Your Band's Poster Rocks
November 22 - December 10th
Opening Night: Thursday November 22nd 6pm
Up There Arts Gallery Space
145 Karangahape, Newton, Auckland

"Your Band's Poster Rocks!" a cry frequently overheard by the artists themselves as they stand at the back of the club.... A true test of any poster is found on the walls in university dorms, overcrowded flat living rooms or possibly even framed and hung by the clubs featured. Together with the artists involved, we’ve gathered the last remnants of gigs gone by and for the first time showcasing a New Zealand Artist Only Group Rock Art Show.

This show will contain a collection of New Zealand's continuing & emerging rock poster designers creating original images for national and international modern rock artists, with a sprinkling of "classic art prints" by the likes of Coop and Kozik from the Illicit Archives.

This exhibition will push to the forefront gig-art usually only seen in densely packed foot traffic areas, with limited wall space and posted under the cover of night by dark hoodie wearing vandals (the artists). These complex, handmade advertisements, as different as the creators, juxtapose aural/visual artistry found throughout fluxing city streets country-wide. Each designer is charged with conveying the difficult visual message coupled with a variety of musical styles to translate the idea that a band's street poster is the direct visual representation of how the gig should make the audience feel. This first in an ongoing exhibit will showcase the temporary posted works from Ruban Nielson, Bradley Fafejta, Ed Gains, Alan Holt, Autistk, Mat Scheurich, Heckman & Ben Thompson.

We make the posters because we love to.

Thanks to:
Up There Arts - Illicit Clothing - BFM - Cheese on Toast - Jagermeister

So, this exhibition opened in Auckland last night, with about 8 of my posters in it. I've been way too busy with contracting work to make it up there, which was really gutting considering it's the first real exhibition I've ever had work in. To make matters worse, I was getting txt's from Pete Heckman who put the show together saying people were wanting to buy stuff and did I have more of X poster and could they buy the ones I'd marked Not For Sale... which is awesome.
The NFS ones were digital prints I had done of posters I lacked big copies of (in this case, Kristin Hersh, the Fighting the Shakes that won Poster of the Week on Gigposters.com, and The Gossip).

but yeah.. if you're in auckland and read this blog, go check out the exhibition and tell me how it is!

Cleatis Preston

I got approached a while back about doing some designs for a newish NZ t-shirt label. I ended up pillaging some of my poster designs, under the rationale that A) I made 'em so I can do what I want and B) they were on posters that were up in wellington for a fortnight at the most (one night in the case of the middle pic) and why the hell not.

Unfortunately, the shirts (and hoodie, also of the middle one) they sent me are a size too small for my fat ass. Hopefully I can switch 'em, cuz I'd def wear them like a big big dork. Maybe I should just set a goal to exercise more til I fit 'em..... nah, switching's easier.

Interesting side note, my favourite shirt, the yellow one (although it's also printed on red and black and some other colour I think), wasn't too popular with retailers. Go figure. Perhaps this was before everyone seemed to go apeshit for slogan tee's and shirts with crap printed huge all over them?

sorry about the crappy photos

strangers + fighting the shakes

a quickie poster that turned into a slightly-longer-than-that poster.

new poster. click to embiggen. more info eventually.

new stuff

Here's the cover for my bands EP. it's titled All My Friends Are Electric. I'll post up the rest soon. We just got it back from the printers today. We head up north in the morning to play a show in Hamilton, and then 2 shows in auckland. hopefully we sell a couple of copies. I'll post up details here for the 1 person who reads this blog who might be interested in a copy.


And a new poster. I just just JUST finished this. had to get it out before bailing. It was looking pretty lame for a while but I managed to turn it into something I'm quite happy with. I suspect this might end up being an art print too.

anyway, I should pack. I'll report back

No updates for a while. Slack! Anyway, I'll post a bunch of new stuff, starting with the most recent.
This is an illustration for Metro Magazine. An article about noisy neighbours. I'm pretty stoked with this actually. It came together fairly quickly. When I was colouring this the first time, photoshop died and I had to start over, which ended up working out a hell of a lot better than the first colour scheme I was working with. The same can't be said for the next one.


Time was pretty tight on this one, and while I quite like it, even now there's things I'm not that happy with. I can't draw hands! Amongst other things.

With the above drawings, I started them off in pencil with the intention of inking them. Due to time constraints this wasn't really possible, mainly because at this stage my inking is a terribly slow, frustrating experience. . Either way, the one directly above, the paper was pretty much destroyed in the area where the woman is, as well as a few other places that were just drawn and erased so many times the paper became useless. This image was pretty much drawn from scratch trying to work out how it was all going to work. I was using a 2H (I think) mechanical pencil. which is pretty forgiving in terms of sketching things out, but pretty rough on the crappy ZETA pad I swiped from work. They seem really nice to draw on until you try to go detailed. I actually find drawing on pretty generic laser printer paper to be the best. Not exactly archival quality, but it's easy. Oh yeah, it's also worth nothing that with both these two images, I made more of an attempt to draw things bigger on the page. I find it takes me a little longer to get the composition right, but once it's sorted the rest of the drawing process is pretty fun. Having more room to put in detail and what not. Basically I'm trying to get off the computer as much as possible for the actual drawing of stuff. Mainly because it's way faster/easier than with my tablet. Poor Intuous 1, so old, so imprecise.
ramble.

