News

A long time ago before all of my fortune and fame, and the women, and my pet elephant, I used to work as a waiter for the Vanity Fair Oscar party held every year at Morton’s Steakhouse in Los Angeles. Here I could hob-nob with celebs such as BILL MURRAY, JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP, DIANE KEATON, and ORLANDO BLOOM.  One year I was working and Tom Cruise showed up on a brand new Ducati.  I’m a total motorcycle geek and for whatever reason without a thought in my head I started talking bikes with him.  So in a giant room filled with celebs, I stood there in a silly Loveboat suit while holding a tray of sour apple martinis, Tom Cruise took the time to be really cool and talk mechanics with me.  He chatted with me for a few minutes and I realized that he should be talking with other celebrities, not cocktail boy, so I ended the conversation.  No matter what the news says about him, I think that was above and beyond and Tom Cruise will always be cool in my book.

Now my guilt. I got a job doing some illustrations for the Hollywood Reporter on Scientology.  I was to depict illustrations about some of the seemingly strange stories about the religion.  Some of these images were to illustrate Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and the religion’s leader David Miscavige.

I had a blast doing the work and although nothing about it was bad or negative, I couldn’t help but feel that I had betrayed my homie Cruise.

Tom if you read this,  I think you’re rad and I’m keeping my Days of Thunder poster up!!

I did an illustration for the Hollywood Reporter a few months back.  The article was about how the movie industry has changed so much since the days of big movie blockbusters like Indiana Jones.  Back then there were only a few big decision makers and they worked for the major studios.  As we have become more sophisticated with market research and the internet, (I know I’m really sophisticated) making big decisions is too often terrifying.  There is so much information to cover as well as a “board of bosses” that young up and coming execs aren’t interested in the positions becoming available.  It’s too much responsibility and it just isn’t any fun.  I’m glad making this illustration was fun.  I hope that never changes.  Lets face it, the Mummy was cool, but it will never be Raiders of the Lost Ark!

I had the good fortune to work with Conde Nast Traveler for an article on “Voluntourism”  This is when people go on vacation and volunteer some of their time to helping the community where ever they are at.  Currently Haiti is a prime spot for voluntourism.  The article tries to point out the complexity of this idea.  It turns out that a lot of programs may actually be counterproductive to benefiting the community in need.  Needless to say, if was a lot of fun to do this assignment and the art director was a pleasure to work with.  Below are spot illustrations I did along with the opening page illustration.

Here are some gif illustrations I did for Tiffany & Co. for a piece titled “Singing for His Supper” and a little about the drama that followed.

About a year ago I was asked by Tiffany & Co. to do some illustrations for a tablet format magazine they were putting out.  They wanted a comic style with a heavy Lichtenstein influence.  The job sounded fun and I accepted.  Because of the opportunity to do illustrations on an eReader, I suggested that I try making illustrations that were lightly animated.  I had never done this before and was working to a deadline.  To be safe, I created traditional illustrations that would stand on their own and then I went back and animated them.  It was a lot of work teaching myself this and even though this took considerably more time, I didn’t ask for more money because it was my suggestion and I was eager.  WELL… no good deed goes unpunished so they say.  Although I turned in all of the work on time and pleased my art director, the blood diamond powers that be decided to not make an eMagazine or pay for the completed work of those they hired.  After looking into the matter, only a few of the freelancers on the job were compensated a portion of their commission and the rest of us were left unpaid and ignored.  I am currently looking into legal action.

My fellow alumni Jeff McMillan recommended me as an artist to contribute a design for the up coming Long Beach Zombie Walk.  I was given the restriction of only being able to use two colors to be printed on a black shirt, one of the colors definitely being white.  Here’s what I came up with!  I wanted to make a design that was grotesque but funny, so as you can see, I am happy with the results.  I will be sharing a booth at the event with the Jeff and Rhett, the third t-shirt designer.  We’ll have merch there and one dollar of every shirt that sells will go to the artists.  Go buy some shirts or I’ll eat your brains.

I had the opportunity to work with AD Peter Hausler the other day.  He asked me to do a couple of illustrations for the Wall Street Journal.  The illustrations were about road rage taking other forms.  It was a fast turn over and I didn’t get to sleep much, but my students seem to like hearing about the physical punishments I go through to get a job done.  Needless to say, I was very unhappy with my work all the way to about 90% complete, then suddenly, “There it is!” happens.  which is pretty much every job I do.  It’s like every illustration I attempt is an ugly duckling until I’m almost finish and I suddenly realize that I really dig it.  Go buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal today!

