Over the years I've made comics, album covers, concept art, and have had my work in galleries. Here is a selection of my professional work, plus some of my favorite art "for fun"...
2021-Present: Selected digital illustrations from an ongoing series of works based around a similar format. With these artworks I juxtapose simplistic yet bold characters and shapes in crowded compositions with very rudimentary depth. I draw much of them in MS Paint, and I like to experiment with that software's quirks and hidden features. I really want to put together a solo exhibition of these pieces someday, but for now, here are a handful of them!
2023: Cover art in collaboration with woegarden 🔗 for its music EP "why rate anything?" 🔗⚠️, released on my label fakenumberland. I drew an illustration/design for the cover inspired by the themes and composition of the release in Adobe Photoshop. woegarden added textures and colors to the illustration and added a background it designed!
2023: Organization and branding for CHAOSMIC UTOPIA, a digital music event ran on fakenumberland's twitch channel 🔗. I booked and worked with the performers, organized the schedule, made the logo and branding, promoted the event with scheduled tweets timed to go up near the beginning of each set... most everything beyond the sets themselves was handled be me. The poster I made for the event is pictured below; The awesome SPARKLECATS2009 🔗 made a first pass of the poster, but it was ultimately lost to technical issues. That said, some of its ideas like the gradient in the background inspired my version, and either way I'd be remiss not to thank it for its wonderful assistance! You can watch the event almost 1:1 as it appeared on twitch via flashmemories' VOD 🔗⚠️! (CONTENT WARNING: flashing, loud volumes, and sensitive themes)
2023: Short frame-by-frame animation sequence featuring my character Vexie flaunting her looks, made in Adobe Animate. This mainly uses the brush tool, though I utilized a picture of a decorative carpet and erased part of it on each frame to match her hair shape, a similar principle to the patterns in the show Chowder. Special thanks to GenesisJam 🔗 for suggesting the little star at the end!
2023: Digital illustration for "SICK! Signals" 🔗⚠️, a music EP by MOM! The Casio Is Haunted, a project by Lovely Abyss 🔗⚠️ as part of their One And Done project (a whole entire album or EP every day of 2023!). It's a very high-volume circuit-bent keyboard and radio jam, which funnily enough I recall getting a bit of 50's futurist vibes from! Inspired, I gave a shot mixing in an early Tommorowland sort of design sensibility with my zany cartoons. I was fun to try and represent such a chaotic and noisy album with a somewhat clean and pop-art style; it's like the covers to some Merzbow albums in a sense.
2023: Two acryllic paintings on canvas. These paintings have a somewhat different vibe than my usual aesthetic, the first especially, and it felt really nice to make them.
2022: A design turnaround reference for my character Inky, and a 3D model based upon it. This was a college assignment where we were tasked with making our own references to model off of via the Blender software. Inky's been around as part of my cast of characters since 2019, and I felt she'd be a good fit. The 3D model below does miss a few details from her reference admittedly; I might go back and add them back in someday.
2022: Digital illustration, package design, and art direction in collaboration with Caybee Calabash 🔗⚠️ for fakenumberland's compilation album "[18] NEW MESSAGES" 🔗⚠️, a project which I also organized/curated. My concept was to have the album cover be a picture of one of the CDr copies of the album that I would make and sell. That stage ended up delayed to after the album's digital release, so we tweaked the plan a bit: Caybee staged a photograph of a CD holder, with the disc on top featuring a drawing by her of a character I designed for the album. From there I added some digital details, like geometric shapes and more drawings of the character, using Photoshop, completing the art! After, I made 10 real CDrs of the album for sale, with a unique drawing by me featuring the mascot (named Silix by daytona 🔗⚠️) on each disc. I also made a back cover featuring the tracklist and credits for the insert.
![Back and front covers of [18] NEW MESSAGES CD](schoolportfolio/18cover back.png "Back and front covers of [18] NEW MESSAGES CD")
![Picture of finished [18] NEW MESSAGES CD](schoolportfolio/0030555800_10.jpg "Picture of finished [18] NEW MESSAGES CD")
![10 copies of [18] NEW MESSAGES CD, each with a unique design](schoolportfolio/0030555802_10.jpg "10 copies of [18] NEW MESSAGES CD, each with a unique design")
2022: "21st Birthday" gallery exhibition. A three-wall retrospective to commemorate my titular twenty-first! It featured many of my personal and professional works, spanning as far back as 2017 (the year I officially chose on making a living out of my wacky cartoons)! While the show was rather low-key-- I didn't talk about it online while it was up-- it ran for over a week, did pretty good, and I feel very proud of it! Pictured below are views of all three walls of the exhibition.
2022: Digital cover illustration and editing for the music compilation "First Class Collection: Volume Four" 🔗⚠️, released by First Class Collective, a vaporwave/experimental music label. They wanted me to include a Roman Bust in some fashion, and I sought to tie into the plane travel theming of its branding as well. This is the result of that thought process; the structure coming out of Chrysippus's popped-open head is supposed to be an abstracted airplane! The flight attendant character would appear again on the cover of Mile-High Club Vol. I 🔗⚠️, which I collaborated with EFFYISOFFLINE 🔗 on.
