"The Lightning Is Within You"

During the Fall 2010 semester, one of my projects involved creating the artwork for a standard CD/jewel case (front/back cover, disc tray art, insert, etc). The artist and album could be real or fictional, just as long as certain requirements were met. I decided to create a package for one of my favorite new acts: Dark Horses. One of the things I love about the 'Horses is their sense of mystery and otherworldliness that permeates both the music as well as their incredible visual aesthetic. Keeping that in mind, I tried to incorporate those creepy yet intriguing elements into the design. I wanted things to be minimal, and black & white - things that are generally consistent with all their artwork. The song titles are all real except for a few which were inspired by quotes directly from the band.













This was a fun project, and I hope I did service to the band. Hopefully we'll have a full album before the end of the year! I highly recommend checking them out at any and all of the following links:

Official Site

Twitter

Facebook

MySpace

Collaborations with John Penola

My super talented bro and I have recently (and finally) begun doing some serious musical collaborations. The results have been really fun/exciting for both of us. John basically sent me sketches, or very loose ideas, of songs in Logic and told me to have at them. So I did, and we've got 2 little songs that we both like and will probably work on a bit more in the future (one may even become involved in Maybe Bomb - whoa!).

For comparison's sake, I included the original "sketches" and of course my versions.

Hope you like!

Look forward to more awesomness like this.

New, Darker, and Generally more Hypnotic

I recently revised an old Logic song of mine, with the working title of "Groper Cleveland" (no, that's not a typo). I included both versions in the zip file. Whaddya think?


Groper Cleveland

Sketch 1-29-11

I think it's safe to say that David Fincher's upcoming The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is my most anticipated film of the year. Even before Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross signed on to compose the score, this was something I knew had potential. After all, who could resist Fincher returning to the crime/noir genre with such an exciting franchise? Yet, with TR and AR officially on board (which excites me to NO end), and the first photos of Rooney Mara (who you may remember as Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend in The Social Network) as the title character revealed, I'm frothing at the mouth. So I couldn't resist doing a sketch based on this recent W cover.

Sketch with type/"tattoo"



Sketch without

Sketch 1-28-11

Headshot of my Cowboy character. I included a Black & White version for fun. If my layers were more methodical, I'd post a progression, but we'll save that for another time. Enjoy!

Self Portrait 1-26-11

My first self portrait on the iPad! Don't know why I didn't do this sooner.

The original:



A crop that I like (maybe prefer). Which do you like better?

Sketch 1-26-11

Gonna try to do one Sketchbook Pro sketch every night for as long as possible. I've neglected this app for too long. It ain't gonna be easy (this piece went in about 3 different directions before I went with what you see), but I feel the need to try.