Chicks on a Bench

I had the fun opportunity to work with a young gentleman by the name of Daniel Shepard, he is a director, producer extraordinaire at Woodland View Productions. He had an interesting idea of some improvisational comedy animated "Adult Swim" style that he wanted to execute on and when I met with him and heard the audio, I must say it was pretty awesome.

We decided to keep the animation simple and not go crazy, since it was just he and I working on it and myself doing all the design and animation. After some background ideas and character designs I started animating and I must say it had been awhile so it was fun and exciting to get back into the loop of the process. You tend to forget how rewarding it is. Took quite awhile but I managed to produce about 5 short web episodes for this "Chicks on a Bench" project and the final product I can definitely say I am proud of.

From the beginning we wanted the animation to be somewhat crude and elementary (this ain't Disney or Pixar) and I think it works with the style of comedy pretty well. I really hope this gets picked up or we can work on some more. It could be a good thing, hell it already has over 90,000 hits, which is insane to me. My most popular video had was maybe 200+

SO GO CHECK IT OUT!

http://www.youtube.com/user/chicksonabench?feature=results_main

INKDcredible Hulk

Design worked out for some tees and hopefully the last run of tanks before the summer ends (this would look cool on a tank). Came out pretty well, took a little time to get the type right. Clients like it and are making snap backs with the same type treatment. Can't wait to see the final product.

It's strange when someone asks you to draw such an iconic figure and alter their identity to fit their needs and message, you want to make sure you are true to the identity of the character but you also want to get the customers message across. Which made choosing tattoos a bit difficult, honestly, if it were my choice he'd be covered in Samoan and other Pacific islander tattoos. They preferred something a bit more specific, but in the end it doesn't really matter if you can make all the tattoos out. When was the last time you saw a guy covered in tattoos and actually noticed the intricacies of the designs?

Spur of the moment.

This was actually a spur of the moment drawing I did directly in Illustrator. I have a tendency to not have a goal when I start drawing or illustrating something for myself. I just let the fun happen and go with the flow. I started out doing my daily animal drawings and ended up with all seeing eyes, custom brain fonts, skulls and mysterious splatters of would could be blood or ketchup. This probably needs a little more work over, adjusted composition, maybe some tonal quality but for the most part it came out pretty interesting and it was done quickly (exciting for me).

FATVM means fate in Latin and is the name of my bands album, so I suppose this could be a shirt design for the newly released EP.

07-25-2012

So maybe not everyday...guess my animal a day will be every other day. Anyway. Here is a woodpecker...interesting creature. Guess I should move to color at some point...next time.

Headsnatcher EP Cover

I love pen and ink and this was a very satisfying piece to work on. A lot of Microns were lost in the shaping of this thing. Stippling is a harsh technique, it tends to destroy all your tools.

This started as a simple drawing of an elephant skull and being as I have a tendency to lose myself in my drawings the idea ended up being too small on the initial surface of 8.5x11". I ended up spray mounting the drawing to a larger board and continued to expand the idea.

Anyway, it came out great! I had to take some RAW photos of it and piece it together in Photoshop for some extra flair. I'll probably develop a tri-fold composition and get it printed for the actual product to sell. Custom make the CD's myself. Once that is done I'll post photos of it too.

This drawing I originally did my sophomore or freshman year of college at SVA in a tiny sketch book I used to carry around and I just really enjoyed the pencil work and distortion in it. I actually found that sketch book and decided to scan in the image and redraw it in Illustrator and just complete the image.

I wanted to create this feeling of being in a back alley by using negative space to crate the environment for me. It was a bit of an experiment for me since I have never really worked extensively in that manor. 

I have about 3 or 4 more of these crazy drawings that I will be redrawing in Illustrator in the coming months.

Inked Life - Aaliyah Source Mag

I was commissioned to do a piece that resembled a magazine cover with the subject matter being Aaliyah de los Muertas. This was an interesting project involving some photo manipulation and good ol' line drawing. Also, since they wanted it to look like a magazine it took a bit for me to convince them that a rectangle would not necessarily look nice on a shirt. Once that was settled it was down to aesthetics.

We started with the full face paint and decided that the half face was the way to go considering we really wanted people to recognize that it was Aaliyah. I wanted it to feel a bit more like an illustration so I did a lot of freehand manipulation.

All in all I think it came out pretty nice and I can't wait until they print it on shirts.

07-10-2012

Goats! Probably my favorite animal, eyes are gorgeous but I didn't draw them. I will definitely have to revisit these guys.

07-09-2012

Decided to start drawing a different animal every day. Nothing crazy, just 30 minutes, 2 or 3 renders. More if I feel like it.

Lion time.

Roller Jam

No idea what this shirt was for but the customer seemed to really like it. I must admit I like the way it turned out, fun disco look.

Just a quick design I put together for a church. Hopefully it's hip enough for them. 

Hati Custom

I created this shortly after the earthquake in Haiti, a company approached me with a ton of paintings done by young kids in Haiti and they wanted them on a shirt but didn't know how to approach doing it. They initially said they wanted to either put them in blocks and put some writing along the top or just pick one or two paintings out the 10 or 12, which seemed a bit boring to me. I loved all the paintings so much I suggested using the Haitian country as our "border" and just creating a collage of all of the images inside that border. They really liked the idea and we used it for production. This was the result. 

Clean up jobs.

I am constantly getting requests from people to clean up their artwork or just to make it printable so here are a few pieces I did. These usually don't take very long, just simple production work.

Grad Packet for USA TEES

I took the liberty of redesigning my company's national school program packet. Go to www.justflyhome.com for a more in depth description and more images.