2022: Digital illustration and poster design for Episode 038 of The Treasure Room 🔗⚠️, a series of online music events organized and hosted by ASCDRGN 🔗⚠️, with whom I collaborated with for this flyer. This event happened on May 29th, so I wanted to go for a summer kickoff theme. Using Adobe Illustrator, I made the eyecatching warped header text, charmingly scrappy art to go with it, and a design mockup. ASCDRGN took it from there, creating the background, putting together the final composition, and the end result came out basically perfect! Teaming up makes the dreaming up ^u^ I'm not totally sure if it was a concious decision to make the dancing fella resemble a Darwinian, but knowing me and the fact there's a starfish wearing Patrick's trunks it probably was (Hi, Introversion Software 🔗⚠️!)
2022: Digital cover illustrations for the music album "twilight hymns" 🔗⚠️ by woegarden 🔗. When giving the album an initial run-through, I noticed it felt nicely outdoorsy, especially considering it's a synth album. In describing the album for my label fakenumberland, where it was released, I likened it to a hike in the forest. Leaning into that theme more was the cover I made, which is meant to resemble a bunch of trees. Most of the details came through improvisation and experimentation, seeing what I felt worked best in each spot.
2020, 2022: Mock Famicom game cartridge labels for My Famicase Exhibition 🔗⚠️, an annual gallery show at Japan's METEOR gallery and shop 🔗⚠️. The exhibition's concept combines visual design, storytelling, and the imagination of the audience-- the artists make the sticker art for a nonexistent game cartridge as well as a small blurb about it. The gallery staff puts the art on real game cart shells and are presented at METEOR and online, for the audience to wonder about what the hypothetical games they hold could be like...
2020 - "work!" - "SONATINA has problems! Her boss will fire her if she doesn't get those papers done by 8! Meanwhile, her archenemies, the CURSOROIDS, plot her demise! Can you help Sonatina get her "work!" done and avoid a cursory fate?"
2022 - SPRAY WORLDⓖ: an ARTventure tale - "Every 2 years, the Aero Express contest is held in secret for young street artists. Draw murals in ART mode, then watch how your creations affect the story. Includes 8 playable artists with their own quirks and artistic philosophy. Make magic on your own or with friends!"
2021: Cover illustrations for the A52 series of music albums by Polyscia (aka Caybee Calabash 🔗⚠️!): "A52 ASCENT " 🔗⚠️, "A52 SUMMIT" 🔗⚠️, and "A52 PLUMMET" 🔗⚠️. ASCENT is a scanned pencil drawing that I digitally colored using Photoshop; the other two were made in Adobe Illustrator. Audie Ellis 🔗⚠️ contributed some texture work on PLUMMET, which I used as part of the background.
2021: "Let it roll", a digital illustration and design with photography. The photograph in the background features a LEGO sculpture designed and build by me, and I drew a character inspired by it in MS Paint. I placed these in an Adobe Illustrator canvas and added effects and additional design elements.
2021: PAC-MAN character redesign concepts. PAC-MAN belongs to Bandai Namco; these are unnoficial designs made for fun. I sure would love to actually work on this property, though! For my version of the characters I took inspiration from various Pac-media, such as the original game's American cabinet art and the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. From left to right: Otto "Pac-Man", Pepper "Ms. Pac-Man", Elroy "Blinky", Pinky, Inky, Clyde, and Sue.
2021: "Frog in a Froggy World" digital painting. I drew this in Photoshop from the ground up for a college final; world and character concepts, rough sketch, clean sketch, and painting it all in! It was a rather ardurous process, but the end result is something I'm super proud of! I'd say my favorite details are the ropes fashioned out of the reeds of the tall pink and orange plants, and the subtle textural mottling on the amphibious character's skin.
2021: "Abby at the Dump" digital illustration. An MS Paint drawing, and one of my favorite pieces I've made! I'm really proud of the background being done in 1-pixel-wide outlines.
“Ooh la la! I have no idea whatever this wacky thingy does, but it’s probably incredibly dangerous! Awesome!” -Abby (Steampunk Ver.), pictured
2019: "Fred the Jester and the Hole That Wasn't Very Big At All" children's storybook cover concept. This was done totally in Adobe Illustrator, though I may have done sketches too. Inspired by some of my favorite storybooks, I devise these characters and a silly premise to base this concept around. For what reason would someone leave such a small hole in the ground!?
2019: "Rollerbladers" traditional illustration/mixed-media collage.
2019: "Disc Jockey" traditional illustration.
2019: "Abby's Room" digital illustration of background concept.
2018: "Melissa Gets Her Snakes Done", a Halloween themed window painting for a hair salon. At the top is a color concept sketch, which I used as a reference for the finished painting below it. In my earlier sketches of this scene Melissa actually had a neutral expression, rather than the little grin I decided fit better. Being a seasonal storefront painting from my High School days, it's long gone by now, but it was fun!
FAIR WARNING: This drawing is a smidgen grotesque and has a bit of blood. Thankfully though, the snakes get better after this.
2018: "Mayo vs. Ketchup" traditional comic page.
