Thursday, July 21, 2011

How Coffee Works / US Patent #597.7311.143

This was a print project near and dear to my caffeine-riddled heart. 3-colors (black, white & fluorescent pink) on 18"x24" chipboard.
I got asked to participated in a coffee/espresso themed print show at Foam here in St. Louis, and how could I pass that up? I had an idea that was a continuation of this weird thing I made as part of a Devo t-shirt design contest last year:
It would get int the nuts 'n bolts of "HOW COFFEE WORKS", externally & internally...
...from the bush to the brain.
I gathered a bunch of reference, did a bunch of sketches, took apart my old Mr. Coffee, and started drawing all the pieces in Illustrator.
I was having a hard time squeezing all my usual junk -- flames, bulging eyeballs, cross-sections of brains & beans -- into an 18" x 24" rectangle...

...and liked the simplicity of the "coffee helmet" guy by himself, so I made the painful decision to eliminate all my usual junk and so something much simpler for a change. Thanks to my wife bolstering my courage (and giving me the 'US Patent# joke):
While posting this picture I just realized that I mix most of my silkscreen inks in old coffee cans. And I don't rinse them out very well, so you can be assured that some coffee grounds made their way into each and every print.
If you're interested, I believe they've still got a bunch of these for sale for $30 down at Foam (at the corner of Cherokee & Jefferson), otherwise catch up with me later. You'll be able to find me; just smell for the coffee breath.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Pungent Stench Manumaleuna

 Notes taken while creating a new character and participating in an OD&D campaign over the weekend.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Simian Snobs vs. Slobs

I drew this shirt in celebration of shirt.Woot!'s fourth birthday, happening this week!
Here's some early monkeying around:
My first design had four monkeys going ape, playing off the numerical "4" element of the birthday party:
We ultimately decided there was just too much monkey business going on and simplified the design to the two most primary primates.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Hardboiled Pixels

I worked with my pals over at woot! to draw a bunch of little assets for their recent 'Choose Your Own Adventure' text game / e-commerce opportunity WOOTQUEST: Bullets Over Crimeville.Although all the good stuff is probably already sold out, you can still play the game here.I drew that fancy extruded logo, the clickable arrow/maze gadgets, and these portraits of the seedy denizens of Crimeville you run into during your quest:
I simplified the sketches a bit to read better at 75x pixels:I also drew this sad finalé scene......featuring the classic woot! MacGuffin, the "Bag of Crap":Good luck getting yours, and not stepping in any along the way!