More MUM

Last two were made rather quickly. Getting the details for posters on Friday, that are due by Sunday = YAY! (Not really! HAHA) 

I like the Bear Cat one though

STOKED

42Unheard Illustration

Hey cool dudes, here’s a thing I did about a month ago, and just now stumbled across the final image. Above is how it looked when it left my hands. See the final dealio below.

I knew they were going to change things, but not that drastically. Still, the cut-out aesthetic works pretty well. I don’t luuuuurve it, but it’s a definitely not what I was expecting, and it’s interesting to see. I like the hanging signs/clouds (too bad that url text block isn’t hung too.. blows the illusion a bit)

I am bummed to see feature elements from my original layout  (the skull and balloons) recycled multiple times though… that’s one of my biggest personal design/illustration peeves that I try to avoid as much as possible, although time’s generally the deciding factor.

As per usual, no doubt saying all of this ( is woefully unprofessional, but for whatever reason (just not ruthless enough?), I don’t mind theoretically crippling my career by being honest. But just so it’s clear, I don’t hate it, and I’m not having a sook. I thought it might be interesting (I know there’s a few upcoming designers who sometimes read this blog) to give an example about how things can sometimes go. This is very very chilled out compared to some other experiences.

and just for kicks, cuz I really liked how it turned out, is my intial sketch for the general concept. this was using speakers in place of mouths with cut off wire tongues (disappointed they wussed out and went with a fully betongued version) but apparently it wasn’t clear enough. I dunno…  Design by committee seems the swiftest way to completely suck the life and personality out of something. I’ll be more careful in future.

BEANS gig poster

This was pretty fun to make. I’d never really tried graffiti style writing before… although it may have turned out more Day of the Tentacle than Wu-Tang Clan, but hey, that’s all good. I’ve been really enjoying drawing, from a probably over-analytical point of view. Just interesting looking at other peoples work or ways of drawing things, then mentally breaking them down and understanding how and why they work, and reinterpreting it as my own. Certainly learn a lot more than just straight up copying styles.  In retrospect I probably should’ve made this a portrait poster rather than landscape. Ah well

MUM – Shocking Pinks

MUM - Traps

Was just playing around with text and textures and what not. I think this turned out pretty nicely… nice depth to it.

MUM – Motocade

MUM – Brand New Math

Aww hell naw, what’s up dog indeed. I pretty much traced a photo for this poster. I kinda hate doing that, but whatever, it works, and it doesn’t look particularly traced, so I probably should’ve just kept my mouth shut and let you all think I’d suddenly mastered anatomy and perspective and drawing dogs.

MEGAUPDATE(KINDOF)

So, for whatever reason, I was super productive this weekend and got 3 posters started and finished. It was a good time. And they’re all totally different. I still struggle with that, as an artist… it seems like if you want to really get ahead you have to continually re-re-re-re-re-re-do the same thing, with minor variations.  Which makes sense I suppose. I dunno, I guess I haven’t found that thing I want to do repeatedly yet.  In the mean time, playing around and trying out whatever takes my fancy seems to be working out pretty well.

On with the show.

Handsome Furs

CHEER!

MUM – Coco Solid

I’m pretty stoked on that Coco Solid illustration. Tittays! That’s a first for my work I think… I don’t recall drawing boobs on anything else. Exciting stuff.

In other news, I found out I made the finalists for AS Colours ‘Little Help Project’ T-shirt Label contest. Grand prize winners are announced in a week or so. Fingers crossed. Check the link for more info about the whole dealio.

I’ve never entered any sort of design contests before, so it was awesome to be a finalist the first time I throw my hat in the ring. I’m thinking of submitting a portfolio for the Young Guns awards too.. although they’re kind of expensive to register with… but looking at past winners, couldn’t hurt to try…

Tough Choice #435

I'm considering turning off anonymous commenting. It's maddening not knowing exactly who thinks you're awesome. But on the other hand, would they write these things if they weren't anonymous? Probably not. Dammit.

presenting… My Worst Poster So Far

This was, out of necessity, a little rushed. boo. Figured I may as well post it here just so people can see that yes, I’m only human. No sense hiding these things.

