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