Crazy 4 Cult 8: Back In LA!

Another year has flown by, and it's time for Crazy 4 Cult to return, but this time, it's returned home to the loving arms of Los Angeles.

A few weeks prior to the show opening, I was asked by Gallery 1988 if I would be interested in creating the poster for this years show. 4 years ago I was first invited to be a part of this show that I loved attending. I never imagined that 4 short years later, i'd be creating the main image that encapsulates this renowned gallery exhibit.

My first pass at a title treatment.

It's a huge honor that they would ask me to create this poster, so I knew I wanted to do something very different than what i'm known for in the Gallery. Something that looked unique and iconic, something that subtly referenced the 80's, but felt at home in 2014. Normally, i'd start with a sketch or writing down a list of movies I wanted to include in the piece, but I started with the title, to get the feeling across I was going for.

Character lay-ins for composition

Next up, I gathered some iconic images of characters from movies that I wanted to include in the poster image. I laid them all out in the composition that I felt worked best. The next step was to then create the final artwork over this "sketch". The final poster image is hand drawn (in photoshop...) using this image as the template.

To purchase this 18" x 24" poster, click HERE

After cleaning up all the line work, I added in some Los Angeles specific elements as well as lightning bolts because lightning is AWESOME!

In addition to creating the poster image, I have another entry in my "Storytime" series based off of one of the weirdest, deepest, and most interesting movies i've ever seen...

To purchase this print, click HERE

Crazy 4 Cult is a Gallery 1988 tradition that i've been thrilled to be a part of for the past 4 years. If you stopped by the opening, thanks for coming out! If you're in the Los Angeles area between December 12th - 28th, and you love unique film art, you'll definitely want to check it out!

"Crazy 4 Cult 8: Back In LA"
Dec. 12th - 28th
Gallery 1988 West
7308 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
www.gallery1988.com 

"Crazy 4 Cult: Say Hi To The Bad Guy" at Gallery 1988

Crazy 4 Cult is back home at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, CA! For this show, they decided to change things up a bit, and so the artists are focusing on villains from Cult movies.

The first two villains that came to my mind are actually the real heroes of the movies in my opinion. Stan Winston has created some of the most memorable characters ever to appear on film, and these two characters in particular are among his best. His brilliant knowledge for making incredibly realistic creatures come to life made my childhood just a little more terrifying since watching those movies at an inappropriate age. Thank you Stan Winston for scaring the crap out of me as a kid, and for inspiring a generation of young people to pick up their pencils or clay or a keyboard or whatever we could get our hands on, and start creating.

Here are my prints inspired by the films "Alien" and "Predator" that will be available at the gallery:

"Facehugs For Everyone!"

To purchase a print, click HERE! 

"The Hungry Little Hunter"

To purchase a print, click HERE! 

If you're unfamiliar with Crazy 4 Cult, it's an awesome series that Gallery 1988 has been doing annually for several years now. There is a new book that just came out that compiles a lot of incredible artwork from some extremely talented artists. You can pick the book up by clicking HERE.

"Crazy 4 Cult: Say Hi To The Bad Guy"
Gallery 1988 West
7308 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
http://www.gallery1988.com

Crazy 4 Cult 5: President Camacho

It is a fact that as a society, we are becoming dumber. Mike Judge, creator of the brilliant "Office Space", realized this several years ago when in 2006 he wrote and directed one of the best documentaries on the future. Idiocracy is the story about an average man that in 2005 is frozen as part of a military experiment. He is forgotten about and awakened 500 years in the future where he has now become the smartest man alive due to the dumbing down of the rest of the world. The movie only showed in a few theaters around the country and was was all but ignored by 20th Century Fox's marketing department, as demonstrated by this terrible trailer:



The movie was dumped onto DVD which is exactly where I found it. This movie is definitely not for everyone. My girlfriend Kristin hated it because "of all the trash and stupid people everywhere". How can you not love a movie that contains this scene:



My favorite character from the film is easily President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho A.K.A. President Camacho, a former porn star and professional wrestler portrayed by the always excellent Terry Crews. For this years Gallery 1988 show "Crazy 4 Cult 5" I submitted two pieces. The first one is a Dr. Horrible piece and the other is this tribute to the future President of The United States of America: President Camacho



Signed prints will be available at the show and on Gallery 1988's website!



Crazy 4 Cult 5: I'm Too Old For This Sh*t!!!
July 8th, 2011
7020 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038
http://www.gallery1988.com

Crazy 4 Cult 5: I'm Too Old For This Sh*t!!!!