I have dreams that frighten me awake

This poster took a long time to come to life. For whatever reason I struggled with it for a while. I came up with a concept I was happy with and I wrestled with it for a while, but it was time consuming. Then, joy of joys!! My computer had some issues and I lost a whole partition. The one that had all the files for that particular poster. Along with a bunch of other in progress projects. YAY! Anyway, it’s been about 8 years since I’ve had anything like that happen, so I freaked out for 5 minutes then shrugged my shoulders and let it go. Such is life.

Anyway, here’s the completed poster. It was done in one 10 hour or so sitting and I’m really pleased with it. There’s no major conceptual gimmick to this one, I was just shooting for something moody and spacey, which is what I get from listening to the band. Also, lose the show info and you’d have yourself a pretty sweet band t-shirt. Maybe I should run it by Bradford and co. 

MUM – May 1 – BangBangEche

Another quickie for MUM/Cassette #9. The font is a new one from Sparkytype/Very Good Fonts. I use David Bucks fonts all the time. A lot of them fit my vague aesthetic really well, and on the good for me/not as good for him side, they’re not ones you see around repeatedly.

Go check out his site though. He was telling me his sales of Chicken have increased a lot recently when some blogs incorrectly posted that it was the Twitter logo font.

People really are super super gay for twitter. I don’t get it. I mean, I have an account, but what the hell?  I don’t understand why it’s SO exciting. Still, it’s like oh my god soooooo awesome that Ashton Kutcher’s the king of it all though. He Punk’d us all.

Vic Chesnutt + Victoria Williams Australia/New Zealand Tours

MUM – Brain Slaves

I’m not sure if this one totally worked as the reference might be a tad too obscure… anyway, that face is the robot body Krang used on Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles… hence… Brain Slave.. get it? cuz Krang was a brain sort of… HA HA yay. good work.

more MUM posters

Please excuse the lack of updates lately. There’ll be a couple of new things this week though. Easter has been exhausting! but fun fun fun. but EXHAUSTING. ZZZ

Matt and Kim

Here's a new one. Did this in one (pretty long) sitting. I'm digging it though. I worked a little looser and tried not to get too pedantic about things and I think it worked. I suuuck at drawing hands though.  Below is the original thumbnail sketch for it. As you can see it didn't change too dramatically.

Album of the Year?

I hate when people say something they've only just heard is THE BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR. But I'm going to tentatively put forward Screens by the Mint Chicks for consideration.  I've never heard anything quite like this.

Kanye West wacked on about 808's and Heartbreak being 'a new kind of music' but honestly, maybe it is for him, but it wasn't THAT ground-breaking, although I do like it. This album is definitely something new. I can't even make a direct comparison. Best I can offer at the moment is, it sounds like the Mint Chicks.

And I'm not even being biased.. I was a little hesitant about this record cuz a couple of the demos they put out didn't really blow me away. But reworked for this record from there, they make perfectly imperfect sense.

so buy it.

Last MUM for March

Been a hectic week. The stuff I was trying to draw for this weren't coming together and out of frustration and time running out, I tried something simpler. I reckon it worked pretty well... even thoguh it's really bright and colourful, something feels kinda dark about it. I'm such a texture abuser.

more MUM

Here's another one. I was originally intending to keep this series using more or less the same layout, but this one went off on its own tangent.

In other news, I did some layout work for the Mint Chicks new album Screens. It was an interesting challenge. Not to mention incredibly flattering to be asked to do it in the first place. They're one of the most personally polarising bands I consider myself a fan of. Sometimes I think they suck only to later realise I was very wrong... I'm such a dick.

Ruban Nielson did all the artwork, as he does. Some really awesome drawings. The only section I did any design work on at all was the back cover. It was a bit of a challenge trying to fit everything into the spaces (and as tends to happen with album covers, the text and tracklist changed a fair few times, but it was all good. Sometimes it drives me insane but I was surprisingly patient this time), but I think I did a good job. When I first laid down that font, it just wasn't meshing with the artwork... it was too clean and looked like.. well, a font on a drawing. So I fiddled about for a bit and came up with a way to make the text look like it'd been stamped or printed on an old printer, but in a fairly subtle way.  Oh yeah, and it's a Super Jewel Case release... hadn't had to layout anything for one of those yet. Those are the cases with the rounded hinges and stuff that look like those early DVD cases, but CD sized. aaaanyway... yeah. yay for me, it looks good and it's for the best, most interesting and constantly evolving band to come out of this country in a long long time. 

