Here’s an illustration I did for the Feb issue of Wired Magazine UK. It was a lot of fun to make and it was exciting working with the folks at Wired UK. The illustration is about a “story-driven zombie fitness game” that you can play on your mobile device — specifically while out running… from zombies.
Cheers!
So, I’m in a video game gallery show in Chicago in February, and thought I would post a few concepts I’m working on… starting with a Halo / Super Mario Bros Mash-up. SMB is —shockingly— the fist/oldest video game I can remember playing, back on the ol’ NES. Halo, is for all intents and purposes the “newest” game I play. And look! I’ve mashed them up!
The next idea is a full blown, almost comic style Mario going all “Mission Impossible” on us. This is the first of several ideas that center around the notion that a couple of badass dudes from Brooklyn might not venture into magical demon-infested realms quite so lightly equipped. I mean, these guys are from New York in the 80s… damn right they’re packing some heat.
I think I must not have recieved the memo about how starting in two thousand twelve, January will be required by unnatural law to behave exactly like March. If I was March I’d be so pissed to have my unique role as “The Crappiest Month Alive” snaked out from under me.
In other news, I think my blogger spell-check is on the blink, because whenever I’ve clicked it lately something other than flashing red lights and miles of highlighted text appeared. So until further notice, my spell check is broken. I consider the odds of the computer software (whose only purpose in life is to fix spelling errors) being messed up as being far better than the odds of me, after 29 glorious years of inneptitude, having learned to spell.
I made a new Michigan-themed art thingy today. It’s old-timey. Enjoy!
So yeah, while I’m at it, I hope everyone had a lovely holiday. And by everyone, I of course mean most people. For instance, I don’t particularly care if Lindsay Lohan had a lovely holiday. I hope that Glen Beck’s holiday was downright rotten.
What an awful shit I am.
But you, gentle reader! I hope your holiday was lovely and fantastic! Joyful, even. And triumphant!
Anyway, my holiday was pretty nice. Those of you who have suffered my company over the years in even a peripheral sense have probably gleaned some notion as to my enthusiasm for the electro-shock-injected sport of whirly-ball. It has become customary for me to claim to be planning holiday whirly-ball outings. It has also become customary for these claims to be treated by my friends as invitations to be baked into a giant pie and eaten ala mode by a monstrous hill person.
Needless to say, whirly-ball matches never ever come to fruition.
Never, that is, until this year! This year marked the first time in a long time that I was able to flatter, bribe, intimidate, seduce, or otherwise force enough people to commit to a game of whirly-ball, which made me very happy. Moreover, I think everyone had a good time. I, for one, had an excellent time. This was due –at least in part– to having been struck by an inexplicable fit of competency (see mad skillz), which resulted in the best played whirly-ball game of my life and, eventually, the only time you will ever see someone blog about how good they are at whirly-ball.
In any case, thanks for tuning in. And happy Twenty Dozen!
The latest Mighty Mitten print is full of dots. The state of Michigan is, in this print, defined by dots — whereas the actual state of Michigan is defined by imaginary political lines and, well, lakes an stuff. In this print, the role of imaginary political boundaries and lakes an stuff shall be performed by… you guess it… dots.
Enjoy!
This! This is a video from The Happy Hour Guys, who seem to pass their time traversing the countryside in search of the latest tasty brews. I hate them.
But! There’s always a but. This episode they have journeyed from what I assume is afar to visit my fair Ann Arbor and, more importantly, my beloved Wolverine State Brewing Co., where I serve as humble designer/art director.
Let the fun begin!
I made a new Mighty Mitten print recently – It’s a robin / apple blossom combo, with some other Michigan iconography to boost its potency. Anywho! You can buy prints and stuff by clicking on the image below.
I got interviewed over at Chirply.com – it’s a big ol’ mess, but at least you can buy the cool card & notebook of mine that they printed!
Link to buy Greeting Card.
Link to buy notebook.
“I used to, but macaroni kept proving archivally inferior to digital mediums, and peeling Elmer’s off your fingers gets old eventually. I mean, it’s no good having a bunch of glue flakes stuck to your hands when you’re trying to seduce a woman, I’ll tell you that much.”
The exotic and captivating tale of mermaid rescue from the “Belly of the Beast” is now up for voting at Design by Humans! It is exotic and captivating!
As always, your support is most appreciated.
Hello there!
I thought it might be nice to display the finished art that came out of the “Blood Bears” sketch I posted a while back. Pretty straightforward interpretation of the sketch, which is always nice. Anywho, enjoy. I hope it’s not too gross.
So I was perusing the ol’ Facebooks yesterday and was pleased to discover that some tees I designed for Eastern Michigan University Student Government finally made their way into The Real Live World of Real Life Tees Worn by Real Live People. And hey, two of those people are my pals, Muayad and Tori. Lookin’ good, y’all!
Oh yeah, “S.O.L.A.R.” stands for Student Organization Learning and Resources. It’s a program designed to teach students about what student organizations are available and how to use them and, better yet, join them. 
