.

Eco-Builder Update

2009-08-25T18:39:00.001+01:00

Getting there...

Click the thumbnail.

Eco-Builder

2009-08-24T15:52:00.004+01:00

This is a logo I've been working on for my Friend Kieran. Not finished yet.

Click the thumbnail for a better view.

Moderat

2009-07-31T12:44:00.004+01:00

Ive been a big fan of Mode Selektor ( HERE ) for a while and also enjoyed Apparat's album ( HERE ), so it was good news indeed to hear they would be collaborating on a new project, the aptly titled MODERAT ( HERE ). I got the album recently and its been on constant rotation since. Highly recommended, especially for early morning bike rides and lazy sunny afternoons.

This is the video for the single "Rusty Nails":

The Butterfly and the hairy boxes.

2009-07-26T11:18:00.002+01:00

What a nasty title!

Just 2 more practice vids from my 3d stuff.

First another thinking particles test using gravity affector, wind etc. Added hair to the boxes to accentuate the rotation and dynamic movement.

Gravity test from stemfour on Vimeo.

Secondly, a test for a project of my own - no tutorials, no copying... Dont want to say too much about my plans for the piece at the moment as Ill probably change my mind several times. In the meantime: pretty butterfly!

Butterfly test from stemfour on Vimeo.

Cinema 4D and After Effects.

2009-07-23T10:52:00.003+01:00

I have been relearning after effects recently as I have become very passionate about motion graphics. Its been a long while since Ive been so excited about my artwork and really want to push in to this field.

I am currently working on a tutorial produced by Video Copilot called The Bullet which teaches compositing 3d renders within after effects, including how to move across camera and lighting settings from Cinema 4D to After Effects. You can see their advert for the tutorial here. All very exciting.

In the meantime I've been playing with some ideas in cinema 4d and have managed to upload some videos...

HD logo from stemfour on Vimeo.

fancy knob from stemfour on Vimeo.

80s logo animation from stemfour on Vimeo.

More 3D

2009-06-29T17:41:00.003+01:00

Another couple of animation tests...

Been experimenting with using sound over the animation, bring it to life a bit. Very quick basic practices, but still quite effective.

Pop grenades from zayed ayubo on Vimeo.

3d practice, now with sound!!! from zayed ayubo on Vimeo.

Align to spline test. from zayed ayubo on Vimeo.

Dust Magnet

2009-06-29T17:25:00.003+01:00

Not messed around with beats for ages, made this clicky little mess today:

Dust Magnet

3d stuff again.

2009-06-15T20:12:00.001+01:00

Its coming along a bit, though I havent had the time to build something nice and complex yet. Still practising different stuff.

This week, hair:

Hairy flesh hoop from zayed ayubo on Vimeo.

Logos

2009-06-09T10:09:00.006+01:00

Ive been working on some logo comissions recently. It's a bit out of my comfort zone as I can't just scribble freely without a care for the outcome, but I love it and it's amazing seeing the work you've done printed or displayed somewhere daily.

This is one I finished a couple of days ago for a friend, Mat. He wanted some references to sound, possibly sound equipment. I tried several things, including having the text completely made out of the cable from the headphones, and with the cable coming from headphones on a character's head. In the end I settled on this look for its clarity and its style, particularly the skewed screen print effect on the headphones/mic. I love it and have found a few nice ways of working from the process of creating it.

I also recently did a logo for a female plumber friend, Suzy. The point was to get across the fluffy, approachability of a female plumber, so I went for a bright, cartoonish look with the BIG smile of the character being a focus. Unfortunately my hard drive just died that was the backup to my recently deceased main hard drive. So, until I get them scraped for data there'll be no picture to show here...

Peter Funch

2009-04-16T10:40:00.002+01:00

Peter Funch takes lots of photos in one spot then takes people from the different photos and merges them in to one shot, usually with a theme.

For example, people yawning:

There are some examples of his other work, as well lots like the above here.

Vintage covers

2009-04-03T12:22:00.002+01:00

Lovely group of pics on flickr, here.

Nifty Products 2

2009-04-02T14:50:00.002+01:00

Some more interesting design ideas:

This is a nice idea - a USB memory stick that gets fatter as you fill it with data. I love things like this - it seems slightly silly at first, but then it hits you how helpful it could actually be. If you had 2 or 3 lying about you could tell at a glance on which one you have space to spare. Wonder what mechanism it would use to inflate/deflate...

This is simple and good.
Available to buy here.

