Bad Robot Art Show

Tonight is the opening of The Official Bad Robot Art Experience at Gallery 1988 west. The show features art based on films and shows produced by Bad Robot, J.J. Abram's production company. It's very cool to be participating with Bad Robot in any sort of official capacity!

I based my piece on Super 8, which is probably in a tie with Star Trek for my favorite Bad Robot film (and was partially filmed here in my home state of WV!) I thought it would be cool to show the kids after the events of the movie, making a new short film about the adventure they'd just been on.

Ninja Turtles Threadless Design Challenge

Here's my submission to the Threadless Ninja Turtles T-shirt design competition, which is now up for scoring. If you like my design please vote for it here, and hopefully it will get turned into a shirt! And if you REALLY like it, giving a score of 5 is, of course, extra appreciated! Thanks to everyone who votes, and to everybody who helped my previous Threadless design get printed.

Trace Around your Heart

Last night was the premier of Trace Around Your Heart, a film made by my pals and fellow Brainwrap crew. It's about the struggles of Trace Cherokee, a washed up country singer (and puppet) who must revisit a past romance.

I designed the logo for the film as well as these posters used to promote last night's showing, which was a complete success. There was a great turnout and a huge response; lots of laughs from the audience and plenty of fanfare at the end. And it was well deserved, as everyone who worked on the film did an absolutely amazing job. The final product is an extremely funny and well-put together movie. I'm always blown away by the quality and quantity of the work the Brainwrap crew put into these projects.


ALSO! If you're in the Huntington WV area then you're in luck, because tonight at 7:25 PM at the Keith Albee theater, Trace will be performing a LIVE concert. Now when's the last time you saw a puppet play his country hits in a beautifully restored, 100 year old theater?

Here's the Trace Around Your Heart trailer:


Trace Around Your Heart Official Trailer from brainwrap on Vimeo.

Stefan

This is one of my three pieces for Gallery 1988's Is This Thing On: Saturday Night Live art show. The theme of the show was kept under wraps until the gallery doors opened, which was a pretty cool idea and also why I'm just now sharing the images with you!

I still watch and love SNL every week, and if you do as well then you will recognize this piece as a tribute to Stefan, Bill Hader's Weekend Update character who has become a fan favorite.

500 Days of Summer

Happy Valentines Day! Here's my piece for the Get a Room art show that celebrates pop culture couples. The show opens tomorrow at Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.

I chose to draw Tom and Summer from 500 Days of Summer. I hadn't seen the movie since it was in theaters, but I caught it on TV just a few weeks ago and was reminded of just how great it is. Like most guys I'm not usually a big romance flick person, but every once in a while you'll find one that's not only told in a creative way, but also really resonates with anyone who has had 'real' relationships. By that I mean that most Hollywood romances are either super lovey-dovey, love-at-first-site-we're-meant-to-be-so-I'll-interupt-a-wedding-at-the-last-minute type movies, or one where there's an exaggerated stereotype of a jerk who is obviously the one you're supposed to be rooting against.

And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to have an excuse to draw Zooey Deschanel. Though I drew Joseph Gordon-Levitt too, who is big with the ladies right now.

Collider.com has an article about the show where you can see a preview of some the work, as does /Film

Fionna & Cake

It's Funny that when I take a break from drawing for the day I end up spending that time making more drawings. Here's a quick one of Fionna and Cake from Adventure Time.

Mail Bag

Here's an email I received recently and my response. I do get this question from time to time, so I thought I would post this in case there were any readers who might find it useful:


I'm a really big fan of yours! Your style is just so amazing, and I love it. But, uh, I know this sounds dumb, you probably get a ton of questions on this, but...To emulate the colouring style, and just the basic outline of it all, how would I manage that? I'm assuming it's digital, which is cool. But I really like the grainy textures and smooth, vectorish looking figures. If you have any tips or anything, that'd be wonderful! Thank you.

Hi, and thanks for the compliments!

You are correct, I create all of my art digitally, and I use a Wacom tablet to create my drawings in Photoshop. If you don't have a tablet, I highly recommend looking into one if you are wanting to do digital illustration. You don't need a fancy one; as the difference between using a mouse and using any tablet whatsoever is like night and day.

Even though I do a lot of smooth "vectorish" line work, I always use Photoshop rather than a vector program like Illustrator. The reason is that I just find it more user friendly for my purposes. In Photoshop you simply take the brush tool and draw whatever you want wherever you want, like a real life painting. In illustrator I find that it is much more about fidgeting around with lines to get them exactly right, which personally I find a bit cumbersome when trying to make an organic drawing.

As far as the different textures used in my work, it basically boils down to different brushes in Photoshop. For smoother lines I use a brush that emulates sort of a pencil line, so that it is smooth but still has an uneven natural quality to it. but for more grainy or blurry lines (like when I'm doing "shading") I use a brush that has sort of a chalk look to it. I have created my own custom brushes after years of whittling down what I like and use the most. Beyond that it's just lots and lots of practice!

A while ago I did a series of posts explaining my process which you can find here: http://albinoraven7.blogspot.com/2010/10/proccess-part-1.html
At the top of each post is a list of links to all the other parts, 1 through 5.

-Glen