June 10, 2010

hOily Whale - desktops

By popular request, I have two sizes of computer desktop version of the poor beleaguered Fail Whale for those who are interested.

Some have asked, and there are various discussions about t-shirts as well. If you are interested in a t-shirt, please leave a comment below.

1680x1050 Desktop
1280x1024 Desktop

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:34 PM | Comments (5) | Design | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Sketches | Stumble

June 9, 2010

hOily Whale!

I have a lot of "internet friends," people I've never met face-to-face. A good many of them happen to live in the New Orleans area. I've got a friend who used to live up here who used to work on the oil rigs out there in the Gulf of Mexico. So when the Gulf exploded, I was following the goings-on closely. Getting unbelievable details from those in the area, friends with family who fished for a living.

It's gotten so that I expect every other tweet or email to contain oil. It's permeating everything down there - from the smell of the ocean turning to the stench of crude oil to the feel of it in the air. So when NOLAnotes tweeted that seeing the Twitter FailWhale yesterday was a little startling because there wasn't any oil on him ... I had a little brainstorm.

Originally, I'd wanted to do the green, green/yellow, yellow pattern inside the birds, but they're just too small for that to work (unless I wanted to do another huge illustration!). I chose to keep it very, very simple, hinting at the oil on the birds (in their eyes and wings - those black areas are usually white) and a nice, happy sun on poor Mr. FailWhale. I wanted to match Twitter's clean simplicity, so I didn't go for the amount of oil that really ought to be coating everything ... the key to parody, of course, is changing just enough to get your point across without beating your audience over the head with your point. In that respect, I think this turned out pretty well.

What I didn't expect was the attention this got - even landing on the Maddow Blog where it was called "instant folk art."

The world is a strange place sometimes - for some reason, I expected more response from the Adobe/Apple illustration which took weeks (and therefore, really wasn't as topical by the time it was done, I know), and this little parody was just something I whipped out when I couldn't sleep Tuesday night.

I'm not complaining ... just noting that the world is a strange, strange place.

Which, of course, is evidenced by the fact that oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for over a month while BP tries to polish their image and protest that their safety records are perfectly fine.

All that just smells a little fishy to me.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:39 PM | Comments (6) | Design | Sketches | Stumble

June 5, 2010

The Zax Stopped in Their Tracks

Finally.

I've been drawing semi-seriously and now seriously for just five years. It started when I first saw Mike Rhode's sketchtoons. I owe a lot to Mike for his early encouragement.

Recently there's been a very public kerfuffle between Adobe - the leading software in design - and Apple Computers. Adobe wants the Flash software they purchased from Macromedia some time ago to be ubiquitous on the web. Actually, I think they want Flash to be synonymous with the web. I'm no Flash hater myself - it's good in small doses for some things on the web. Whole sites? Uh, no. It's buggy, it's unreliable, it's a resource hog. But I enjoy using it to do animations ... it has its place.

The standoff between Apple insisting on HTML5's ability to do everything Flash can do, only better, and Adobe's insistence that Flash is the supreme gift to the web is a bit ludicrous. There are always shades of grey.

And this battle reminded me of a favourite Dr. Seuss story: The Zax. You see, there were South-Going Zax and North-Going Zax and one day one of each met up. Neither one would move a step to the east or a step to the west to allow them to continue on their way. No, each insisted that the other must move. And so the world just continued on around them, eventually building a bypass over the two stubborn creatures.

Please click through for the full version where you can see other references to the Sneetches and the Lorax as well.

So glad to finally have this piece done. If it'll stop raining around here, I'll take it in to get matted and possibly framed to go above my desk here at home. The final piece is about 29"x30" and is the first major piece I've ever done and is only my second foray into India inks.

Process:
Sketched on copy paper, scanned, cleaned up a little in Photoshop. Then I reprinted a neater copy, traced it onto medium-weight cold-press illustration board and sketched a few more details. Then I went over that with Speedball India ink. Once that was dry, I used Copic sketch markers for the colour details. I chose a palette very similar to the one Dr. Seuss used on his Zax bypass drawing. I was nervous about the india ink bleeding, but since it had dried for about four days before I got time to do the colours, the ink had dried and set well and I had very little issue with bleeds (although I tried not to go over too many of the lines just in case).
Both the Apple logo and the Adobe logo on the Zax' t-shirt have been painted white with a Marvy DecoColor extra-fine paint pen.

Update - 1:40 PM -
I should add, that I'm not really bashing Apple or Adobe at this point. I think the standoff is the ridiculous part. (I also think Flash is buggy as hell, but it's not evil.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:03 PM | Comments (1) | Design | Sketches | Stumble

June 2, 2010

Eep!

Sorry, for some reason I always underestimate how long something will take me. I've pretty much done nothing but some fast client updating and working on this illustration. Had a large catastrophe Friday night which necessitated a trip to the art store for more illustration board and starting over. Had another minor set back Monday which meant more wasted time Monday, Tuesday evening and this morning, but looks like things are back on track now.

Not the world's best picture, but it's still in progress anyway. I've got to add colour to the vehicles and then decide if I'm going to leave the rest b/w or mimic the Dr. Seuss page further with colour on the overpass columns and the background. I'm definitely leaning toward b/w.

Hope you enjoy! Remember, if you want to leave a comment, the "Captcha" I use is actually a bit different and easier than most. All you have to do is put the first LETTER of the word, not the whole word.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:03 AM | Comments (2) | Design | Sketches | Stumble

March 31, 2010

Wordless Wednesday

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | Sketches | Stumble

March 25, 2010

Too Many Daves

So I'm a huge Dr. Seuss fan ... always have been. I still have the copy of Horton Hears a Who that my aunt got me when I was just a bitty li'l red monkey. At any rate, this is the second drawing done for a Twitter bud's daughters, from the story "Too Many Daves" in the Sneetches book.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:11 PM | Comments (1) | Sketches | Stumble