CANCELLED

So in 2012, after a pretty lengthy break from working on rock posters (although I did a few here and there), I asked to be included in The Detroit Cobras 2012 poster series for the canadian leg of their tour. I was given their show in Edmonton and as soon as I saw the name of the venue - The Pawn Shop, the gears in my head started turning. Back in college I had been working on an idea for a graphic novel, inspired by some things going on in my life, about a fallen angel and her descent into drugs and ultimate destruction. In fact that time in my life was the inspiration for a lot of my angel imagery. But one of the scenes in my story involved the angel, having become hopelessly addicted to drugs, going into a pawn store and selling her halo. Not too long after this scene she would hack off her wings with hedge trimmers and eventually jump off a building while attempting to fly using crudely made newspaper wings. Here's a couple illustrations I did at the time involving various scenes from the story. I just remember at the time it felt like my brain was bombarded with ideas and imagery...it was a really cathartic experience.

But unfortunately I had difficulty turning it into an actual story...sometime I'll compile all the sketches I worked on for it but at the time it just felt really overwhelming..... I did however take different ideas and scenes from that story and would pepper them among different projects I did over the years. here's some examples....a piece for a fake movie poster contest.....

A Get Up Kids double side poster I collaborated with Drowning Creek on depicting her wings before and after

and A Built to Spill poster depicting the scene where the main character cuts her wings off....

So when that Detroit Cobras poster came along, and seeing the name of the venue was The Pawn Shop,I saw another opportunity to depict another scene from that story. Unfortunately while it was in process of being printed that entire leg of their canadian leg was cancelled, but I'm glad they exist. I still have copies left if anybody is interested - 18" by 24" 3 color silkscreens for $20 + shipping and handling. Available here.

Hot Wheels!

Another client from over the years - Hot Wheels / Mattel. From 2005-2012 I created graphics for various car segments including an actual monster truck called Bad News Travels Fast. I'm trying to remember the first official car I worked on as it seemed like a few were thrown at me at once, but I believe it was this one - a Scion XB for their Dropstars line....

Next up was this car for their Bone Blazers segment, the Rapid Transit

After that I worked on an entire segment called Spy Force, which consisted of 5 cars......

Over the years I did a bunch of odds and ends, including graphics for their 2007 Toy Fair car, 2007 Halloween Dream, All Stars line , Road Beasts, Clover Cars etc. Here's a little sampling of those....

This car is actually my favorite of all the cars I worked on, the 2007 All Stars Impala....They also did several other colorways of it, including a K-mart exclusive silver version and a really cool looking blue one....

Next up was a really cool project - redesigning the graphics for one of the Hot Wheels sponsored Monster Jam trucks - Bad News Travels Fast. I had a lot of fun on this one and it was surreal seeing it in person when Monster Jam rolled into town February of 2008.

It was released in various sizes including 1:64 and 1:24 scale as well as being featured in a Monster Jam XBOX 360 game

Here's a video of the actual truck in action.... Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you view it, Bad News was sold to another owner and was redesigned again....:sad trombone: Oh well it's immortalized in die-cast cars.... Next I worked on a couple segments from Hot Wheels' pop culture series which are a little pricier and fitted with Real Rider rubber tires. First up was a series of cars inspired by Nose Art and Pin-ups. Here's a video showing all of them..... One that's kind of special about this bunch was the Dairy Delivery truck because I put a tribute to my Grandpa Goad who had passed away in 2006 on the side of it. It's military designation IG11261912 stands for Ivan Goad followed by his birthday ( Nov. 26, 1912 )

and then last but not least I worked on a segment of cars featuring Universal Monsters.... I would say my favorite is a toss-up between Frankenstein and The Mummy. They even had nice retail displays for them and I was able to snag one from the local Krogers. SCORE.

"Res Luk Ra'auf!"

People are probably very aware of my obsession with Star Wars. To me it's not necessarily about the movies, or the toys but about a great time in my life and a lot of my love for Star Wars is clamoring to get just a little taste of that. I still have my Darth Vader case full of all the figures I got as a kid and I would say for about 90% of them I can tell you a little story about the circumstances of which I got them - maybe even the time of year I got them and in some cases even the weather of that day. It's like I was so laser focused on my action figures that my brain took a little snapshot of everything going on around me. One figure I remember specifically getting was Bossk. For people not familiar with Star Wars lore, Bossk was a bounty hunter hired by Darth Vader along with Boba Fett, Zuckuss, IG-88, 4-LOM, and Dengar, to track down the Millenium Falcon and his occupants.

