BOLTgraphics

Robothon 2012

2012-01-31T16:30:00.004+01:00

This coming March the conference on type design and technology called Robothon will once again be held in The Hague, The Netherlands and as ever it's being organized by Erik van Blokland and Paul van der Laan.
Although they are both gifted graphic designers themselves, they thought it was a good idea (don't ask me why) to let me design the logo for this year's conference.

The brief was simple: "Do what you like" and as a guideline they gave me a few words:
- UFOs (.ufo is and I quote "a cross-platform, cross-application, human readable, future proof format for storing font data")
- 2012 (as in the end of the world... maybe)
- robots (Robofont is a .ufo font editor which will be launched at the conference)
- general 'nerdyness' (it is after all "type design and TECHNOLOGY")

It was plenty for me to go on.
At first I thought about doing some Gigantor (Osamu Tezuka) and Ultraman inspired stuff...

...but I opted against that route. This kind stuff doesn't really come across in Roman characters and I din't want to go the 'faux-kanji' route.

Instead I started looking for more western inspiration like the science fiction tv-shows from the seventies:

This would give me that nerdy edge, the space, the UFOs... time to get sketching.
I did a couple of sketches at first trying to fit type into the shape of a flying saucer... or have the logo be emblazoned on the chest-plate of a giant robot (still hadn't fully let go of that Gigantor idea), but that would make the thing way to bulky.

So this one wasn't going to let it be squeezed into a mold of some UFO. I had to give it some room to stretch it's legs... Although I liked the interlocking, the UFO thing had to go.

I built the basic character-shapes in Illustrator and then deformed them, to give it that spacey "zoom into the future of 30 years ago" type of feel. After that I adjusted weight and contrast where it had all gone a bit wonky from the deformation.

After that I added the space-ship (which sort of resembled a pointed calligraphy pen), the 2012, colours, drop-shadow and some Kana (a word in Japanese characters that, as my underdeveloped knowledge of the language assured me, was saying "RO-BO-TO-N")and it was done...
Through the wonders of Twitter we found out that although the Kana did spell "ROBOTON" the "TH" would in Japanese more commonly be transcribed to an S sounding character (resulting in "ROBOSON"). It was corrected...

Good Luck

2012-01-04T08:20:00.001+01:00

Gus typography

2011-11-21T21:47:00.000+01:00

Good friends had a baby boy, I decided to write his name. I liked the name and can always use the practice.
I made it all nice a blingy...
Hope you like.

Dyzack's Mangy Soul

2011-10-01T01:52:00.002+02:00

I designed a sleeve for the new album, by my friend Dyzack, named "This Mangy Soul".
We decided to have it printed on a genuine old Heidelberg letterpress (with some hot type for good measure).
I don't have any pics of the end result yet (as it only officially came out today) but I shot some video on the day we were printing.
Made a little promo:

Get the album at Dyzack's site.

Check it out in full HD at my vimeo account.

Rituals

2011-06-19T23:27:00.003+02:00

I just posted a new film/music experiment on my vimeo page. You can watch it here too, but on vimeo it's all HD and stuff.

Shot and edited on the evening of May 22nd of this year.
One of the family rituals that takes place in my house every day.

I used my Olympus PEN2 with a 35mm Canon FD lens.
Music was done in ableton using samples from a piece called "Darha Nopigom" as it was performed by Byungki Hwang (it's tradional Korean music)

Oh and in other news... you can now 'like' BOLTgraphics on Facebook... if you're into that kind of thing.

Ganbatte Nihon

2011-03-28T12:11:00.002+02:00

I did another t-shirt design for LimitedTshirts.com and this time it's actually about something.
I will send all the proceeds of the sales to the Dutch Red Cross Japan relief fund (giro 6868) and the kids and Limitedtshirts told me they will match what I make and donate that too.
Please go to LimitedTshirts.com, register and vote... and buy the t-shirt!
Thanks!

Austrian Tradition

2011-03-07T13:58:00.004+01:00

Last month I spent a week's holiday in the beautiful town of Ehrwald in Austria together with my wife, our daughter and my in-laws. This being the first time I was ever in the Alps in the winter I was very impressed by all the natural splendor the country had to offer.
Besides all the beauty, food, snowboarding and 'gemütlichkeit' though, the thing that I was also really impressed by was the many pieces of the hand-painted signage on many of the buildings there.
Of course most used the nice texturas, frakturs and bastardas you'd expect in this part of the world, but there were also a few nice more modern pieces.
Here are a few of the nicer examples (in my opinion).

3D + sound

2011-01-19T22:17:00.007+01:00

As you might have noticed in my last few posts I've been getting more and more into animation/motion graphics and lately I've spending quite a bit of time in Cinema 4D.
Here's a simple little experiment in sound-triggered animation (I made the music in Ableton Live 8).

As this is all self-schooling any input is appreciated.
Thanks!

ps: best to watch it in HD on VImeo by the way...

Scissors & Spice

2011-01-19T21:56:00.008+01:00

Here's a blog that might interest you, if not for the (to quote the description) "clever crafting, comforting vegetarian and vegan recipes, perusing [of] well designed housewares, fabric, paper goods, vintage finds and unique clothing, getting creative with your children and appreciating the cuteness in the world around us", then at least for the fantastic piece of hand-lettered type.

The blog is run by Eva Lynn Barber and the type is from the hand of her husband and my friend Ken Barber.
Check it out, it'll make you smile.

Keepin' It Casual

2010-11-23T14:26:00.005+01:00

With modest pride I report that the logo I designed for our mates at Sugar Frosted Goodness gets a mention in the latest issue of Communication Arts. Admittedly the article is written by my good friend Ken Barber (typeandlettering.com and House Industries), so there's a tinge of nepotism to this.
Nevertheless, it made my day.

Have better look at the work that went into this thing here

Work in progress

2010-10-08T09:46:00.003+02:00

Lately I've been doing more and more of, what is popularly know as, motion graphics. And usually they have contained mainly illustrated / animated materials, but a while back I bought an Olympus E-P2 (PEN2) which has quite formidable video capabilities. Granted it's no 7D by any means, but it does a few tricks very nicely.
Especially with the help of After Effect the results can be quite epic looking (if I do say so myself).

