Weekly Project

A little delayed, but better late....

Theme: Giants
Check out Lucas and Pat's efforts (links on the right).

JT out.

Jimmy's Tattoo

Whipped this up for my main man Jimmy O before he left for Toronto last weekend. He's a huge fan of the 'Lone Wolf & Cub' Samurai movies and I promised him I'd design a tattoo based on the main characters, so of course I waited until the DAY before he left to actually do it. Here's the illustration, and rough placement of where it's going to go on his arm. Hope it turns out alright!

JT out.

Brush off the Rust

This weeks challenge: retrofit a WWII era ship to be used in a 2025 mass exodus effort.

Sea Monsters

My boy Pat O'Keefe and I are going to try and keep up a weekly design challenge; giant deep sea creatures was our first topic. You can check out his at http://www.patrickokeefe.blogspot.com/

Remembrance Day

I designed these skateboards just for fun this summer but never got around to posting them. Each one is based on a different type of fighter plane from WWII, and seeing as it's Remembrance Day, I figured now's as good a time as any to finally get them up so here we are. Enjoy!

JT out.

Samsung Campaign

An update with some of the work I've been doing for the last few months. Samsung just launched a new campaign for their wireless lineup, and I was lucky enough to have played a role in it's creation working with Derek Neil (Art Director) and Noreen McDermott-Santilli (Writer) at Cheil Canada, Samsung's goto agency. I created the initial concept illustrations (not allowed to post those yet) that got the idea off the ground, and which were used as reference for both the TV spots and the Print ads posted here. I also designed the background and type treatment for the final print spots. These are up all around Toronto, and I hear word that they're up in Vancouver as well, so keep an eye out for them.

You can find the TV spots here:
http://www.dailymotion.com/ViaMedia/video/x5d3j9_express-yourself-samsung_creation

JT out.

LP

Had an assignment to illustrate a 12" LP cover for a song our prof chose. I found it eery and dark, and wanted to create a kind of abstract story in the drawing so here's what I came up with.

JT out.

Vintagey

Here's a piece I whipped up sometime before Christmas. Kinda felt like diving right into the full vintage travel poster style after only just touching it with the Absolut piece.

JT out.

Absolut

This is an assignment from one of my classes where we had to do an ad for Absolut that represented Canada in some way. I chose to show the Confederation bridge in a vintage travel poster style. Hand drawn, coloured in photoshop.

JT out.

Dusty in here...

Yeah, I know, it's been a while since I've put anything up, but I'm gonna get right to it. This is a promo card idea for a lounge one of my profs runs. I kinda missed the mark with it (it's a Latin music lounge) but it was remembrance day and I couldn't help it.

JT out.

Memory Lane...

So there's a new Ninja Turtles movie coming out next month, and I couldn't help but go back to my drawing-roots and bring my favourite green dude to life, albeit in greyscale. Here we have the katana wielding Leonardo perched on top of a rickety old water tower somewhere in the Big Apple. I had a lot of fun making this, I think I'm gonna whip one up of Raphael in the near future. Enjoy!

JT out.

Les Chiens Chaud

My good friend Adam Zelikovitz asked me to design a logo for his intramural hockey team Les Chiens Chaud out in Halifax at Dalhousie, so I gladly agreed to lend a helping hand. Bravo boys for coming up with the funniest team name I've ever heard!

JT out.

Concepts

Here are some more digital concept paintings, along the same lines as the two earlier ones (Republic Expedition and the Sunset Pier). I created these by zooming in on one of those abstract marker comps from below and finding interesting images and shapes, sort of like finding pictures in clouds. From there I went to work digitally painting in everything you see. I'll post the original marker compositions I started with shortly.

JT out.




*update*
So these are the marker comps that I started from. Like I said, it's similar to finding images in clouds. I saw glimpses of my final images in these marker blobs, then just went at it. Enjoy!

Opening Doors

Here's a recent piece I finished for an up-and-coming local foundation called the Canadian Youth Life Link, aimed at helping young adults find their passion in life and guide them in the right direction. This sucker will grace brochure covers and posters when the foundation launches early next year.

JT out.

Abstract Marker Comps

I know, I know, they're pretty busy and overwhelming, but I was experimenting with markers on mylar, then combining multiple test sketches in photoshop and was happy with how they turned out. It's a really nice stress-relieving exercise, so I think I'm going to try and fine tune this technique in the future. Enjoy!

JT out.

Shirt Designs

I created these during the summer for the t-shirts I've got up over at cafepress.com/panzerlounge, I just never got around to posting them on my blog. So if you haven't already checked out my online 'fanshop', do so immediately! If you just want to see the graphics, click on 'em above.