The album is due out on March 16th. I haven't heard it yet, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. I just realised that's the day before my birthday. neato.

new MUM poster

Some other bits and pieces to post soon.

In other news, it's so weird when people come up to me at gigs and stuff and talk about my posters. It always kinda cracks me up and I feel like I end up accidentally coming off as a bit of a prick. It's very flattering, but I just react by being a bit of a knob I think. So yeah, if you read this, it's very much appreciated, and if I seemed like a dick.. well.. maybe I actually am, but I wasn't meaning to be. oh dear

now that's an... uh.. thing

next year it'll be quicker to type 2010 than 2k10. Well, about the same anyway. But the k will become redundant. WOAH! But. Maybe it's just because I'm a dork and like to add things like 2k8 (2k9 now) to the end of phrases or objects. Only in an online text manner of course, I don't go round saying it out loud like some kind of guy who does occasionally say "lol". Ironically of course. But anyway yes, the 2k8 usage... like... umm.. superfalloutboyparty2k9!!#@% or something. this seemed vaguely interesting when I started writing it but now I realise I was wrong. It is retarded. Thanks for sticking with me thus far though. I means a lot. If you've read this far (well just a little farther), I instantly love you.

neato

oh yeah

girl whose name I forgot who kinda looked like Lily Allen when I was real drunk and was a big fan of my stuff apparently and had emailed me once but I couldn't remember, who had a crappy old boyfriend but had a new boyfriend who visibly wasn't too thrilled about you raving on to me, drop me a line.

Some recent capers

Pretty straight forward, and self explanatory I guess. For a club night at Good Luck, called Bad Luck.

 

A couple of odd in-jokes were the influence for this. I'd never really tried to draw caricatures of anyone I knew before. Figured now was as good a time as any. Turned out pretty well... apparently they were recognisable from a thumbnail, but someone might've just been polite.

 

My design for Camp A Low Hum. Again, somewhat of an in-joke for anyone at last years Camp. A bunch of bongo playing bastards went pretty much 24/7 and were a major pain in the ear to a lot of people. Just in a something-to-grizzle-about way though. Anyway, I thought it'd be funny, and people did seem to appreciate it, so, mission accomplished.

Speaking of Camp, I'm still recovering from this years. I had an amazing time! Basically 4 days of hanging out with great friends, having a lot of laughs, a lot of drinks and a lot of party hard. Some bands played too. But yeah, mostly just had an awesome time with my friends. We may've had one of the most dero campsites in the whole place, but when you're having that much fun who has time to vigilantly bin beer bottles? WHO DAMMIT?!
We tidied it all up at the end anyway. Go team!

El Guincho

 

A slight departure

As you can see (if you're even vaguely familiar with my work anyway) this is pretty different from other recent stuff. This was borne partially out of feeling kinda stale on my usual methods, and partially I just wanted to hoon about in photoshop again. Plus I've realised designing stuff all the time to look like screenprints is kinda dumb if they're never going to be screenprinted so I may as well make the most of my tools. No doubt I'll get over this way of thinking by the time my next poster comes up.

Conceptually I'm really happy with this poster. Make of it what you will, but I think it works in both a glass half-full way, as well as the more pessismistic take.  All depends on your outlook.  Also, it should be noted the poster loosely includes all the old So So Modern costume colours (Red Blue Green Yellow). The other thing was, when I came up with that band-aid peace sign idea, I googled around a bunch trying to find an example of it. It seemed like one of those super obvious ideas that would've been done somewhere. And no doubt it has. but I couldn't find it. No doubt some bastard will go, re-do the idea even better and makes a billionty dollars off it and I will huff futilely on this here blog.

I'll make a process post shortly,  including the initial sketches and scribbles that kicked it off, plus the aborted Flash-drawn version and the evolution of the final piece. Not that any of you even give a shit! Bastards.

Vomit! at My Disco

I'm pretty stoked on this one. Best one I've done in a while I think.

2009 eh?

Happy new year everybody.