Anyway I've been working on this thing which is all about worrying. Waking up in the middle of the night and just uncontrollably stress about stuff.
It's not finished by a long shot... it will have a few more scenes, sharper editting and a score of some kind, but I am just curious what you people might think.
Any comments are welcome.

You can watch the hi-def version on my vimeo page.

Musn't Worry (in progress) from BOLTgraphics on Vimeo.

New old book

2010-09-30T16:09:00.004+02:00

Just bought this beautiful little book at my favorite book store Nijhof & Lee. A treasury of German Tradmarks (volume one 1850 - 1925).
Well it does what is says on the box...

Votes Please!

2010-07-12T12:09:00.003+02:00

I did a tee design for the kids at Limited T-shirts. They run an online t-shirt shop and they let the public vote to determine which design go into production.
Mine is up now and you have 28 days left to go over en vote for it!
You do have to register, but there's a lot of great quality nicely printed fabric.

The design is from an illustration which was also the bases for a painting I did a while ago. So some of you might recognise it.

I hope you'll grant me your vote...

Zeilen

2010-07-06T11:09:00.007+02:00

Zeilen (Sailing) is a magazine about... you guessed it, sailing. And I've done illustrations for them before and they always let me basically do what I liked. Which is great!
This time however they let me come up with just about anything, and that actually proved a bit of a challenge.
Every year the magazine has a writing competition. They give readers a few words or a picture to inspire them to write a story about, with the central theme still being sailing of course.
This time I was asked to come up with an illustration to inspire the masses.

The editor gave me a few things to consider (calm seas, the guy with binoculars), but it needed something to add mystery. So I liked the idea of a bottle floating in the water, mainly for the above-water/under-water visual. But just the bottle wasn't enough... it needed something inside.
So here I considered a few things (among which a finger – too much) I decided on a key. It can open doors, lock someone in, it can represent power, wealth, danger, safety.. in short; plenty.

The sketch:

If the composition seems a bit lopsided it's because it's a full page spread, so it has some open areas to accommodate for text.

For the inks I wanted to try something different. I knew I was going to use Photoshop to color and I thought it'd be nice to have a bit of texture to my inks. Usually the my inks are usually tight black and white. This time it added black watercolors to the brushed inks with the intention of it adding a bit of depth.
Anyway here the are...
(oh and the editor didn't like the boat being on fire... so I left the smoke out)

And then the colored finals version:

Hope you like it.

World Cup Fever!!

2010-06-17T11:33:00.001+02:00

It's been out for a while but as the Football World Cup is in full swing at the minute, I thought I'd show you this now.
Barcelona based ad-agency Vasava was commissioned by 55DSL and Panini to come up with a line of shirts (as part of a bigger campaign) to celebrate the World Cup and Football in general.
They invited artists from around the world to represent their country in a t-shirt design. I of course came out for the Netherlands.
We were free to do whatever we wanted with the only restriction being the use of colors, they had to be the national colors of out countries.

The idea behind my piece was the one of the boy dreaming of becoming a football star and one day competing in the World Cup.
Here's the sketch:

Inked and colored:

Then client thought they would prefer to have their logos incorporated into the design after all. Which was fair enough of course. Also, it wasn't possible for the fabric to have a color, so that had to become white.
With these amendments this became the final design:

Go buy one at the 55dsl online shop.

Hair

2010-03-11T16:44:00.007+01:00

It's not often that I get to do illustrations for book-covers. Not sure why, I think it's because most people perceive my style to be too 'heavy' or whatever.
Anyway a few months ago, I was commissioned to do one, for the Dutch release of Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato.
The idea came from the graphic designer of the rest of the cover, Marlies Visser. It was to have the main type to be entangled in the hair of this girl Mathilda (who obviously is the main character of the book). And I love drawing hair, so I was more than happy to go along with it.
I did a sketch, but in the first sketch her eyes were too adult, too sexy really. I hadn't had a chance to read the book and didn't realize at first the Mathilda was a 13 year old... stupid mistake.
Anyway I amended the sketch to the satisfaction of Marlies and after, some haggling with the publishers over the colors, I finished the illustration.

Marlies added more typography, but unfortunately I don't have an image of that. But check out her website, maybe you can find it there.

10 YEARS

2010-02-04T09:41:00.009+01:00

This week my company BOLTgraphics has turned 10. On 02-02-2000 I started up my little circus and it's been chugging along ever since. And, as ones does at these occasions, I got a little bit nostalgic...
Here are all the different logos I've used over the years.

2000:

2002 (a t-shirt design really):

2004:

2007:

2009:

Not all of these were extensively used and none have really been decommissioned, but I have to say, looking at these, I should design a few new ones.

hmmm sugar

2010-01-28T09:42:00.008+01:00

Through the power of the world wide interwebs, I have over the years worked with and befriended quite a few people. People I have never met in the real world. One of these friends is Jeff Andrews who interviewed me last year on his Design Inspiration blog.
Then later that same year (it was 2009, I remember it well...) Jeff needed a new logo for one of his other blogs; Sugar Frosted Goodness. He was thinking of something typographic and asked me to have look at it.

So sketching ensued...

After taking a look at these sketches I decided none of these really captured the gooey sugary sweetness the name of the blog demanded. So I decided to go for a more gloopy feel, but I still wanted to keep a strong all be it playful character shape.
Also Jeff had mentioned he would like to see some typographic interwoven..ess, so I did this sketch:

Jeff liked it. I didn't quite yet, but after amending the last S on Goodness and some other little things...

And then it was ready for digitization. And after a bunch of nitpicking and vector-fidgeting this is the end result:

Jeff's blogs:
Sugar Frosted Goodness
Design Inspiration
Adventures in Blogging

New site

2010-01-25T18:04:00.004+01:00

I know it hasn't been that long ago that I announced I had a new site up... well forget that one and go check out my latest new site!
It's all clean and breezy, with nice big images of my work. I haven't put all my work on there yet, but I will in the coming weeks.
Go take a peek at the thing and let me know what you think. Thanks.

