Last month, I created these illustrations for a new clothing brand called "Tuner Kids". It's an offshoot of the "PRPS" jeans brand, and is aimed at the very niche "tuning" culture of car modification. If you've ever seen The Fast and the Furious and Jackass, it's sort of like that.. just mix the two together. The "tuner kid" is basically one of those kids who likes to beef up their cars (almost exclusively imports - Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi) with additional or replacement parts for extra speed, or sometimes simply for aesthetics. You may have seen them in local parking lots comparing their cars, their girls, and/or the fluency of their slang. Or racing by you wrecklessly with rather loud mufflers (is that an oxymoron?).
I was asked to convey plenty of rawness, attitude, obnoxiousness, dirt.. flies. As well as a little humor here and there. This subject matter is certainly not my norm, which is why I had a lot of fun drawing these. They'll be printed on t-shirts as part of the launch of the brand, with more designs to come in a few months. I'll post a link to the final shirts when they're up for sale.
Here are my portraits from the last 3 issues of Spirit Magazine - Dean Kamen, Cathie Black, and Yvon Chouinard. I actually pitched them the idea of using Yvon Chouinard, the founder and owner of Patagonia, since he's an incredibly inspirational business man. (I also happen to be good friends with his kids.. Fletcher and Claire.) Patagonia is one of the most environmentally-conscious companies around, and they basically started the trend of using organic or recycled materials in their products - like using recycled plastic bottles to make fleece. Oh, and Yvon pretty much invented ice climbing and modern climbing tools. Here's a cool interview of him (though it is a bit old): http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/22/little-chouinard/
I do have a disclaimer to make on Yvon's portrait, however. I'm given the list of words for each portrait from the copywriters, and in this case I protested a bit about the word "Advertising".. but still had to keep it in. It's sort of misleading out of the context of the magazine, with the accompanying interview, because Patagonia actually tries to avoid advertising whenever possible: "We hardly advertise. In the late 1980's, we grew as much as 50 percent a year, and it nearly destroyed us. Now we grow by word of mouth, or between 3 to 10 percent a year."
This one is in the current November issue of Men's Journal. I'm back to doing monthly portraits now, after a 2-month hiatus. I've already done portraits of Jon Voight and Chuck Yeager for the Dec. & Jan. issues, which I will post after they hit stands.
I finished this piece today for the "Cover Band" show at Gallery 1988, which opens October 7th. It's a group show with about 60 artists, each of whom got to pick their 10 favorite album covers from the Rolling Stone Magazine’s Top 500 Albums of All Time. From those ten options, the gallery sent out one original cover to each artists for use as a canvas... basically making it into a sort of collaboration. I luckily got one of my top 3 -- the self-titled Led Zeppelin album with the burning Hindenburgh -- and wanted to try to keep as much of the original art as possible. Thankfully there was a lot of white space!
My attempt was to take this iconic, tragic image, and give it a different feel. More like a cute "whoops" rather than a horrific "oh the humanity". If it's just a little girl's balloon catching fire it's not quite so dramatic, is it? Well, maybe she'd be more freaked out if she knew there were people in there. Also, I wanted to do something that had nothing to do with the actual songs or the band, since I felt that would be... well, almost an insult to the original cover. It's such a perfect cover for that album, I would never presume to make a better or more poignant version.
Here's the 3rd TV spot for Key Bank, entitled "Concerned Dad", with a guy talking about the need to pay for college for his kids. You can check out a sample of the final artwork I supplied below, and larger, sharper version of the video here: http://www.d-kitchen.com/project.php?p=127(click on "Concerned Dad")
Here's the 2nd TV spot for Key Bank, entitled "Medals". They interviewed Diana Munz, one of the US medalists in the Sydney Olympics, to talk about her medals and how she used Key Bank to help keep them secure. Overall I'm pretty happy with the animation on this one, considering they had to do a good amount of tweening to get the swimming and mermaid parts to work right.
I included a handful of stills from the final artwork I provided to Digital Kitchen. They mostly kept close to my original illustrations, but a couple of their translations didn't work quite as well (in my opinion). They turned the blowfish and the clam into 3D-rendered objects, that end up losing a lot of the charm and stylization of the more flat illustrative versions I provided. But this is an opinion that's admittedly non-objective. Aside from this, I think they did an amazing job!
This is the first of five TV spots for the Key Bank campaign I've been working on all summer (which I mentioned in the last couple of posts). Digital Kitchen is the amazing motion graphics team that animated all of the artwork, and actually came up with each visual storyline. And Cramer-Krasselt is the forward-thinking ad agency that hired us. My endless thanks go out to Noel Ritter and Lorraine Harkins (the art director and art buyer at CK, respectively) for hiring me to work on this great project. And another thank you to Anthony Vitagliano -- Digital Kitchen's creative director for the project -- and his team, for making my artwork come to life!
The first 3 spots just started airing in target markets this past Friday, so if you're in Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Boise, Seattle/Tacoma/Puget Sound, Portland (OR), or Hudson Valley (NY), you may just see one of them pop up in the middle of your favorite shows..
I'm still working on the last spot -- due next Tuesday -- so I don't really have time to post much info about these as of yet. But I will post more in-depth comments on each one later. You can go to the Digital Kitchen website for a full list of credits: http://www.d-kitchen.com/project.php?p=127
I did this one back in May, for the August issue of Men's Journal. They asked me to do portraits for the September and October issues as well, but I unfortunately had to decline because of this Key Bank campaign. I've had to say no to all other jobs that have come up since June, too. I haven't even had time to update this blog since last month! I'll be wrapping up the Key Bank job in the next couple weeks, after which I'll be able to post more updates, and take more jobs (oh, and leave my studio!). I have been squeezing in my monthly Spirit Magazine portraits, though, since I had already agreed to do them back in April. More posts soon (hopefully)..
