some LLLLLOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGG over due character sketches i promised someone. i know this particular dead horse has been reduced to mince meat by this point but FUCK. there are not enough hours in the day.

old, cold leftovers from the christmas project. we had to come up with the perfect gift for a famous person picked at random from the festive fez. i got orson welles (who was a total DUDE!) so i gave him a snow globe featuring a scene from his glory days in theatre.

also, i may have just figured out how to embed videos into posts. to celebrate, here's a wonderful song on the subject of that most polarising of toast toppings; vegemite.

more pencil work for the new york editorial piece.

in other news, the illustration department's taking us out there next wednesday. HOLY FUCK, YOU COULD TECHNICOLOUR ME EXCITED.

more book marking. check these out folks, they're pretty damn niffty!

http://www.dutchuncle.co.uk/illustrators/du/tavis-coburn/portfolios/bafta-2010 -travis colburn's posters for the 2010 baftas. there's one for each of the five movies up for best film. mmm-MMM! love those old school aesthetics.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/02/22/cool-stuff-brandon-schaefers-movie-posters/ - god, i WISH the folks who churn movie poster out would take a leaf out of this guy's book.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/02/16/cool-stuff-the-lost-art-of-inglourious-basterds/ - un used art work for inglorious basterds.

i think pretty much all this stuff was pilfered from the /film website.

pencils for the bits of the final part of the editorial project. they gave us an article about this guy's love affair with new york and it's doing eeeeeeeeeeveryone's head in.

needed to throw these up as a reference because i'm to damn lazy to flip back and forth between pages.

editorial project! now with 99% more colour!

pandemonium was meant to be the word behind this one, but looking at it, others seem to come to mind.... hmmm... i think they go something along the lines of WHEN I WAS A YOUNG BOY, MY FATHER TOOK ME INTO THE CITY TO SEE A MARCHING BAND and so on and so forth.

huh, if i ever get around to making that illustrated song book i've been wanting to do for FOR-FUCKING-EVER, this would probably be fair game for that particularly emo-tastic ballard...

yeah, totally abused this for the sake of drawing gnarly monsters but oh lordy lordy was it fun.

(i'm also maybe a little too please with this one)

storyboards

blargh, i totally ran out of time on this one BUT YOU TOTALLY CAN'T TELL, AMIRITE?!>but yeah, i ended up cobbling these to optical atrocities together on the world's bumpiest train to edinburgh (on that note, if you ever want to make a 7 hour train ride wizz by, get yourself a super massive project with a deadline that's about 16 hours away and you WILL FLY BY THE SEAT OF YOUR GOD DAMN PANTS).
...
a-booooooooooooooo.

o9/o9 of the highrise illustrations.

and that's that. taken from the very last bit of the book where laing, having weathered the process of decay and degeneration, looks on as the process starts anew in the neighbouring highrise.

gosh, j.g ballard sure knew how to write a jolly yarn. but all snarky comments aside, this was a damn good book. if your itching for something a little icky and feeling particularly cynical about man kind, this'll go down a treat.

yeaaaaaaah, those unintelligible yellow blobs in the other building are _meant_ to be torch lights but i think someone had lost the will to put any effort into this by that point. shame on me.

found a couple more glamour doll storyboards kicking around so oh well, what the hell. the shoot wrapped a couple of weeks ago although they've said they need to do a couple of reshoots so maybe watch this space for more rent boy/drag queen action?

and WOW, these are some weak sauce drawings. doing work at two in the morning of deadline day is so frigging futile.

just some stuff i wanted to book mark because there's too much groovy stuff out there on the interwebs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bsXOcK9_Cw
- wonderfully dark music video for depeche mode's wrong.


- video for spacious thoughts. OH MY GOD IT'S PRETTY.

we're currently trying to wrap our heads around screen, lino and dry point etching at the moment. for it, they gave us a passage from a nonsense poem in alice in wonderland (something about fish pulling shapes?) to illustrate. there weren't enough lines to go around though so this was a two parter done with abi (she did the bottom half).

OH HOW I REGRET GIVING MY PART OF THE DESIGN SO MANY SWOOPY LINES.

sketchbook guff.

stuff you can do while waiting for horrendously late people (i think the person finally rolled in two and a bit hours after we were meant to be meeting? GO FOR GOLD MY SON!)

this was back when iphones were all novel and new.

sketch book stuff from copenhagen. there are some very pretty buildings round those parts.

those are some wise words from tash man over there.

sketch book stuff!

i think this is way back from the first week of uni when they took us out and about to do some reportage work. holy crap, i can't believe that was five months ago. clearly we've been having too much fun.

or we've just been working ourselves into the ground.
..
....
HA!

o8/o9 of the high rise illustrations.

ugh. so many dead people

pencil work for the word of the day, pandemonium. the madi gras from hell is a totally appropriate response to that brief, right?

oh my shitting christ, this was too much fun. best part hands down is the totally asstastic job i did putting this together in photoshop.

trying to come up with some charater designs for Q's webcomic. fuck. there are not enough hours in the day.

but yeah. orcs. i always pictured these guys as big ass-bad tempered vultures, roving around in make shift bits and bobs scavenged from what's left of anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path.

IF I HAD THINGS MY WAY, EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE A MASSIVE CHIN!

300th post!

and what a crappy one it is too. the out come for the equals brief. eeeeeeeeew. the yellow one was the first attempt but it felt so freaking static. tried to bring it back to life in the second attempt but maybe it's too scrappy and dark?

GAH!

editorial project stuff. teetotal was the first of the 'made up' words they gave us to tackle. the fact that there are fruit based alcoholic beverages out there COMPLETELY undermines this one.

christ. haven't inked anything in forever. it's waaaaaay too fricking intense.

o7/o9 of the high rise illustrations.

of all the dark, uncomfortable moments in that book, this one practically h chokes itself on the cake. we've been following wilder's obsessive accent up the high rise and watched him degenerate along with the ever more decrepit scenery. by the time he finally makes it to the top, he's regressed to little more than a child. he's not the only one up there though- a tribe of knife wielding women have taken up residence in the roof garden and made habit of decorating it with the left overs of tenants who've wondered up there only to be butchered and eaten.

when we last see wilder, he's toddling towards the flock of eager harpies, having mistaken them for his 'new mothers'.

shudder.

stuff for the editorial project.

buzz word for this one was 5th column (derived from general molar's insurgent group planted in madrid during the spanish civl war). was made super tricky by the fact we had to work to crazy small dimensions (something like 3x5). the good news is that apparently most editorial brief out there in the real world will measure in somewhere around there.

yay?

hmm, should have made the stink eye on the traitor more evident. did not come out _at all_ in the print off.

also, ARMS DON'T WORK THAT WAY!

we're doing this super quick fire editorial project at the moment where we're given a word and then have three days to come up with something niffty. this was for maverick. phoar! can't you just smell the machismo?

that glowing thing was meant to be like a cattle brand but it ended up looking like a big flaming y.

done while stuck on a train coming back from edinburgh.

sketch book junk- frivolous doodling while trying to come up with an idea for the phrase '5th column'.

acctualy, i think it was just an excuse to draw a big, gnarly wolf.

finally managed to squeeze in the do over for the zombie comic i'm doing with janek and craig. i'm super curious to see how this is going to look after it's been inked because these pencils are CRAZY loose.