More Morvil

The past few days i worked on some more screen printing action for Morvil. This is where i live 9-5 Monday-Friday. A publication that we started running some client ads in is putting together a "goody bag" to give away at a function this coming week.

Being the crafty folks that we are, we jumped on some ideas to help drive home the importance of good graphic design and advertising. The coasters have playful and simple messages on them to encourage good design/advertising in their lives.

Our goal is to encourage people to "Shake Things Up" in there advertising. Help them to try looking at advertising from another angle. "Leave Your Mark" on your audience. Creating a memorable brand that over time people know they can rely, respect and trust your company. While remembering "Don't Water It Down".

Allowing for good, strong, well thought out design and advertising to grow and inspire your patrons and employees, is plan good thinking.










Of course, most of the real fun happens back at the office putting them together! Maria found these great rubber band balls that had black rubber bands in them. We thought they would go swimmingly with the designs on the coaster.

Spike, found them wonderfully enjoyable and yet an enigma. Teamwork helps everything go by quickly. Brian F, Spike and I sorted and packaged them for the "goodie bags" the publication was handing out.

The Show

The Thermals show was a whole lot of fun. It is wonderful to have bands come through and hit up littler town venues and rock out for us. Really enjoyed meeting the guys from both bands. If you get a chance to check them out, do and enjoy!

Here are a few pic before the camera battery died on me. Boy did i feel like an amateur when that happened. Not really even enough time to get used to the lights to find what worked.

Later
Doc

The Thermals Are Coming! The Thermals Are Coming!

Well i have had lots of things on my plate as of late. With that i do have progress to update on. I finally got some time carved out and got down to business on a gig poster for the band The Thermals. They will be stopping by the Soapbox downtown Wilm NC, Monday April 5th (strike that, it's the 12th). I got really excited about it and it was just the excuse i needed to print some gig posters.

I had done a sketch of the singer and intended to follow up with sketches of the drummer and bassist. A poster triptych, where the faces would change but the type and info all stayed the same. Needless to say that i ran out of time and was only able to get the one design pushed through to production. Here is the starter photo, sketch and digital sketch to kick this project off.







There were quite a few changes from this point to the final. A major one was to drop the line drawing altogether and just use shapes to convey the subject. Probably the biggest change is turning you home into a printing space. Setting up is a hassle when you don't have a proper space for your printing projects. Your kitchen/living room/den end up looking like this. I'll probably be cleaning up for a few more days after this.



Here is a shot of the Blue positive (dark black part of the image) over laying the magenta (lighter grey).


The blue screen with the image burned and ready to print.


Printing with friends always makes this wonderful process even more enjoyable. This brown bearded fellow is Brent Holloman. You should really check out some of his work. His photography is pretty close to amazing and his design skills are dern next to a brilliant match.


So here is the how the first color of the print went. Honestly, i'm really excited about how this turned out.


The magenta screen with burned image also ready to roll. Registered the second screen to the first print. Now just mix the ink and get to printing.



My buddy Justin Munn, stopped by to check out the process and lend a hand as well as pull a few prints. After a few mishaps with the magenta being to pink and the issues with the ink sliding under the tape, we were able to get the posters printed!





Personally i enjoy comparing the preliminary sketches to the finished piece and see where the creative journey takes you. Over all i am thrilled with how these came out. If you're able to stop by Wilm NC's Soapbox Laundro-Lounge April 5th (strike again, now mon the 12th) to check this show out you should be in for a good time.

TTFN
Doc

Over all I had a great time. I had started this post wed evening and checked Friday afternoon to show a friend some more dates at the soapbox only to find there was no Thermals show Mon. Needless to say i was a little panicked. It's frustrating when dates happen to change on you. When you're making posters to make posters and exercise the creative juices i guess it doesn't matter in the long run. Might just walk around with sticky notes to all the posters i hung to correct this change in schedule.

The Fully Belly Project

I was contacted by a friend who was designing some poster and advertising for a benefit dinner. Turns out they needed some posters screen printed and wondered if i could help out. It was a turn around job that needed to be completed in a few days time.

Luckily the design work had been handled by Signal Design. So all i had to do was burn the screens and get to printing (if it were only that simple). Rachel Hardy of Signal was good enough to bring the paper and cut it down while i finished up the screen prep.

I was unable to make it out to the event but i hear that it was a success. It was also fun to stop in and see the Fully Belly shop, what their plans are and some of the gadgets. All to help others countries that are not as blessed as we are here in the States.

Hop on over to the Full Belly Projects site and read about it your self. You might find that it is something that you would like to get involved in.

Here are some shots of the poster and the mess made printing them.






TTFN
Doc

Holga Portra 400VC

Well i got some more film back from the great Folks down at Image finishers (http://imagefinishers.com/) and got a few really cool shots to post from a ski trip at the end of January and a Haiti support show i saw early Feb.

I also am in the works of getting a website together to post a greater collection of design, art and fotos that my wife and i have put together over the last few years. I am setting a personal goal to have it up and running by the end of June so we'll see how that goes. As soon as it is up i will post a link here.

On to the art...

Here is Justin Munn, you may know him from a few other shots taken while shredding the guitar on stage with fellow band members of Crimson Refuge. A van full of tired kiddos from our youth group. Good ole Aaron is poking his head out. This was taken with a cheap fisheye and a color gel ringflash. However i am going to have to look into doubling up on the gels cause there really isn't a noticeable difference like those dramatic shots that you see over at the Lomo website. I'll try it out and post back here with some results.



Ok this fellow is Brent Holloman. You may know of him from Beta Radio. This is a shot that was taken at the Satellite Lounge Back earlier this month. Great Tunes! If you get a chance head over to there myspace page http://www.myspace.com/betaradio. If they start playing regularly differently check em out. This was again a colored gell ring flash with little effect from the gels. The background lights were the stars here. I love not knowing what your gonna get when you drop film off at the shop. Little mini Christmas' all year long.




Till next time

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Digital Painting

Ok so it's been a while. Sorry about that. I have some cool things coming up. Scanning in two rolls of 120 film right now and should be able to post them here in the next week or so.
In the meantime i have been really trying to get into this thing called speed painting. From what i can tell it is an exercise that illustrators and animators use to warm up and get going before they jump into there work. Its like working out a gesture painting with out having to let it dry.

Now i have been back and forth on To get Painter 11 or stay with Photoshop. The rotate canvas is the feature that has been the most coveted feature of Painter. Now PS CS4 has that!
Still dont have the funds to break out painter yet, but if some one out there wants to get rid of their copy holler at me and i'll gladly take it off your hands.

Here are a few names of those that i admire in the digital painting field.
Bobby Chui
Bjorn Hurri
BK Studio
Christian Alzmann
Lois van Baarie
David Colman
Chris Sasaki
Willie Real
Carlos Felipe Leon
I could go on for a while but i'll stop there.

Although Cory Godbey, Chris Koelle and Justin Gerard over at Portland Studios don't do very many straight digital pieces they surely spark my interest in the aspects of digital first.

All that to say i did my first digital painting. It's still is floating on the page a bit. That said it's my favorite mug. I look forward to doing more of these in the life ahead of me.


TTFN
Doc

Handmade Holiday

Today I finished printing the holiday art prints for the company. It was a lot of fun, lot of work but i think the end product is really cool.
Here are some process pics and one of my little helpers.


Dried print from yesterdays efforts.


Had to change out the second color for visibility reasons for the darker paper.




Mathis is the man. Don't have one of those supper sweet drying racks (If any body out there has one and wants to give it to me, yes i will take it.) So string and clips will have to do.



Looking forward to screen printing some more posters.
Doc