May 28, 2010

Energy Biz Cover

Got to do a fun job on one of my favorite subjects: green power.
I know it's a power hungry world and green power still seems like a fantasy, but here's to hope!


Art directed by Jürgen Mantzke who is also an illustrator. He had the interesting direction of trying to show the future by hinting at the past, which was fun to explore.

Here's a smaller piece I did for inside.

Some color studies, they preferred the dark blue, better for the loads of typography.

Ironically immediately after I finished this job we went on a kayak/raft trip down the San Juan river (4 corners area) and found this petroglyph. There is something cool about sticking your nose right up to 4,000 year old artwork and no alarm going off.

I considered putting this one in the SI:EARTH Fragile Planet show, but went with my original entry.

I'm actually going to fly out for the show, hope to see you there! You won't miss me... in order to neutralize the carbon impact from the jet fuel I'll burn, I'm going to wear a loincloth I weave en route out of opaque plastic shopping bags.

And after the show I'll recycle the loincloth it by giving it to my petroglyph friend above.

May 22, 2010

ai5000 "Mr. Responsible"


Forgot to post this last month, finally got to work for the venerable SooJin Buzzelli!
It was a portrait of James Gifford for Asset International.

Basically this guy goes all around the world partly with the UN, showing that socially and environmentally sound investment practices pay better in the long term.

I've been doing more portraits lately, although it's not my specialty, I've draw thousands of portraits as caricature artist when I was a teenager, so that helps me not be so rusty at it.

On the page.

May 19, 2010

Killed Microsoft Campaign

These were for posters and ads mainly to be used for a international Microsoft anti-piracy campaign, mainly in China and Russia. The ad agency thought my textures would appeal to that audience (basically potential chinese and russian illegal software purchasers) Don't know if I should be proud of that though.

Well apparently it didn't appeal to them, because it got killed in the end.

Or perhaps someone at Microsoft read Chris Anderson's book "Free: The Future of a Radical Price"
where he argues that piracy is free publicity and enough pirates eventually become customers to make it a net positive.

Here's a link to the book, but don't buy it, just snag a pirated version somewhere, I'm sure the author won't mind ; )

Some alternate compositions.

And the color options I sent them.

May 11, 2010

When a Newborn Can't Hear


In today's NY Times Health Section, for a story on hearing loss in infants. AD was Peter Morance.

It ended up running in black and white, so I thought I'd give the color version some air.


I was lucky my favorite idea got picked, thanks Peter!



Here's the version that ran. Maybe it was better in B&W after all?

May 6, 2010

Epigenetics

I love illustrating articles about food and exercise, so I was excited to take this job from Paul Gonzales for a Los Angeles Times Health Cover.

Story was on epigenetics, basically you can influence your DNA by diet and exercise.
I favored the woman tying her running shoes, but Paul had better vision and choose the jump roper, which turned out much better in the end, thanks Paul!



In the rough I had the typical overused skinny sports bra model, but I felt a more plump figure would be more look more interesting. And somehow from the tight sketch to the finish, she unintentionally turned out looking slightly like Oprah.