One trick pony

2009-11-24T17:00:00.007+01:00

A while back I did a series of posters for Bullet Creative in London in an old Victorian "circus-sideshow" typographic style. Which, I have to admit, is something I like doing and apparently it shows as I was asked to repeat the exercise for the latest issue of "Creatie". It's a magazine geared towards the Dutch advertising industry and has a guest editor every month, who determins the theme of the issue. This time it was Sicco Beerda of Euro RSCG and the theme had everything to do with "reality" or "realism" and at the same time "fakeness" and "untruth" I guess.
Anyway on that theme I was asked to start sketching for an article which wasn't quite finished yet. The editor came up with the idea of referencing well-known commercials that played with the idea of "real" and "not real".
They were Cadbury's Drumming Gorilla, Evian's Skating Babies and I put in Axe's (or Lynx for some parts of the world) Chocolate Man.

Right after I presented the sketch, the final article came through and it didn't fit the sketch (or vice versa). The article focused a lot more on certain people who influenced opinion. So the editor decided to keep the style but change the characters, replacing them with the people mentioned in the article.
I didn't mind too much because it gave me a chance to do some portraits. Although I was kind of looking forward to putting ink on that gorilla...

These are the (somewhat dirty) inks of the portraits:

And the finished product:

Click for a better look...

STATE-X NEW FORMS

2009-11-20T13:12:00.010+01:00

Yeah yeah I know, it's been too long since I last posted something... but here it is now, so quit your yapping.

The beautiful city of The Hague is quickly turning into one of the more cultural cities in the Netherlands as well. One of the ways by which it is doing this is through a festival called State-X New Forms. It's a festival focussing on alternative electronic and underground music and art... Or as they put it themselves "Festival for avant-rock, cutting-edge electronics and nu-art".

They asked me to design and art-direct the whole publicity side of this year's event. As you might remember I showed the proposals for the style that they didn't go for earlier this year (click here or just scroll down... yeah again I'm sorry I haven't been posting jeeees!!).
Here's what they liked better:

Flyers (collect all 4!!):

Posters:

All kinds:

The whole thing goes down on the 11th and 12th of December. There's some more stuff I did for this project but I can't really show that since it's not been made public yet.

If you're interested in going, here's the website (the design for which I was not responsible).

Thanks for your patience...

Typosters

2009-07-10T14:35:00.006+02:00

This is a series of posters I made under commission of the London based Bullet Creative for the Cool Sounds from the Frozen Arctic event organized by Cape Farewell and the Eden Project as part of the 2009 Eden Sessions.
It was a nice job since the kids at Bullet basically let me do 'my thing' and luckily for me the client really liked it.

Because of a somewhat limited budget I wasn't able to custom-drawn all the type, but I did do the 'Shlomo'. For the "Jarvis Cocker" I made use of the House Industries, Photolettering Inc. online application of which I am lucky enough to be a beta tester.

All of these were used, apart from the one with Jarvis Cocker. He had to drop out of the line-up for reason I'm not aware of.

Hope you like.

Digging the crates

2009-07-07T10:28:00.010+02:00

Over the years I have designed a ton of T-shirts, which was fun, but hardly lucrative. The one thing I still get a bit of a kick out of though, is bumping into people wearing them every so often. This usually happens at punk-rock or hardcore gigs as the vast majority of those shirts were commissioned by Mark Beemer.... hang on there's logic to that.
Mark being a veteran photographer of the hardcore and punk-scene also runs the Syrentha Savio Endowment, a non-profit organization that provides financial assistance to underprivileged women who cannot afford the expense of fighting breast cancer.
He raises money by, among other things, sell limited edition t-shirts of well-known hardcore- punk- and alternative-bands who make their name available free of charge (I assume). And these needed to be designed. So that's where I came in.

Not all of these were used in the end, but I like these enough to post them (obviously). Click the pics for a closer look.

All American Rejects (never used).

Antiflag (never used)

Between the Buried and Me

the Draft, I also turned this into a painting, with the band's permission.

Funeral for a Friend

Halifax (never used)

Minus the Bear

Maroon

Mark also organized tours and when he set up shop in Austin for the SxSW festival in 2007, I did something special for the occassion. A double bill of LIFETIME and My Chemical Romance, t-shirts and a poster.

Orange 9MM

Paint it Black

the Pink Spiders

Refused

Sacry Kids Scaring Kids

The Sounds

The Receiving End of Sirens

Sorry for the carpet-bomb-post but I figured I had to make up for my blog slackery lately.

REJECTS

2009-05-28T14:06:00.003+02:00

Occasionally when I start working on a project, the same basic idea will produce two (or sometimes even more)very different but equally strong potential directions in style. In those cases I usually just leave it up to the client to decide which one they feel more comfortable with using.
Which always leave a reject. These poor schmucks didn't tickle any fancies, so I'll post them here.
I can't divulge anything about the concept or the project as it still on-going.

Hope you like it.

BOLTposter

2009-05-12T10:38:00.006+02:00

Every once in a while, when I have some money left over, I like to get some stuff printed, to send 'round to friend, colleagues, clients, people I would like to become clients etc.
So I did. Posters this time.

The posters were printed by the friendly and very professional folks at Drukkerij Terst and some of you will probably find one in the mail in the coming weeks.

Doodle Toosday

2009-04-14T11:56:00.002+02:00

Just some doodlings I did recently. Hope these will keep you mildly entertained for now.

We could be heroes.

2009-03-17T12:29:00.008+01:00

And now for something completely different.
Every once in a while I love to go on little excursions into styles and techniques I normally stay away from or not get a chance to get into.
This time Erik van Blokland from Letterror asked me to help him on a project for the Andreas Hofer Museum in Süd Tirol, in Italy (it's an Austrian part of Italy.. sort of).
Andreas is a folk hero in those parts and the museum wanted to show how heroes are often not made by their own actions, but more by how their actions are perceived, interpreted and recounted by the public.
So we made a hero factory, showing all kinds of heroes, from the historic to the modern and all their fans / makers.