Derrick Brown of Write Bloody Publishing asked me to design a shirt for him to sell and promote his company.  I always find shirt graphics a little strange and imagery seems almost arbitrary.  Really, if there is no specifics other than the company branding, the goal I suppose is to make something cool.  So I made a bunch of different sketches of things that I were interesting and I fired them off.  Derrick liked this drawing of an old spaceman sitting in his library drinking some scotch.  He requested some adjustments taking the initial image in a bit of a different direction and wrote some copy to accompany it.  I was happy with the end result.

I’m not quite sure what my fascination is with spacemen.  I feel like they are lost, wandering, and often out of place.  It’s kind of like they were never supposed to be wherever it is that they are.  Isn’t that the lot of an intrepid explorer?  My uncle once told me that heroes don’t come home.  The melodrama of someone’s end being shrouded in mystery is quite tantalizing.  I have to admit that a large percentage of my daily jogs are consumed with fantasies of my unexpected and mysterious disappearance.  Spooky! “We thought you were dead. We had a funeral and a coffin, a gravestone.” “What was in the coffin?”

Here are the initial sketches:

Over the years I’ve made quite a few promo images for my friend Ed Galvez.  He is the creator and host of a weekly standup comedy show in Santa Monica called the Punk House.  Ed always has a solid attendance at each show because after the entry fee, the beer is free! The catch is it’s Cerveza Caguama importada from El Salvador which we lovingly refer to as turtle beer because of the turtle on the logo.  It is among the cheapest beers on the market going for about $9.00 for an 18 pack.  Needless to say, there is often plenty for next week.  Well Ed’s show is now being sponsored  by Pabst Blue Ribbon and he wanted an updated version of the first drawing I did for him about 6 or 7 years ago.  It was fun revisiting an old drawing and trying to breath some new life into it while keeping the same overall design.  I don’t think it’s too conceded to say that I’ve gotten better. Here is the original:

I recently finished the book cover “Glitter in the Blood” by Mindy Nettifee for Write Bloody Publishing.  This was a tough assignment.  I’m used to doing a lot of drawing and in this instance it was not the case.  I actually got this assignment second hand after it was given to me from another artist.  Some of the specifics stayed the same such as the location of the title, author, and the use of a zebra.  I had some variations that I really liked too that I have added below.  Enjoy!

Giant Robot ask me contribute to Game Over, a group show of art inspired by video games.

Growing up in a strip mall in the suburbs of Los Angeles I quickly learned the value of a dollar.  Each day after school I would go to the dry cleaners that my parents owned and operated.  Of the eight businesses in this generic American marketplace, I had gained employment at four.  One dollar for taking out the trash and one dollar for vacuuming.  I was ten years old and pulling in eight dollars a day!  That translated to one Nintendo game per week!  I easily had 50+ Nintendo game cartridges by the time that Super Nintendo had shown its face.  For the art show I was conflicted.  Which of these memorable games would I choose to represent as the excuse for my childhood obesity and poor school grades?  The more traditional classics came to mind: Super Mario Bros. (too overdone), Mega Man (too obvious), Rampage (too King Kong/ Godzilla), and Castlevania (too scary).  My feelings of defeat had become overwhelming and the likelihood of me doing something that felt uninspired was inevitable.  To my surprise, my much younger sister recalled a game that I could hardly believe she remembered, Joust!

Joust was a game that I remembered playing for hours on end.  A player controlled a knight piloting a flying ostrich to defeat evil knights flying vultures.  But slaying an evil knight was not enough, because the evil knight would always drop an egg that would hatch into a furious and frenzied doppelganger of himself who was much more difficult to slay.  The only solution was to reach the unhatched evil baby and stomp it to pieces.  Take that evil baby!  In addition to this complex plot line, players had to also avoid death by not venturing too close to a lava pit from which spawned a giant hand of magma trying to pull its victims to a fiery grave and from a pterodactyl made of lava (By the Gods! What manner of beast be thee?!) who reared its ugly invincible head when players lollygagged on a level.  In two player mode, alliances were made and easily broken when one player may or may not have “accidentally” skewered his ally.  Figure A, clearly my vision of the crusading white knight, and Figure B, my idea of the evil black knight inspired by General Kael from “Willow”.  Ahhh, Joust.  I love thee and I wish that your iPad version had better controls.

I’ve been curious if anybody reads this stuff.  If you do, shoot me an email.  I’ll be check my inbox every seven minutes for the next week in anticipation.

If you are free, come out to Giant Robot 2 this Saturday and checkout the art.  I’ll be there and that’s reason enough!