11/06/2009
At long last, I’ve got a new illustration in the running at Threadless. It’s called Feeding Frenzy. It’s… well… hopefully it’s self-explanatory:
“And that’s when the attack comes… Not from the front, but from the side… from the other two mermaids you didn’t even know were there.
The point is, you are alive when they start to eat you.”
Other recent Greatest of the Latest news, I give you: A Logo, a Mascot, and a Very Strange Tee…
10/30/2009
To kick things back off, and in the spirit of Halloween, I thought I might post a photo. It was actually taken during the summer, but that should not detract from its very ghoulish theme, which, as it so happens, is… well, ghouls…
You see, one day, Matthew Gelzer woke up and thought, “Gee, I think I’d like to make a gory horror movie… Wouldn’t that be neat?” Other, equally jovial voices in Matt’s head agreed, as did starlet and producer, U-M film school grad Anna K. Jonsson. What happened next is called Blood Kin: Terror is Thicker than Water, which was written and directed by Gelzer, who also starred and is currently laboring away in post production. At some point I got a call asking if I could come out to the set for an evening and play one of the ghostly ghoul type things that serve –shockingly enough– as the undead antagonists. Despite a whopping hangover, I said I would be delighted. Little did I know that playing the part of a gurgling, grunting, violent zombo-ghoul would involve wearing a burlap sack over my head, being doused in a gallon of fake blood (principle constituents include corn syrup and non-dairy creamer…) and having dirt ground into my slimy red skin while I stumble around shambled and barefoot in the woods outside Hillsdale…
To be sure, clean up was hell, but filming was actually a blast. Mine was a fight scene. I got to hit people, make supernaturally yucky noises, and projectile-vomit ectoplasm all while choking the shit out of the director. Below is the photo, post-burlap headgear and well after my glistening dermis had begun to set and congeal into a dull and outrageously sticky mess.
Another still from the set:
10/30/2009
Well, I’m back. If there are any dedicated readers of this blog that found themselves unexpectedly disappointed by the lack of activity lately then I certainly apologize. It’s been an intense couple months, fraught with personal matters that sapped much of the time and energy I typically feed head first to the hungry maw of leisure activities such as blogging.
But enough of that. Regular posts shall resume, such as they were ever regular to begin with, in whichever sense of the word you fancy. Cheers for now.
08/31/2009
Local readers may have heard tell –perhaps through annarbor.com or markmaynard.com, though not The Ypsilanti Citizen, bizarrely enough– of a new artist-related endeavor in Ypsi called SPUR Studios, which is “a collection of private work spaces for artists, musicians, and other creative people” made possible by Ypsilanti institution (Ynstitution™) and screen-printing extraordinaire, VGKids. The goal of the studios is to become a sort of creative nexus for the area while offering exceptionally affordable and highly customizable studios. And by exceptionally affordable I mean close to $1/square foot per month. And by highly customizable I mean that SPUR actively encourages renters to take considerable liberties in modifying their spaces. Carpet, drywall, and even windows are safe from neither whim nor lease agreement. I’ve already witnessed the installation of a hardwood floor in a 10′x12′ unit upstairs, which contrasted nicely with one of the larger basement areas that in a couple short weeks has transformed itself from a white carpeted room with 5 large windows to a boarded up dungeon with black and red insides. Says Steve Emschwiller, one of the building managers, “We are trying to make a great place for artists by providing them with a building they can make into their own, drawing inspiration from that, and [from] each other’s ideas … We want the building to come together by each tenant’s own personality.”
Not surprisingly, I found the whole thing irresistible and signed up for one of the smaller spaces (SPUR 27) at the first given opportunity. For a hundred dollars a month I get 24-7 access to a 9′x9′ studio and the opportunity to immerse myself a little further in the Ypsilanti creative community. SPUR 27 is located on the upper floor, which has been designated for use by visual artists. Bands dominate the basement level, though I haven’t really heard much from them yet, and the only guy I know that’s well on his way to being set up down there is actually in leather work (Marty Flint, he of the aforementioned blacked-out dungeon). I don’t have any such grandiose plans for little old #27, although eventually I’d like to get it set up such that I can tinker and build things and paint and perhaps house a modest assortment of tools and materials and whatnot. Below is the view in and the view back out, as documented at the open house last month before signing.
Frankly, it doesn’t look a whole lot different right now. It harbors a very large and functional (and holy crap, heavy) corner desk and a book shelf and not much else, though it’s certainly enough for me to use to work on drawing, writing, and anything computer-based. Anyway, I look forward to posting a follow up once the thing is fully fleshed out and operational, along with pics of other folks’ spaces to illustrate how comparatively unambitious I am in my accomodations.
