TONIC (n.) - Badass, Cybernetically-enhanced, Industro-punk Star Of The Dark Future.

Interrupted.

The Big Reveal.

Another linework sketch for possible graffiti art. This time, went for some Phantogram fan art. Just let my imagination run wild while listening to Voices (and Nightlife and Eyelid Movies). It’s straight crazy, but I think I could pull it off on a wall with some practice.

(I really like the idea of graffiti being a coded language of sorts, where only the artist, and the people who know how he or she works, can read their letters. Kinda what I was striving for here.)

Something super cool... Walked into a local bookstore a while back, and they had my hardcover displayed face-out right next to Jeff Vandermeer’s newest Southern Reach novel!

So amazing when a store sees the cryptic abstract cover and is like “this is cool” and puts it face-out. Plus Absolution has a similar chrome-foil element to my cover, so I thought they looked really nice together.

That’s all. Just a fun little something.

colorofamirror.net

Color of a Mirror is my cyberpunk novel centered around a musician who wants to be a rockstar. Written, designed, and published by me, it’s not bombastic or action-heavy, but rather is driven by character and personal, human issues. It gets into ideas of the subconscious and the lies we tell ourselves. If you like the dark futures of William Gibson, I think you’ll find something to like in this book.

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I love different forms of communication, anything really that codes words behind beautiful design rather than actual letters. The above design motif is on the cover of the forthcoming deluxe hardcover novel, and is a stylized version of the American braille for “Color of a Mirror” (beginning at bottom left).

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Tomorrow is Cyber Monday. This is everything I’ve ever wanted a cerebral, cyberpunk novel to be, so what better day to check it out than tomorrow!

Available exclusively from my website, each copy will come signed by me, and will start shipping on or around Dec. 1.

(And if you want a taste of this world, check out the cinematic dark ambient soundtrack of the same name, now streaming on Spotify and other streaming platforms!)

Open

Is it weakness, the compulsion to live one’s life openly with others, to readily expose our faults and frailties? Or is it strength, a spade to rip out the weeds that would love only a false version of ourself? Or perhaps it is neither… not inherently good or ill; instead, only a danger. For to live so openly requires trust. And trust, no matter how great or how small, is merely an invitation for the world to break a little further…

Duskblade. (Of a part with the earlier Moonblade.)

Main Title Design: Lesson 3.

For this assignment, we were tasked with creating six narrative frames with typography using only a limited set of 40 images. The film is a documentary about the Apollo mission. I used only 6 of those images, in my effort to create a set of modern minimal titles.

Instead of going for the sepia-faded, old-film look, I really wanted everything to have a strong black level, to make it feel more modern, (perhaps more like how the movie Gravity made me feel about outer space). However, I didn't want to completely do away with a nod to the past, to the "Golden Age" of space exploration, so the opening frames are very warm as the sun breaks around the edge of a hidden planet. It evokes a more mysterious energy, more like a sci-fi movie, speaking to discovery and unknown worlds.

As we begin to pan across the planet, we see the Command Module hanging in orbit around the planet. It's moving towards us slightly, even as we pan further to the left of it. As it grows larger in our field of vision, preparing to pass by on the right side of the screen, the camera pulls back through a window, and we realize we are in the Lunar Module, seeing through the eyes of one of the astronauts.

The camera pans away from the first window, settling on the smaller "approach" window. At first the view through that portal is blurred, focusing instead on the numbers on the glass. But once we move beyond that glass, the moon is passing by, filling our vision, until finally, we settle on the final frame. This last shot mirrors and inverts the first frame, contrasting the warm glow of exploration and expectations of 1960s space exploration with the colder, harsher reality that is outer space.

As for why I chose the "side" view of the moon, instead of putting it at the bottom of the shot... simply put, it's not a view we see as much in film and other media. And the truth is, there is no up or down in space, so the views aren't grounded in the planet's surface being beneath your feet.

The font is "Impact Label Regular." I chose it in an attempt to replicate the old-style label machines that created the raised labels for technical systems and buttons back in the 60s and 70s. The font also evokes the feel of classified documents, riddled with black redaction marks. The Apollo missions were all part of the space race and NASA's battle with the Soviet Union (not to mention the strong undercurrents of the Cold War). The science and research documents behind the rockets and computer systems were highly classified materials, and so I wanted to make sure to include an homage to this atmosphere.

(via Homework - 3. A Controlled Experiment)

@ashthorp

The Waves’ Revealing

Part Two.