This cover for Mother Jones started as an inside illustration, full page of this little guy. When I did the thumbnails I already had something in my head, so just a few little thumbnails to get the idea on paper. Tim thought he should not be quite the heffer of a fat cat, so we slimmed him down a bit in the sketches. They wanted Him to look a bit more like the Monopoly guy....but not too close.
Where Have All the Whistleblowers Gone? Get Out of Jail Free Cards.... Big Wall Street Banks take a walk around the board on the tax payer, and Washington does not have the balls to let them all go belly up. "When President Barack Obama's jobs bill passed the House in early March, it contained a little-noticed provision to recover part of its $35 billion price tag by cracking down on offshore tax evasion, which costs the US some $100 billion a year in lost revenue. The provision, which requires foreign financial institutions to report more data to the Internal Revenue Service, was likely prompted by a 2008 Senate investigation that revealed the systematic efforts made by Swiss bank UBS to help moneyed Americans hide massive sums from the IRS." Well basically we are still suffering through the remains of these actions. and it looks like several more years before we may recover.....if ever.
I got this note from Tim the other day; thought I'd pass it along...
The Jan/Feb cover you illustrated is currently not only projected to outsell the March/April 2010 issue, but if the current numbers hold, will sell better than every one of the 2009 issues; so thanks for your great work on that! And I believe those stories (with your outstanding lead illustration) have gotten a good amount of exposure, both the print and online versions; so thanks for that too!
I’ll definitely look at your drawger posts. Love that site.
Best, Tim
A FUZZY NAVEL
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a little guy who came to be known as Wally. Wally actually started out as a drink coaster, brainchild of Jean Page at SVP. They came to me and asked me to be a part of this great summer campaign for Yupo; I was sent a list of drinks I could illustrate. By the time I responded, most of the good choices were gone. Fuzzy Navel was still open, so I did the normal fifty thumbnail ideas and the one that struck me right away was this cute little guy in deep Omphaloskepsis, (contemplating ones navel.) I thought it would be funny to have him hairy everywhere but his head. As I am not a hairy guy, someone had once sent me a chest wig as a joke . So, I scanned the chest wig in and made a brush out of it so I could paint anything hairy. The folks at Yupo fell in love with him, and for years they had some happy fun together.
Wally lives on in Yupo's "Wally Awards;" (A contest for the best use of Yupo Paper) in a special award I designed for Yupo; a snow globe. It was supposed to have hair floating around inside of it, but the folks at Yupo decided that it should be Yupo pellets instead. Now, Wally is taking a long needed break. (Although it is rumored he may make a comeback early 2011...) Stay tuned for breaking news on this development.
Wally Award being modeled. These were some in process photos of the plasticine scupture getting it ready and approved before casting.They got a little nervous about the naked butt so we added a cape around his neck....
Illustration of the Wally Award.before we did the actual award I had done this Illustration of an award for them. The actual award was cast and asembled in a cute little six inch snow globe complete with Yupo pellets inside.
The Other day we were rummaging through some old files and ran across these thumbnails. Even though this was a couple years old, I thought you guys would enjoy this. "All Aboard" was a Picture book I did with Art Director Ann Bobco. A puzzling alphabet book; where all of the letters would be hidden in the illustrations. Certainly some more than others. When I started the book I wanted the overall feel to be reminiscent of those great travel posters from the 1920's and 1930's. Bold and graphic images that would stand on thier own, as well as make a great collection in a folio. See all of the images from the book in theGALLERY
Sometimes when you sit down to work on Ideas , you just get too many great ideas. Sometimes even the Art Director can't choose and you end up doing two . That's what happened with these little bed bug illustrations. I get ichy all over just looking at them . Here is also a case of photo shop allowing me to do a concept I would have proabably stayed away from. But with being able to clone the bugs , I could just do one or two bugs and clone them into a mighty army of mutants. Ready and willing to suck your very life, if not the blood, and leave your lifeless body a hollow shell for your kids to find in the morning when they come in to wake you. I guess you can pick up on the ones they picked; #2 and #9. Ended up with the large area for the Village Voice mast head at the top. on the inside full page for the bug army. God I love these bug jobs. Just can't get enough of them.
