Electric Avenue

Calendar illo' for the Night 'n' Day section of the Miami New-Times, advertising some kinda 80's retro-prom goofball barf-fest. Click for a larger view.

Happy Hunting

Merry Thanksgiving, everyone!
(above: RFT illustration combining a variety of St. Louis area Turkey Day events)

St. Louis Film Festival '07

This year's St. Louis International Film Festival is already in full-gear, and here's a bunch of components I put together for it. The big poster / program cover is seen above. Below are the badges, T-shirt, web-banner, silkscreened prints shown 3/4 of the way through, and my initial sketch. Go see some great movies!

Fit for Print

Some recent spot illustrations for the Riverfront Times - usually for the "unreal" section.
The Backhoe Rodeo:The Pink Pistols Gay Gun-Rights Group:Muny 2007 Year-End Wrap-Up (bonus points if you can name all 7 plays):New Study: "Household Appliances Attack!":Signs of Road Rage, Before:
And After:

Sugar Daddy / Babies

Here are some illustrations I did last week for the Miami New Times for an article about the south Florida sugar daddy scene. It was sort of a tough conceptual nut to crack because of how easy the targets are so I did a whole bunch of sketches: I ended up going a different direction, playing up the candy packaging / product character angle I stumbled upon with my last sketch. Here's how the lead illustration to the article turned out (ink & vector):And here are the two interior spots (ink & graywash):

Case Study / Caber Toss

I did this illustration (above: ink & wash on copy paper, 11" x 8.5") last week alerting readers of the RFT to the Scottish Games and Cultural Festival held annually in Forest Park. The subject matter seemed familiar and then I realized I had done an illustration about the exact same event two years ago, only worse (below: ink and vector, 3" x 5"). Maybe it's interesting to see what in my style has changed (tartan patterns in Illustrator) and what has stayed the same (woodgrain, sweatles).

Big Read Festival Saturday Oct. 6th

If anybody is planning on going to the Big Read Festival tomorrow in downtown Clayton, I'll be doing a panel and talking about comics with my pals Ted May (Injury Comics), A.J. Trujillo (Star Clipper) and Cliff Froelich (Cinema St. Louis). Apparently there is also a "demonstration" involved but I'm not sure what that's gonna entail. Anyway, come find us at the Big Bee Stage (on South Central & Carondelet) at four o'clock! I should also have a fresh out-of-the-oven batch of silkscreened Schematic Comics available for purchase and/or personalized doodling.

One Last Voyage

Hey everybody! If you don't know, my pals Kevin Huizenga and Ted May and I have run a little online shop for minicomics & zines for about 6 years - the Catastrophe Shop. It was fun supplying the world with (what we considered) worthwhile and enjoyable little home-made & self-published booklets, as well as being able to sell our own.
There was a point though, where it just got to be too much work and was really slowing down our own comics productivity, especially mine. The good ship has been steadily sinking into disrepair, so sorry for that. But here's a last chance to do any last minute shopping. I'll be filling orders like crazy for the next couple of months, hoping to send our remaining books to good homes.
A million thanks to our loyal customers and amazing artists whose books we have carried. It's been great. If you have questions about orders or whatever else, email me at danzettwoch (at) gmail (dot) com.
Finally, it should be known that there are several places who do a similar thing that we do / did, only better. Here are some of 'em: The Poopsheet Shop, Bodega Distribution, Global Hobo, Secret Acres.

DANZETTWOCH.COM

In case anybody's interested, I finally got around to making myself a proper website. There's probably a bunch of stuff on there you haven't seen, especially on the Illustration side of things.
I also posted up bunch of full Comics to read, like this classic cautionary tale / math comic starring my pal Jason Shiga, and this dusty old chestnut from the long-out of print Impossible #1 zine. There's some juicy stuff in the Prints section too, as I reveal how different (usually worse, sometimes better!) my silkscreens look than the original art.
Anyway, feel free to poke around and let me know what you think, what links are broken, etc. Thanks everybody!