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***UPDATE*** Because the internet is awesome, this Dr. Horrible design is now officially licensed merchandise! You can buy it for yourself and all of your loved ones over at Quantum Mechanix by clicking HERE!

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It's like Christmas in July! Gallery 1988 is having their 5th annual "Crazy 4 Cult" show in Hollywood on July 8th, 2011! I am more than honored to be a part of this show for the 2nd time.


Crazy 4 Cult has become a summer tradition in Hollywood. Every year a group of around 100 artists come together to celebrate our love of cult movies. There are always so many to choose from and this year I had a hard time deciding which movie to choose. I was torn between 2 different films. Well, technically, one was an internet film, but it has quite a cult following nonetheless.

Last year I had chosen a film that I felt was very under-represented but loved by a very vocal and awesome group of fans that call themselves Browncoats. While I was creating "River Tam and the Fireflies" for last years show, I knew I had made something special... but I had no idea it would take off like it did. The internet was very kind to me and that artwork took me on a strange adventure over the course of the year.

I made some new friends:



I got a lot of press coverage on some of my favorite websites. I sold a few T-Shirts, and received quite a few justified complaints about a missing Shepard.

Last week I was asked to participate in an awesome event called "Can't Stop The Serenity" here in Los Angeles. More on the event can be found by clicking HERE. I had donated some artwork to be auctioned off for a charity called Equality Now. I made a few more friends at the event:


I was able to show Joss, Nathan, and Felicia the new artwork I had created for this years Crazy 4 Cult show. I was a little nervous showing them but it seems like they enjoyed it!


They each requested some of the artwork, so i'm currently putting together some special gifts for them. This was an amazing opportunity and I thank Gallery 1988 for allowing me to be a part of their show. For this years show, i'll be contributing two pieces to the Crazy 4 Cult show. I'll be writing another blog about the 2nd piece, but for now, here is my artwork submission for "Crazy 4 Cult 5: I'm Too Old For This Sh*t!!!"



I consider this to be a companion piece to the "River Tam and the Fireflies". If you're not familiar with Dr. Horrible, then you owe it to yourself to pick-up this movie. It's a 45 minute musical set in 3 acts. It was self-funded and produced during the writers strike a few years back. The writing is fantastic, as usual, but the music is the real star of the show. I'm a big fan of musicals, and this short film doesn't disappoint. A framed album will be available at the gallery. Unfortunately the soundtrack wasn't released on Vinyl, so i've included another record in it's place.


Here's the back of the album:


And the framed album that will be available at the show:


The album's Front and back prints will be available exclusively through my etsy store. To purchase high-quality water color prints, all you have to do is click HERE!. Signed prints of the album front will be available exclusively at the gallery and online through Gallery 1988's Website.

If you love film and you love artwork, you won't want to miss what is becoming THE gallery event of the year in Los Angeles. Come on down to Melrose, see some awesome artwork from some amazingly talented people, and then go across the street to Pink's Hot Dogs and get one of the best tasting dogs of your life!

Crazy 4 Cult 5: I'm Too Old For This Sh*t!!!
July 8th, 2011
7020 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038
http://gallery1988.com

Crazy 4 Cult Book Signing!

It's that time of year again when Gallery 1988 puts on their annual "Crazy 4 Cult" show, more on that soon. This year they have decided to put a book together with a lot of artwork from all previous "Crazy 4 Cult" shows and in honor of that, they're holding a book release/signing party!


Come on down to Gallery 1988 for what's sure to be a fun time. My "River Tam and the Fireflies" artwork from last years show is featured in this book along with work from some amazing artists including Shepard Fairey and Scott Campbell.

As for the book, I haven't seen it yet, but the reviews are starting to roll in and it sounds like an awesome collection that film fans will surely want to pick up. The first review can be found by clicking here.

Save Ferris! The Nintendo Game That Never Was

Last year I had great success with Gallery 1988's Crazy 4 Cult show in Los Angeles. They were kind enough to invite me to contribute work to multiple shows this year, the first being "The Road To Shermer: A Tribute To John Hughes". I'm a little bit different then most kids of the 80's, as I really am not a big John Hughes fan. I have seen his movies, and some of them I really like, but i've never been a huge fan of Sixteen Candles, or The Breakfast Club. But there's a reason for that, and that reason is video games.

I was born in 1980. When I was 5 years old, a brand new shiny Nintendo Entertainment System came into my life one Christmas morning, and me in all of my 5 years of life knew that things would never be the same. We had an Apple II as well as an Intellivision, and they were great, but something about the squatty little Italian plumber and the simple 2 button controller really spoke to my 5 year old sensibilities. Also, it came with a robot that I could play with when my brother wasn't around.