He was only shown on screen for a couple seconds, but I just remembered loving his design, especially the colors of his space suit. My memory involving me getting Bossk was that my mom, who was an occupational therapist went to Pittsburgh for some sort of seminar and we had to pick her up at the airport. Maybe I'm not remembering correctly the chain of events, but it literally felt like she got off the plane, opened up her yellow carry-all, and plunked good 'ole Bossk down in my hands, as if getting it to me was extremely important. I think this was actually even before the movie had come out so I really had no idea who he even was, but just remember thinking he was the greatest thing in the world (next to Boba Fett of course). I wonder how long it took me to rip him out of his package?

p.s. I just added an original watercolor painting I did of Bossk to my online store. Check it out.... Bossk original watercolor painting

Art goal for 2016?

I've been trying to figure out a simple goal every year, a project that I would like to do - in 2014 it was doing a children's book, which I managed to wrangle up pretty quickly. Not long after I expressed wanting to do it, a friend of mine got me in contact with an author he had worked with before who needed an illustrator for her new book. It was more a gift for her daughter rather than something that would be pushed hard at retail. The basic premise was it would depict her daughter, the preschool she attended, and most importantly Speedy, the class turtle. It would also educate the reader about box turtles including how to take care of them and some of their physical aspects. All in all it took about three months start to finish and along the way I learned a lot about publishing and how to prepare files for printing. Over the years I've had a few ideas knocking around in my head for some children's books of my own, so it also helped alleviate any intimidation I had about working on a children's book and getting it printed. I think the only major hiccup was when it got time to print hardcover versions. It was through a different printer (Lightning Source) and even though the paperbacks came out perfectly, the hardcovers were a disaster. Despite using the exact same file for the interior as the paperback, the printing was horrible - terribly washed out and despite me sending a copy of the paperback to show an example of how they should look, they seemed uninterested in resolving the situation. Basically they just kept sending out worse and worse copies which I eventually had to send back. I just finally gave up on hardcovers. But the paperbacks were great and I'm a real stickler on how my stuff is printed so that's saying something. Colors were rich and contrast and everything looked exactly how it was on my computer screen....Here's a link to purchase a copy on Amazon

In 2015, my goal was to do label art for a beer company. After contacting multiple companies and e-mailing portfolio examples I received responses from a few companies throughout the year. I'm not going to name names, because it's not like they really did anything wrong, but I did start to notice a trend. The second you talk about any money they run off. The first company I received a response from was excited about my work from the get go and said it was great timing because they were beginning to work on beers for the summer (this was in January). I was asked my rate so I consulted my Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook for Ethical Pricing Guidelines to see what they suggested. According to it, in regards to packaging design for beverages, they suggested between $5,200 and $30,000 per label. Of course the high end is ridiculous and honestly some of the companies I was talking with I would expect the low end to be considered high as well. So the first figure I threw out to someone was $2500 per label. Radio silence. And this wasn't a poor company...while looking up info on the owner there was all kinds of articles talking about how he had become a multi-millionaire through ownership of strip joints. I followed up, but still didn't receive a response. I was contacted by another company, actually in this case it was someone who found their way to me. Same thing though. Once money was discussed they vamooshed although in that case it was a start-up that to my knowledge never went anywhere. This was still early on in the year so I didn't give up and continued to contact different companies where I felt my style would fit in. One thing that was kind of frustrating was there was rarely an e-mail address to contact a lot of these places, but instead a generic website form. Frustrating because I couldn't attach examples of my work and also because instead of knowing where it was going, picture that scene in season two of Lost where they find out the pneumatic tube where daily logs were placed in led to some remote part of the island and dumped in a huge pile. Oh man, I miss Lost. Eventually another company contacted me and in this case I had a couple things working for me - they were friends of a regular client and also my style and sensibilities would have fit in perfectly. In fact when it seemed like that one was going to work out, I really thought that was the reason it didn't work out with the other companies. But again, once money was brought up, VAMOOSH. In this case I wanted it so bad if anything just to accomplish my goal for the year, I made sure I priced the label at below $1000, but no dice. I had started to give up on my goal for the year around November and really started to get rattled myself when trying to price label art. What was considered too high? Is there even a phenomenon where if I price it TOO low, that scares people off as well? It just became really frustrating. A couple weeks ago I responded to a thread on Gigposters.com looking for an artist to work on label art. I received an e-mail from them about a week later saying they really liked my work and wanted me to work on concepts. Being this close to the end of the year, I almost felt like Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when he rolled under that door and reached back for his hat. Right down to the wire. But, honestly, I had a bad feeling while reading the e-mail because it felt like they were more interested in just getting sketches than saying they definitely wanted to work with me on the final label. Gave me a real cattle call vibe. I was asked how much it would cost to get me started on concepts, I gave them a deposit amount and an illustration price (in this case, they already had a label designed and just needed art to plug into a rectangular space). And as expected nothing. So it looks like my art goal for 2015 was a bust but not for a lack of trying. Not sure if I should roll it over to 2016 or just move on.....