I did all the little characters and Erik did the building and the type (he also made some nice little videos for the same exhibitions)

Here are all the hero-makers:

And these are all the heroes... can you name them all?

And this is the end result (click the pic for a closer look):

Nightmare

2009-02-27T12:59:00.005+01:00

These are a few illustrations I did for the magazine Zeilen [Sailing]. The article, titled 'de Nachtmerrie' [the Nightmare] was the true story about a young Dutch sailor traveling around the Caribbean islands where he got found himself blackmailed (over a bogus poker debt) by Colombian gangsters to transport a shipment of drugs to Europe.
It's a harrowing story and the poor guy is now locked up in a French jail, where he can't even defend himself in court for fear of retributions as even in prison the gangsters threatened to harm his loved-ones if he were to testify.
Anyway... the illustrations; the first one is the main one, the other three are fillers.

Extra Extra!

2009-02-23T09:01:00.006+01:00

Well a week has passed and I've made the front-page again... surprisingly. Last week I posted an illustration I did for newspaper "De Pers", about the financial crisis. The accompanying article asked readers what a suitable punishment would be for the bankers, accused of being greedy and f-ing up the global economy.
The verdict: the bankers should be forced to go to work in full clown get-up.
So everybody would know not to take them too seriously and trust with too much of their money, I guess.
Anyway I did a new version of the vulture I did for them last week but this time, you guessed it, in red nose, blue wig and make-up.

An interesting little side-note the vulture I did last week got some t.v. attention from a show called "Rondom Tien" (a topical, serious talk show here in the Netherlands) devoted a show to the financial crisis and the whole 'blame issue'. And halfway through the show the presenter whips out a copy of last weeks De Pers and goes "Illustrator Martijn Rijven shows us this vulture in a pinstripe"... Well, the live studio-audience and the guests all agreed: This was going way too far... outrage!

KUMOKUMO

2009-02-20T15:38:00.009+01:00

I only just noticed that a good friend and college-colleague Bas Smidt has also been keeping a blog. Lot's of interesting graphic design stuff on there. Check it out: KUMOKUMO

Hot off the press...

2009-02-16T10:02:00.006+01:00

Last week I did an illustration for Dutch newspaper 'De Pers' (which is Dutch for 'the press'; explaining this posts lame pun title). It's out today (the second dimension to the lameness at the top). To my slight surprise they used it for the front page. The dimensions they gave me weren't big enough so they had to blow up the illustration to make it fit, coupling that to the fact that they print at 200dpi for some reason, made the piece turn out a bit fuzzy.
ANYWAY....
The article is about a story you might have heard before: the wa.. bankers of the world, running the global economy into the ground, having taxpayers bail them out and then demanding bonuses to boot.

Here are the initial doodlings:

The cleaned up drawing and sketch I presented to client:

And the final thing:

And the finished result as they used it (explains all the space around the bird):

This concludes my blog of today, thank you for viewing. Please feel free to leave a comment.
Cheers.

Blogging blogs

2009-01-22T11:11:00.006+01:00

I'm humbly honoured to report that an interview I did with Jeff Andrews went up on his blog Design Inspiration today. Jeff is also the man behind Sugar Frosted Goodness, which you probably already know (if not you should get to know it, it's fun).
Anyway my ramblings (and some examples of my work) are up. Enjoy.
Thanks Jeff!

ps: please excuse the gloomy picture...

Pencil portraits

2009-01-16T16:11:00.005+01:00

Recently I moved my studio into a space a bit closer to home (instead of a half hour bike-ride it's now a four minute walk!) and whilst settling in I decided to do some drawing. As you do, keeping the skills as honed as possible. I'm sorry I'm rambling...

Here's a portrait I did a while ago for Revu in a same vain as one I did earlier in the year (this one).

Here's another one I did jsut for the practice of one of my all time favorite celebs. His eye got stuck a bit too far to the right (I didn't notice it in time), that's why that stupid little arrow is there.
I thought it'd be nice to give him a bit of colour, all be it gray and pink.
Can you guess who this wrinkly rocker is? First one to get it right wins...

Happy!

2009-01-05T17:30:00.003+01:00

yeah happy new year folks...
ps: the pic's nicer when you see it big (click it).

Ruben vs. Sophie

2008-12-19T15:07:00.006+01:00

It's already been a few weeks since I finished this project, but I still think it's worth blogging a bit about it. Every once in a while the agency I'm connected to (Shop Around) will take on jobs that they will art direct themselves, and every once in a little longer while I get asked to participate.
The Shop asked me to supply the artwork / illustrations for the opening leader animation for a tv-show that was being produced for BNN (a little Dutch network). The animation was gonna be done by the kids at Ka-Ching
I did the illustrations, the logo and most of the graphics (didn't do the building in the beginning or Leonardo's visions). Below are some of the illustration and the final animation.

Anistration or Illumation...

2008-11-27T16:57:00.006+01:00

For over two years now I've been making illustration for this company named Valori (a client of Bureau aan Zee who in turn commissioned me). I've done about 10 now and they all depict a person showing managing skills (management being one of the main products of the company).
In some more of my recent animation experimentation I decided to try and find a way to get a bit more life in an illustration I had already finished and these works were perfect candidates.
So I ripped them apart, stood the resulting pieces up on a virtual stage and let a virtual camera move around them.
Although it started out as an experiment I couldn't resist making something 'real' out of it. So I did this little clip, which could be seen as an ad for Valori.
Let me know what you think.

ps: please excuse the stupid post-title.

Bluffing

2008-11-21T11:41:00.009+01:00

This week I finally finished a self commissioned piece I started about 2 years ago and it's the third in a series of illustration I started even longer ago. Well in fairness, in style it is part of that series eventhough the concept for this one came about differently.
The short of it is that based on the first 2 pieces I was asked to work on a project with the goal of providing information about responsible cannabis use in the Dutch coffee-shops (yes, this is the Netherlands and it was government sponsored as well). The commission came from Reinier Hamel of SIN who recognized the weird and "collectibility" would be a good way to package the information in a way that might just get the happy smokers to take notice and be mildly interested.