At first glance I thought, "Nah, that's just dead silly". On reflection though, I can actually imagine using this a lot. I am often victim to my own ability to instantly misplace things upon putting them back down. Pens, pencils, scissors, sharpeners... This ring would definitely increase drawing time and decrease fumbling time accordingly, however this might lead to eventually having some kind of utility belt-type bandolier across my body, with the contents of my desk strapped to me - which might be silly.

If only my mum had some of these when I was small! What am I talking about, the spillages still occur nowadays. Probably not long till these appear in Quality Save for a fiver. Or buy one from here now.

This laptop case is lovely. Here.

Finally, a blank, standard Yale type key, in the shape of a flying V guitar. You can take this to the key cutters and have it made to fit your front door. Ace. Get on from here.

Tadaomi Shibuya

2009-04-01T18:53:00.004+01:00

Tadaomi Shibuya paints portraits in acrylics using angular lines to great effect. Check them out here.

Sam Weber

2009-04-01T13:56:00.004+01:00

Sam Paints.

Luuuurvely:

Rip off

2009-03-29T11:36:00.003+01:00

Im thinking Im gonna print myself some personal bootleg tshirts. I'm talking about printing copies of T-Shirts I used to own but are no longer available to buy.

So far I'm stuck on old skate labels:

Thanks to retroskatestickers.com for most of the sticker images!

The only Tshirt I still have is the Toy Machine Devil one...

I'm sure I'll think of a new theme for utter piracy soon...

American Sweets

2009-03-27T12:07:00.002Z

Considering I haven't posted for so long, this is a fairly rubbish comeback, but I felt I needed to alert people to the wonderful thing that is American Sweets.

Peanut butter M&Ms anyone?

Its a UK site and the prices are ok.

Roll on payday, gonna get stocked up on Butterfingers.

New render - depth of field

2009-02-27T10:25:00.002Z

Getting on top of the lighting more now and having my first play with depth-of-field, or blurryness if you like. Its amazing how much more realism is achievable through a bit of blurring...

Click the thumbnail for the big image.

1680 x 1050

2009-02-26T14:15:00.009Z

Some of the wallpapers Ive made for myself recently. Thought Id share.

These are made to fit a monitor with a 1680x1050 resolution.

Just click the thumbnail to see the full size image.

Rendering for realism

2009-02-19T12:21:00.006Z

I was becoming somewhat puzzled, while comparing my renders with others on the net, seeing the level of realism in the others that I was struggling to emulate. Now, while I know that there are LOTS of options when it comes to rendering, and there are a number of things that can be enabled/disabled to increase the level of realism, such as Ambient Occlusion, etc, I dont have the rendering power on my PC to handle much experimentation with these.

However upon tinkering with the basics ( all my dinosaur PC can handle really ) I came to see that the main factor is how you set up your lighting. Using multiple light sources that are not too intense, and ensuring these sources cast a shadow, gives a sense of ambient lighting, as opposed to a direct source, like a spotlight.

You can see some of the results below.

This one below benefits from the amazing glass texture I downloaded from C4D Textures, where I've had a few great textures from in fact.

This has inspired me somewhat, knowing I can produce much less "computery" looking images. ( See, I have ALL the terminology down ). I have a stack of renders that I'm gonna redo with these lighting techniques in mind. Woo!

Neon bearing spin

2009-02-10T15:34:00.004Z

Another little bit of animation practice from a whiloe ago. Gona post a few more vids as I upload them to vimeo. Takes about 20 mins for me to upload a 30mb file to them, then they spend 2 hours converting it. Sigh.

I applied a little bit of motion blur and a filter that bleeds the colours a little bit. Once again it looked better on my PC.

Need to experiment with the video compression Im using for the movie output.
This video is a little clunky on the 1st play. Play it again.

Neon Bearing from zayed ayubo on Vimeo.

Painting for Peter

2009-01-30T16:24:00.003Z

My esteemed colleague, Sir Mangalore ( of Mangalore Sugar Cane Interests notoriety ) recently celebrated his birthday. Here is the evolution of his present, one painting of Wesley ( AKA Brendan the Liar ), Pete's cat.

1:

Time to sort out the angry face...

And here is Peter with his painting:

After presenting Pete with his present he informed me of the very sad news that Wesley passed recently after being very ill for some time. Really, really sad, he was a lovely cat. Glad I spent so much time painting him now.

RIP Wesley, AKA Brendan the Liar.

Some more older pieces...