Christmas Gifts

These arent the best photos but here's some of the gifts I made for people this year. First up, for my mom I did an illustration of Krampus for her. My mom LOVES Christmas. Growing up her and my father really made Christmas a magical time for my brother and I. She would go all out on the decorations and before we went to bed Christmas Eve would play a little record she had as a child of The Night Before Christmas. A few weeks ago, kind of as a joke we went to go see Krampus together. I had heard that the first half hour of the movie was basically Christmas Vacation and the rest was Gremlins. Well yeah it was just like Gremlins if in Gremlins they had clown puppets with teeth filled gaping mouths eating kids and psychotic angel puppets strangling people. I remember when I saw King Kong in the theater one of the most disturbing scenes in the movie was when a bunch of the characters fell into a pit full of giant insects and worst of all - LAMPREYS. And I think the most disturbing part of it for me was the music which wasn't heroic and adventury, but really quiet and almost hypnotic....but there was a part like that in Krampus and I really began to feel bad for taking my mom to see it... p.s. she actually held up better than I did, probably because of my existing fear of clowns....I guess maybe instead of painting her a Krampus I should have gone in the complete opposite direction and painted her a nice classic looking Santa....maybe thats what I'll do for her next year. I will say this though, not too long after I started painting it, I wished I had stained the paper before hand to give it a more classic old look .....I thought about spray fixing the final painting then doing an acrylic glaze over the whole thing, but sometimes the spray fix doesn't completely fix those ink and I was afraid the red background would end up getting smeared....next time though....

For my dad I finally finished up this painting I started back in June of my grandfather Goad who passed away in 2006. I've always been kind of intimidated painting realistic portraits of people, but I've realized that if I don't focus on the resemblance as a whole but instead just look at shapes, value, and the relationship between all these things its easier for me....just something that needed to click in my head I guess....once I get to a certain point I'll graduate to painting with oils, but some people say my paint style resembles oils anyway.....

For my brother, who is a rabid supporter of Ford I did another portrait, this time of Henry Ford. Sorry about the picture quality...I was working up to the last minute on this one and had to snap a quick pic...

For my sister-in-law I painted a portrait of Jettison, her and my brother's dog who passed away earlier this year....I was actually surprised how much enjoyment I got out of doing this piece as I have a little complex about doing pictures of pets. It just reminds me of caricature artists or something.....but it's one thing for someone to have me paint a portrait of a pet I've never met and another thing if it's a pet I'm familiar with....I guess what I'm saying is it helps to have that personal connection....

I also did an abstract painting for my Grandma but unfortunately forgot to get a pic of it....but everybody seemed to like their gifts, although as would be expected the painting of Jettison was bittersweet.

The Giant Peach : Dead End Roads and Ninja Monkeys

While continuing to showcase some of the clients I've worked with over the years and go a little more in depth as to the ideas and concepts behind some of the pieces I did, next on the docket is The Giant Peach. Back in 2007 after sending some self promo postcards to The Giant Peach, located in Alameda, California, I was contacted by the owner Karen to work on full page ads for them to run in Juxtapoz. This was on one hand exciting but also extremely intimidating as I held Juxtapoz up in very high esteem and felt immense pressure to make sure my work was at the level of the other pieces featured in it's pages. Giant Peach had a hip hop vibe to it, so for the first ad I wanted to make sure I got that across while also representing my own personal style. Also at the time, I felt a pull towards a certain color scheme in most of my work - yellows, oranges, and purples. I just loved the combination of it and this color combo would find its way into the majority of ads I did for the Giant Peach. I also liked this because there's a cohesiveness to them when you view them as a whole.

A lot of times what else is going on in my life finds it's way into my work. I had just recently moved back to Dayton from Columbus in 2006. I'll eventually talk about all the circumstances for me moving back, but let's just say they weren't ideal. So just to kind of process things I would walk around my neighborhood and I found one particular route that lead me to a dead end road, which in a lot of ways, was how I viewed my return to Dayton.