Pretty basic poster this... There was a tone of type so I laid it all out first, and, pressed for time , grabbed a bunch of photos from this years camp, from Partyphoto.com, put a halftone over them and yeah... there ya. Disappointed I didn't have more time, or less text. Still.. interested to see these up and about. I put a photo of me in there from camp, doing probably the best 'mouth open wooo yeaaah party!' PartyPhoto.



This poster is the first time I've really recycled quite this blatantly. See the posters below. Regardless, I quite like this layout.


Again, shitloads of text. I layed it all out first, then figured out what to draw in the gaps. In this case a vaguely Cheshire-ish cat. and a mouse flipping him the bird. I have copies of the Chch poster for sale, and should have copies of the Wellington one soon. It's worth (?) noting that I drew the characters for this in Flash, mainly because I had no idea what I was going to draw (I'd toyed around with a sailor with a spyglass but still don't have enough confidence in my human characters to go through with it). I dropped a screengrab of the text layout into flash and then scribbled around until something came out. Oh yeah, these posters are the first time I translated my halftone texture technique to Photoshop. Much less system intensive. Just as fiddly though.

I'm pretty sure there's more stuff, but I'm really tired. That'll do for now!

forgot about this one... the street posters were 1/2 an A1 each.. so, in an ingenious move, they're printing both on one sheet and then somehow, perhaps using a cutting implement and agonising hours of surgery, separating them, much like a doctor separate siamese twins.
at a guess.
(time for bed)

The Shins

Here are two pictures of the Shins NZ tour artwork.... the first is the 1/2 A1 sized street posters. Solid orange so, when you see 'em on the street the band name stands out from far off, but if you get up closer, there's something to look at. The version below is for the web/print/retail/tv advertising.. basically the same, just with a bit more tone in it.
I'll post a process thread if anyone's interested in seeing how this one came together?

To anyone who actually read this blog, sorry about the delay in updates! I got ridiculously busy and somewhat loss the blogging bug. Rather than ramble on, I'll give you a quick update on what's been going on...
over the last month or so things have been really busy with my band, Fighting the Shakes. We played Auckland three weekends in a row, which was awesome fun, but hard work, travelwise.
Besides that, getting back, going to work, going to practices and then going back on the road again. madness!
the other big news is I was asked to design the gigposter for The Shins upcoming New Zealand shows!@%@$^ I'll post it up soon, and a process blog.

excuse the blah update, just feeling kinda jaded

something new, finally!

I know it's been ages, and there's not a lot of excuses really... some personal stuff to deal with completely drained my inspiration. This poster was a major major struggle.. I felt like I'd totally lost my mojo. It all came together eventually though.

Anyway, my band Fighting the Shakes are playing a lot in May.... it happens to also be New Zealand Music Month, but I'd like to think that that's not the reason for all the gigs. But whatever... we're playing three weekends in a row in Auckland, which is going to be pretty brutal, travel-wise.

We're heading up next weekend (may 11th) to play with The Tutts and Motocade at the Kings Arms, and maybe a house party the night after, although that's all still being jacked up. Hopefully it happens though, as house parties are really really fun... with the added bonus of, if I get a bit drunker than I should before we play, odds on everyone else at the party is in much the same state and won't notice!

The weekend after we're doing the tour detailed on the poster above. This one I'm *really* looking forward to. We'll be travelling with some really great bands and some great friends. Sam and Pads who are behind the Mole Music label are awesome guys and a lot of fun to hang out with. White Birds and Lemons and the Vacants are excellent too... we've played with both bands in the past and I'm looking forward to seeing them on a nightly basis. Thankfully the last show of the mini-tour in Wellington, so we/I can party hard and not have to dread an 8+ hour drive the next day. Although all I have to do is sit there. I don't have my drivers license so it's up to Chet and Jayesh to do all the driving. I really should get my license...

The weekend after THAT one, we're back up to Auckland again, this time playing at an industry showcase thing that 95bFM are putting on called Fancy New Band. I'm not sure who else is on the lineup at this stage, but I'm sure there'll be tons of cool bands. A little nervy about this one as it's gonna be in front of a bunch of music industry folks... but it should give us a good indication of where the band stands in terms of anyone giving a crap. Actually, the two weekends prior should give us a fair idea on that front. Who knows... either way it's exciting to be asked to play all these things.

In other band related news, our EP is really really close to being finished. All the vocals are down now, barring a couple of retakes and overdubs, and might re-record bass for one of the songs, but other than that.... so nearly done! I need to get cranking on the artwork. We should have unmastered promo copies of it ready before we go away thoughee, so if by some chance you're reading this and will be at a show, hit me up and I'll fling you one.

One of the final tracks from the recording, People Would Say, is up on our myspace page. Check it out if you are so inclined.

I'll try to keep updating with a little more frequency now that things feel a little more stable and on track!