2009-01-28T12:25:00.003Z

Some work thats been knocking about for a while...

An experiment with pointillist shading:

A magazine cover type collage:

This is a very old sketch which I've been looking for for ages, intend to redo this proper-like.

I went through a phase of creating these woodcut type images in Phtoshop, just using the polygon select and paint fill. Another thing I need to revisit:

And another in the same style:

An old painting

2009-01-28T12:15:00.002Z

This is a painting I did a couple of years ago for ( and of ) my mate Fee. She drums for a band called The Whip. This was my first foray into painting since I was at college about 10 years ago. This piece is about 80cm by 80cm. I think I definitely prefer working on a larger scale like this.

More painting...

2009-01-27T08:34:00.004Z

Another painting, this time for my son Otis. He was 13 this month!
I wish I'd taken a better picture of the final result, or even scanned it. Again I learnt a lot from this, and again several layers of paint on there: I'm surprised it's not an inch thick.

2009-01-14T16:43:00.007Z

Ive been trying to paint again recently and am finding the medium difficult. The pesky paint keeps moving around on the canvas and gets very annoying. I'm trying to find new methods to deal with paint's qualities, which are quite alien to me. Quite silly really, considering how long I've drawn for.

First here is a painting I did for my mum. A waterfall scene, of the like that my mum's been asking for since I was about 15. Despite taking 17 years to start, it was rushed to say the least ( excuses, excuses ) and I plan to finish it some time. For a start the water really shouldnt be so white at the end...

Start

Middle

End

I learnt a lot from this one painting, especially the importance of patience, in building up the layers from dark to light, drawing in reverse almost. All these things may seem obvious when contemplating painting, however its hard to fight the instinctual approach to producing an image that I have. Onwards!

ZBrush

2009-01-07T23:38:00.004Z

Lord have mercy! I'm practically pissing in my pants as I type this after having my first proper go on ZBrush. My wonderful mother just got me a Wacom Bamboo tablet for Christmas. That coupled with ZBrush is like heaven, except with worse neck and eye strain from the 4 and a bit hours I've been fixated with this program.

Still learning but I'm very happy with my first effort.

Stage 1. A malleable ball.

Stage 2. A face appears.

Stage 3: End result.

Here's a side view.

SO now this is a fully exportable 3d model - I can place this in to Cinema 4D and add it to any model/animation. Jeez.

More 3D renders.

2009-01-02T23:47:00.002Z

Been dabbling with Cinema 4D again. Learnt to use a few more tools now.

Audrey Kawaski.

2008-12-31T14:26:00.003Z

I've been in love with Audrey's work ever since I saw the piece below. She's pretty prolific and you can take a look at her work here. Nearly all her paintings are of nymphlike girls, beautifully drawn and posed, on wood grain that is left to bleed through the paint in places. She usually incorporates some object/animal/plant in the image to play up even further the natural aspect of her work.

She also shares some of her techniques on her live-journal here.

A couple more of her pieces that I love:

Banksy's pet store.

2008-12-31T14:10:00.002Z

I've been reading about this and have seen some grainy crap videos and didn't really get what all the fuss was about. I even assumed Banksy had finally disappeared up his own arse. Nice to be proved wrong when I saw this decent video of the exhibition in San Francisco:

HERE.

Bloody brilliant! Bloody unsettling. See what you think.

Some nifty products.

2008-12-31T13:38:00.003Z

Wordlock! Simple idea, implemented nicely.

Super Secret Spy Lens!

I used to have a water pistol that did basically the same thing when I was little. Caught a few people out with it, as Im sure this sneaky lens would. You can take a photo at a right angle while still looking like your facing forward. Candid snaps should be a lot easier.

Freehands! Fingerless/not fingerless gloves. There's no need for these to be an expensive, niche product really. Im sure someone could knit these easily enough. Good, simple idea none the less

Magic... Moments...

2008-12-30T16:32:00.002Z

Yay!

James Jean

2008-12-28T23:03:00.004Z

James Jean is an illustrator whom I first came across through his work for DC comics, in particular the FABLES series. Here is a nice example:

His work is simply beautiful! He creates such atmosphere in his images through his palette choices, the depth o f texture and best of all - his image composition. His figures seem to fall over and through objects and each other, at once chaotic yet perfectly placed, like in the next image...

Please make your day even better by having a look at the link below. Make sure you scroll the page to the right and take your time if you can.

Piece for Prada by James Jean. James is an American illustrator, painter and much more. based in Los Angeles.