08/28/2009
It’s no secret that I have a thing for dinosaurs. I regard them and other ancient monsters with an enthusiasm that is curious to my friends, if not entertaining. But what my friends should keep in mind is that there are people out there that harbor still deeper dino-obsessions and, more importantly, the ambition to tell people about it.
Enter: The Smithsonian “Dinosaur Tracking” blog, a delightful repository of dinosaur news, musings, minutia, and even sightings — which is where I come in to the picture. The section of the blog devoted to sightings is a survey of all things dinosaur that one might encounter in everyday life — particularly in pop-culture– such as roadside sculptures, billboards, motion pictures, and — in my case– t-shirts. To such ends, the blog discovered my Sweet Tooth design on Threadless and decided it was worthy of entry as a cataloged Dinosaur Sighting. Naturally, I am pleased 
Brian Wolly (yes, it was acknowledged in an email that our names are eerily similar, even moreso in pronunciation than in spelling), who helps run the blog, said they may even feature my Dinosaurs Ate My Shirt! store sometime in the future, which makes him one of my favorite people on the internet at the moment.
Other incredible finds on Dinosaur Tracking are as follows:
08/26/2009
I’m pretty pumped about this post. I thought it could stand an aural accessory. Enjoy the Smooshiness.
Anyway, back to the action, which –in this case– is a living room wall… An action packed living room wall, complete with a painting –honest-to-goodness painting– of my very own Quack Attack. The wall belongs to Denmark’s* Jesper C L, of Ivy League Design, who says he “…pulled out the majority of my hair from not being able to find some decent decorations for my livingroom wall.”
First off, in a similar vein to the tattoos people have been getting lately, I’m naturally flattered that someone likes my illustrations enough to want to look at them every day. Secondly, I’m super impressed with the execution here. I very much doubt I could paint that thing on a wall as well as Jesper has, and I drew the damn thing. So hats off you you, sir! You made my day.
* Or at least that’s what the Danish “.dk” domain tag in his URL would lead me to conclude, although “Ivy League Design” does suggests a potential American connection. I dunno.
08/24/2009
Last week, while ambling along the historic corridors of downtown Cleveland I ran into an old foe. The mutual surprise of the encounter conspired with the oppressive heat to turn our grudge down a violent path, and though the day’s end found the peace broken, also did it find one ancient villain subtracted, for in the familiar contest of a dual was Hamilton once again made low.
I don’t suppose there is much that will do by way of remedy or explanation, though either would be rightly due to any reader not already frightened off the internets. Alas, I can’t take away the knowledge that you’ve squandered moments of your precious life reading this blog post; All I can say is that in 2007 my friend and I went for Halloween as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, respectively, and that since then I am easily provoked into mock violence at the image of our ill-fated Secretary of the Treasury, thus necessitating his reenacted assassination along the Erie shores last Sunday when he was discovered so pompously displayed outside the Cleveland courthouse.
Other than all that unpleasant business, however, I daresay our stay in Cleveland was better than expected– Which was good considering we more or less expected a boarded up hive of scum and villainy (Buckeye state, after all). In all seriousness though, it was pretty enjoyable, not to mention good old fashioned pretty. Below you will find a few pictoral snippets of our Ohioan sojourn, as well as an old photograph from October 31st, 2007 in Madison, Wisconsin.
For those who know me well, and therefor know that I typically do not venture into Ohio without good cause (Cedar Point, Put-in Bay, to get to the other side…), the purpose of this trip was to attend my buddy Logan’s wedding. Though why he had it there I’ll never work up the courage to ask.
08/18/2009
For anyone not in the loop, there is a place called “Up North” in Michigan. There is probably a place called Up North in other states as well, but I have a difficult time imagining that it has earned quite the Proper Noun Status as Up North, Michigan. It’s something of an institution in the nomenclature here. That being said, if you’d like to know exactly where Up North is, don’t ask, because nobody knows. Or rather, everyone knows but no one agrees. Like pornography, they know it when they see it. Everyone would agree that Traverse City is Up North. Well, everyone from the lower peninsula anyway. But ask a fellow if Ludington falls within the fabled confines and you’ll draw mixed remarks.
If you go far enough back in history there was a time when anything north of Detroit was considered Up North, with US-12 the acting boundary between civilization and wild frontier (Bear in mind, there is an average of only about 25 miles of real estate between US-12 and the Ohio/Indiana border). Nowadays, I’d say a safer analog would be M-10, but I still might prefer an even more selective designation (I used to say, “Wherever the black bears aren’t,” but apparently that is far less discriminatory than I was able to appreciate). All of this is, of course, just a very roundabout way of telling you that I went Up North last week (Frankfort, if you are interested) and that I saw an opportunity for a mini rant regarding perhaps the most general of Michigan’s many mythic regionalities.