So movies of the 80's came and went, and I saw and loved a few here and there, but I was a video game fiend. It came time to create a piece of artwork for the John Hughes tribute and I had a bit of a hard time coming up with a concept. I started to think about what it was that his movies main draw was, and I thought about the great characters he created that became cultural icons. I quickly drew a comparison to the old Lucas Arts adventure games. Tim Schafer was my John Hughes. Games like Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Sam & Max had characters developed as deeply as any in a film like Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club. But those games came out in the 90's. John Hughes movies exemplified the 80's, and so I would need a more 80's theme to the art piece.

There were some awful Licensed games released for the NES.
Exhibit A:


The thing I love about those old NES boxes was that the artwork was really representative of the gameplay.



Then somewhere down the line someone in marketing decided it would be cool to imply amazing graphics with the box art because you should always judge a book by it's cover:



For a tribute to John Hughes, I thought I'd like to make a game based off of my favorite of John Hughes movies, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". It would have to be an action game set in chicago. It would also need Cameron's dad's Ferrari. Inspired by the Super Mario Bros. box art, my goal was to create a fitting tribute to both John Hughes and Nintendo.



and the finished image:



But as I learned with my "River Tam and the Fireflies" piece, if you build it, they will come. It's cool to have artwork, but it's cooler to create a collectible, one-of-a-kind item. So I made the box:



And you're gonna need a game cartridge and instruction booklet:




(The cartridge doesn't contain an actual Save Ferris game, it was however at one point my copy of "Back to the Future Part II")

All of this and more can be yours if you come down to Gallery 1988's new location in Venice, CA on Friday February 11th. There are 50 artists participating in the show and Gallery 1988 always puts on a fun gallery opening.



Prints will also be available both at the gallery and online in my Etsy store.

P.S. Gallery 1988, how about a "Tribute to Tim Schafer" themed show?

Crazy 4 Cult: 4

It's that time of the year again! Gallery 1988 is holding their 4th annual "Crazy 4 Cult" gallery show. I have participated in several previous shows at Gallery 1988, and they were kind enough to invite me to participate in this show.

Crazy 4 Cult is a gallery show celebrating the unique love for cult movies. According to Wikipedia, "A cult movie is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans.". They kindly provided me with a list of movie suggestions, and as I went through the list, I felt that a lot of them didn't necessarily add up to cult status. Most of them were films that I loved, but I felt there was a sub-genre of space western missing from the list.

I remember seeing the ads for the show Firefly but I can't say that I ever watched it when it was on the air. I guess I wasn't alone in this because the show sadly didn't make it past one season. The show left on somewhat of a cliffhanger, and luckily there was a rabid enough fanbase that someone somewhere at Universal decided it would be a good idea to greenlight the movie "Serenity"

So, when I sat down to think about what movie I wanted to illustrate for the show, I decided I wanted to join the Browncoats . As with the show, I didn't see this movie in it's initial theatrical run, but instead on DVD... which i immediately purchased after blowing through season 1 of Firefly over a weekend. Anyway, one of the things that always seemed unique about the show was the opening theme song. It's a great little ballad written by show creator Joss Whedon that sets the tone perfectly for the entire series. Apparently the NASA astronauts are fans of this song as well, in February of this year they used it as a wakeup call on one of the last shuttle missions. Click HERE for a cool little article about that, including video from the shuttle!

A few years ago I got into collecting Vinyl records with artwork on the front. I've never really had a chance to design an album cover, and when I started thinking about what would be a fun illustration to do for Serenity, I thought since music was such a strong component of the show, that an album would be perfect. I was always a fan of old vinyl art of children's music so I wanted to incorporate a retro feel. It is a known fact that River Tam is a badass, but for now things have taken a lighter direction with "River Tam and the Fireflies"

And here's the back of the album

and the record itself

Since the soundtrack to Serenity wasn't actually released on vinyl, this record contains something special for whoever decides to purchase the full item from the gallery. Here's a quick shot of the finished product

Prints of the cover art will be available to purchase through the gallery as well as my etsy store HERE

So if you're in town July 9th and want to come check out some great artwork by over 100 artists, do yourself a favor and come check out the gallery opening for Crazy 4 Cult at Gallery 1988. Kevin Smith will be there as the host for the evening as well

Crazy 4 Cult: 4 "the case of the redundant number"
July 9th, 2010
7020 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038
http://gallery1988.com/

p.s. I got to meet THE creative genius Joss Whedon last year at a comic-con party... and I just wanted to share this picture because it's awesome! Beards unite!