Also, that’s a custom (from scratch) typeface there. It was the easiest custom typeface ever, and yet, remarkably easy to screw up. Go figure.
Typically, it is my custom to mark the beginning of each new year with some sort of retrospective on the closing year. Last year’s write up on Anno Domini Two Thousand and Nine (or, as I like to call it, Em’n'Em Eye Ex) was, frankly, a little depressing. 2010, as it turns out, was not equally depressing. 2010 was actually pretty interesting and, dare I say, exciting. But — there is always a “but,” isn’t there? — its largest and most conspicuous features were, dammit-all, kind of depressing. Its epitaph would read similarly to that of 2009.
So screw it. That’s what I say.
And screw it I shall. Instead, my first post of MMXI (which, yeah, sorry for dropping the ball the last few months. I’d tell you about it, but like I said… depressing) will serve only to alert y’all to the fact that the exceptionally swell guys over at 604 Republic commissioned me to do a couple designs for them and that one of those designs is now for sale (in 2 different colors) at their site.
Rock. On.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope that wasn’t too depressing for you. I’m not trying to complain. Surely, my list of complaints is a mercifully short one, and I’m grateful. None-the-less, I’m not really up for writing a 2010 run-down that literally nobody is begging for or would likely find interesting. I’m going to stop talking about this now, because it’s starting to sound like someone ASKED me to write something and I’m letting them down, which, of course, could not be a greater departure from reality. 
More regular updates to return soon.
Best,
brian
Well, I mean I guess my name is IN it. I don’t know if that counts… I don’t think I can say that I’m in a book if the mere presence of my name is my only contribution between the covers. Y’all would probably call righteous shenanigans on the “IN-ness” of “me” regarding said “book.”
If I had a buddy who had, by virtue of his first and last names appearing in the correct sequence somewhere, even once professed to be in a book, well, I would wait till he was talking to a pretty girl at the bar and then butt in and say, “Hey, did he tell you that he’s in a book? You should have him tell you about that book that he’s in,” and then watch him crash and burn.
Because I am eeeeevil. Or something.
Anyway, regardless of the highly dubious nature of my bookish inclusion, I am most certainly irrefutably incontrovertibly unmistakably ON a galldang book. Front cover, front and center. Of course, by “me” I mean “something I drew,” which is probably better looking than me anyway. So that settles that.
The book in question, I must admit, probably stretches the accepted standard definition a bit, at least in terms of any literary expectations you might have, but I’m happy about it anyway. It is, of course, the Threadless Book. Yes, that Threadless. Yes, the website. Yes, the website that sells t-shirts. Sometimes my t-shirts. Yes, they wrote a book about it. Why? Because they are turning ten years old and they figured it would be a neat thing to do. Yes, this is the book I’ve been excitedly rambling on about for the past several stolen moments of your life.
So! Would you like to see it? I thought so!
(my drawing is the three-eyed sea-tiger dude above the big yellow dot)
Below is Threadless founder Jake Nickell posing with a giant Threadless Book cover.
And, finally, here is the full illustration of my Sea Tiger monster dude.
The end!
I’ve been getting a lot of nice feedback on Sanguine Parliament, my Tee-of-the-Day at Design by Humans, and I just noticed that it’s made it onto the “Top Tees” list.
They like me! They really like me! </melodrama>
Two (2!) more designs up at Threadless now, bringing the live sub tally up to three (3!) for the week. As always, I appreciate whatever love you can send their way.
Introducing Bumbles the HoneyBear and Chums, the, well… yuck.
And, of course, please don’t forget that PTR is still in action. AKK-SHUN, Y’ALL. Kapow and stuff.
Power Ranger + Texas Ranger = abomination.
New submission now highly vote-able over at Threadless.
Let’s go, team! Hype it up, hype it up! Waaaaaaay up!
Sanguine Parliament was just featured as Tee-of-the-Day at Design by Humans! If you’re keeping track at home, yes, this is my first winner at DBH. Smile time.
…and do an awfully nice thing like vote for my latest Threadless submission. If you care to add some sort of hyperbolically cool comment, that would be lovely as well… Like, “Oh my stars in heaven if Threadless doesn’t print this shirt I fear my guts will simply explode out of my belly button in anguish!”
In other news, I’ve made another sketch that involves censored cusswords. I’d tell you about it, but I’m more interested in seeing if you understand it on your own. All I will say is that the pun in play is “Vampire Hunters.”
In the realm of “recent work,” much has gone overlooked this summer, but here are a couple projects of that are at least somewhat noteworthy.
The first is a hornet illustration for the Roswell High football team down in Roswell, Georgia, and it’s the first high school athletics mascot I’ve illustrated since I was in high school myself. Fittingly enough, my high school mascot was also –you guessed it!– the hornets.
I customized a typeface for ‘em as well. I hear that hornets adore modified Dinova Black.
The other bloggable today is for a patch I did a little while back, which is noteworthy because I’ve never designed a patch and I’ve certainly never designed a patch to be used in the United States Air Force… !!!
Cheers to you, 440th! Thank you, and best of luck!