I know I haven't posted in about a month. But it's not for lack of work.. quite the opposite. I'm not sure if I've ever been quite this busy. I landed a big ad campaign for Key Bank, which has me creating all of the artwork for 5 different TV spots as well as the artwork for print ads and billboards / bus stops. The artwork for the spots will be animated by a motion graphics team. And all of this work will need to be finished by mid-August. More on this job later.. So in addition to starting this job, I managed to create a portrait of Morgan Freeman (above, on stands now) and Dennis Hopper (next month's issue), another 2 portraits for Spirit Magazine (will post those later), and about 10 icons for Death & Co.'s new menu. Also out this month, a couple illos I did for Runner's World in early May. I'll post those later too...
This is the first of a monthly illustration assignment I'll be doing for Spirit Magazine. It's the in-flight magazine for Spirit Airlines. Each month will feature a different, prominent business-person (mostly company founders, I think), and some of the history and philosophy of their company represented by a sort of brain-map. The brain-map was the art director's idea, and took some time to get to work.. but I think I've figured out a good process for future portraits.
I designed this label/logo for my friend Dave Kaplan, owner of Death & Co. (see last post), for a rum he had produced. Here's what Style.com said about it:
"Boozing up the maxim "If you want something done right...," Manhattan cocktail den Death & Co has crafted its own brand of rum. Dubbed Scarlet Ibis—after Trinidad's national bird—the versatile 98-proof tipple can be mixed into citrus drinks and Manhattan-style concoctions with equal aplomb. To produce it, Death's Dave Kaplan enlisted importer Haus Alpenz to help him scour the Caribbean for a round-bodied, dry-finish spirit with a full burnt-caramel note. He settled upon a three-rum, 150-proof Trinidadian blend (hence the name), which he then cut with a hydrometer and good old NYC tap. Better yet, the bar isn't keeping it for itself—watering holes and retailers on both coasts have picked it up. About $26, available in NYC at Grayz, the JakeWalk, and Elettaria; in San Francisco at Alembic, Absinthe, Bourbon & Branch, Forbidden Island, Slanted Door, and Flora; in Berkeley at Wine Commune; and in Washington, D.C., at Central Liquors; deathandcompany.com"
We had a very short period of time to get this thing designed (basically 2 days), and had some serious limitations put on us by the importer. I was hoping for special paper, offset printing, and foil stamping, but the labels ended up being printed digitally (far from ideal). I painted the bird in the background (a scarlet ibis) in gouache - If you see the actual label it ended up printing too pale and grayed out. But whatever.. the rum tastes great! I think you can also get it at Astor Liquor in NY, by the way..
I made these drawings for the bar Death & Co. to illustrate some of the specialty drinks they offer for their catering service. The drawings, along with recipes, were letterpress-printed onto cards for their cocktail catering launch party, as well as used on their website (click "Death & Co. Catering). If you find yourself in New York with an appreciation for refined cocktails, make it an urgent goal to try Death & Co. They truly have the best drinks in the city (sorry, no vodka drinks), and pretty amazing food as well.
Here are the names of the above cocktails: *Elder Fashion *French 75 *Rum Rum Mule *Fresa Brava *Mothers Ruin Punch *Rye King Fizz
I did these portraits of Matt and Joe -- the dapper new agents at the NY office of Friend & Johnson (my reps) -- to accompany their welcoming announcement. Good to have you on the team, guys! Thanks to Rafael Macho at Propelo for the design.
I did these portraits a few weeks ago for Institutional Investor Magazine. The article had to do with some sort of round table discussion involving some sort of investor types. The group portrait almost made it on the cover, but they had to run with a larger story about the tanking economy. Gee thanks, economy!
I finished the last of the 12 Zodiac signs that I've been working on for a while. Here are Aries, Pisces, Taurus, and Virgo. You can see the rest here.
I did this portrait of REM 2 weeks ago for Rolling Stone Magazine, which is out now in their April issue (Chris Rock is on the cover). It's for the Reviews page to go along with the review of their new album "Accelerate", which is supposedly "one of their best records ever". I'm not really able to agree (or disagree) with that since the preview CD they sent me was watermarked and wouldn't work for anyone but the Art Director. I did manage to listen to a couple songs on their website, though. Based on their faster, more energetic songs, and the title of the album, I decided to reference this new speed and acceleration with the motion lines. Those lines were actually sorta fun to draw. I didn't have a t-square though, so I improvised one with a ruler and a piece of cardboard!
Design Ranch commissioned me to do this 2/3rd spread for a magazine they design, 39th+Rainbow. The article was about the varied paths taken by students of medical schools. It talks about how some students have already had completely different careers, or raised families, before deciding to become doctors.
I did these two pieces over the weekend for Business Week. The issue will be on Newsstands Friday, the 14th. Here's the copy that accompanies them, if anyone's curious:
--"U.S. Carmakers care about what online game players think about autos – the gamers are an important demographic for the industry: Most live in households with at least 2 cars. And they are seen as “influencers,” with many researching vehicles online and giving advice to other potential buyers about brands of vehicles. Now a new study of these gamers shows that while the majority now own American-made cars, almost 80% are planning to buy an import for their next car – many of them in the next 12 months. Other results of the surveys: Not surprisingly, they like cars with a lot of tech (MP3 plug-ins, GPS systems, SurroundSound). Many like hybrids, too."
--"There’s a shortage of watchmakers and watch repairers in the U.S. Rolex, which has been supporting training programs for years, has just given $1 million to Oklahoma State U. for a program to train more future watch technicians.. And the American Watch Guild has just announced the Watchmaker and Technician Training Program –scholarships and apprecenticeships for disabled and other veterans."