It was to become a whole series of these little illustrated stories that would be incorporated in the packaging of a bunch of different products and publications. A new illustration coming out every few months, making them noticable and (dare we have dreamed it) collectible.
Sadly they idea was lost in a storm of interests and bureaucracy.

This is what all the cuffafle was all about.

And these were the earlier editions in the series.

Maybe, just maybe I might do a few others. I've got a few ideas on the shelf that might be worth it, but they do take a ton of work though.
We'll see.

Affordable

2008-10-27T10:24:00.005+01:00

Just a quicky this one.
From October 30th until November 2nd, the Affordable Art Fair will be held in the Gashouder at the Wester Gasfabriek in Amsterdam. Some of my more artsy work will be on show and indeed for sale there, as part of the Prints and the Revolution gallery. Some old stuff and some (relatively) new.
Here's a look at the new stuff... please excuse the quality of the pictures (that's due to the "quicky" nature of this post).

Maybe see you at the art fair.

Why?

2008-09-30T16:48:00.002+02:00

Just finished another short animation (notice how they keep getting simpeler and simpeler). After the last two animations I wanted to do some more typographic animation or, as people also tend to refer to it: 'motion graphics' (lame term).
This one is sort of a test and to get some more practice in, before I start on something a bit more challenging (and original), which I have brewing in the back of my sketchbook.

On the web there are a lot of kids doing these typographic animations using movie scenes as a guide. It's a pitty nobody really does anything original. Anyway I wanted to find out how long it would take me to make someting similar, well design and animate it that is. I didn't use a movie soundbite, and synching it up to something like that would cost quite bit of time (I guess) but I did this in a little over half a day.
Just a bit of fun.

Oysters...

2008-09-12T16:32:00.003+02:00

I just finished another animation. Lately I've really concentrating on my animation skills and trying to get them into some kind of shape.
So this latest animation is based on an illustration I did a few years ago. It was for a poster to promote some event (can't really remember the specifics), showing a step by step visual guide to opening up an oyster shell. The style had to be like the way those "in-flight safety" cards on airplanes are done.

I quite regularly get asked to do illustrations and/or designs in a similar style, so I thought: "why not offer future clients the option of this sort of thing in animated form too?" Plus, most of the work for this animation was already there: the drawings and graphic elements.

The only thing was, as I realized when I was working on the thing, that I wasn't really going to leave me with a very interested animation to watch. And it has to be somewhat entertaining if you want it to have a bit of promotional worth. Anyway I added a little twist to the story (if there really is a story to speak of...)

New website

2008-09-05T14:37:00.005+02:00

It's been a while in the making, but today it finally happened! My new website went up today.
A new design and a nice blog sort of feature on the front of it.
Don't worry, this blog isn't going anywhere. I put that feature on my site because it's a quick and easy way to get little news items on there. I will be putting the more in depth and 'process' posts up here.
I also put up a few new pieces, some of which you might have already spotted here.
I'm still working on making sure I got all the typos and bugs out, but besides that... here's the new BOLTgraphics website!

Dubai

2008-08-29T14:24:00.011+02:00

It's always a lot of fun when you get asked to do something that's not really your regular thing. This time and art-director working on a job for KPMG (the big accountants firm) was looking for a Art Deco style poster, and through my agent he came to me.

He needed me to do a poster for an event taking place in Dubai. The poster was part of a larger campaign also involving a website and flyers etc. The concept behind the campaign was based on the story of the genie in the lamp.
I was asked to the typography and the illustration and also provide some additional art-work for the website.

Here's the breakdown.
As always, I started with a nice bit of sketching. The artdirector had provided me with a very quick sketch to show me the basic idea and based on that I did some more detailed and realistic sketches for all the seperate items.

When this was approved I started working on an even more detailed pencil version of the thing. And from this I went straight to illustrator. In the work I am usually asked to do I would first ink the pencils and then color it in photoshop and/or illustrator. But this time it needed to be all quite straight and sort of cubist, so no need for nice flowy brush strokes.

This is the background, only a fragment of which is visible in the poster, but was needed for the website.

The artdirector was looking for the grainy texture which are characteristic for those old art deco prints. I would have like have achieved this by using scanned in textures made with charcoal or chalk pastels, but there wasn't really the time. So I administered some photoshop trickery which came close enough (click the pic for a larger view).

Then there was the typography. There aren't that many strong Art Deco inspired typefaces, but one very good one is the Duiker which incidently is designed by my friend Paul van der Laan of Type Invaders.

So that took care of the smaller type, but I wanted to draw something custom for the big eye-catcher "Dubai". It went through a few phases, I did a sketch and the idea was to have the lettering to move along with the shape of the top of the window. This in hindsight might nor have been the best of ideas, I have to admit. It sort of works, but not quite. De 'D' gets in the way and needs to have the strong vertical on the left (otherwise it looses to much legibility) so that makes it very hard to squeeze in the onion shape of the window.
And not trying to squeeze it in left the lettering somewhat out of balance... anyway this is what the lettering went through. If I would have to do it again I think I would not have tried to have the lettering to follow the window shape and just lay it on top of it, more independently. But again the time constraints...

And here's the finished result of the poster (click the pic for a closer look).

Corrections

2008-08-29T14:04:00.003+02:00

A while ago I posted an animation on here that I did as a self promotional/educational piece. And as I wrote back then I was still to do some changes to the sound. Well I'm still working on (or better: "asked a friend to help me with..." ) an original score but I have added some sound effects.

And some anonymous eagle eye spotted a typo in there too, well it wasn't too hard to spot but he/she was the first to point it out to me. Thanks for that Anonymous.
Anyway it's all fixed now.

If there's no clip, please check back in later, it might not yet be verified by Youtube.

