Erin and I successfully made the drive across the country for the second time with trailer in tow. it took us 5 days. We had a cat in the car this time which turned out a lot easier than I feared. The trip was pretty uneventful, except for missing a tornado that hit Billings, MT by about an hour. Other than that it was just wide open road.
So now we’re back in Michigan. It’s good being back but we’re still looking for a place to live. All of our stuff is scattered around my parents house. I think that their excitement at us living so close to them outweighs their annoyance at not being able to use their living room, basement or garage. We went up to Port Austin for the week starting on the 4th of July weekend. It was pretty great to see fireworks shooting off all up the coastline, and even across Saginaw Bay over around East Tawas and beyond.
I got an email on Friday morning from the art director at the Seattle Weekly, Boo Davis, asking if I might be available to do this week’s cover. As if there was any hesitation. It was a quick turn-around (due Tuesday afternoon), but they already had a pretty good idea of what they wanted. The cover story this week is about an immigration lawyer who is pretty shady and, unfortunately, some of his clients are being deported. The Weekly wanted a stylized seal of America that was rather ominous, with Antonio Salazar, the lawyer, happily welcoming people into the land of opportunity!
They wanted me to execute the cover in a style somewhere between my Cops & Robbers poster and my Let’s Save Michigan poster. For my first attempt, I decided to go a bit more in the hand-drawn direction, but it wasn’t really coming out right.
I should note that that Statue of Liberty was just a placeholder. But it doesn’t matter. The whole thing wasn’t looking great anyway. So I scrapped this one and instead pushed forward in the direction of the Michigan poster. Much more graphic and bold, which was more along the lines of what they wanted anyway.
We worked back and forth over the last couple of days finalizing this piece, preparing little versions for the interior and the web, and getting the masthead to look interesting but not distract too much from the art. I think it worked out pretty well!
Big thanks to Boo Davis and the Weekly for giving me the opportunity and good direction on this. It was a lot of fun and a great pleasure to do the cover!
I just completed a new poster for Comedy Central’s Mash Up. More specifically, this poster is for the live event that will be filmed as part of the upcoming one-hour special on Comedy Central. The show will be directed by one of the greatest guys I know, Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Mashup also features four great comedians: TJ Miller, Matt Braunger, Kumail Nanjiani and Hannibal Buress.
If you live in LA you should do yourself a favor and reserve some tickets. Especially because tickets are free! You will be required to get drunk, watch some great standup and be part of a live taping, though, so if you’re a moron you might want to avoid this.
My friends Morgan and Leianna are celebrating a big anniversary this week. You know what that means; They needed to give each other killer gifts! Leianna contacted me to design and print a poster for Morgan’s favorite movie, Ghostbusters!
My inspiration was old country/rock playbills and posters. I wanted to make it seem like it could have been an actual event, so I used the Sedgewick Hotel Ballroom as the venue. Devotees may recognize this locale as the one the Ghostbusters trashed while catching Slimer on their first big job. The date listed is the original release date of the movie. I threw in a couple of choice quotes and a photo of Stay-Puft and we were good to go.
I was hoping that my somewhat lacking printing setup would help to make this poster a little more rough and aged, and it definitely did the trick. Still, I was excited to screen print using a halftone on the black screen for shading. It’s the first time I’ve done that and it worked pretty well.
I only printed 6 of these so you know they’re going to be worth a bazillion dollars.
As many of you have already heard, I was awarded “Critics’ Choice” in the Let’s Save Michigan and Detroit Institute of Arts’ poster contest last week. I had a lot of support from many people which was wonderful. I didn’t end up getting enough votes to place in the top of the popular vote, but I was honored that the contest officiators felt the need to create the critics’ choice category. As they put it, my poster “truly embodied the goals of Let’s Save Michigan. His work of art portrayed the theme of alternative forms of transportation and the diversity of Michigan’s landscapes, which are central to our campaign.”
So thanks again to everyone who got involved. Apparently my poster is up alongside all of the other finalists at the Fisher building in Detroit. If anyone happens to find themselves there, want to snap a photo for me?