As is fitting of a late evening journey Up North –mysterious place as it has been above described– my compatriot and I encountered some curious –if not epic– doom-type meteorological events at the outset of our trip, not far north of Ann Arbor. It was documented on an iphone and later cut and assembled into the video embedded below. This was all accomplished by my friend, Anna K Jonsson (one-time Up North native), whose brilliant choice in listenables may have taken some of the DOOM out of the experience, but none of the beauty. I just wish an iphone had the same color capture capabilities as a peice of professional HD hardware, because damn, there were colors. In any case, I’m quite taken with the vid, and not just because I’m in it.
08/17/2009
Moons have passed. Exactly how many I am not certain –perhaps a few, perhaps more– but moons have passed since I last mustered an honest effort in the competitive tee design game. I suppose my recent lack of production could in small part have been motivated by a bout of discouragement, since a handful of very promising designs were teased with voting success only to fade into the Threadless purgatory fated to so many well-scored illustrations that will never see the light of day.
But a far greater agent in this fall from proliferation is simply that I have been pretty damned busy. Well, maybe not absurdly busy, but certainly busier than when last I felt free to spend hours doodling things like hacksaw-brandishing scuba bears. There have been road trips and weddings and road trips to weddings and a weekend retreat or two, plus a new studio to furnish, a new marathon to train for, and my own intrinsic spacey-ness when confronted with the various effervescent entanglements that summertime affords. Trees need climbing. Turtles need catching. Rivers need exploring and warm nights need the attention of a distracted late-youth and his misplaced freetime every bit as much as the coffee shops need his twilight work sessions and pocket change.
None-the-less, the flee-bitten hens of my imagination have not ceased popping out stray nuggets of inspiration these last months, and I have recently found time to incubate a few of these bastard ideas into full-fledged works of art-like visual consumables– Luckily, my ability to extend an already awkward metaphor far longer than anyone is comfortable with needs no practice to retain its potency. Anyway…
Hiatus termination notice: Served. (The pictures, they are clickable.)
As always, emptees love is always appreciated, though ultimately unimportant. It occurs to me now that I may have never really explained what the whole emptees.com thing is about. Simply put, it’s a good way to whore yourself out to those who might wish to aquire your t-shirt illustrating services. If a tee design happens to become wildly popular on emptees it can lead to a lot of attention. That’s basically it.
08/07/2009
I was on vacation when this happened so I forgot to blog it, but the lovely folks at TeeFury did a run of my Terror Bear design last month. So there it is. One more design escapes from my computer and into the real world, which is always fun. I hope to do more work with TeeFury in the future, it’s a great way to get stray designs made and once the 24 hour sale is over all the rights revert back to me and I can go sell the design to someone else, who hopefully won’t mind that a few hundred shirts are already floating around out there.
So yeah, any takers?
08/04/2009
You may remember a post from a while back about my acceptance to the 7th installment of the Shadow Art Fair, in which I probably promised updates regarding product lineups and other such improbable silliness. Well, tSAF came and went. As might be assumed from a tagline like “1 day. 40 artists. 9,000 gallons of beer” it was loads of fun, as always. I displayed a few new shirts and a few new posters and made a few new dollars, not to mention a few new friends.
Folks proved excitable when confronted with the Ypsi-Ynvaders poster of our infamous water tower (above) and the Scyptsy shirt (below)
But one of the best things to come out of this summer’s Shadow Art fair was this wicked sweet video by Mike Ambs. Make sure to keep an eye out for me and Heather (0:49), the Hide-a-Turtle (1:23) and the Ynvaders poster (3:08):
1 day. 40 artists. 9,000 gallons of beer. from mike ambs ☂ on Vimeo.
(I apologize if this thing isn’t embedding properly. WordPress seems to hate Vimeo, which is a shame. But seriously, you really should follow the link to the vimeo page because this is a truly charming little recap of a great event!)
07/31/2009
Man, one of my favorite Ypsi bars is apparently considering installing a trough style urinal. GROSS.
For anyone who has not experienced The Trough, I have one thing to say about it: Multi-vectored close-quarters spray-back.
Seriously. One should not have to foster concerns regarding how much of another man’s urine may accumulate on his person whilst visiting the loo.
In case you’re wondering, yes, it IS drop-random-British-colloquialisms-like-they’re-hot-potatoes-day.
IN OTHER, NON-POTTY NEWS: I’ve created Frankenfeather– Mad Raptor Scientist. His wisdom. He used it for eeeeevil.
07/30/2009
I received an email the other day from a fellow named Andy Pitts. He was writing to inform me that he had made a cake based on my Sweet Tooth design for the bizarrely delightful Threadcakes competition.
He then provided me a link to the gallery. Having no idea what awaited me on the other side of that innocent looking hypertext, I gave it a click.
Hyperbole be damned, as soon as the page finished loading there was faint Pfftt! sound somewhere between my eyeballs, followed by a few wisps of acrid smoke from my ears. My mind had been blown.