Bruce & me...and the man

2008-08-11T12:22:00.012+02:00

I'm sorry if you got here expecting a post about the new Akzo Nobel logo and how it came to be.
Well it's not here anymore. I have been forced to take it off.
It's a very long story and way too boring to go into here, but involves the threat of legal action. I can't afford legal action.
So again I'm very sorry. Thanks for all the comments and thoughts and please come again.

I can refer you to the site of Saffron (who commissioned me for this job) they have some of my work showcased on their site.

Keeps coming back...

2008-07-15T18:03:00.004+02:00

Some time ago I designed this poster. Which I then reproduced during a mimeograph workshop. That left me with about 50 posters (decent ones). When I hooked up with the nice people of Prints and the Revolution I decided to start selling them through their website.
This got noticed by the people at Boomerang. A company that distributes free postcards through bars and restaurants, forming a platform for little (or big) ideas and the inevitable advertisement.
So now the poster is available as a postcard for free at most Dutch bars etc.

For those of you reading this from outside of Holland and who would like a couple of cards too, let me know. Drop me an e-mail through my website (boltgraphics.com) and I'll send some over.

BOLT Propaganda

Click the little star and rate the thing at the Boomerang site... if you like.

Animated

2008-07-03T17:17:00.004+02:00

For the last few weeks I've been doing quite a bit self commissioned work. In september my new and improved website will (should) go up online (SCOOP! SCOOP!!) and I want some new fresh work on there.

Especially the animation department is in need of some fresh meat. So I prepared some... here it is:

I used After Effects and Cinema 4D. And iMovie to put it to music.
I'm not yet happy with the music and it needs some sound effects, so that will change, but you get the idea.
Hope you like it.

Canvasses

2008-06-22T17:53:00.004+02:00

As you could have read in the previous post, there are now two shows on in Amsterdam with some of my work in there. One has smaller drawings and the other has some of or rather all of my paintings... Two you already know about, but here's a sneaky peak at the other two.

They are sort of a couple because apart from being the same size and have similar style in images, in both I am sort of exploring the same techniques. I started with a background wash of two or three very transparent colors. Then I put on the drawing (using an overhead projector) again using transparent loose paint, mixing two colors. Then I partially detailed and worked through certain parts of the piece.

The goal was to get some dynamic or 'movement' and depth into the things using composition and color... I know it reads like some of that typical artsy-fartsy bullshit but that was the goal. Not sure if I really succeeded but they are a lot more interesting then what I did with some of the paintings that went before. It was a good learning process.

Here are the paintings. The shots are of about half way and the final result.

The show will be on untill the 3rd of July.

2 for 1

2008-06-13T21:12:00.004+02:00

It's been a while since my last post, sorry about that, but my wife and I took a little trip. About which I will post more later.
This post is blatant self promotion... uhm wait every post is blatant self promotion I guess. But next week there will be two art shows that my work will be a part of.
The first one is the "Prints & the Revolution" show. It opens on the 19th of June. And I will show some old works ("the Clown" and "SCUM") and two new paintings I'll post about later too.
The other show is the "Garage Sale" opening on the 20th, and there I'll be showing a bunch of drawings. All new.

Here are the flyers with all the details. Hope I'll see you there.

Buy SCUM

2008-04-10T14:06:00.006+02:00

Not the pond variaty, but the painting I finished a couple of weeks ago (scroll down for that post).
It's now for sale on through the online gallery run by Arne Toonen and Birgit Schuurman called "Prints and the Revolution". There you can also buy the "Paco" skateboard decks series I did last year and a little poster I did in whih I share my opinion with the world on US foreign and economic policy.

Right now I'm working on a few screen prints that will also be available on the site in a few weeks (if all goes well).

Go check it out, and don't forget to subscribe to their newsletter.

Sketches are drawings too...

2008-04-04T16:45:00.011+02:00

As some of you (but only some) might have noticed, an illustration I did was published in the Dutch magazine Nieuwe Revu last week. It was a portrait of strong arm to Dutch crime boss Willem Enstra and somewhat ironically named Geurt Roos (for all you non-Dutchies his names sort of translates into Smells [like] Rose). I was asked to do the portrait because they only had a really bad photograph of the guy and they liked a portrait I had done of musician Pop Levi.
So I did a sketch for them to approve... and they came back with not only approval of the sketch but they wanted to actually use the sketch instead of a 'final inked version (like the Levi piece) because it fit the new style of their mag better.
It was a nice surprise, were it not for the fact that I had (somewhat over confident) already inked the thing... oh well. I cleaned the sketch up a bit, but it went in the magazine almost unchanged... Maybe I spend too much time on my sketches?
Here's the stuff I did for the mag plus a quick scan (unpolished) of the inks.

Done! No really... it's done.

2008-03-12T11:58:00.004+01:00

I'm sorry. I just couldn't help myself. I know I said it was done before, but now it really, really is.
The thought that there was something still missing had been nagging at the back of my mind ever since I had declared the thing finished, but I kept dismissing it by telling myself I had to keep it simple.
So that gaping big yellow space kept staring me down and in the end I just gave in. "SCUM" was the name of the piece. I decided to make that more obvious. Adding a bit of depth as I went along.
Here's the result. Hope you like it.

Adi Dassler's

2008-02-08T17:11:00.002+01:00

A while ago I was asked by 180 Amsterdam to hepl them out visualising an animation the were thinking about that gave a little insight into the man behind Adidas; Adi Dassler.
I spent a day with the talented creatives at 180 (Samuel Coleman and Dario Nucci) and after I had handed over my sketches I didn't really hear much about it. As it often goes in the advertising industry.
And then all of a sudden I bump into this on that world wide interweb thing.

It's great to see how it stayed so close to the orignal ideas, something the doesn't happen too often in said industry.
Here are the sketches I did.

Sketches

2008-02-08T16:20:00.001+01:00

I don't what it is about buying and then using new stuff. A new pencil, a pen, sketchbook. It always makes me want to do new drawings, it's inspiritational in a weird way. Some people have the same thing with cleaning up their studio or their desk, I have it with buying new stuff... maybe that's my feminine side.
Anyway, new sketchbook, here are a few new sketches.
I like them because they're nice and loose. Hope you like them too.

