Metal for Veterans

 

This is a poster I put together for a group of metal bands playing a benefit show in Boise, ID next weekend. My brother is in the band RipshaW and their album is now available. Give a listen here.

On the process of making this: The skull image was sketched out in pencil using reference from GoMedia. I inked it with a Sumi brush, using a very wet brush for a slightly sloppy flowing effect. Then some dry brush for some details and texture and then some layers of grays for more texture and tone. Then I used a flag image and messed with the layer options in Photoshop until it looked 'right'.

I thought the dogtags would be a nice way to display the band names. I started with low res versions of the band names and a dogtag image from Google images. In Photoshop I created a brushed steel pattern with the dogtag outline and then used some layer options on the band names to give them a 'stamped' look. Once I had the skull and dogtag elements, I brought them into Illustrator and added the requested logos and text. The font was free from dafont.com. Spent some time nudging and tweaking and that's about it.

Moby Dick Illustration

Here's an illustration I did for a design contest. I've had a thing for drawing waves lately.. I inked this with a sumi brush, which I don't know why I don't ink everything with sumi - it's just awesome. The only thing is, I think larger paper would help to be able to ink the details..

New Shirt - ROCK!

Made a new shirt, cuz I can!

Pizza Party! tshirt

I finished coloring this shirt tonight and put it up for sale at MySoti! All the cheese drips and sauce splatters were fun to ink. Figuring out the saucy breadstick lettering was really fun too.

Space Walk

I did a new illustration for a t-shirt design. Follow the link to check it out on sale through MySoti.

New Shirt - Sludge

I made a new shirt and put it on mysoti.com for now. Eventually I'll be selling these shirts separate from mysoti I think, but this works until I get that going.

This was a fun design to make, I penciled, inked and finished it off all today. I used a Rosemary & Co. Series 33 size 0 brush for the linework. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted it to look like in the end, but I did things a little differently with the brushwork. Instead of filling in all the 'black' areas, I outlined the penciled linework, then in Photoshop just filed the inside and subtracted the brushed lines. Working this way made the line weights extra important.

I wasn't sure about the face. Adding it made it look a bit cartoony and leaving it blank made it look more creepy.. but a little less interesting - so I went with the face.

While inking I was thinking a lot about 'process' and I came up with this: "Your process is the answer to the question 'how do I make this look the way I want it to?'" - That may not be the best or fullest explanation, but that's kinda how I think of it.

RipshaW will eat your soul!

Every 10 billion years a force of great power and destruction is born of the earth. The time has come and this force has manifested itself as the power of ROCK! The vessel for which this power is contained is known simply as...

RipshaW

Anyways.. this is my brother's awesome metal band. And this is an awesome t-shirt design I did for him...

rock.

R.U.R. - T-shirt Design at Design By Humans

I liked that drawing in the last post enough to try it out as a T-shirt design. If you like it and want to see it produced, go on over to Design by Humans and vote for it. Here is the direct link: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/25972

Detach - Illustration Friday

I've been playing with technical illustration a bit lately as well as isometric drawing. And I thought these techniques would work nicely to illustrate the topic of 'detach' for Illustration Friday.

Sour - Illustration Friday

So I used a little different of a process this week, parts of it I liked and others I didn't. I can see that in the end result. I started off with a pencil sketch. I kind of had a loose idea of how I wanted it to look anyways and I pretty much captured that. I think it would've lost a lot more life had I NOT done a pencil sketch. I scanned the sketch and outlined my shapes in illustrator. I think that's where I went wrong. The illustrator shapes are just a little too rigid. Next time I'll remember that and probably hand draw each shape over a lightbox. I took the pieces into photoshop, messed with layer options and threw in some grunge effects. Then cropped it all down. So I liked some of the process, but I should've done it a little more hand drawn and a little less computer aided. But it's done, thats whats important - and I learned from it.

An Effing Foodie

I have posted about this project before, but hadn't put up the final web banner. The first draft was more of an illustrated cartoony style, but the client was thinking of something a little more elegant. This style works a lot better with the layout of the site. See for yourself at http://www.aneffingfoodie.com/.

Mangia Mix

I was browsing through my past work folders and realized I never posted this project online. Theres a few that slip through the cracks now and then, but this is one I especially enjoyed. Rich has made a business combining two of my favorite things: food and music. He does great music mixes for restaurants in the NYC area. I designed his logo, business card and some miscellaneous stationary.

This is the front and back layout of the business card. I had them printed at overnightprints.com because they're good, cheap and can do those nice rounded corners that I wanted.

Battle Ground Little League

This is a banner I designed and printed at work for the local baseball little league group. They were very happy with the final product and apparently are getting a lot of good comments at their tournaments.

Vinyl graphics

I figured this was worth a post. I designed this partial vinyl car wrap at work for 'Timberman's Tree Service'. The main body wrap is around 12' x 7'...so, it's pretty big. I didn't do much on the actual install, but the overall design was me.

Ominous Cat Logo

By the way, my freelance art and design business name is OMINOUS CAT. I had a few names mulling over in my head on the way to the courthouse the first time I signed up for a business license.. That is what popped out when it came down to it. Other runner up names were: LEVEL UP and... maybe some variation of my name... SPERRYART... kinda lame. I guess i don't remember all the runner ups, it was a while ago. Anyway, I've embraced the name since that confusing day at the downtown Manhattan courthouse.

I decided to update my logo a bit. The older logo is just on my business cards and invoices, so chances are you haven't seen it. It was the same basic structure, just less ominous.

An Effing Foodie

Here is a web banner that I am working up for An Effing Foodie, a wonderful food and review blog. It's not quite working for me in this direction so I think I need to take a few steps back on the project and rethink it a bit... it may just be a matter of recoloring and rearranging some of the elements... we'll see. I figured I'd share where it's at anyway. And check out Effing Foodie. Especially you New York Foodies!

THEY LIVE!

Another John Carpenter related post. This is a poster I've been building up for an open submission project SUPERTRASH . This evolved quite a long way from the original concept, but I like this much better. Originally, I was just going to do a big 'alien' face, with THEY at the top and LIVE at the bottom. But I think that may have been too simple. This has a little more content to it.

I'm not positive yet if this is the final FINAL version. I'm going to let it seep for a day or two and take another look at it to make sure it's 'done'. It's kinda like baking for me, even if the oven buzzer goes off, you still have to check it and maybe add a few minutes.

Grunge poster design

I did this poster design at work. I was given two (very) lo res images, so I figured a grunge look would be the best way to go about the design. They haven't picked up the print yet (finished print 24x36"), but I think they'll be pleasantly surprised.

Model Postcards

Here are a couple postcard designs I did recently. I liked the idea of putting a pretty face next to a pretty number sequence. The idea was a little better than the execution in my opinion, but I still like it.