Now look here, and behold the most diabolical pastry known to mankind:
Here’s what Andy has to say for himself:
“I’ve always been a fan of thunderpeel aka Brian Walline’s tee designs – so I picked one of my favorites and tried to do it justice in cake form! I wanted to make this guy as sugary as possible using a variety of sweets, Chocolate cake, confetti cake, peanut butter rice crispys treats, tic tacks, skittles, caramels, gummi bears, tons of fondant, butter cream frosting and a wisp of blue cotton candy smoke on the volcano.”
Thank you Andy! I am flattered by your cake design, awed by your cake skillz, and now, inexplicably… hungry?
07/28/2009
Swoops McKenzie, aka Winged Lightning, hasn’t been the thunder-spewing flyaway success I’d hoped he might (No, my hopes for him were not actually that high) with the Threadless and Emptees crowd, so I’m giving him another chance to gnash, screeeech!, and electrify his way to the top at Design By Humans, a site which historically has had little to no interest in anything I’ve ever done…
I guess that’s where you fine folks come in!
As always, any support in the Voting Grounds would be MOST appreciated.
In the Exciting & New category, I’ve added a second color variant. It’s more manly. Yeah…
07/10/2009
Just got back from my west coast road trip. It was super long and super fun:
It was my second longest road trip, though perhaps most intense. The longest by mileage was back in ‘04:
06/29/2009
Found this oooooold post of mine from a previous blog and thought it was kind of fun, perhaps even enough fun to share. TIME WARP!
I’m Having Trouble Concentrating… Could I be Pregnant? That’s the very first line of what might be my new favorite commercial of two thousand ‘effing six (I’m sorry, but I simply can’t go without at least implied cussing when speaking about a year that starts with TWO thousand and ends in anything above, I dunno, four. Such is my capacity to deal with change. Anyway. I believe the line is for the “e.p.t. sure-fire hands free works underwater or something stupid” pregnancy test, which is a wholly uninspired snippet of air time but for its giggle-inducing intro-hook, which I’m sure was not intended to be humorous at all. How serendipitous for everyone.
In case you’re wondering what my previous favorite commercial of O’-fuckisnotawordrecognizedbyspellcheck-six is, you should perhaps direct your attention to Teh Milky Way. See, some people fear what they do not understand. I laugh out loud at what I don’t understand and then I whore it around on the internets.
edit: I would say that the new “Un-pimp Ze Auto” Volkswagon commercials starring Peter Stormare (The Big Lebowski, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Minority Report, etc.) are my favorite new commercials, but they never get air around here anymore.
I don’t think I watch enough teevee these days to pick out a favorote commercial or two-thousand and nine. It’s definitely not that “Think with your dipstick, Jimmy,” nonsense.
06/23/2009
Fact: There is a cheapiddy-cheap sale at one of the various (generally low-ish quality) online printing vendors. In light of this fact, I ask why the dickens shouldn’t* I order a few dozen business card variants of me as an aristocratic crab-man?
* You needn’t answer this. In fact, it’s probably best for my self esteem if you don’t.
P.S. Regardless of whether or not this makes a good card, I think I might make a comic in this style, which I am convinced will be super fun.
06/18/2009
Recently put the finishing touches on some illustrations for what can only be (self)described as an adventurous wench. Obviously, getting paid to draw monsters is right up there with, well, other things that are swell, bitchin’, or otherwise terrific.
06/15/2009
I tuned in for the last five minutes of a late night edition of Sportscenter and witnessed the following: a Big Lebowski quote, a Doobie Brothers reference, a Tenacious D reference, a Burger King reference, and what may have been a Simpsons reference.
Those dudes be crazy.
I also found the image below in an old notebook of mine. In these days where I occasionally long for the familiarity and ease of an undergraduate college classroom, I sometimes forget how bored I was at times.
(I ate your teacher. He tasted like stupid.)
06/12/2009
Yuck. It’s been a rough week. Started getting sick on Sunday, spent the next two days getting sicker and the previous two days in Chicago helping my girlfriend get her condo ready to be sold, which, for my part, involved some painting, some heavy lifting, and a fair amount of coughing. Monday, however, was spent alone in Michigan and at the height of my varied “flu-like” symptoms (swine flu-like symptoms?) in a laziness-induced coma of sorts, during which a number of minor evils were visited upon me. Most notable among these evils was the viewing of 1986 animated blockbuster, Transformers: Teh Movie, with Robert Stack, Orson Welles, and Leonard Nimoy (as Galvatron). That seems to have had some effects which I currently perceive as both negative and lasting. Although… when it’s not busy being inferior to the TV version in nearly every way imaginable, the movie can actually be sort of hilarious. Allow me to demonstrate: “Me, Grimlock, not nice dino! Me bash brains!”
