Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Comic Sans



Stolen from here: Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole.
BY MIKE LACHER

- - - -

Listen up. I know the shit you've been saying behind my back. You think I'm stupid. You think I'm immature. You think I'm a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I'm Comic Sans, and I'm the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.

You don't like that your coworker used me on that note about stealing her yogurt from the break room fridge? You don't like that I'm all over your sister-in-law's blog? You don't like that I'm on the sign for that new Thai place? You think I'm pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don't all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can't all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I'm standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest. Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once.

People love me. Why? Because I'm fun. I'm the life of the party. I bring levity to any situation. Need to soften the blow of a harsh message about restroom etiquette? SLAM. There I am. Need to spice up the directions to your graduation party? WHAM. There again. Need to convey your fun-loving, approachable nature on your business' website? SMACK. Like daffodils in motherfucking spring.

When people need to kick back, have fun, and party, I will be there, unlike your pathetic fonts. While Gotham is at the science fair, I'm banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I'm shredding "Reign In Blood" on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I'm racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who'll kill me if I don't cross the finish line first. I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you.

It doesn't even matter what you think. You know why, jagoff? Cause I'm famous. I am on every major operating system since Microsoft fucking Bob. I'm in your signs. I'm in your browsers. I'm in your instant messengers. I'm not just a font. I am a force of motherfucking nature and I will not rest until every uptight armchair typographer cock-hat like you is surrounded by my lovable, comic-book inspired, sans-serif badassery.

Enough of this bullshit. I'm gonna go get hammered with Papyrus.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Chuck Jones: An Animated Life

So a few weeks back my brother and I went to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to sadly take my Mom there so she could go home to Michigan after her ten day visit. After we said our tearful farewells I asked my brother if we could find the little mini art gallery they have in that terminal (Terminal Four!) he said sure since we were going to have to pay for the full hour of parking anyhow.

So we found the gallery and what do you know...a Chuck Jones exhibit! Now for those of you who don't know who Chuck Jones is, he is one of the lead animators/creator of characters from Looney Tunes. It was quite the retrospective of his work. I didn't get pictures of everything but I got the best things in my opinion.

Again these are taken on my camera phone as it was the only thing I had. Yay Droid!

Biography


Sketches








Looney Tunes Paintings




















How the Grinch Stole X-mas Painting


Phoenix Art!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Bigger Than You

So in Tempe Towne Marketplace there is a store front called "The Night Gallery" It is a facility that is used to showcase student works from ASU. A lot of the time they will have "established" Phoenix artists share the gallery space with the student work in order to get more people to come in and see the shows and to hopefully get more revenue. The shows are free but there is a donation jar in the front.

The following is from a show that is still up (it's been up for awhile now in the back) and it is by Nathanial Lewis and called "Bigger Than You" According to his blog this was his Thesis show for ASU.

here a couple links to him and his work: Blogspot Blog and Art Site

A side note: My photos don't really do his work justice. I only usually have my phone on me, so all of these pics are taken on my Droid.

Now on to the show!


"Blossom"


"Icarus"


"Scribble"




"Feast"


"Maya"


"Melt"


"Real Gone 1"


"Ghost"


"Anticipation"


"Hunger"


"Loom"


"Me & You"


"Extrude"


"Romper"


"Satisfaction"


"Make Believe"

Phoenix Art by a Phoenix Artist

Monday, July 12, 2010

Sunday, July 11, 2010

CD Cover Design


Fantabulastic's Victoria by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

The next Card in The Creative Grab Bag Series! Design a CD cover for a fake band. Luckily, I already have one of those.

Fanatbulastic starring the lovely Kabukikatze on Guitar and SyntheticPlatypus on Vocals.

Awhile back Miss Kabuki and I did an art trade where we had created a band and did posters advertising for them : Fantabulastic Poster
Miss Kabuki removed hers cleaning house :) But I assure you it it was an epic poster advertising the Russian leg of our tour.

So a little about the design of this cover. I had the band already so the hard part of figuring out a name was already taken care of. I knew I wanted to revisit fantabulastic, but how?

When I was in Victoria, Canada I fell in absolute love with the Native Art there. Evan bought a painting and I bought some magnets for the fridge. If I could have bought more I would have.

So I decided to use that as my inspiration! The CD is called Victoria for Canada and I used the design elements in their native art that makes it so unique and fantastic. The colors are simplistic and everything is made of shapes and alot of those shapes have animals in them.

I'm on the left I have glasses! Miss Kabuki is on the right. See the red hair? :)

In this picture somewhere: A beaver, a rhino, a frog, an eagle, a cardinal, and a parrot.

I had a ton of fun doing this, once I figured out how to draw with the shapes it actually came out rather quickly. Colored it in photoshop and sized it correctly.

Phoenix art by a Phoenix Artist!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Mint Condoms and Weed

Now you are looking at the title for this blog entry and thinking: "...what?"

Now that would be what I was thinking when I encountered these very items.

Let me explain.

The other week I had my follow up Doctors Appointment (everything is fine, I worried for nothing). As Evan and I were leaving the office I pulled out the wrong way into a gas station that is in front of the building center. So as I pulled around to go out the other way I saw something on the ground and I came up to next to it and opened my door.

A wallet and a phone! Holy Crap!

I picked up both and pulled into a parking spot at the gas station. Now as luck would have it I was just reading about what to do when you find a wallet or phone from The Simple Dollar.

So I went inside to the gas station and told the clerk I found a wallet and phone and I wanted to leave my contact information. She told me that the guy has just come in 15 minutes ago in a panic. I gave her my name and number and told her that I hoped he came back.

I went back to the car and started going through the contacts of the phone, hoping to find a "mom" or "dad" number to call. Evan started going through the wallet. There were no credit cards and no money (hopefully no one had taken it) but there was a mint condom that Evan pulled out (which we had a good laugh at)and then a small bag of what I could only assume was a bud of weed. (o_o)

Well, I wanted to get everything back to that guy ASAP because I was not keeping this around. Especially when one of the numbers was "House of Toke" so I punched in the guy's address from his license and found it was only 5 minutes from the station and since Evan was with me, I figured we could drop it off at his house.

Well as we were pulling out a car pulled in and rolled down his window and started to ask something of the maintenance men that were working around the gas station.

I told Evan that this had to be the guy. So I pulled up next to him and asked if he was looking for something. He said a wallet and phone and I handed it over to him. He looked like he was gonna cry from happiness. He asked where we found it (on the ground) and then I told him I was going to drop it off at his address. He threw a couple "God Bless You's" at me and we drove off on our merry way.

Make Art Like A Child


miscellaneous by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

Another somewhat easy card drawn, once I figured out what I was actually going to do.

Card Drawn: Make Art Like a Child

So the first thing I did was dig out a bunch of old old artwork and look through it. I was looking for inspiration, at one point I was going to update a picture I had done in 1998 but then I found some stuff I did while I was in school and realized the answer was this:

DOODLE

I teach kids now and this is all they actually ever want to do. So I took a sketchbook page and I doodled the crap out of it. No pencil, no erasing. Just pen to paper and have at it.

I enjoyed filling up this space quite a bit and enjoyed trying to come up with all sorts of different things.

It did take me a few hours to do it (I watched some moves while doodling) but on the whole I'm pleased how it came out!