Malignant Humor

This weekend I'm getting stuff ready for an art show with Saxton Moore and Jorge Lacera at American Greetings. Not sure what all's going to happen, but it should be fun.

Meeting Notes

Ah....meetings. Why am I invited? Why do I go? Why do I slide into surrealistic list making?

Oh No!

Sorting through piles of bills and filing them, I ran across a couple sheets of stickers from ICON4, last year's illustration conference. I have about 60 left. Now I have to think of something fun to do with them.

Sack Puppet Saturday

Meet Zeke...proud office worker in orange pants.

Another One From The Vault

I've always loved the punk rock flyer and cut-n-paste zine asthetic. Finally started putting together some goofy zines about 10 years ago. King Kong and a Hunter S. Thompson quote.

Resumes

Going through the Savage Monsters files, I found a bunch of my old resumes. Kind of fun to see the changes. Some of the stuff I'd NEVER put on a resume now. Just like I'd never show some of those portfolios from back then. Above is the resume I used when I first got out of school. I interviewed at about 25 places before I got a job. I do remember turning one job down, that maybe I should've taken... doing signage for trade shows. Could've been fun. And I did get called in to one of the TV stations to interview for a postion doing on-air graphics. I'd never used AfterEffects, which the job called for, so I didnt' get that one. The guy interviewing me called me in because he liked the type treatment I did on my name.
I'm not sure this one even got sent out. I ended up going back to school at Portfolio Center in Atlanta.
When I graduated from Portfolio Center, I was told by the head of the design department that he'd give me a "template for a resume that f@#$ing works." And this is what I got. Never really liked that resume, but I did end up in NYC using it.
Finally, I threw caution to the wind with this one. Just had fun going nuts with it. Some people told me that some companies wouldn't even look at someone with a resume like this. I figured that if they wouldn't look at this resume, I wouldn't want to work there anyway. I did have a boring backup resume done in Word, just in case.

Work Shennanigans

Seems like there's lots of photo play at work. And most of it's mine. I've tortured one coworker by doing stuff with his photo...using Photoshop to put his head on different pictures, did a take off on the "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" stickers (I know, pretty lame, but it was funny because it confused the hell out of him), and the most recent, a giant blow up of his head in black and white tacked up on the bulletin board. It's about 4x6 feet or so. The best they've done to me so far, has been putting my face on the body of the Thing on a Fantastic 4 poster. I wish other people would do more creative non-work related stuff like that. And I suppose I should probably do more work and less goofing off.

A few years ago I stuck my face on a postcard of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Amazes me how many people have been taken in by it. I suppose the crappy scan masks my crappy cut-n-paste job a bit.

Sack Puppet Saturday

Meet Lulu...cyclops sack puppet from a few years ago.

I'm so unmotivated to do anything, I started a paper mache skull today. It's big enough to easily fit over my head. And I've got a big melon. Hopefully this one will go better than my 2 headed baby did. It's a much simpler design.

Excessive Thoughts

Too many things floating through my mind...can't really concentrate on anything. Maybe I need Ritalin or something. Or maybe I've been watching to much stuff from Le Dernier Cri. I bought a bootleg of the Hopital Brut (sic) DVD a few months ago and was mesmerized by it. So I recently ordered Les Religions Sauvages from them. Holy smokes, that's pretty amazing, too. Absolute sensory overload....it's like Nam June Paik combined with MTV combined with Einsturzende Neubauten comined with...I don't know, European degenerate art. Really mind blowing stuff. It inspires me to do my own work, yet I can't pull myself away to actually do my own work.

Pic above: Mondo Kim's in NYC a few years ago before they cleaned off all the stickers. Check the Savage Monsters sticker of yesteryear.

Sack Puppet Saturday

Another puppet from the collection. His name is Slinty.

Gross Eerie Store

I just revamped my store at savagemonsters.com. Hopefully it'll be simpler for me to update and simpler for customers to use. It takes awhile to figure out all the HTML when you're not used to using it. Now that I kinda have it laid out, I still need to get more items up there. I've had buttons for a long time but have been too lazy to photograph them all and put them up there. My original plan was to sell them in little packs of 5 or 10 with silkscreened header cards. Never got around to doing those, either. I think there are around 70 or 80 designs. Maybe. I'd also like to get my zines up there. People seem to like the 2 new ones I did recently... "Color Me Stupid" and "This Is You." I may have some of my older zines around, too. "Mr. Green Zine," "Close Cover Before Striking," and "Color Me Naked." No idea if anyone's even interested in them.

Above is a photocopy/collage doodle I did at my last job a few years ago.

More Notes from Important Meetings

My success in life is all due to my extraordinary ability to take detailed and accurate notes. Two examples are shown above.

New Vintage Goonheads

In an effort to keep my work evolving, I'm experimenting with making my monsters have more of a 50s or 60s comic book feel. The top image is my original drawing in Flash. I overlaid some tranparent blocks of color to mute the colors (one of them is a gradient from purple to blue) and dropped a shadow behind the head. I adjusted the colors a bit in Photoshop. Finally, I'm working on adding the half-tone effect. With some more work, I'll get it right eventually.

My Moronic Adventures

My plan this morning was to take a walk and go to the ATM, mail some letters and get my hair cut. The first 2 went according to plan. I decided I was probably too sweaty to get a hair cut, so I kept walking. Ended up at the park overlooking Lake Eerie and I sat in the shade and doodled a bit in my sketchbook. And I then continued my meandering. Walked by the skatepark. Saddened to see that there were only 3 or 4 kids there on a Saturday afternoon. The concrete seemed nice and smooth, but it looked like it was kind of a lame layout. And I continued walking. I stopped into an antique mall that caught my eye. Not too much cool stuff there, but I did find an arificial arm for teaching nurses about how to hook up an IV or something like that. It had a blue carrying case and an IV bag with some kind of fluid in it. And it was ONLY $45. I managed to walk out the store without it. I ate at Taco Bell even though there were at least a half a dozen other choices. I continued my trudge home. I passed by a Salvation Army drop box by the Giant Eagle grocery store, and half on the curb, half on the side walk was a nozzle and hose from a gas station. I almost picked it up, but didn't want to carry it all the way home. On the hike, I thought it would be great for work...for the "Creative Refueling Program," then I thought the arm at the antique store would be great for that, too. What a banner day. I cooked up a scheme to drive back to Giant Eagle and pick up a few things I needed, and the gas hose as well. It all went according to plan, except Giant Eagle didn't have the water filters I wanted, so I had to go to Target. Not only did I find the water filters, but I found a tiki on clearance for $35. So I bought it. Why did I do the impulse buy at the department store, when the creepy latex arm (complete with carrying case) was so much more bizarre and interesting? Oh, and I eventually realized that the program is "Creative Recharge," not "Creative Refueling." I still have a gas hose in the trunk of my car.

Savage Monsters Sack Puppet Saturday

This is the first bag puppet that I attempted to silkscreen. And it probably came out the best of the 4 designs I eventually silkscreened. They're fun, but they were kind of a pain to do. My plan is to upload at least one puppet to Goonhead Patrol every Saturday. That should keep me busy for the next 5 years, longer if I make any more puppets.