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. I originally named the series "SOFT PIXELS", but now I want to rename it. Once I've made enough works like these I'm going to try and do an exhibition of them. Here's just a few because I'd rather not spoil too much of it.
2023: Cover art in collaboration with woegarden for its music EP "why rate anything?", released on my label fakenumberland. I drew the base digital illustration and design, which woegarden added textures, colors, and a background to.
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 that was ultimately lost to technical difficulties. Some of its ideas, like the gradient in the background, still made it in, 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, made in Adobe Animate.
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 the year!). 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: Acrylic paintings on canvas.
2022: "Inky" character turnaround reference and 3D model. This was a college assignment to learn Blender, where we were tasked with making our own references to model off of. Inky's been around as part of my cast of characters since 2019, and I felt she'd be a good fit for the project. I had to simplify her design a bit while making the model. I might go back and add the missed features sometime.
2022: Digital illustration, package design, and art direction in collaboration with Caybee Calabash for fakenumberland's compilation album "[18] NEW MESSAGES", which I also curated. The idea was to have the album cover be a picture of an actual for-sale CD copy of the album. I ended up having to put off making and selling CD copies until after the album's 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 based off of a character design I made. From there I placed around the photographed CD some additional details, like geometric shapes and more drawings of the character. Then I made a back cover featuring the tracklist and credits. When it came time to make physicals, I drew a unique cartoon scenario featuring the character on each copy-- 10 in all.
![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 of many of my personal and professional works spanning as far back as 2017, the year I officially settled on making a living out of my wacky cartoons. The show somewhat low-key-- I didn't talk about it online while it was up. But it really happened, and the views of all three walls exhibition are pictured below to prove it.
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 the aforementioned Caybee Calabash!): "A52 ASCENT", "A52 SUMMIT", and "A52 PLUMMET". All digital, although ASCENT was a scanned pencil drawing that I colored in. Audie Ellis also contributed some texture work on PLUMMET.
2021: "Let it roll" digital illustration and design with photography.
2021: PAC-MAN character redesign concepts. Pac-Man obviously belongs to Bandai Namco-- these are simply "fan-made" designs made for fun. I sure would love to actually work on this property, though! For these I took inspiration from various Pac-media, such as the Hanna-Barbera cartoon and the original game's American cabinet art. From left to right: Otto "Pac-Man", Pepper "Ms. Pac-Man", Elroy "Blinky", Pinky, Inky, Clyde, and Sue.
2021: "Frog" digital painting.
2021: "Abby at the Dump" digital illustration.
2019: "Fred the Jester and the Hole That Wasn't Very Big At All" picture book cover concept.
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. To the top is a concept sketches made for it; I remember it being the third and final pass before the actual painting. The finished painting is on the bottom. Obviously, being a festive painting for a storefront, it's long gone by now.
2018: "Mayo vs. Ketchup" traditional comic page.
