Bringing back the chop shop. Sort of.

So while I was at PC, some illustrator friends and I started a daily blog, where we picked pop culture topics out of a jar and drew the given characters for that week. After a couple months of doing it consistently,  we named it “Character Chop Shop.” So, I’d like to start doing character drawings again, but I’d like to give myself a little more freedom. This is meant to explore, be free, and experiment with different forms and styles. It is going to be a little more random for me rather than a new topic each week. Character Chop Shop will be just be a category/theme on my blog. I’ve got a few ideas brewing around so I’ll get started at the start of the new year.

Check out what the chop shop used to be at one point and take a look at the other artists and their sites as well. They’re talented people, so do it!

http://characterchopshop.com/

New York, NY

After a long month and many miles behind me, I’m finally settled in NYC.

Back to work!

Goblin

So, there used to be a picture of an artichoke hanging in Portfolio Center a few months before I graduated. The moment I saw it, this painting is what I saw. I wish I knew which student photographed it, so I could show them. I wanted to add in a little bit of Spider-man into the piece, so I painted the spider dangling in the eye of the mask like Spider-man would hang upside down.

Scroll through for the sketch and the artichoke that inspired it all.

MTGO Traders

I’ve been in the middle of a bunch of projects and neglecting the blog.

I was recently asked by MTGO (magic the gathering online) Traders to recreate their logo in vector form and had a little freedom in putting some of my own touches on it. After some deliberation with them, here is what I came up with…

Also included is the old version in comparison with some of my steps.

If any of you are into MTGO, check these guys out at www.mtgotraders.com

Marty with ASYO

This was commissioned as part of a gift. This will be a lead in to a much larger gift/experience…

Booked for RAW!!!

The show will be on Wednesday, October 24th.

Little Warriors

I have been doing some work for Andy over at MondoBaldo for some time now, and the latest job has been working on an illustration for a t-shirt featuring these little warriors.  MondoBaldo is well on its way to being associated with the Alopecia community, and has done great things for people by simply delivering its message of being bald and proud.  This design is specifically for those children who are battling their disease head on and showing that they have nothing to fear.

The design options themselves were narrowed down to this by the MondoBaldo community. Colors are not final, and will more than likely be the color of the shirt they are printed on.  These colors were simply to show a quick difference between the boy and girl designs.

Happy 50th Robin!

I have had a number of projects the last few weeks, so I want to show you some of the things I’ve done.
This project started out as part of an invite to a 50th birthday party, but after a minor setback the project continued in the form of this poster that was displayed at the party this past weekend.  The content came from ideas Robin had for the theme/features at the party.

Cisco Annual Report

This project was a collaboration for Mia Chubarova’s annual report for Cisco.  The concept going into this project is that “With Cisco, anything is possible.”  With that concept in mind, we worked on developing visuals for how Cisco is changing the way we work, live, play, and learn.  The benefits of this particular photography style allowed for so much more to come across on camera without having to use photoshop to achieve it.

Santa (is Nigh)

I’m throwing this one up on the blog because I don’t really consider this one done yet.

I wanted to show some process on a piece that I worked on recently related to the Holiday.  I thought about various holidays and “important” things or potential hot topics for the rest of the year and how to combine them.  I was thinking about what might be happening in December when I remembered that the world is supposed to end on the 21st, just a few days before Christmas.  Despite the fact that nobody really believes in these “end of the world” things, I figured it would get brought up again when the date is closer.  So I wanted Santa to take part in the fun of moving past this ridiculous event.  In the original idea, Santa was going to be standing over a man passed out on the sidewalk with a sign that read “The End is Nigh.”  However, Santa will have painted over “The End” with “Christmas” instead as he giggles to himself and tells the viewer to keep it a secret. As this idea continued to develop, I removed Santa and replaced him with a shadow.(img1)  It was at this point that the image started to take on a different kind of feeling than I wasnted, so I scraped those ideas to draw up a new Santa. (img2) So after this new sketch I thought this version looked like he could be tagging the wall behind him.  I removed the man with the sign and pushed forward with that.(img3 &4)

I consider this image incomplete because I’ve been playing with a number of different tags that Santa could be spray painting.  I have been diving into a number of conversations ranging from topics on security issues to Occupy and so on.  This current version is meant to get a little less heavy and make it more playful by having him paint a snowflake, but it just so happens to start looking like the Star of David.  So like I said, I’m still playing…