Did this a while back as a quick overnight fix for a magazine. Usually I’m not one for using Photoshop filters but for once it actually worked out pretty well. The article was about a indie punk band called Trigger Effect, and was mainly talking about how they tended to do a lot of their business independently, although they disliked the being associated with the term DIY. For visual sake though, I thought the 80′s DIY punk aesthetic made sense for the article.

I basically ran a stamp filter over a photo of the band and cobbled their heads together to make the record cover. Was trying to get it to look like a grainy black and white photocopy – actually tried drawing it but it looked too clean. All in all  I thought the experiment worked out pretty nicely.

This was done for the June cover of Lucid Media magazine. The focus of the issue is the North by North East (NXNE) music festival, which is a big free music bash in Toronto that features a huge array of up and coming bands, as well as a few big names.

The festival’s mascot is the bunny that you see on the yellow wristband. I was hoping to create something that was eye catching and keeping with the spirit of the festival without being too overtly like a music poster. The editor wanted to try to tie in the multi faceted aspects of the festival (apart from the music, it also has a film and interactive/ conference portion). I worked the other elements into the tattoo on the main hand.

The piece is probably more inspired by the game, Rockband than the festival itself. I really have no idea if people still wave lighters around at concerts. But heck, it was cool when they did…

Worked on this a couple of months ago with the good folks at Mclaren McCann Toronto.  The project was for World Vision’s Spring 2010 direct mailer. The job was to create an illustration for the envelope, which would be repurposed for the letter and note card inside. Additionally, I was asked to illustrate a little mask for kids that was to be printed with lenticular printing (remember those plasticy cards where you turn them and the image changes?).

The project was great fun and I really enjoyed (more…)

Spring is here! Happy Spring! This piece went out as a email promo with the message ‘spring cleaning is good for your soul’. Below are some of the rough concepts I drew up beforehand – thank you to everyone who gave their input!

Finally had a little time to do something of my own. So naturally, I render a character that belongs to someone else…

Ah, but Death is timeless, and appropriate for what I intended to do anyway. Pity there is no new Death Gallery book being published.

This was done for an art book collecting various artists’ impressions of their favorite video game. My piece is derived from Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne (or Lucifer’s Call as it was known in the UK). The premise of the game is that the world has ended and the sole survivors, a group of teens, are left to deal with the demons that now walk the Earth.  Your main character, one of the teens who himself has inherited some esoteric power, wades through the confusion of the game, battling and collecting monsters as he goes. It’s a bit like Pokemon as interpreted by Lars von Trier…

This is probably my favorite piece of work this year. A fullpage and spot for Penthouse, for their erotic fiction section. The piece was about a lady who enjoys diddling herself on planes. She gets found out by her hunky seat-neighbor, who proceeds to literally give her a helping hand. Perhaps not the most intelligent of stories, but certainly one of the more entertaining things for an illustrator to work on!

These were done earlier in the year for Acco Brands. A bunch of illustrators were asked to create designs for laptop skins, and these were the two I made. I’m not sure if they are available for sale yet, but if they are I’ll make an announcement!

13 ghosts of halloween

I love Halloween, and this year I set a set of goofy ghosts called the ’13 Ghosts of Halloween’ as a client promotional. Each ghost is based off an actual client of mine. It was a lot of work but ultimately very fun to do! I hope the clients liked them!

Check out all 13 Ghosts and their ghastly stories here!

The final days of free money

This was a fun little piece that was rushed out over a weekend. The article for Seattle Metropolitan was titled ‘The final days of free money‘ and it was about some financial incentives that were about to run out.  I just went with the concept the art director had as the time was very tight; we decided on Cinderella theme for the piece.