P-4!

I can't remember the exact year, but back when the whole designer vinyl craze was ramping up I was asked to be part of an artist created series of characters that would be produced using PVC plastic. Unfortunately the project eventually imploded but I came up with this little guy I dubbed P-4 ( short for Power Plug Pee Pee ). I think he's pretty self explanatory...incidentally enough I had been working on some sketches for a guy on another project and he pulled the whole "if this works out, we'll get to work on a bunch of your personal projects", which I've heard before. Its a game people play when they want to get stuff either cheap or for free. But I showed him P-4 and right off the bat he was wanting to change the shape of the mouth and most stupidly take off the plug to make it more "kid friendly".....it was then that I realized he didn't "get it" and would essentially be negating the point of the character. One day I hope to see him realized as an physical object, but in the meantime here's some drawings of him over the years as well as his female counter part - SC. I'll let you guess what that stands for.

Some variant paint schemes including a C-3PO version

Sad Trombone

Unfortunately sometimes projects will fall through for me for a variety of reasons - something will be cancelled, I'm participating in a "cattle call" with other artists on spec (sometimes to my knowledge, sometimes not) and someone else gets chosen, I'll just get straight up screwed, or there's just a difference of visions. Here's some things that have fallen through over the years..... Some helmets I worked on for a company called Scorpion. Why these didnt get made is still a mystery....there's a whole story behind this thing, but I'll kind of leave it be....let's just say make sure you get stuff in writing and also watch who you show ideas to, because you can get ripped off. Sad trombone. p.s. The three helmets on the left and the upper right were inspired by the movie Aliens. GAME OVER!!!

I was able to use the rear graphic I created for the fiery biomech helmet (middle right side) for other stuff though....

Next up, I was contacted to work on some posters for No Doubt's 2009 reunion tour. All told I was originally asked to do 15 posters, so for about a week I went into an intense brainstorming session coming up with ideas for posters. It was going to be nuts with insane deadlines, but I was ready to go. The only direction I remember there being was Clockwork Orange and 60's futurism. Here's sketches that I came up with....

Response was pretty positive for all the designs except for the skankin' Notre Dame guy and I began to move forward on 4 of the designs.

But unfortunately in the middle of the last two, they decided on a consistent direction for the series (other artists were working on posters as well) and the last two didn't fit into it. So all told only two of the 15 posters ever saw finalization. Sad trombone. In the future I'll show some other projects that fell through for various reasons and make sure my sad trombone is tuned up and ready to go......

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.....

Art block!

So I've kind of been going through a little period of burnout/artist block and thought maybe I could resurrect my blog as another outlet, while I figure this shit out. This happens to me every once in awhile and I used to get freaked out about it, until I realized instead of hitting a wall, I was running into the side of a step. Hopefully, when you're an artist what you do or have done in the past isn't enough anymore and you have this need to push yourself to do better and grow. But if the answer about how exactly to do that isn't entirely clear, it can be very frustrating. So I'll either go play video games, take a walk, watch movies, or just push myself to create anything no matter how bad it is. Honestly, I still haven't figured out which of those is the right answer, or more simply whether it's just a matter of taking a break or better to work through it. I do always manage to get through it, but it's scary as hell when it happens. I find myself falling into this cycle of thinking I'm washed up, I've lost my "powers", freaking out thinking my work will eventually dry up, and people will forget about me, etc. But then I'll get an e-mail about a job or from a fan, maybe I'll see a movie or play a video game that inspires me and then I'll get out of my funk. So that's where I'm at right now - right in the thick of one of those funks. I did however do this sketch cover the other day. For a couple months I've had a stack of blank sketch covers chilling in the corner that I have slowly amassed over the past year and have been meaning to knock out. Normally I do them with Prismacolor markers and even though I was getting pretty good at layering different colors to create new ones, you are pretty much limited by what you have/ are willing to spend money on. Some colors I would have to (ugh) go to Hobby Lobby to get them because I couldn't find them at my mainstay, United Art and Education but they jack up their prices on art supplies, because they're dicks. But it dawned on me that I should just say screw it and try actually PAINTING a cover - I could mix pretty much all the colors I needed and also could do some looser style pieces. The only downside I saw is not knowing how the covers would react to wet paint being applied to them i.e. would they get super wrinkled and buckle? But I was sick of seeing the stack and just kind of jumped in. I'm happy to say besides a little bit of warping that will probably go away in time the paint didn't really affect the cover at all. Best of all, by painting it, things went a lot more quickly AND in my opinion, the final product looks more energetic and stands out more than one of my Prismacolor ones. It'll be interesting to see how doing things this way translates to a Star Wars sketch cover.