Paint

2008-01-14T15:25:00.000+01:00

It's been about a year in the making... maybe even more. And I am ashamed to admit it, but I thinkg it's still not quite finished yet.
It's damn near to it though! I did some more work on the painting I posted on before and I think it will take maybe 2 r 3 nore hours and then I'm going to leave the poor bastard alone.

older shot:

as it stands now:

Sorry for the quality of the pics being a bit wobbly... the colors in the second one is closest to the real world.

We're back...

2007-12-30T13:09:00.000+01:00

...for now.
The site is back online. Fingers crossed it will stay there.

Great start...

2007-12-28T15:41:00.000+01:00

For those who haven't noticed yet, my main website (boltgraphics.com) is down.
The guy who hosted it decided to take a vacation and forgot to pack his brain or something. He says he made a deal with another comany that they would keep his servers in check, but they say they don't know nothing about anything....
In the meantime I'm screwed. No e-mails, no website, no webstore, no nothing... wel there is this blog.
So please people, don't be alarmed. I'm still here, don't panic and sit tight, I'm working on it and will be back with you shortly.
Thank you for your patience....
Cheers,
Martijn

oh and a happy new year!!

Britannicus

2007-11-29T18:17:00.000+01:00

A while ago I was asked to do a bit of art on an almost blank poster. As part of an art-project build around a run of performances of the play 'Britannicus'. The whole thing was thought up by my good friends, the Stone Twins.
The play is about Nero, the Roman emperor and also one of the most sadistic tyrants the world has ever seen. So the theme of the play (and the poster) was power... and the abuse there of.
See if you can find all the little hidden messages.

I did it all for the 'Nouky

2007-10-23T16:36:00.000+02:00

Every once in a while you get a call from a potential client and from the very first words they utter you just know it's going to be a nightmare.... Especially when those words are:"Do you work on a 'no cure no pay' bases?"

This time it was EMI (remember them, from when you had to buy music from a shop). It concerned the artwork for the upcoming release by Anouk, one of Holland's biggest selling artists. They were obviously shopping around for cheap and eager designers. As it turned out the only two they were trying to snare were the guy who I share a studio space with (Shamrocking.com) and me. And unlucky for them we are neither cheap nor eager (not eager to work for the major music-industry anyway). To cut a long and for EMI somewhat embarassing story short, we decided to do it together (Shamrock took the job and I would help him out as he didn't have too much time).

HRH Anouk's manager (a nice guy, it has to be said) came by to tell us about the feel they were looking for. He was talking about religious (catholic-) imagery used in southern Californian and Mexican Latino cultures and we, quite entheusiastically, jumped in with all kind of ideas fo ourselves...

First priority was the artwork for the first single "Good God". EMI kept insisting we show them 5 different completely worked out proposals for them to pick and choose from... well we told them that that's just not the way we (or any other designer we know) work. So we gave them two proposals plus a presentation of collages (or mood-boards if you will) to show what kind of feel we had in mind for the rest of the campaign (album, posters, dvd etc.) Anyway this is what we did... keep in mind all this was of course on the tightest of deadlines.. (3 weeks ago).

This was Shamrock proposal for the single art...

This was mine...

And these were some of the collages for the rest of the campaign...

They picked my design and really liked the ideas we had for the rest of the stuff....
So I started on finalising the art-work for the single. The only thing they wanted me to change for the finals was the color of her face... I thought the silvery look was kinda cool (remeniscent of old silver statues in catholic prosessions), but they wanted her face to look as young as it could... (she is in her forties so I understand her insecurity).

Made the required ammendments, made the deadline, job's a good'un.

Or so I thought...
The day after the deadline. We get word from EMI (Shamrock had all the client contact go through his agent at this point because we didn't want to deal with the bullshit anymore): "She want's her hair to be more visible. Could I move the picture over a bit?" O...K.... I had to make the type a bit smaller for that too:

So that's surely it...isn't it? Oh no it ain't!
"Don't like the logo touching my face... and it's covering too much of my hood" This is seriously what she said.
Anyway (I was getting on my hourly rate by now, let me assure you):

And upon seeing this, HRH found those ornaments too distracting and why not take them out all together..
Well I stopped caring two versions ago so I just started the clock again...

So finally that was it... the bitch was happy and I was done. During all this she also decided that she wasn't going to (ab)use us for the other artwork. I didn't care really because these types of jobs give me flashback of the years I used to work for a boss and I hated those years...

So a few weeks go by and I start to wonder when this thing is finally going to be released upon the populace... so I checked her site and to my ashtonishment:

So here's a call to all budding young designers: Don't let them screw you around. They are used to people jumping at the chance to design something 'high-profile' and this is why record companies aren't used to paying decent fees. So make sure you do get paid right (which luckely I did) because it's not like they don't have the cash... they just don't want to spend it on you.... the bastards

Sketchbook exhibition

2007-10-16T14:22:00.001+02:00

On de 2nd of November there will be an exhibition hosted by my agency Shop Around. They asked all the illustrators to scan some pages from their sketchbooks and send them in. They'll be printed and then shown at Kunstcafe Gommers.
I send in 5 scans, some of which have already featured on this blog.
Read the flyer below for more details. (if you can't read it... click the thing for a closer look...duh)

Shirts...

2007-10-11T12:52:00.000+02:00

As my website and new corporate identity design is nearing completion, I'm also working on some new t-shirt design to accompany the beg launch of it all (no date set as of yet, but will be soon enough). And I know this isn't very professional, but I want to ask you, my trusty blog lurker, to help me pick the one that will be actually go to print and up for sale in my online shop.

I've got three different design for you to choose from. Just leave a comment and let me know which one you'd pick or wear or hate and (if you have the time) why...
I'll get you bastards to comment yet!.. or not... please...?

Anyway here you go.

Number one:

Number two:

And number three:

happy picking... and commenting.

