This awesome blog just posted the close up of Batgirl and Harley I posted a little bit ago! If you like nerdy comic/scifi random images, this is the place to go. I also got a nice critique on the piece, which is sweet, I dig getting feedback. Need to listen sometimes to improve and what not.

Any who, here are a few recent things from the blog that I think are cool. And random. Go look at stuff yerself!

my buddy Josh got his website up and running, you should go check it out! Really dig his style and look forward to seeing more of his work.

here are a few examples:

So a few months back, my lovely wife and I had a hanker’in for some ThunderCloud Subs. They are my favorite sandwich shop in Austin, and after ordering my Italian Combo I noticed a paper stand on the counter that was looking for Design Submissions. When we got back to the pad I went to their website to figure out the deal. Turkey Trot is a run/walk charity event in November, and they were having a contest to come up with ThunderCloud’s logo for this years 20th anniversary. And the winner gets free subs for a year. Done. Good cause, awesome subs and some free times on my hands fueled this endevor. I really wasn’t in it to win it, I just liked the challenge. It’s good to have little projects that you don’t set the rules for, good practice and a fun idea.

Long story short…. I WON!!!!!!! On Tuesday I met with one of the owners John (really great guy and fellow New Yorker from back in the day), for a little photo op and to collect my free sub coupons. Below is the winning design which will appear on over 1.200 t shirts, on posters and in ads for the event. Life is good and long live ThunderCloud!

Turkey Trot Logo

Thought I would show a little of how I work, shine the flashlight in the face of the man behind the curtain while he’s making #2, so to speak. This pretty much is my standard process and seems to make sense to me. It varies for each job, but I feel developing a system with steps is a great way to approach anything. It allows to you set time goals and systemizes the creative process just enough to make sure you don’t get overwhelmed or veer of coarse:

First I come up with an idea of what I think will work for that subject matter. In this case, the story is about a do-it-yourself husband who does it all wrong and pisses off his wife. Pretty straight forward. Most of my stuff is light-hearted, so I try not to over think things too much, and stick to showing only what needs to be shown.

Next, reference! The internet has made getting any reference material for any kind of anything possible. I knew I wanted a subarban backyard as my environment, so I googled “backyard”. And a million images popped up. I chose one that had plenty of room for my characters, and one that I could easily change around and make my own. Once I had my stage, I sketched out some characters in my sketch book and scanned them in. Now I can place them on my reference backyard and see how i need to adjust things to make the design of the illustration be even and work. In this case I drew the water pipes and squirts in Illustrator so I could easily move and adjust those too.

Super Rough

When it looks pretty much how I want, I begin to trace over my sketches in Illustrator, each element in a separate file, so I can continue to adjust placement after each piece is done. I also take things out that don’t seem to work. Originally I was going to have a TV next to the Husband, set to a DYI show that made is project look easy. It got to confusing, I think you can still get the basic point across with out the TV, so it got gone.

And sometimes the sketches don’t seem to gel right after they have been flushed out in Illustrator. I wasn’t feeling the wife so much and wanted her body language to read “pissed” a little more. So, I googled, “angry wife”. Plenty of good material popped up, and I based my new wife off of this image:

Wife

This worked out much better, so everything got put into different layers in Photoshop, and I started to add some textures to give everything a little more character and not seem so vectory:

Getting there...

Now it’s a matter of fine tuning and tinkering with more textures, adjustment layer options, filters, and tweaks until to looks how you like. I think at this point fate steps in and mistakes become happy accidents. I tend to step away from an illustration at this point, maybe for an hour or two, so I can come back at it with fresh eyes. Sometimes I like to look at it in a mirror just to get a different perspective and see if it still looks balanced. But now it’s wrap up time. Make sure you send a lores to the client and wait to see what notes or changes they have. Knock those out quickly and politely and then this one was done:

Final Illustration

Would love to hear any comments or questions, and will continue to post these as they happen. Thanks for your time!

In case you don’t know me that well, I have been obsessed with LOST for the past few years. Definitely got involved late in the game, but quickly caught up season by season until I was sitting and swaying in front of the TV until season 6 started. The show was like crack to me, and the last season and finale were bitter sweet. I wish the island had a little more to do with the ending and the actual cork that kept out the bad things was kinda stoops. But, overall, an amazing show that the networks are now trying to copy (like that new one with the people abducted and put in that town), but it just ain’t even close.

In October I did this illustration of my favorite Son-of-a-bitch, Sawyer. This was before the final season started and I think it holds up with the Smoke Monster in the back. Let me know what you think! And check out Fuckyeahlost for more awesome LOST related nuggets. Below are some badass stuff on the site.

"FIN" by M. Brady Clark

Map of the Island

And remember, “live free or die alone”…. wait, that’s not it…

I found this randomly trolling the web for art. Really bad ass blog…..

My buddy Jordan Is an amazing chef in Vail, and hired me to come up with some logos for his Home Chefs of Vail business, and a blog he started called Hungry in the Rockies. This was a super fun project, both are 2 very different looks that still kinda work together. The direction he gave me for the blog was along the lines of, “A monster coming up over the Rocky Mountains”. I went with this Ol’ Timey look, and gave it some color. I think it turned out pretty nice, on my website you can see the business card version of it in 2 colors only. Still translates that way too, and is one of my favorites….

This is something I was just playing around with. Did the slime first which is super vector and kinda clean looking, then thought the vintage background and the chaotic, devil shit meshed together pretty well. This piece is called “FUN”.

This is how the GAMERA LOVE THE KIDS illustration first started out. I went for a kinda retro look, but decided to push it even further and make it seem like it could actually a retro illustration. Did a little photoshop mumbo jumbo and came up with a little rougher, 4 color simplified version, that is now on my site. Curious to see what others prefer…..

A while back I was working on a Cartoon pitch with my buddy Big Robb. A lot of back and forth with a few different networks for years, and after the smoke settled, no deal but some really cool character design art and a lot of experience with Turns. Now whenever I start to illustrate a story or try to figure out how to keep drawing the same character from every angel over and over again, I tend to do some Character turns before rushing into panels or whatever.

Here are a few that I’ve done over the years. Once I get into my old hardrive I’ll prolly find some more to post, and definitely for future projects I’ll keep doing them and keep posting them……

Still one of my favorite characters

"King", main character from my Who Do You Love comic

Old Geronimo sketch straight on, happy, drunk, and pist