Retail Traffic...

These were done a little over a year ago for a trade pub. called Retail Traffic, with A.D. Sean Barrow, this was before everything went spiraling down the commode. However even though the opening illo. was injected with as much positivity as we could muster, the spots seemed to hint at an uncertain future. 

The old guy with the oxygen tank was for the Gap and how they may have spread themselves too thin, expanded into too many markets and seriously diluted their brand. So much so that they were in need of some life support. The idea was to spoof their old television and prints ads.

The one with the giant robot was about Walmart and how smaller independant business' and local communities were doing their best to keep Walmart out of their towns.

Internet Super Villans

These character designs were done for what was going to be a very fun job for SmithGifford, an advertising and branding shop out of Falls Church Va.  The client was Apptix a company that offers internet services.  The A.D. on this job was Kevin Richards, when he called me for this job he said he needed some designs somewhat in the Marvel Comics style of  super villains that would represent different problems we all deal with every day on the internet, in this case spam and virus's. He wanted to develop two of the characters to show the client in conjunction with the rest of the campaign. We did, the client liked it but they did end up changing them from villains to heroes, probably a good idea. Unfortunately by the time SmithGifford was given the go ahead on the campaign I was knee deep in what turned into a 3 month long assignment for another client so I had to sadly decline the job. It would have been a gas, maybe next time.

Gift Cards Exposed...

This piece was done for Keith Whitney at USAA.COM magazine. It's a financial services trade publication and this article dealt with, obviously, gift cards and how they may not be giving the consumer everything they claim. What? Say it ain't so.

In the final Keith married the illustration with a photo of a guy holding the tabloid in his hands reading it with a look of consternation on his face. Unfortunately I don't have a file of his finish so this will have to do.

Global Warming...

This piece was done for for a local "alternative" tabloid called Brick back when Pete Humes was the Editor. I'm not sure how it qualifies as being alternative though, I believe it's supported by Media General, which puts out the local Richmond Times Dispatch and apparently 24 other daily newspapers. In fact They're a media conglomerate with interests in broadcasting and interactive media and who knows what else. My guess is like everyone else these days they're experiencing financial difficulties. One look at the paper and you'd think so. It unfortunately has little to offer in the way of real substance, it's full of trivial unnecessary information and lots of photo's of young people partying. I thought that's what Facebook and Myspace were for.

I don't mean to criticize the people who put the paper out week after week, I'm sure they're under staffed, underfunded and work very hard to meet their deadlines. I know that when Pete was putting out the paper he was lacking any meaningful support from Media General. It seems to me that this "alternative" paper is just a cynical ploy on the owners part to collect ad revenue. Unfortunately they don't seem to understand a basic rule of the marketplace, if you're going to ask people for something, in this case the advertisers, you need to give them something in return and that would be a paper worth picking up. If Media General really wants succeed at this they need to take a long range view of what they. want the paper to be and then give the staff the financial backing to achieve that goal.

After all is said and done though there's no escaping the insidiousness of a corporate conglomerate pretending that they have a sincere interest in putting out an "alternative" paper. I think people are smarter than that.

I Think I see a Yeti

This is another job that was done with Tyler Darden of Virginia Living Magazine about a year ago. I thought perhaps I'd post it before spring gets here. It was for a feature on extreme winter sports. I'm not sure how curling and ice fishing fit into this category but it wasn't my job to ask. Maybe because it's extremely cold ? All's I know is I was given the opportunity to draw a Yeti, who wouldn't jump at that? Tyler suggested developing a narrative of sorts which I did, however tenuous it may be. Anyways I always enjoy working with Tyler, he makes every job fun and challenging.

Italian Film and Food Festival 2009

We were excited to be given the opportunity to do the poster a second year in a row for The Italian Film and Food Festival. This year I worked with Spencer Hansen of Team8press on it. Like our poster for popidiot we collaborated again. I came up with the initial concept and executed the drawing and Spencer designed the type and did the coloring and as always, we printed it together in Team8eight's top secert underground location.

