CRITICAL MASS

Details from a piece in this weeks BusinessWeek Magazine.
Hi tech gizmos for all kinds of bike riders.
Like HD helmet cams that also track you by gps.
If you make that sweet jump, you're gonna want all your  friends on Facebook to see it and know the exact place on earth it happened.

Children's Review: Stop Snoring, Bernard!

Really Nice review for Bernard at Shelf Awareness! Yeayy!! A quote and the whole review at the link below.

"This is a crowd-pleaser sure to send youngsters clamoring for more from snoring Bernard".--Jennifer M. Brown

Children's Review: Stop Snoring, Bernard!

DENTAL FLOSS TYCOON

Another Zappa inspired piece for the show in March. This is probably one of Zappa's more known songs, it's like the gateway to Conceptual Continuity.

HAPPY NEW YEAR REPOST

Just got these great pop-up New Years cards in the mail. I posted some of the art for this earlier but I'm just so excited about how these came out, I had to post the real thing well, crappy iphone shots of the real thing. Awesome design from Introduction!

BILLY THE MOUNTAIN

Another fun piece for the Arcadia Show. Billy the Mountain from the "Just another Band from LA" album.

THE RAVIES

In the messy aftermath of Valentines day, here is a little bit of order and clarity. This is 4 year old Raven La's ratings of the Fuzzytown Valentines cards. And I think I would vote much the same way, although "medium-cute" for that little platypus seems a little harsh. What do you think?

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

Its that time of year again. Don't worry, if you forgot to bring Valentines to work or you didn't receive  as many as you should have, Fuzzytown has you covered. 

Go to Fuzzytown click the Fuzzytines link on the menu and a full sheet of Fuzzytown Valentines will be delivered to your desktop.

Print them out. (preferably at work to save on ink)

Cut along the dotted lines. (even better have your intern do it)

Give them to loved ones

Or keep them for yourself. (You cubicle will be the envy of all, really!)

Stay Fuzzy!

THIS IS IT, WHAT CAN YOU DO THAT'S WORSE THAN THIS?

I have a show next month at Arcadia Boutique in NoLibs and I've decided to do a series of paintings inspired by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. If they lived in FuzzyTown of course.
This is a reinterpretation of one of my favorite albums of his, Weasels Ripped My Flesh.
The original art is mind blowingly amazing, probably something I shouldn't touch, but I did anyway.

Here's the original artwork, so disturbing and amazing.

When Frank Zappa approached the artist Neon Park to create a cover, he showed him this cover of Man's Life, and said "This is it, what can you do that's worse than this?"

Terrifying image but strangely hilarious at the same time. So Weird. I wonder if this inspired the scene in the Big Lebowski when the Nihilists threw the ferret/weasel in the tub to torture The Dude.

YESSSSS!!!!!

SOUTHERN FRIED HIP HOP U HEAR ME?

I had the pleasure to do a quick turnaround piece for the Oxford American this past week. It's a portrait of the Southern hip-hop artist Ms. Peachez. "She" is a controversial cross dressing man from Louisiana who uses stereotypes of poor southern blacks to poke fun at hip-hop hits and the perception of the South in general. Or, at least thats what I think she's doing. Decide for yourself here and my favorite here.

I love doing pieces for Oxford American because they basically leave it up to you to deliver. No sketch approval phase, nothing, just straight for it. But with this freedom you can drift, I did an almost finished piece before scrapping it and starting over.

After thumbnailing a bunch of different directions, including some really bad ideas like a Ms. Peachez brand tub of fried chicken ala KFC. I decided this image below would be the one.

It was too busy, so I cropped it and started dropping in some flat color areas to see if it would level out a bit.

Something still wasn't right. It was a little too detailed and looked like some weirdo coloring book uh, boring. So it was back to the drawing board.

And the final piece. I thought a more traditional, almost, formal portrait would balance the zaniness and of the subject. Well, that and some cute flowered stretch pants.

GO BERNARD!

Found out that "Stop Snoring, Bernard!" received it's first review today and it was from Publishers Weekly no less. They called it "A promising debut" among other things. Full review over at the Stop Snoring, Bernard! blog.

HAPPY YEAR OF THE RABBIT

You may have noticed there have been a lot of bunnies on the blog, its like they keep multiplying like, well er, uh, ahem.... plus its the Year of the Rabbit.  But mostly it's because they are cute and fuzzy.
 This illustration is for a pop up Chinese New Year card for Oscar Printing Company also known as OPP. (You down with OPP? Yeah, you know me.)
Not reflected here, but the card is beautifully designed by Sara and Lydia at Introduction Design.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

This morning, Oskar and I were playing with the vintage Fisher Price sets that he got from Santa.
 Santa is an amateur when it comes to eBaying but hes pretty damn sure that all those other people out there bidding astronomical figures for old Fisher Price toys are PROBABLY not buying them for kids to play with. Anyway, the train pulled into Vegas in time to catch a show and what a show it was, btw for you "collectors" out there, I'm aware that those square guys are Playskool, so chill.

DEAD IN THE WATER

Sometimes even when the client likes your illustration its not right for the clients brand.
This is some packaging I illustrated that got killed. I've removed the company and product name that was in the steam cloud because the product is still in development. Too bad, it was still fun to work on and I'm happy with the result. Especially as there were a lot of parameters with the packaging I had to keep in mind for the design. For example, the white space over the creatures face is a cutout that reveals the products great googly eyes.