...and then he said, "chirp."

a little while ago, I entered a little competition by submitting this design:



now that it's up for voting, tell me how much you love or loathe it. i suppose indifference wouldn't be out of order either.

the same image is also up for voting at yay art here. there are also more of my yay art designs here.

hooray yay art.

yay art is yet another online competition i've recently joined. this one in particular sells limited run art prints.

i've put together 2 pieces, one i was assembling for threadless, and the other was reassembled from an entry i had placed at design by hümans.



you can visit my yay art profile here, i'm sure i'll be updating that page often. as much as i adore t-shirt designing, it's nice to step out of that and do these prints and skate decks.

edit:

boo yay art.

i have 2 more designs in the same spot, but they are fairing really badly percentage wise.

the diva in me thinks it's the other artists all "naying" or voting that they don't like every design that is not theirs in hopes that it will help them win.

the reality may be that people don't like my designs, but it has dropped pretty drastically fast on both days 2 and 3.

yay art is also announcing the winners shortly after the last day of the competition, and the voting is ongoing. so while mine will be voted on for 2 weeks, with people stabbing it in the heart with nay votes, someone could enter theirs on the last day, get their 15 online friends to vote yay, and they have a considerably better chance of making it into the top 24 prints than i do sitting around for all the nay votes.

i hope the folks at yay art have a way to take this into consideration.

righteous robo roundup.

as a huge transformers fan, i've always been keen on robots of all sorts.

i decided to run through some vector designs i'd made over the past 2.5 years and was actually suprised at their numbers.

here they all are, titles and explanations after the images. and if you like any of these, they are all for sale currently.



#1 a radom sketch of a robot "peeing" on a fire hydrant like a dog. this was done prior to the transformer movie's polarizing scene of bumblebee doing the same thing. this was one of the first pieces of vector art that i completed from sketch to screen. i created it as a possible threadless design; but i blogged about it as a work in progress and it wasn't well recieved so i shelved it.

#2 this guy is my favorite and he made it into my personal portfolio. toastor! he made his rounds through threadless

i was very pleased with the execution, especially since this was the first sketch to screen vector i shared with the masses. this little guy also has a backstory:

"TOASTOR
'I will butter the charred chassis of my enemies... then sprinkle fresh cinnamon on their remains!'
Toastor is the maniacal leader of the evil Appliance Defiance squad. In battle, his strategies are unmatched, leaving many of the Utensil Defense soldiers sent to the dishwasher of doom. After burning one too many slices of toast, society tossed him aside. After emerging from an alleyway trashcan, he amassed an army of the disposed, and ever since, the "Appliance Defiance" has been taking over the world... one kitchen at a time."

#3 here's a design titled "seekers" showcasing the 3 generation one transformers jets making up the team by the same name. i wanted to place their sihouettes against a very vintage looking sun design. never did anything else with this one.

#4 a transforming ipod. modeled after soundwave, one of the more popular generation one transformers that changed into a tape deck, i thought this was a novel idea... but wait a few years, and it exists. as big a fan of transformers as i am, i had to hold back on an overly expensive mp3 player, when i already have an ipod stuffed with 6,000+ songs

#5 "rock monster" this guy also ran his threadless course:

just an abstract idea i had that i wanted to see come to life. this was the first time i played with swatches (for the smoke and fire) and got the swawtches to work well.

#6 and lastly, "back burner" another soldier in the appliance defiance. i had fun making him, but after toastor scored so low on threadless, i decided against adding him to the competition. he has his own story as well:
"Back Burner
The once proud stovetop oven cooked thousands of family meals. After his owner's house sold to a young couple, they opted for a "less drab" color scheme in the house and tossed him to the back curb. It was there that Back Burner met Toastor and joined the ranks of the Appliance Defiance. The muscle of the group, he remains quiet and stoic, and loyal to Toastor's cause. He has been known to overkill "innovative" appliance's, like refrigerators with LCD screens, during raids; a rage issue Toastor secretly hopes he never has to reign in."

so there is my vector robot collection (paling in comparison to my plastic robot army, taking up real estate in 9 large tubs in my closet).

again, these are all for sale, if anyone loves robots as much as i do, let me know.

jesus was a headbanger.

i've been in ska bands, punk bands (ska punk bands), metal bands, hell, i've even used garageband to make a few rap and r&b songs.

a few years back, i used to play in absent of. and one of the many bands we'd played with over the years was godhead & manhood, they were trying out second guitarists a few years after absent of. had broken up. and i obliged. ultimately, i didn't have the skills to stick around, but they kept me in mind for graphic design projects.

the title of the album is "the world blasphemes the name of god because of you" and is pointed at the hipocrisy of many practicing christians. they knew the art and idea was walking a tightrope, being a christian metal band and having such dark implicitly evil imagery has to handled with kid gloves, but they said "they'll deal with it, it will entice them to speak to us about it and allow us to explain to them what christianity really means to us." i said, "okay."

here, i made album and cd art for them:



the only thing i would have done differently would be to remove the textured feel that the bible verse repeated on the cover creates. it was client specific, so i didn't want to stomp on their descisions. but i'm proud of it, and i know they liked it as well.

i've gone on to make 2 shirt designs for them. one of which i have to talk to their drummer about... the design was prepped for white ink, and he decided it would look cooler with black ink, despite making the image appeaer inverted and indecipherable. but i'm good friends with him, so i can rib him openly about screwing up my designs.