New Clothes!

Was just noticing a lot of signage and typeface changes all over the place, maybe due to to political and economic changes. Lots of companies it seems give themselves major facelifts during times of upheaval. Check this one out. That old mainstay of American chicken franchise has just gotten a lot younger looking:

Reminded me of this Nixon poster created as a way to speak the "language" of the young people.

Merry Christmas!

Bicentennial Project Grant

Trippy US Bicentennial animation created by psychedelic animator Vincent Collins:

The World Of Vaughn Bode´

In the mid to late 60's, Vaughn Bode was a true pioneer of underground comic/illustration art. His work centered around 2 main characters: Cheech Wizard, an orange pair of legs with a gigantic wizard hat. And Puck, a simple minded lizard who acted as fall guy.

While this sounds pretty general, his work was some of the most imaginiative and detailed of any at the time. He often placed these characters in various stories and setting, including War Lizards, which involved his characters as soldiers in the Vietnam War. His work was incredibly detailed, and he would often include schematics to explain how his ships and vehicles would actually run.

He passed away in 1975, and his son Mark has kept his work going, as, he's adopted his fathers style and continued the stories rather successfully. His work has been influential amongst filmmakers like Ralph Bakshi and George Lucas.

I first noticed Vaughn Bode's work in graffiti art. Graff writers co-opted his characters into the art, and, they almost became mascots of the subculture. I've painted many Vaughn Bode characters,and, in creating the Quasimoto video 'Bullyshit', as a homage to Vaughn Bode, I had a cameo of Cheech Wizard in the video.

Figures 4

And some more rough color sketches of some figurine work Ive been doing. Mostly color studies and posing. From there, a premium pose/stance will be determined for the model to be sculpted from.

This Just In!

Very excited!

Album Art

A casualty of the digital music revolution was ambitious LP artwork. Everything from the classic Blue Note Jazz records to Led Zeppelin 3, all pioneered interesting ways to sell vinyl. There's tons of great examples, but, I'd say for gatefold releases, these two come to mind as being 'above and beyond.

Pauls Boutique- Beastie Boys (1989)

Beyond The Gates- Possessed (1986)

Forrest J. Ackerman

For more than sixty years, Famous Monsters of Filmland has graced the newstands as the stand-out magazine dedicated to horror and sci-fi. The man at the helm of that publication was Forrest J. Ackerman, who recently passed away.

The magazine was pretty much the only place to see mostly behind the scenes/making of, of the fantastic and bizarre in modern film. You'd have great interviews of writers and directors alongside fan letters with photos the kids would send of themselves dressed up in horror make-up.

I especially loved the layout and the lettering they'd use, which was mostly done by hand. I think since, a few type designers have actually made these into fonts that you can find digitally. Forrest had also converted his house into a museum for film memorabilia, know as the Acker-mansion!

Joe Johnston & Colin Cantwell

I stumbled across some Joe's artwork for a while back. He'd been one of ILM's key concept artists, I think before there was even a department. Along with model maker, Colin Cantwell, they created all sorts of fantastic sets and ideas for a host of movies, most notably the original Star Wars movies.

These are some photos of his designs alongside Colin's models.

Joe's gone ahead and left the art department, and pursued a career in Film Direction, helming movies like Rocketeer, and the upcoming Wolf Man movies.