April 11, 2023

The Encyclawpedia Dictatia

I had an idea 2 to 3 years ago about doing an illustrated series of cat dictators. Well, I think deep down I know I'm not an illustrator and kept putting it off. Son when I started playing around with Midjourney it hit me that it would be the perfect tool to finally make it. I partnered up with Anaiis Rabiela, a super talented student from the class I taught at book180, and we set out to make a full website for it. While I used Midjourney, she turned to ChatGPT to spit out baseline encyclopedia entries for each. After all, her focus should be on adding tone and jokes vs. being an academic writer.

It was a fun exercise to see what we could make and how fast we could make it with these new tools. For comparison, my children's book took 5 months. I think where this will make the biggest difference for now is with social. Not being limited to what we can shoot in the agency's closet will be a huge creative boon for those who learn to use these tools. You can see the full project here.

February 2, 2022

Home

Decide to do an illustration of my house. My now wife and I moved in back in June of last year and things have gone pretty well since.

I'm debating the merits of starting an Etsy shop where I sell custom prints of people's homes.

September 15, 2021

Serene Beach

A lot of the time I'll see different techniques on Instagram or Pinterest and think they look fairly simple, but I like what they accomplish. Sometimes I'll try my own hand to see if I can replicate them.

The problem is that I don't really have my own style, at least visually speaking. I think my style is more a tonal style. I have a particular sense of humor that I try to inject into my work. Usually a sense of irony with maybe a darker twist when the audience will allow it.

I was able to recreate the visual style for this, but when it came time to make it mine I realized there was only one good solution. There was a stunning lack of people in the original versions of this style I saw, and I began to wonder why that may be.

That's when I decided to add in the shark attack to explain why everyone else had run away.

Enjoy!

September 1, 2021

Maker’s Mark

I've always been bad at freehand drawing, I think I mentioned that before. I remember in high school in my art classes when we were painting I'd sit there banging my head against a wall while everyone else did it with ease.

At the time I at least took solace in the fact that I could wipe the floor with them when it came time for photography stuff. Anyway, In an attempt to develop a freehand style I'm trying to hand illustrate more stuff and see where it takes me.

This is mostly flat styled but I tried to add a bit of depth using some textures to lightly shade.

August 30, 2021

Clothes & Clothes Sans

Over the past month I've been developing a pair of complementary fonts titled "Clothes" and "Clothes Sans." I wanted to do something that was completely hand drawn because It's an area that I know I need to practice more. I use vector as a crutch with illustrations and wanted to get out of my comfort zone.

July 12, 2021

Robot Cowboy

The other week I had this vision of a robot cowboy. Last night I finally had time to turn the vision into a reality (as much as an illustration is reality).

January 23, 2021

Doomsday LA

Decided to start an illustrated series of monsters of various sorts around the city and county of Los Angeles. This is the first one I worked on today.

December 22, 2020

Tiger Kid Illustration

When I was in 2nd grade, they had a career day. One of the kids at my school came dressed as a Tiger. I'm pretty sure I dressed as an architect, and given that I didn't become one I can't really make fun of the kid for not becoming a tiger.

December 20, 2020

Coffee Illustration

Was walking around earlier today and this image popped in my head, so I decided to illustrate it.

December 7, 2020

The Sushinaut

The other day I had a vision of an astronaut standing on a pizza, I don't know why... I just did. So I illustrated it.

October 10, 2020

Dog Lovers for Biden

Last week I got a message from TBWA\Chiat\Day NY President Rob Schwartz asking a favor, and when Rob Schwartz asks you for a favor it doesn't matter how busy you are... you do it. Despite it being our final week of our initial submission period for The Side Show, I told him yes.

He needed a black and white illustration of two German Shepherds wearing sun glasses in homage to Biden's dog Champ. They needed something for their social channels and I was happy to oblige. Below is the end result.

August 10, 2020

Brain Freeze

I honestly had no intention of doing any more illustrations until my super secret project and freelance were done, but this weekend inspiration struck while while I was spending time with my girlfriend and her friend (who happened to be eating an ice cream bar).

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