The festival is this saturday, Jan,. 6th. There will be 4 films, the first starting at 11:00 am at Plant Zero, you can find all the information you need at The Richmond Moving Image Coop.

A big thanks again to Ed for providing us with such fun work.

Society of Illustrators 51

I was very excited to hear that the cover I did for our T-shirt company popidiot's catalogue was accepted into The Society of Illustrator's annual 51. It's the 2nd time in the last 3 years that I've been lucky enough to get a piece in. I find it a little odd that both times it has been for something I've done for popidiot. Gee, I guess I should try and get some more work from them. And a big thank you to SI, we think you have wonderful taste.

More Comics!

This was a comic that I worked on with Tyler Darden, art director extraordinaire at Virginia Living Magazine and Don Harrison, local writer, journalist, blogger and all round funny guy.

Yes we did this a few years ago, 3 to be exact. Wow, it's been that long? Time flies. So the time's just right for this post. It was done for the June 2006 issue to coincide with the 400th year anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. Our intention was to showcase the side of the story that had until then had been shoved under the bed, pushed to the back of the closet, hidden under the rug. We tried to imbue it with the sensibility of the very early Mad Magazine, the 

Harvey Kurtzman - Will Elder Mad Magazine. It's doubtful we attained our goal but we had a lot of fun trying.

Areva Opening Video

      This is a job I did last year with Bruce Hornstein of Pyramid Studios. It was done for Areva, a European company that builds and maintains nuclear reactors. My understanding of the function of the job itself was that it was more or less a pep rally for the company, something they do every 2 years, and this was part of the opening module. Pyramid has been doing this for them for awhile now. When Bruce approached me about this he said he wanted to create an animated graphic novel feeling for it. Granted the animation is limited but given the budget and time constraints I think it ended up having a very rich atmospheric feel to it.

Comic work with M.w. Kaluta...

Since I haven't posted any work in way too long and the post that I made just prior to this one could be perceived as maybe a little less than positive, depending on your political perspective, I thought it might be fun to revisit some work I did some 25 years ago or so. This is my only mainstream comic book work done with the generous support  and recommendation of Michael Kaluta. I had been a huge fan of Michael's work long before this opportunity came along. During the early to mid-seventies Michael's work along with Bernie Wrightson and  Barry Smith started to appear in mainstream comics. Being young and not knowing how or why the industry worked the way it did, when I discovered their work, it was like a creative breath of fresh air. It was unlike anything else being done at that time that I was aware of.

Many years later while attending art school at VCU I was lucky to meet Michael through a mutual friend, Phil Trumbo, and become a friend of Michael's in the process. This lead to me getting a job on Michael's recommendation being his assistant on an early MTV music video for the band "The Allan Parsons Project". I'm not sure that anyone of us who worked on that video think back on it as a high water mark in our careers but for a young kid just out of art school working side by side with one of his idols, it was an incredible experience. I'm not sure how long after that job finished Michael offered me the opportunity to work with him again as his inker for this Superman comic, maybe a year or so, but needless to say I jumped at the chance. Did my inks do his pencils justice? No. But I still look back on it fondly as the exciting experience that it was.

Now george, Behave...

Even though I haven't posted anything in way too long, this post isn't going to be about illustration, it's about the sense of relief and joy I'm feeling that we finally did something right by not letting yet another election be hijacked by a bunch of self interested short sighted money grubbing entitled pirates. 

It looks like the one thing the bush years have given us is a complete repudiation of his administration and everything it stood for. So I'm going to say something I never thought I would or could, thank you george bush. Because without you subjecting the American People to an unthinkably painful eight years, I'm not sure we would have had the courage to put someone like Barack Obama into office. 

After watching you, george, over the last couple of weeks doing interview after interview pathetically grasping for anything to hang your legacy on that hasn't been tainted by your actions of the last eight years. It seems that the one thing you may actually be able to lay claim to, however inadvertent, is helping to put Barack into office. Let's just hope that Barack and his administration are up to the task of shoveling all the shit you and yours left behind.