Take a look at the rest of his very beautiful work HERE.

another logo gif

2008-12-23T00:46:00.005Z

More 3d GIFfery.

3D worm

2008-12-11T00:35:00.004Z

Been playing on C4D some more. This is my evil worm.

2008-12-05T20:35:00.008Z

I've been wanting to learn some 3D stuff again for a while. Finally got round to installing Maya and Cinema 4D. I'd never used C4D before and it's amazing! So is Maya, of course, but, for someone still getting their head round 3D packages, C4D is far less stressful to learn. It also seems to be less resource hungry whilst editing shapes etc, and definitely a LOT quicker at actually rendering.

Made my first thing with it today.

Epic eh? Its a pity about the tiny video and all the noise on the video as the texture on the black plastic is the best bit and it doesnt show up very well under this much compression. Had fun making the bearing/hub thing and changing the lighting etc - very satisfying software.

Here's a still showing it in its former glory:

And here is a little spinning stemfour I did. Very basic and a bit naff but I'm learning!

My first Mp3 post.

2008-12-03T07:25:00.003Z

Some songs I been diggin of late...

This Phillipians instrumental remix of The Pharyde's "Runnin' Away".

It's off this compilation put out by Delicious Vinyl:

I'm also loving this album:

...by the Menahan Street Band. Here's a sample track:

Usernamecheck

2008-12-01T15:57:00.003Z

Want to see at a glance what username is readily available for all your social networking needs? Or maybe you're just curious as to how popular your username is?

Check it out here, at Usernamecheck.

How to...

2008-11-30T23:24:00.002Z

...extract your own DNA, apparently.

Here.

Axel Peemoeller

2008-11-30T13:22:00.002Z

Axel is a German designer, currently based in Hamburg. I just came across these directional signs he created for a multi storey car park in Melbourne, Australia. They're inspired.

work doodle 4

2008-11-29T03:54:00.002Z

These are still photographs. Think I'll have to add a scanner to my note to Santa.

work doodle 3

2008-11-29T03:51:00.003Z

I have much more of these but no scanner... bah.

Garlicshire

2008-11-28T11:36:00.003Z

Carl Warner

Check out the FOTOGRAPHICS section of his site for more.

Hotel Fox

2008-11-23T12:30:00.003Z

This hotel has let a load of designers andillustrators loose on its rooms. Mostly the results are amazing. This one's funny:

Marinated Lamb...

2008-11-15T16:42:00.002Z

My favourite things to draw are people, bits of people: heads, arms, HANDS, etc. So I tend to be drawn to drawings/paintings of this subject. Souvlaki Space Station is the homepage/moniker of Joao Paulo Alvares. His work makes me go weak at the knees. With beautiful lines and forms, his figures spill off the page despite the muted tones and colours he employs. Everyone seems to have a rosy-nose, which I really love too!

This was one of the first drawings of his I saw and I went gaga for it. It ended up being the wallpaper on my big-screened phone for aaaages; I used to sit on the bus gazing at it, hoping to absorb some of his skills by osmosis.

As well as the elegance of his linework there is his skills for selecting beautiful pallettes too. Working in mainly gouache and pencil/pencil crayon, the palettes are usually quite muted, as I said, though with bursts of vibrant colours to pick out and accentuate aspects of his figures/faces too. The anatomical knowledge at work here really reminds me of one of my favourite comic artists ever, Simon Bisley.

Here you can see one of Simon Bisley's studies for his book of illustrations based on scenes from the bible ( which I VERY highly recommend).

Its probably not the best example but it's the best I could find on a quick Google. You can see how well Bisley poses his figures though, as well as the REALNESS of the characters he draws.

I shall have to do a post about Simon Bisley soon too...

Photoshop online...

2008-11-15T15:25:00.005Z

Photoshop Express BETA has been out for a while now. Have you signed up yet? It gives you a free 2 gigabyte storage for photos and allows you to bring photos straight across from you Flickr or Picasa online albums. It's good but it's only for photo editing, so no full on painting, general photoshop style illustration or owt. What is there seems to work well and the interface is nice and clean to boot.

I would like to see more tools in there, especially the paintbrush, paint fill etc, as well as the various brushes and what not. I guess they can't make it too good, as a free tool, cos who will buy their over-priced full Photoshop then?

Guitar Hero.... AT WORK!

2008-11-15T13:47:00.003Z

Yes it's true, you can now fuse your fingebones and tendons in to one furious mangled mess at work, as well as at home.

