Tag Archives: illustration

Jim loved your card so much he ate it

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“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”
– Maurice Sendak

When Stock Art Attacks

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Information Week Cover Illustration

This magazine cover is a perfect example of why you should always have someone else review any art decisions you make. There are several things in this illustration that don’t make any sense…

  1. The kid on the left, I assume, is supposed to represent current, cutting-edge technology — hence, the Web 2.0 shirt — so why is he playing Pong?
  2. I guess that old is represented by wearing a tie, being unshaven, and working, while youth is represented by spiking your hair, getting a facial piercing, wearing flannel shirts (seriously? What is this, the nineties?), dirty Converse and t-shirts while playing video games on your cell phone, listening to your ipod, and wearing sunglasses inside your cave-like office.
  3. Which side is this article taking? The photo and intro paragraph imply that the old IT guys need to adapt to modern technologies, and are unhappy about it. But the “Grow Up!” headline implies that the young new-tech guys need to get serious. The only conclusion this illustration gives me is that no one is happy.
  4. Whose glasses are those on the desk?
  5. How many monitors does this guy need? Seriously, I count either four or five, wrapping around this guy like some Hollywood movie’s idea of a professional workstation. Clearly, more monitors = more professional.
Note: This was originally posted on my work blog, and I’m re-posting it here for archival purposes.

Misery and the New Style

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Red Things: Rust, blood, roses, meat, plums, bruises, negatives of ice; sunsets in smoggy cities, poison-arrow frogs, henna dye, MISERY.

Misery is an incredible Photoshop artist, but he’s kind of sad… a patron of the Stile Project. His images of women have all this energy, like the burning filament of a light bulb… but their subjects are almost invariably cut, pierced, tattooed, bloodied, painfully integrated with machinery, or all of the above…

I think Misery is one of a wave of techno-arteests who are going to control the look of movies, record covers, and advertising for some time. It’s going to creep in around the edges at first, the way the Amiga MOD community and all the other early computer music led to, say, Moby.

They’re alienated, intelligent, and their prose sucks. They have everything to show, and nothing to say. And maybe it’s because words deal with set meanings, while images are unbounded… There’s a vast amount of information here, but what it tells you is going to be different from what it tells me. If it tells you anything.

This is a new kind of art. I mean, if you wanted to be an art-historian about it, I’m sure you could lump Misery in with fantasy illustrators like Frazetta and Giger. But you know, both those names sprang to my mind because they were unique enough, and skilled enough, as artists, to make an impact. These guys created genres. Misery and the guys on deskmod and all the other sites are creating a new genre.

Son Of A Gun

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“WATCH OUT! SON OF GUN! SUPER-HERO-NUMBER-ONE!!”
– kmfdm – son of a gun

I’m excited. It’s really really cool when someone that you’ve admired for awhile suddenly writes you an email saying great stuff. About a year ago, Steve showed me a link to this guy’s website. It’s the “best damn web page in the universe.” It’s just a big page of rants by the guy, and I love it. I check it out every few weeks to see if he’s added a new one and it just cracks me up. So I added a link on my website to his page.

Today, at work, bored, I visited his site to see if he updated, and he’d done some large overhauls. Among the many changes, he had added me to his page of links. I was amazed. I’ve never spoken to the guy before, just viewed his website and linked to it, and now he was linking to me! “Great design, cool overall.” I showed Miles, and we concluded that he must have found my site through watching his access logs and seeing the link on my page.

So I decided to drop him and email and thank him for linking to me. I also told him that Steve named his server after one of the rants on his site! (Fojar comes from the article called “Let’s blow up the moon!“) Within a half hour, I had an email back from him. I’m just going to post it here:

Hey Scott, I’m glad to finally be in touch with you guys. A long time ago I noticed some links in my access log from people coming to my site with http://spaceninja.com/home/links.html. It’s ironic that you like my site, as I often find myself going to spaceninja.com for web design ideas and to show my friends examples of how web pages should look.

I’m thrilled that your server is named fojar. My friend and I were just talking about the word “fojar” the other night, and I couldn’t remember where I had used that word before (we have code words for everything)! I checked out fojar.com, and the art/style is awesome. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Mac and wasn’t able to check out Mutton Kombat. What’s it written in? By the way, is all the art on fojar done by you? That “MUTTON KOMBAT” gif on the play.fojar.com page reminds me of the style on Batman the animated series. Very cool. Anyway, that link I have to spaceninja doesn’t do you guys justice, I’ll have to update my links when I get a chance. Talk to you later,

I’m stunned. Here I am, admiring this guy, and he’s writing me an email saying that he likes the stuff I do! Miles saw me getting excited and said to Mark that he didn’t think I would be any more excited if I got a letter from Milla Jovovich herself! (we just watched fifth element last night).

If I babble about this any more, I’m just going to sound like a moron, so I’m going to shut up and just say that I’m excited.

In case you’re curious, yes, I did all the art on fojar, and the mutton kombat image is kmfdm album-cover style.