In The Works...

While the new book is at the printers, I've been putting together press materials and promotional items. If time allows, I'd like to put some full color pieces for posters and the like, though, the book is black & white. Also, figuring out how to include a soundtrack by either including a disc of music, or, listing a link to an MP3 mix...

Album Art

One thing that digital music did was shrink the size of LP artwork. There's nothing like the feeling of seeing your art displayed 12"'s in diameter. CD's mostly made up for that in the form of the booklet, though, it still didn't have to same payoff.

A lot of folks ask about the future of music promotion/artwork now that album art exists mostly as a 2" X 1" rectangle at the bottom of your iTunes. There's some interesting ideas out there on where this is going. One of which was just written up in Wired. Check it out.

Walk Cycle

A new project had me throwing together a walk-cycle for a character design. A rather quick 3 second shot ended up being a little more complex than I'd imagined. He had to resolve in the pose that's cleaned up at the end here:

Official Nominee!

Food Dude got nominated for a Webby! Be a stand-up citizen and go vote!

Google Image Search

A new set of titles has us raiding Google Image Search, and trying the damndest to mask and distort these, making them as custom as possible. A photo someone took of their Pad-thai in Roanoke gets on the web somehow. You grab that photo, change the levels, add some new shading and maybe a little 'unsharpen-mask' and viola, you have your new custom image.

I think what I'm doing with these isnt too much different with what folks are doing sampling music. The trick is to not be too obvious, and do your best to create something 'new' from the original.

Though trouble can arise when you find yourself in Shepherd Fairey's situation.

Classic!

Night Train 98!

An marker piece done about 12 years ago at the "NHS School of Art & Design". Mostly involving characters from a comic I was writing at the time. One of my first attempts at a 'night' scene'.

The Asthetic Of Surprise

Here's a great video of Ira Glass at the GEL Conference talking about the art of storytelling, and some of his angle on what makes a story great. (lifted from Kelsey Mann!).

Ira Glass at Gel 2007 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.