Way dude.

Click the pic to play the game.

excellent.

Northern Fail

2008-11-15T13:00:00.002Z

Ooh ooh ooh, public transport eh?

After a couple of months of travelling to Rochdale, via a tram from Stretford then a train from Victoria, I reckon I must have shaved about 2 years off my life through stress. Now, I am not famed for my organisation or punctuality, to put it lightly, but still...

Lets look at this week:

Monday - 30 minute delay on metrolink meaning when I turn up at the station 30 mins early ( because its a mare enough as it is gettin on a tram - you have to abandon all morals and fight your way on ) I find over 200 people waiting on the platform. Im not exaggerating. Then when the trams start rolling again I have to let SIX go past before I can fight my way on. Then as I approach town the trams are being queued all the way back to market street so it takes another 12 minutes to crawl from market street to shudehill where I give up and run the rest of the way to Victoria. Ah what fun it is running around in the morning without any breakfast in you.

That was Monday. I'll spare you the detail for the rest of the week, suffice to say that I have been late FIVE times this week thanks to tram/train fuckery. I'll also spare you the tales of getting home again, waiting for trains that never come, just like an explanation never comes.

So, today, Saturday...

I turn up nearly 15 mins early for my train, just in case, and see that it has been moved from its normal platform 1 to platform 4. Ah well, no bother. So I make my way to the platform and am keeping an eye on the LED info board thats saying my 8.19 will be 5 minutes late, due in at 08:24. No bother. Then the 8:27 to Huddersfield rolls in on that platform and sits there. Lots of people start getting on it, assuming its the Leeds train ( My train ). I, however, have asked the driver where he's going because I have made the mistake of assuming the info on the board is CORRECT before. Driver says, nah, Huddersfield mate.

So I ask the platform dude, all-powerful man with the whistle. How can this train thats getting in at 8:24 stop at this platform if the Huddersfield train is gonna be sat there till 08:27. We have an impending CRASH on our hands! Danger!!!

"Dunno mate".

Okay, thanks for that. So off I jog, over the stairs, down to where the slightly more competent looking platform dude is. I ask the same question. As I ask I see the Leeds trian coming in on Platform one. "Is that it there, going in to a different platform?"

"Er. Dunno. Yeah."

Cheers! So, Im jogging again.. Phew, I've made it on to the train, at least I can relax now. Anyone who knows me will know Im pretty agitated by now - 2 months worth of agitation built up to be precise. So I get on, Im cross, I slap the door open button at the entrance to the carriage. It doesnt respond, it doesnt respond, it doesnt repsond. I slap it quite hard and go "Urrgh!" Next thing the conductor is screaming, like a girl, at me to not smash things up. I turn round and stupidly say ( not shout, not scream, but say... ) "How can you be giving me shit? You are now 15 minutes late and youre giving me shit! Christ!" And I sit down.

I see girly-voice storming off in a right huff and he gets off the train and disappears. Fuck this shit I think and start my arduous phone call to try and lodge a complaint. 10 minutes later we are still sat there and Ive finally got through to the right person. Hello, I'd like to complain, da da da etc"

"The train you are on is not moving because of a disruptive passenger".

"Oh. I think thats me you know."

This is the moniker of the crappest company ever, Northern Rail.

I hang up, tell the also agitated old man next to me I think its my fault that the train is now not moving at all. He started laughing but there are other people waiting to get to wherever so I go to get off, so I dont delay everyone else. As Im getting up the police appear, tell me to put down my coffee ( I suppose it could be a weapon ) and get OFF NOW.

I cant help but start laughing and get off. After that I gave them a statement and the conductor gave his. Turns out they're quite conflicting. The conductor tells them I was repeatedly punching the door very hard, very aggressively, then when he calmly told me to stop I told him to fuck off and threatened him with my fists. Hmm. So the officers have started being alright with me at this point, probably because I was totally calm ( yay me! ) and ask me to show them my knuckles, which are nice and smooth cos I use a good moisturiser in the morning. " You've not been punching anything." No, I know.

So they go and collect statements from the other passengers and find quite quickly that the conductor is full of shite. However they explain to me that there is a zero-tolerance approach to abuse of staff etc. I explain that I understand this and I agree with it completely. People working in public situations should be protected, etc, blah blah..

