It's been awhile...

...but the last few weeks of my internship at the Press didn't produce a whole lot of portfolio-worthy material. Mostly just a few ads to be done quickly without much design work necessary, which is fine, but I wouldn't want to put it up here. Good news, though, is that school's started again, and there should be plenty of work to put up now.

Humpy's Ad

Here's an half-page ad that I did today at the Press. So far everything I've done over there's been weird. Skeleton's playing golf, Godzilla, monsters. Oh well, I guess that's just how things go sometimes.

*Update* The skeleton playing golf was deemed "too Halloween-y" by Humpy's and was cut and replaced with some golf-themed clip art. It's alright though, I thought I might've been pushing it a little bit anyway.

Hooray! I'm published

So I'm finally a published designer, which is exciting. My fill for the Press ran Thursday, and if all goes well there'll be two more this next week. Woo-hoo! I guess it's not that much of a big deal, but it's kind of a milestone in my design career. We'll see what my next assignments are tomorrow, and hopefully they'll be as fun to do as these were.

Realism be damned! I'm an optimist!

So I think things are pretty exciting. I'm right now in a very good place. Not summer vacation specifically, but just in general. I feel like there's a lot of neat things in the world to explore. Things like careers, the complete discography of the Talking Heads, hiking trails, Japan, libraries, noise, and exotic foods. I think I can do that.

Anchorage Press Illustration Fills

Here are a couple ad illustrations that I did for the Anchorage Press, a free weekly newspaper that kind of like the Anchorage equivalent of the Seattle Stranger or the LA Weekly. I'm interning there now, and so far I've done a couple of these "freelance photographers and illustrators wanted" ads/fills and an ad for a hotdog stand. It's pretty fun work, and the people are fun to be around. I'll replace these tiny pictures with larger ones soon.

"Transformers" and a rascist in disguise

So Leslie and I were standing in line at the concession stand at the movie theater and, as she usually does, she asks me what the chinese kanji tattoo on the man in front of us says. It's on the back of the man's neck and he's buying candy for his kid. I squint my eyes and look at it and--while I'm pretty poor at reading chinese, I recognize the two symbols. The first is "white" and the second is "power." I thought it was kind of strange, to declare your prejudice so publicly, yet at the same time hidden in a foreign language. It's kind of a paradox. A declaration of racial supremacy written in a language that is very much the language of a different race and culture. It was pretty odd. "Transformers," though was awesome. Aside from the few moments that felt like I was watching a GMC commercial.

"Tiffany Jones" poster and invite comps

This was kind of a long project that I did in my design class. We were each given a film title and had to make up a short synopsis, then designed logos, posters, and an invite for a screening of the film. My film "Tiffany Jones" was sort of a mockumentary/"Life Aquatic" hybrid.

Wilderness

I think that nature, while beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dangerous. I went and saw Gregory Colbert's "Ashes and Snow" exhibit when it was in Santa Monica. It was big and fancy and boring. Every picture was some ethnic child cradling a leopard or having a hawk land on its small brown head. It was the stereotypical "communing with nature" bit, and it (along with the "Where's Waldo" and "I Spy" books) inspired me to make these two prints, which--I think--are a little more real. Nature isn't something to dilly-dally around with, because it will try to kill you. Every time I go backpacking here in Alaska (so far every weekend this summer) I'm frightened by the prospect of running into a bear or falling down a mountain. They're real fears and should be respected. For these photos I went out to Joshua Tree National Park for the first image and the Santa Monica Mountains for the second. All the animals were photographed in the National History Museum of Los Angeles.