Plymouth Fury Tattoo Art

(More info on my new kitties here).

HOT WAX

Cross-post with the St. Louis Drawing Club, where I have a tendency to drink an alternating regimen of coffee and beer and do weird gross-out drawings thinly attached to the night's theme. I basically always take the theme and somehow make a hot rod out of it. Last night: moustaches.

Ms. Missouri Nursing Homes 2007

Here's a little illustration (ink and wash on bristol, 10" x 12") I did for the RiverFront Times in honor of Ms. Sylvia Brickman Slone, who was named Ms. Missouri Healthcare Association at the annual pageant. Congratulations Ms. Brickman Slone!

Pedal to the Metal

Another in my series of Mysterious Cyclists seen cruising through Maplewood, this kindly fella was seen toolin' past my studio a while back. I wish I would've seen him on the way back -- I bet he filled that basket up with some good stuff.Here's to cool Fall weather, my beautiful neighborhood and neighbors, and to starting a brand new sketchbook!

Sack Lunch Drag Race

If you find yourself in the magazine aisle of your local grocery, look for the September issue of Nickelodeon Magazine (there is a smiling cow on the cover). In addition to lots of other fun kids' stuff there is a weird "back to school" themed drawing that I drew for the cover of the comics section (pictured above). Inspired by some Sharpie/White-Out drawings I did on French cardboard, the editors suggested I do some drawings on (American) brown paper sacks. Here are my first rough and real stupid ideas:At some point I decided to do a drawing on a 3-dimensional bagged lunch rather than flattened sacks and here were some ideas on how that could've worked ...... and then (of course) I decided to turn it into a hot rod! Actually two dueling hot rods, one full of gnarly bad-for-you bully foods and one full of wimpy good-for-you foods. WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?! The first step was to stage the little drag race scene by stuffing a couple of sacks with me and Jenny's actual lunches and position them on the blue tile floor of the St. Louis Science Center's gift shoppe. Then our pal John took lots of nice pictures with his fancy camera. Thanks John!
I got rid of the sweet note from Mom and changed the tile to a nice puke-green back-to-school color. Speaking of wimpy, at some point I realized that I wouldn't be able to do the drawings on the bags themselves so went toward a more layered photo/illustration combo method. Bottom-line -- it was light-box and tracing paper time:
After a bunch more boring computer voodoo this is how it turned out (below). Now get back to shopping or your ice cream sandwiches are gonna melt!

VICTORY

Another summer at the Saratoga has come to a close, and with it another gold pin for the Handsome Brothers' trophy case. It was tough, having narrowly edged out the Heisenburgs, 3 J's and a Z, and team Whoa! Yeah! for first place in the final week. Luckily there were some sharpies laying around for me to deface our loot (pictured above) with. I love drawing at bowling.
In case you haven't seen one of us strutting down Manchester in our team colors, here's what our logo looks like:
And here's an action shot of me. It should look familiar to purchasers of Private Stash. The pin is probably hiding a gnarly 4 - 10 split (the lanes were real graveyards last night). For an indication of how old the Saratoga is, count the stars on that flag.
Look out Fall League!
UPDATE: See Billy K's sandwich blog for another view of this magical night.

Local Color

In case you didn't hear, me and 3 pals of mine were recently elected by St. Louis Magazine some of the "Coolest People in St. Louis". I know what you're all thinking: "St. Louis must SUCK!" But the fact remains that we got to party with Murph-Drrt and Bill Keaggy. And we did the above collaborative drawing to accompany an article about us. From L to R: Kevin H, me, Ted May, and Mardou.

The Sunny Side of Dan Z.

(Drawn during thesis reviews at my alma mater the week my wisdom teeth were removed and I had a surprise root canal. It was too dark to ink the page I had snuck into the auditorium with me and I was in a bad mood. These made for good catharthis though, as did the white castle fish nibblers I ate on the way home. I was ashamed of both in the light of the next day.)