Sometimes you come up with great ideas ,sometimes it's your grand kids that come up with the ideas and you just steal them and put them down on paper. this idea came from my grandson Forest who has been helping me around the studio for a couple of years now. I still had to put down a few of my own, the normal 40+ thumbnails...Katie Burk at NPR was the art director, And ultimately gave me more freedom than I am used to having on jobs.
Okay a great way to stay sharp,( ha) take an object from your studio and do ten sketches :10 min.... for me I like being on the sharp end ..so Push pin works.....If you want to see No.1 STAYING SHARP click here
Right brain thinking....So it's a little exercise I started when I was in art school...Doesn't have to be brilliant, just a great way of staying fresh and keeping the ideas flowing. Honestly this little set of drawings only took :10 but then another 20 minutes to scan tham and figure out how to post them....but you get the idea.
What I was trying for was a Old "Pulps" Cover from-the-20's feel.... Goose-stepping bugs on their way to conquer the world.
Click Here to see All Final Images.
When Mathew Willis / Blue Print Partners, Amsterdam called me about working on this project , it was a simple reuse of some illustrations I had for a project with Shaun Hawk, at McCormick. Blue Print is a Public relations firm who were given the task of trying to come up with a brochure to help sway public opinion about pending Euro legislation that would curb pesticide use . It started as a single page comic in the form of a direct mail piece. We went over the project and decided to produce a little underground comic instead. Address the pending legislation, twist the story a little, as rising food cost. Since they didn’t have an art director I assumed that role and along with a writer Robert Roth we adapted the existing bugs and a couple of new ones into a story line . The Bugs would go on an eating holiday across Europe. Although the original copy reflected more of a world domination theme that was a bit scary to the Euro market so the eating holiday won out.
Here are some of the thumbnails figuring out a sequence and story line .
page layout, and rough comps. Trying out some different names. Showing how the existing bugs would fit into the drawings.
Expiramenting with different variations of names and images for cover illustration. I really liked the idea of "Bugs Life" but kept thinking "This sounds so familiar!" until we remembered the movie of the same name... So we settled on "PEST PLANET."
These are low res comps just to give the director an idea of what the cover could look like..
Some of the other possible names for the comic included:BEE-BOY, HONEY BOY, THE BEE’S, B, BUTT MUNCH, BEE-BO, BUGO, BUGGABOO, BUG OFF, BUGGER, CRICKET, TWITTER, CREEPY, CRAWL, SWANK, INSECTO, INSECTO-RAMA, BUG BOY, BUGGY, PESTO, PEEVE, VEX, MICROBBE, BUGO-RAMA, TASTEE WORLD, THE STAND, BUG LAND, BEE-TLE BOY, INSECTIVOR, FUTURAMA, HOUSE AND GARDEN, LADYBUG JOURNAL.
What we were trying to do was create this, kind of, underground comic, that would be something people would find at coffee shops, and sit down and read... Create an awareness of the problems that the rising food costs could create..
Yeah, yeah, I know.. Working for the man... Click Here to see All Final Images.
one of the inside illustrations. Same bug, now reading a newspaper, plotting his takeover.
Congratulations to all of the winners; just getting into the show is a huge thrill for me. This year, seeing some recognition for some of the personal work I had been doing is very rewarding, and will help validate a continuing efforts in these directions.
This was a fun little illustration for David Sather; “Buzzing with Creativity.” I know this Illustration is a year old, but we were thrilled to find out it just won a gold medal at Society of Illustrators West, Editorial Category! So, I thought it would be a good entry to my blog. Hope you enjoy!
This little illustration was an article for IBM’s series magazine. It seemed pretty obvious when you’re using bee hives as an analogy for the work place, then why not put the bees in a honeycomb cubicle? I added some little high tech jet trails to give it a little motion and connection to technology.
Thumbnail sketches for ideas..
#8 ended up being the one they chose.
Okay ,yes another penis drawing from "The Penis Chronicals." I had this little drawing I used to throw into my slide shows to scare the kids and try to keep folks mildly awake. one time I was showing it to some Portfolio Center student and someone yelled out I should call it "Call for Entries." I thought that was pretty funny so I had this little idea tha tI could reverse them and call it ..."Call for Re-Entry."