JT out.

Film Student

My main man Pat O'Keefe and I pitched some visual options for the Vancouver Student Film Festival's program this year, and this is an illustration I did for it. They ended up going with one of Patty-boys layouts, but I was pretty happy with this drawing so I figured I'd post it for the world to see! Enjoy.

JT out.

More Painting

It's looking like I'm not going to able to focus my thesis on conceptual painting as I'd hoped; profs wanted me to stick to something a little more alligned with the illustration curriculum as it is. But regardless, I'm gonna try and do some on my spare time. Here's one I did a few weeks ago.

JT out.

Republic Expedition

Gotta give my man Patty-boy respect for sparkin a fire inside my head this summer. I've decided that I want to focus my thesis year on digital conceptual painting for possible movie, t.v. or even video game application. Now I just have to convince my profs to let me! It'll come down to my thesis instructor's (Paul Dallas) decision on whether or not I can persue this path for my fourth year, but I'm definitely going to push for it. This is my first go at it (we needed to do at least one example of what we want to work on next year over the summer) but I hope to get out a couple more before school starts. I'm kinda surprised this is the first Star Wars piece to show up on this blog, but I couldn't help it this time 'round. Matty K, eat your heart out!

JT out.

Final Two

These two portraits round out the bunch of my life drawing updates. They're also probably my favourite of them all as well. Drop a line and let me know what you think.

JT out.

More Life Drawing

Here are some more portraits done the same way as the last bunch. Still have another batch to post after these, so stay tuned.

JT out.

A Little Life Drawing

Finally I get a chance to post some of my life drawing works. I've got quite a few so I'm going to spread it out between two or three posts. The majority of what I'm posting are portraits done in a subtractive method, meaning I rub down my paper with conte (compressed charcoal) then create the image using a kneadable eraser to remove the conte, leaving highlights to map out the drawing. I spent the majority of my life drawing class last semester working on this method, and I'm pretty happy with a few of them, but you can decide for yourself!

JT out.

JT Makin' Money

Exciting news, I found this wicked website that'll print any design I can create on t-shirts, longsleeves, sweatshirts and a whole bunch of other stuff. I just opened up my own personal shop with them and as of now I've got two shirts that anyone can buy - that's them up above. I've got a link to my shop on the right with all the others. If you want the address straight up, it's as follows:

http://www.cafepress.com/panzerlounge

Pretty cool stuff, I plan on creating tonnes of new stuff for it so check it out every so often. Let me know what you think of the designs, and DEFINITELY let me know if you end up buyin one (or two) of 'em!
Easy peasy,

JT out.

Stoppin' Crime!

I've been fortunate enough to help out on a print campaign for CrimeStoppers of Wellington County, aimed at emphasizing the fact that if you call in with a tip, you will remain absolutely, 100% anonymous. I was sent the background shots from a professional photographer, and was tasked with the job of adding grafitti to various elements of the scenes(as well as a bit of touch-up on the bg's, i.e. stretching out fence posts, filling in areas that had been blocked by unwanted cars, etc...). In the case of the shot with the picket fence and school locker, I painted/drew out the text and scanned it into photoshop, but the graf on the brick wall was created digitally. Thanks to my man Derek Neal for hooking me up with this one. Love working with you dude!

JT out.

Altering Landscapes

To help Steve(my bro), and his friends Petey G. and Parks give their house painting/landscaping venture 'Outside Works' visual representation I whipped up a logo for them so we could start making some signs they could put out front of any projects they work on. This was the first artistic project I completed after my trip, the second will be added shortly. Hope you like!

JT out.

Holy Smokes!

My apologies for the gigantic gap in between posts. I had a trip to Europe in there so at least I wasn't 100% unproductive, go to http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/tuerdeforce/my_photos if you wanna see some pics.

This is a piece I should have put up a long time ago but I held off until I completed a couple alterations. Didn't want to post this and then repost an updated version like I've done with a few previoius creations. So here you have my final project from my Sequential Narrative class where we had to take a metaphor and create a multi-paneled story around it. My metaphor of choice was "The dead of winter".

Put 'cha dukes up!

Figured I'd post another one before I leave for Germany, so here are a few pics of my final project for the illustration class. We had to create something three dimensional for a change without a whole lot of guidelines to follow. I made a boxing kangaroo USB hub. There are three USB ports in the kangaroo's pouch, and his tail is the USB cord that would connect to your computer, so it's something you'd plug into one of your computer's existing ports to give you an extra two USB slots. It's just a prototype, so it doesn't actually work, but I've been annoyed on many occasions at either the lack of USB slots on computers, or the inconvenient positioning of such ports. That's where the idea came from. After I sketched out the design I molded him out of Super Sculpey, painted him with acrylics and voila! Thanks to my wonderful aunt Sheila for the tripod that made these spec photos possible!