At first they were giving me the option of an one the spot £80 fine or to let it go to court. Where no doubt it would become very black and white and the fact that I admitted using a swear word would no doubt be enough to enforce the zero tolerance approach. However, after chatting to me and checking out my details, they find me to be reasonable, have a good case for being bloody pissed off and the fact that I have no previous also makes them decide, fuck it, we're gonna give you a caution.

So I have to sign something that said I was abusive. I asked what exaclty comes under abuse. Apparently any use of a swear word, whether directed personally at someone or not constitutes abusive behaviour. Ok, fair enough, I guess thats what I should expect in this nanny-state. so I signed it, got my caution, the police shook my hand and offered to call my employer to help me explain my 5th lateness that week.

The funniest/unfunniest thing is that when I get the next train it stops in the middle of nowhere because of leaf-fall ( EEEEEK! NOOOOOoooo! ) and gets in to Rochdale 20 minutes late. Oh how I laughed.

So, yeah, public transport. Why is it that for a 40-50 minute journey I have to leave my house almost 2 hours before I start work. Where does that extra hour plus go? It is swallowed up by an inept, disconnected, unsynchronised, unmanaged, unapologetic, piss-up-in-a-brewery of a public transport system.

Grrr etc.

Just Press Play

2008-11-14T14:47:00.005Z

A friend of mine, JT ( Not Justin Timberlake, or Jim Taggart ) has a wonderful blog called Just Press Play. It's a bang up to date round up of shit hot musical happenings on the web and includes music links and interviews with artists. He recently interviewed Darshan Jesrani from the dead-good Metro Area. Check it out.

Stanley&Barney

2008-11-14T14:10:00.007Z

Barney Ibbotson is a friend and fellow illustrator who's intricate doodles have always tickled my fancy. He has begun a collaboration with another Manchester-based artist, Stanley Chow. Taking Barney's doodles as a starting point and utilising Stan's excellent composition and presentation skills they have produced some wicked illustrations that were recently exhibited in the Golden Camel gallery space at the top of the famous Affleck's Palace building in Manchester's Northern Quarter.

It's great to see 2 artists of different styles work together so well. Below you can see one of Barney's lone works...

And this, below, is one of Stanley's originals..

You can see the difference in their styles and also immediately see how their collaboration created images like the one of the cow at the top. You can visit their collaborative home page here: Stanley&Barney.

I'll be collaborating with Barney on a mural soon and can't wait to get started! Will be posting updates of that as soon as we get going.

Big Hands I Know You're The One.

2008-11-14T12:41:00.004Z

I've just come across John Casey and his slightly demented drawings and I'm smitten. I'm a big fan of scary big hands and there's plenty to be scared of here. Heavily detailed ink drawings, almost pointillist in texture, depicting deformed figures and twisted faces. John uses scale skilfully to create an uneasy viewing experience; we know something's wrong. Not that wrong, but wrong enough to push us out of our comfort zone.

As well as this subtle play on our senses there is the overriding freakishness of his mutated characters that is charming and nightmarish in equal parts. And the hands: big, gnarly, overbearing hands. Ace.

John also sculpts and the works on his site are 3d renderings of his 2d characters and they are just as menacing.

Doodle 2

2008-11-13T22:12:00.007Z

Another doodle from work. Click on the image for a bigger one. My scanner just broke so these are all gonna be shitty photos for a while.

Doodling on the clock...

2008-11-13T21:55:00.006Z

I seem to draw more at work than anywhere elses and have done a fair few doodles of late. I'll be posting more soon, here's a stupid robot to begin with.

Photoshop fo real

2008-11-13T16:25:00.000Z

Love this! Great idea by Wandaaaa.

French

2008-11-13T15:28:00.000Z

Not the language, the artist. Just... amazing. Heavily detailed etching-like drawings, lots of foliage, feathers and fur and he's a fellow cheap noodle lover. French's homepage is here, and his blog is here.

Digging celebs up for fun...

2008-11-13T14:47:00.001Z

Another one from Barney, Portraits as Living Dead is the work of Swiss illustrator Frederik Peeters. Cool idea. I'd like to suggest some new subjects: Barry White and Anna Nicole Smith for starters. Fat zombies, yeah.

What am I doing?

2008-11-13T13:19:00.000Z

I'm intending to document all the interesting stuff I find relating to art ( especially illustration ) and music. Maybe other shizz too.

Barney Ibbotson, a friend of mine, just put me on to this guy: Oscar Chichoni.

Oscar is an Argentinian comic illustrator of some repute. Heavily textured and detailed paintings and sketches are his mainstay...

though he seems equally at home with a clean, linear style too: