old stuff: Cracked Out Snowmen

These were proposed illustrations for the Spin corporate holiday card a few years ago. Didn't get approved for some reason.

Prince's Purple Rain

I remember listening to this album constantly when it came out. I had the 45" of "When Doves Cry" and my sister had the LP, and we'd listen to it at our house and her best friend, Jennifer Wentzel's house. I would sing, "this is what it sounds like, when dogs dieeeee!!!" I didn't know what "Darling Nikki" was about, but I wanted to. Spin just published a huge feature package marking the 25th anniversary of the release of the movie and album, and they got a bunch of bands to cover the album. Best part for me? I got to do the photo-illustration for the cover under art direction from Devin Pedzwater.

This first sketch is something I threw together that didn't get used. I had done a few different ink versions before I scanned this and colored it in photoshop. It got me very comfortable with the image, which helped when I made the final.
This is the final version, as it looks on newsstands.
And this is the original photo, by ASP.

After Effects of my after effects class

More stuff from Spin

This was the AD's initial idea for the illustration - DVD morphing into imageThis one is what ended up running. I was happy with how I managed to make the type seem carved into the collumns, and the shadows/highlights seemed to all work well in the end.

Photo Illustration :: Noise Opener for SPIN 200808

Challenging photo illustration (or digital collage, if you prefer) combining these parts into a final image. Grass was too big and had to be tiled. Lanyard on VIP tag had to be "draped" over the edge of the tray. Tray had to be squeezed to fit the page layout, hands were moved and kept at the same size. Two versions follow, the full-color logo is the one that made the final page layout.

Photo Illustration :: Madden for SPIN 200808

Photo collage for the Games review page in the August issue of SPIN. Art Director: Ian Robinson