JT out.

Greekness

Here we have a gouache painting of a Greek Hoplite soldier for my main illustration class. First time I've dabbled with gouache paint, like how it turned out. I'm now officially done school for the year, great feeling...now I've just gotta find a way to be productive this summer.

JT out.

Dreadlock Samurai

I had a project for my Think Tank class where we had to create a display that showcased the opinions of a person whose voice isn't normally heard in society (i.e. janitor, security guard, stripper, etc.). My group chose to work with a chef, who was also a friend of one of our groupmates. Really cool guy named Mark Lanoue, covered in tattoos with long dreads hangin from his noggin. For our display, each group member created their own portrait of Mark, and hung them all from a long canvas with a piece of graffitti Mark had drawn out on it. This is the portrait I did of him, done to make him look like a samurai in the traditional Japanese painting-style. His sketch book was full of Japanese themes, so I thought he'd be pleased if gave my version this type of treatment. Hope you like.

JT out.

Wordless

Here are a few panels from an 11 panel story for my Sequential Narrative class. It's my interpretation of the Japanese myth "Kintaro" or Golden Boy. None of the text was integrated into the panels, I set the whole thing up like a poster with the story playing out on the left hand side of the page, but these are how the illustrations look in the final product. The story is about a mountain ogress that gets impregnated by a clap of lightning sent from a Dragon. She raises the boy in the forest and finds out he possesses incredible strength. As a young man he clears the forest of all monsters and brings peace to the land. Reminds me of myself.

JT out.

Panzer Up Close

Due to request, here is a large image of what the Panzer logo from all my board designs looks like, as well as a lineup of all the snowboards previously posted. I've also posted a larger version of my Samurai board so you can see it closer up. Enjoy!

JT out.

Totalling 8

I present the final two snowboard designs; they were the last boards I created of the bunch, and it's probably due to that fact that they are also my favourite. The first is strictly digital (Adobe Illustrator) and the second more physical, with photos, sketches, painting and texture all slapped together in photoshop. I was inspired to do the first one while staring at the stiching on the cuff of one of my sweaters during my lecture course, thought I could do something with the pattern it made. And the second - well, the whole time I've been working on these boards I've wanted to do a Samurai/Japanese one, so this is my final rendition of that idea. I'd be very interested to find out what are your favourites are of the eight, so feel free to post in the comments. Until next time, take 'er ease.

JT out.

P.S. Hi MZ!

Then There Were Six...

Two more snowboard-ular creations, with another two to follow shortly. In all of my designs, you'll find a little logo somewhere of a crazy fire-breathing bird with the word "Panzer" beneath. Instead of putting my signature on the boards, I decided to create my own brand, logo and all, just cause I thought it'd be cool if they end up getting printed I can say I have my own snowboard design brand. I'd designed the Fire Bird a few months back and had always been looking for an application for it, then this came up, and voila. Any comments, good or bad, are appreciated, so comment away!

JT out.

Few More Boards

As promised, here are two more of my snowboard designs. I tried to work in a bunch of different styles doing them, so hopefully there'll be something you like by the time I've uploaded them all.

JT out.

Snowboards!

I entered a snowboard design competetion that's taking place in Whistler in late April, so I thought I'd share some of my creations with you all. First place is a thousand buckaroos, so send me all your extra "good luck" points asap, it'll definitely make my Europe trip this summer a lot comfier! I've got a bunch, but I'll post two at a time, just to keep you coming back. Lemme know what ya think, and if anyone would like it, I can upload horizontally-oriented versions too.

JT out.

A Few More Night Missions

And the final panels, seven(bottom), eight and nine(top). If you've just arrived and haven't read the previous "Night Missions" posts, these are the final panels of a nine panel series. You can find the starting panels by scrolling down a little. Hope you like!

JT out.

More Night Missions

Panels five(bottom) and six(top).

JT out.

Night Missions Continued

Here's panels three(bottom) and four(top).

JT out.

Night missions

This time around, I present a nine panel "comic book" if you will, an assignment for my sequential narrative class. It's a cool class, but this was the first time I really felt like I could do what I wanted. The task was to create a story wherein one character talks a lot, and the other(s) do not. Mine takes place in the twilight skies over Britain during WWII with the crew of a Northrop P-61 Black Widow, an American nighttime fighter-extraodinaire! Extremely large for it's class, the Black Widow specialized in hunting down German bombers that used the cover of dark to sneak deep within Allied airspace. It flew with a crew of three - pilot, gunner, and radio/radar operator who manned the self-contained radar unit, a feature unique among Commonwealth and American fighters. With four Browning machine guns in the dorsal mounted turret and two 20mm cannons in each wing, the P-61 packed enough of a punch to take down anything the Germans could fling across the channel.

