Artwork for South Bronx

These are my favorite pieces that I did for my soccer team for different games and events we held. Thanks Dave for being a good sport on a few of the pieces. He's the one wearing the Darth Vader helmet and the No Country For Old Men wig.

Class project from early 2000s

I was given an assignment to do a cd cover. I chose to do DJ DNA. I used to really like this cover, but now I only like the back. The front was done in Illustrator; the back is my eyeball with a blur effect on it and the back DNA strand from the front imported into the eye. The text was done in InDesign; this was either b/c the professor said to do so, or b/c I just felt like using a third program for nothing. The barcode was done in Illustrator.

ATL 2010

This is the third cd cover I did for DJ Atlas. "ATL 2010" is a compilation of Atlanta's more well-known rappers like Gucci Mane, etc. It's done in Photoshop and Illustrator. I believe I drew the shapes in Illustrator, then added the glow in Photoshop, and the chrome text was also Photoshop. That's the way I usually work. The font is Borg9, like the people from Star Trek, I think.

I consider myself an illustrator first, so I wanted something that felt like a hiphop cd cover, but I didn't want it to be a rapper photoshopped into a fake setting like I feel like I've seen too many times. Or sitting on a vehicle. I think the whole thing has a logo-type quality to it, especially the inside cover. What do you all think of it?

The Cool School cd cover

My good friend DJ Atlas is releasing another cd. This one is dance-oriented music for children. It's called "Cool School". Zeb (DJ Atlas) loves Calvin & Hobbes, so we decided on a cover that to me serves as a tribute to them, as well as making it child-friendly.

The front cover is the first time in a long time that I've done a project completely in Photoshop. It's all a photo composite, except for when I drew in his shirt, b/c the image I extracted Calvin from had him shirtless (it was a drawing of him flexing in the mirror.) The chalkboard writing is an actual font that I found on Dafont.com, called Denne Schoolgirl or something like that. I tried writing in the title with my Wacom pen, but I like this font treatment much better.

If any of you remember, I've been working on this project for a few weeks, and I found a lot of interesting variations on Calvin & Hobbes while searching for images to use. There were a few anime versions of the characters, some comic book-styled images, and even one made out of sushi or something. I like to see different renditions of a character. It's the same as a cubist, photographer, impressionist, etc. painting the same subject, but they're all different.

I didn't do a rendition of Calvin & Hobbes, since we wanted to make sure children would immediately recognize the characters, but I used color, cropping and silhouettes to make an original image, which was the main challenge. I didn't want to just find an image of Calvin and stick him on the front like the Calvin stickers on people's trucks where he's peeing on some name brand.

The inside cover was done in Illustrator and Photoshop, which is the combination I most commonly use. The squares were simply colored and arranged, while the silhouttes were made in Photoshop and imported in. That font is called "Calvin & Hobbes", and it's made to look like the title font from the strip.

I read Calvin & Hobbes somewhat regularly, and I always enjoyed Watterson's illustration. But now that I've spent a good deal of time on this project, I would like to read even more of the strip. I hope you all like it too.

Project:Gold unveiled

You all should feel special. I haven't even sent the (simple) revisions back yet to the DJ. But it's ready to go; he just reminded me that I hadn't put my contact information on it. He's a versatile DJ, plus a good, thoughtful person. His birthday was on the 5th, so I'm glad he liked the project. Just one more thing that went good for him this week. "Magic Gold" is a dance-themed cd. I got to hear the mix while discussing ideas w/him, and the idea that you see was very strong in my mind very early on, once he told me what the project was about. I'm working on two more pieces with him, plus a possible book cover, so expect to see more artwork in this space, soon.

Hylandaz Redux artwork

I didn't like the front at first, but then I did, so here it is. The idea was loosely inspired by "Apocalypse Now" as well as by the original "Hostile Takeover" artwork. Doc, who makes beats for the album (he's the same Doc of the Single Minded Pros-if you haven't heard them, don't kill yourself, just listen to the music), loves "Apocalypse Now," hence 'Redux'. I have an electronic copy of the album from Doc, and it has new songs added along with a new song order.

The Akil project

I'm working on a cd cover for Akil from Jurassic 5, or formerly of Jurassic 5, since the group no longer exists, as I found out very recently. I did a draft of the project, based on the ideas I was given, but it has to be revised. Here's the piece, pre-revision:

The Chocolate artwork

I've been promising to put up some artwork. I guess I'll do this a few pieces at a time. Here's the last cd cover I designed. It's not released yet. It's an r&b artist. I enjoyed the challenge of this: I'm not at all an r&b fan, and so many cd covers from its artists seemed to me to not be very visual, so I wanted to make sure I did something interesting.