Also around that time I had finally seen Iron Giant after hearing it described as a "perfect" movie on NPR. When Im trying to come up with a concept for a piece I usually start off by looking into the history of a word or in the case of peaches, where they come from, maybe even the root of their name...just anything to at least get the gears turning. But through my research came across the story of Momotaro (translated as Peach Boy). "According to the present form of the tale (dating to the Edo period), Momotarō came to Earth inside a giant peach, which was found floating down a river by an old, childless woman who was washing clothes there. The woman and her husband discovered the child when they tried to open the peach to eat it. The child explained that he had been sent by Heaven to be their son. The couple named him Momotarō, from momo (peach) and tarō (eldest son in the family). Years later, Momotarō left his parents to fight a band of marauding oni (demons or ogres) on a distant island. En route, Momotarō met and befriended a talking dog, monkey, and pheasant, who agreed to help him in his quest. At the island, Momotarō and his animal friends penetrated the demons' fort and beat the band of demons into surrendering. Momotarō and his new friends returned home with the demons' plundered treasure and the demon chief as a captive. Momotarō and his family lived comfortably from then on." So the ad was a character witnessing Peach Boy falling to the earth on the dead end road I was walking down every day in the style of The Iron Giant. Also on a side note, at the time I was thinking about getting a dog, so I depicted the character walking a Golden Retriever.

For this next ad, there was an ongoing joke on a website I frequented called Gigposters.com about a martial arts move called "Monkey Steals the Peach" which was basically where you rip your opponents genitals off.

At one point I had a realistic looking ninja holding a giant peach, but thought visually it looked weak, so then I got the idea to literally make him a Ninja Monkey...most people probably didn't get it, but they seemed to like the image...:) Just one of those inside jokes....

For this last ad, Giant Peach was doing a joint ad with 594 Apparel, a graffiti inspired line of clothing. By this time I was trying to figure out different ways to depict either giants, peaches, or both together and thought it would be interesting to infer a giant peach rather than actually depict it. So in this case the Giant Peach was where the viewer is, reflected in the graffiti artist's lenses and by the color of spray paint he's using. I also managed to slip in an idea I had been doing lately that I was calling "faux angels", basically using props to represent angel wings on characters, in this case the flood lights behind him.

This is actually one of my favorite ads I did for The Giant Peach, mostly because my work on the computer was minimal, just coloring on top of my cross hatched pencil work.

Anyway, here's a little sampling of some of the other ads I did between 2007 and 2010. If anybody has any questions about the concepts for any of these other pieces, just drop me a line ( goad.jason@gmail.com ) Be sure and check out The Giant Peach .

Focus

I think as a still struggling freelance illustrator, I have a tendency to focus on the worst aspects of the life as an artist - the slow times, frequent rejection looking for new work, and some of the frustration that goes along with having to compromise on your vision during the process. But I think I'm going to try focusing on some of the really great clients I've worked with over the years and showcase some of the work I've done for them. First up - Joe's Barbershop Chicago. I began doing work for them in 2011, when a mutual friend suggested me for posters advertising their yearly Hangover Shave Sunday events. For the past 4+ years in addition to creating posters for HSS events, I've also created posters for other shop sponsored events, as well as t-shirts, various sticker designs, and odds and ends. Kind of like the Giant Peach stuff work, it becomes a challenge coming up with new ideas for what is essentially the same event/same subject matter but between Joe and I we can usually come up with something. Personally, I still really love this first poster I did.

Here's a little sampling of the many posters I've done over the years for Joe's Barbershop as well as a little video I put together.....

Be sure and check out the Joe's Barbershop Chicago website to find out more about this great family owned business as well as pics from the various event they host......

Joker sketch cover process

Even for something like a "sketch" cover unless I have the idea concrete in my mind's eye, I try to plan stuff out and that involves numerous steps. Here's some pics detailing the progression from thumbnail sketch to final painted piece. My original plan was to do the final piece in Prismacolor markers, but I thought I'd try painting one for once despite some fears about whether the paper covers could handle acrylics. I'm happy to say they did really well and it opens up a lot of possibilities for me on future sketch covers. But here's some of my initial marker sketches for you to check out....

For the next step I used a lightbox to roughly trace my last marker sketch. Then I mixed up some reddish purple and acrylic matte medium to lay down an underpainting. Since 1997 I've used Basics Acrylics for painting... I've used a lot of different brands but to me they are just the perfect consistency - I find a lot of other brands to be too watery for my tastes and I mix everything using primary colors and white. But I'll start by mixing up a dark purple and paint darks and lineart really quickly, then cut back over it to clean it up. Here's a couple pics of the painting in various stages.

Here's how the final piece ended up. I put it up for auction on Ebay if anybody's interested.....

Goad Batgirl/Joker sketch cover auction