It's probably fairly obvious I did a little research for this, couldn't be helped. I'm going to post these one or two at a time (work your way UP the page rather than down to get the right order), so you can see each frame up close. It'd be a shame if two sleepless nights produced images to small to see, now wouldn't it? Enjoy,

JT out.

Testing the waters

This one's from the same illustration class as my last post, only this is part of my weekly series rather than an actual assignment. Every week, regardless of whether we have a project due, we have to submit a finished piece that follows the theme of our choosing (has to be the same theme for the whole semester). As I'm sure will come as a surprise to everyone, my theme is soldiers(!), so I present my rendering of a 16th century Polish soldier of the heavy-cavalry class. It's the first time I've worked in watercolours since early high school, and the first time I've felt as though I've had any kind of control over them. Quite excited, I'm going to try to use them whenever I get the chance in the future, and when I do you can be sure to see it here.

JT out.

School work

This here's a piece I did for my illustration class for second semester. Everyone was given a page out of a 1950's pulp comic book and told to illustrate a picture that could go along with what information we'd been given. Mine was about some dude finding his way through this foggy terrace, where everything had been turned to stone/concrete, then lighting a match to see better and catching a glimpse of a building off in the distance. Did it in acrylic, then scanned and worked some photoshop magic on it. Enjoy!

JT out.

Let it go!

I always felt like there was more I could do with what I had for the Caesar cover (first post), so I drew in parts of the soldier that were missing (top of his helmet and his left arm) and made the piece into a vignette to open it up more. Did I take it too far? Please let me know what you think, I just had to do it and get it out of my system for good.

JT out.

Some more tastings from the book.

Here are a few more pages from the book, the title of which is "Teen Wendy Blair - No Time to Spare," done for the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work. I've just received news that the layout designer is nearing completion and the book should go to press in a matter of weeks. Can't wait to see this sucker when it's finally done!

JT out.

Storybookin

Hey all, sorry for the month long delay, hope you're still with me!

Here are three pages from the storybook I illustrated last year. I did twenty four, so I will probably be posting some more of them in the future. But for now, take a gander at these and let me know what you think! I've changed the settings so that you no longer need to be a member to post comments. Take 'er easy.

JT out.

Tuer's Take on Tartakovsky

This one's hot off the digital presses, it's due this week for the same illustration class as the Roman stuff and the Japanese poster. The assignment was to create a corporate illustration of anyone we wanted, so it had to show the person in a positive light and in a way that would convince possible clients that this is the person they want to deal with. Everyone chose fairly high-profile people so it wasn't about introducing them to society, but rather showing that they are even more successful now.

I chose Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of "Dexter's Laboratory", "Samurai Jack" and creative director on the "Star Wars: Clone Wars" mini-series. I focused on the style of Samurai Jack to help identify him as Genndy. I'm happy with this one, the quick ones are always satisfying!

JT out.

Back to the basics

Man, I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd worked in acrylics! It was like learning to walk again. Thanks goes out to Alex for some late night tips and pointers over MSN!

JT out.

Samurai Game/Movie Poster

This here's another creation from the same illustration class as the Roman stuff. We had to create an image that was bold and easy to decipher from close up and far away, plus told enough of a story to keep the viewer interested. What can I say - Japan's still got a hold on me!

JT out.

Follow Up part Deux

And here are the last two Act Illustrations for Julius Caesar. Had a lot of fun doing these, really quick and rewarding. I'll probably further develop this style in the future.
'Til then,

JT out.

Follow Up

These are spot illustrations that go with the Julius Caesar cover and are meant to begin each chapter of the book. They are also done in a sketchy, out of control style to be consistent with the cover image. The ones here are the first two of four images, the next two will follow shortly.

JT out.

Oh, Hello!

Hello and welcome to my blog! I'm a newb to this but it seems fairly straight forward. Artful Nonsense will basically be the spot where I post my most recent graphcial workings, so check back every so often for the latest. I won't even try to commit to a schedule yet, but at least this way it'll be more of a surprise!

This first piece is a book cover for Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", which I did for one of my illustration classes at OCAd. I've been hooked on HBO's series "Rome" so I had to do something with all the images of footsoldiers, centurions, and basic Roman-coolness floating aorund my brain. I plan on doing some more Roman pieces in the future.

JT out