Lunar Holiday Poster

Yesterday I finished this holiday poster for Lunar, a product design company based out of San Francisco. They approached me with the general idea of wanting to collaborate on their company holiday card, with the hope that it could become a fold-out poster incorporating lots of different types of imagery. They sent out a questionnaire to their employees in San Francisco, as well as to their offices in Munich and Hong Kong, asking them to name some of their favorite things. The point of this was to gain a bit of a cross-section of the "Lunar culture" as experienced by their employees around the globe. Here's a few sample questions they sent out:

- All time favorite holiday food?
- Favorite corner in the city?
- Favorite LUNAR project of the year?
- Favorite gift to give?
- Favorite festival of the year in SF/Munich/HK?
- What’s your favorite SF/Munich/HK institution?
- Favorite after work/weekend past time?

So I had to take all of the different answers and figure out some way to represent them into a holiday poster context. Here are my first 3 sketches:




They liked the 2nd sketch, but wanted way more stuff going on and more imagery from the answers incorporated into it. They found an image of a vintage Candyland boardgame, which they loved as an idea for more of a path or a map. They felt that referencing this could communicate something like, “LUNAR is a unique place during the holidays". And they loved the way the illustrations tend to combine things in strange ways, much like mine tend to do. So I did some revisions and we came to a final approved sketch..





The final poster will be printed at about 12" x 18". Here are a few close-up sections:

Germs

Germs are creepy, and so is this drawing...

"The {Sketch}book" vol. 01!!

"The {Sketch}book" is the first volume of a new series of books showcasing all of my favorite sketchbook pages. This first volume is a rather large compilation of 114 pages from multiple sketchbooks I've kept over the past nine years. I included the cover and 7 interior spreads, above, as examples.

I spent the last 2 months compiling images and designing the book in my free time, and am really happy with the results. Originally, I started creating the book as an addition to my larger portfolio of commissioned jobs and gallery work that gets shown around by my agents. But I realized that I could offer it up for sale, as well, to whomever would be interested.

For more info on purchasing a copy please click here: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/626123

If interested, I highly recommend getting the hardcover version, but there is also a cheaper softcover version available. Both options are 8" x 10", 114 pages, on Premium Paper. Keep in mind that these books will likely be a pretty limited run as they were not mass-produced for book stores. Each book ordered is professionally printed and bound on-demand, and shipped within about 8 days. Please email with any other questions: timtomkinson@mac.com

Lurzer's Archive ads

I worked on these two promotional ads for Lurzer's Archive. The top one was made just a couple weeks ago, to be published in the near future.. and the bottom was in the vol. 4, 2008 issue.

The top ad was designed by Coco Connolly using some of the new branding for my agent, Friend & Johnson. The photo on the left was taken by Charles Shotwell, and I decided to make my page into a play off of his photo. I had free reign to do whatever I wanted, but thought it would be sort of funny to somehow use the missing chair from his photo. For some reason the first thing that popped into my head was a guy balancing a chair on his nose. So I went with that idea, and also pushed it to the more ridiculous side with the juggling of live grenades and the unicycle riding (which i've always wanted to try).

I designed the bottom ad myself, since I had the entire spread. And since I was extremely busy at the time, I used existing images: the left side being from a sketchbook, and the right side from a series of spots for Skiing Magazine.

"Tuner Kids" t-shirt illustrations

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.

"The Ridiculous Race" interior illos

I finished 2 more chapter headers for "The Ridiculous Race". Only 2 more to go and they'll be done..

Illustration Friday - "Choose"

The topic this week at Illustration Friday is "Choose". I had some free time this afternoon to do these portraits of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It seems as though the choice between these two for the Democratic nomination is becoming more and more unsure, especially after this week's Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses. It may even come down to the choice of merely 800 "Super Delegates" to break a near tie, which I happen to be opposed to. I think the nomination should be based on the popular vote, and not on the whims of relatively few high-ranking party officials!

But I digress... I've been wanting to draw these two for a while now, and the "choose" topic seemed to give me a good reason. If this was a commission I would probably redo Hillary, but I'm pretty happy with how Barack turned out.

- Tim

"The Ridiculous Race" interior illos

Just finished the first six chapter headers for The Ridiculous Race, as well as a map showing where the two guys went on their travels. By the way, the book is about these two guys from L.A. who bet each other who could travel around the world faster.. going in opposite directions, and not using any airplanes. It's main point of ridiculous-ness is that the bet itself was simply for one glass of 1969 Kinclaith scotch. Six more chapter headers are due at the end of March, and I'll also be working on the illustrations and design for the back cover and spine.