April - Scott Pilgrim.

The Fine Art of Design.

Did a magazine ad for a great vintage shop in Palm Springs. Was a fun project and allowed me to do more textural work which I’ve been getting into recently, and a touch of screentone which I’ve found hard to incorporate into my style but like the challenge a lot. 

It’s October so we’re watching spookies. Here’s good ol’ Deputy Dewey from Scream 1.

Legends of Rock #06 - Paul McCartney

Fab four going strong with the guy holding it down on the low end and writing a whole lot of tunes - some not the best, but some timeless and wonderful. Don't get much bigger a rockstar than Paul.

Year In Review

Phew, today marks the 2 year anniversary of my starting this blog. It was a slow starter the first year, trying to figure out exactly what to post and how to talk about my work. The blog underwent a huge shift this past year, in tone, content and importance for me. It has become a place to experiment with new techniques, make jokes, write music, and share what goes on in my everyday life as an illustrator and designer. I plan on pumping up the volume exponentially this year on the blog and all things AE. Looking back at the year, I picked out a few posts I was particularly proud of and hope to match and maybe top in 2012.

2011 was the year of illustration. My work shifted heavily towards hand-crafted, fun imagery - a departure from my more precise and clean design previously. My 6 favorite images of the year pretty clearly show this trend.

My buddy does an epic Wrestlemania party each year, so I made some "get out of a shot" cards for the various games where when you lose, you drink. I think it's the only way to get people pumped about wrestling if they're not already. I went with a few famous finishers here. I'm new to wrestling but I already know I missed the best guys, namely Hulk and Macho Man.

Five Deadly Venoms

Pupil #2: The Snake from Chang Cheh’s (much more) story-driven martial arts film Five Deadly Venoms. One hand represents the snake’s head, the other the tail. Trying to keep the warmup game going.

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Bird 4: House Sparrow

The ultra-common, often ratty, occasionally cute House Sparrow. These guys are all over the states, and Brooklyn is no exception. Commonly found fighting pigeons for bread.

Another gig poster for the now Chicago-based DJ Lani Love. I like them all, but this one might be my favorite. This one is up before the event, do you live in Chicago? cuz this bar is in a bank vault...

And a close up on the face without text:

Non-Threatening Rorshach

The character Rorschach from Watchmen is a pretty scary guy; but that is only because his ever-changing mask cooperates and swirls into menacing ”what does it mean?” formations. I prefer a mask that does not share this glum attitude towards symmetrical mood projection.

M&M Wedding

Meg & Mike, the sweetest couple, asked me to work up a whole graphical package for their summer wedding. It was a real pleasure figuring out which elements represented each of them separately then worked together as a whole package. 

The main double-sided wedding invite contained a mixture of flora from the bride's and groom's respective region mixed with some from their wedding location, Ithaca NY.

The back of the invite was maybe the funnest part of the project. This hand-written font I worked up really seemed to fit the style of the couple and the mood of their farmer's market, DIY wedding.

Many of the elements I used in the main invite were then used for name and table cards. Here's a good portion of them all laid out above.

Meg & Mike chose passages (sometimes lyrics) to accompany my illustrations on the table cards. 

The illustrations made their way onto name cards the guests could match up with their assigned table. *Photo courtesy Anna Simonak. 

The groom and I even brewed up a special champagne-style beer for the wedding and I hand-cut a stencil and painted the bottles with its fitting batch name.