (Mr. Andrew Dyer). A quick sketch was formed from making the "F" and "S" into one icon and from the bottom of the "S" a paper roll, rolled up. Sounds a lot more complex then it really is.


THE original drawing of the logo revealed several hurdles to jump over in order to get a workable version. I began redrawing the sketch in Illustrator as a locked template. As the first round of sketches became first round of vector concepts, I noticed a slight problem in the thinking. While, the "S" was very readable the "F" had begun to lose clarity.



WHILE dealing with the "F" clarity, my creative director advised me to think about my decision regarding the color palette. After reworking the same palette just figuring out a different way to use the colors, it seemed everyone was happy with the decision. When it was all said and done, the final draft looked a little like below.

THE HUMANOIDS RULE THE EARTH

EVERY so often I get to work with one of my best friends and favorite artist Dan Zettwoch on some band artwork. The Humanoids first EP is the second collaboration of what Dan and I dubbed “Lamb Grenade” (the first being the debut 7” of Cross Examination). For this release the band asked us to capture the simplistic nature of early mid 80’s and early 90’s pop-punk. Think the Descendents, ALL, etc , etc. The Humanoids first t-shirt design featured a half-man, half-robot drawing that Dan drew up, which the band sort of adopted as their identity.


THE creative mind of Greg Stinson (guitarist and good friend) came up with the idea of an infant robotic baby inside the womb of a women and naming the ablum “The Humanoids are Born”. The first step for the project was to get the baby drawn up and ready for imaging. Dan drew up a rough comp and with Greg’s approval we were off and running.




WITH the robot baby drawn up and ready for placement, I began laying out the type, placed in the vector art, laid out the type, readied the images & finished laying in the PMS colors. The finished product featured a metallic spot color that really added a nice element of depth. Not shown in the jpeg’s is the on-disc, which featured the robotic baby free of the womb, and the back try showing the womb only. The layout features a lot of white space, which is reminiscent of the early album art of the Descendents. The scratched out type, full adjusted type and over exposed film frame added a little extra pop-punk flavor.

IF you get a chance to check out the humanoids, do so. They are a great band filled with top notch people. http://www.myspace.com/thehumanoidsruleearth

YOU MADE THE LIST!

EVERY Christmas Switch has a cd exchange that is based around making a cd that is "totally you". This is my first year being apart of the CD exchange & I must say I got to see some really interesting, out of the box concepts. From a beautiful "rat pack" themed CD to some really nice hand crafted booklets, this was a really great exercise.


MY concept was based around the fact that I sketch or doodle pretty much all day, everyday. I wanted to introduce some characters that have been popping up in some recent sketches, some creepy fears & of course my wonderful cat. I thought a weathered notebook background would give the piece a more "hand crafted" feel & the coloring should be loosely applied. Again, this was the first year I was involved and really have some more creative concepts for next year.





I'D like to thank Andy Dyer for welcoming me into this yearly tradition and hope to win next year! Oh! and Happy New Year!