Sketch-o-rama

2007-10-01T11:12:00.000+02:00

Hey kids,
A quick post of a sketch I did in my sketch book.
Usually i start every fresh doodle on a blank page... and in the spirit of environmental awareness I thought I would stop that and fill the pages to the brim. I also dusted off my little watercolor compact and added some color this time, besides the usual red and blue.

Long time, no post...

2007-09-26T17:23:00.000+02:00

Yeah sorry about that folks, it's been a while since my last post, but here it is. So stop your whining.

Since my move to Amsterdam I've been trying to free up time to work on a new visual identity for BOLTgraphics. I thought if I have to print new cards and letterhead I might as well freshen up the whole look of it.
Well I've finally mangaed to free up a few hours and here are some of the results...

The basic concept our new corporate identity will be one of flexibility. It will entail several different logo's within a consistent visual environment, to show versatility and flexibility. Or, to put it less pretentiously, I've been drawing a whole bunch of different logo's to show people I can do all kinds of styles...
So here are a few of them. These are not the colors I will be using for the visual identity, I want to keep that under wraps for now.

I'm gonna try and find out if I can get baseball jersey's with those last two. If so they'll be available in the BOLTgraphics online store.

Practice makes... better

2007-07-27T17:58:00.000+02:00

Lately I've been really working hard to get my inking and coloring to a higher or at least to a different level. To broaden the scope and become more of an all rounder. I have been inking sketches that I found on the web, by among others, Jack Kirby. Just to have something to ink. But I figures since I'm never going to be part of a comic book producing machine like the people who used to ink his work and I will always be inking my own work, it was an utterly pointless (though interesting) exercise. In order to develope my own style of inking I needed to ink my own pencils. So I did.
I took a sketch I posted in my last blog entry, but here it is again....

So I inked it. I did a light blue print out of it and inked on top of that.
I wasn't too unhappy with the result, although I think I overdid the details slightly. I'm trying to find a better balance between rough and undetailed parts and detailed more rendered part of the drawing. But I always get sort of caught up in the fun of putting ink to paper with a brush, which result in the whole thing being too detailed and loses all tension within it... Does that makes sense? It needs a contrast between rendered and less-rendered bits, so that certain parts jump out more and get more emphasis. That's important...
Anyway te ink:

So as I said, the inks had room for improvement, but it was a nice little exercise. So I thought what the hell, let's follow through with some more photoshop practice. I love the way photoshop let's you make the illustration look sexy...

I'm thinking of maybe adding some type, but I don't know what yet.

If there are any inkers/draftsmen/colorererers out there that have any points for me, please let me know. I've been a professional illustrator and designer for about 10 years now, but I still have plenty to learn and not afraid to do so. So if you have any thoughts on this stuff, it'd be cool to hear from you....

Doodles

2007-07-25T15:13:00.001+02:00

Not much to post but a bunch of sketches.
Some inked, some not, some halfway.
Enjoy...

Mighty Thor

2007-07-17T12:07:00.000+02:00

Some time ago I came across this Flickr page (through a post on Coop's blog) onwhich several artists, both amateur and proffesional had posted their own inkings of Jack Kirby's pencils of a page out of the number 144 issue of Thor.
Never having inked some-one else's pencils befire, I intended to join in and add my own but due to other deadlines and the like I didn't get to it for weeks. Untill yesterday...
On my way to my studio (on the other side of town) the weather changed from beautifull to crappy (as it has done every morning for all of this summer so far). Thunder and lightning were in the sky. I caught a couple of bolts out of the corner of my eye and scanning the skies for more fireworks I hadn't noticed a little post in the middle (!!!) of the road in time. So I crashed right into it, going over the bars,bending the fork and left pedal of my bike, cutting my hand and hitting my knee hard.... idiot.
Anyway since the god of thunder had distracted me that much I decided I let him destract me some more so I inked a panel from the page.... bla bla bla here it is.

The original pencils (just the last panel)...

Aaaand the inks...

I want to do the rest of the page aswell so as soon as that's done, it'll be blogged on.

Hitching the wagon

2007-07-03T17:35:00.000+02:00

In august I'm getting married which is fun. But what's even better is I get to design my invitations! (only kidding, honey).
Since my lovely girlfriend soon to be wife is from South Korea and I'm still buzzing from the trip we took there in May I decided to go with Korean feel.

In South Korea almost everything looks beautiful and grubby at the same time. And in some way the beauty and the grubbyness seem to compliment each other wonderfully. So not phased by the fact that in Korea this came about over a few hundred years, I set upon trying to achieve the same feel in the invitation.

Since the Korean manga industrie is renowned for ripping off the Japanese manga classics, I decided to do the same... And since I bought a dvd boxset of AstroBoy in Soul the choice of which classic to rip off was easely made.

So First I started to sketch out the characters...

Then came the type. Based on some AstroBoy artwork from the 70' (i think) I did the main lettering of the word "Trouwen" in Illustrator. No handdrawn sketches because it's such a straight/blocky style.
For all the remaing typography I used Bullet Smallcaps from the House Industries font library, and quite heavily tweeked it using the 'skew' and 'free transform' features in Illustrator (yeah I went no holds barred on this one).

The next step was to dump it all in photoshop, color it all, add some cutesy robot characters, Korean type and some of that all important grubbyness. The latter mainly consisted of the 'pixelate > color halftone' effect and switching all the layer blending modes to 'multiply' and putting it all to the background of a scanned in piece of cardboard. Et voilá, c'est la belle grub.

Check this dude out.

2007-06-15T16:26:00.001+02:00

As some of you might know, I did a short stint working at House Industries and that's where I met this guy Chris Gardner. He's an immensely tallented illustrator and actually the fella who turned me to using a brush and taking this illustration thing a lot more serious.
I recently found out he has a blog of his own. This guys work is as tight as a duck's arse.
Check it out.

Another PS coloring experiment...

2007-06-11T15:11:00.000+02:00

I'm still trying to get more into Photoshop. I'm basically a big fat Illustrator fanatic (only using Photoshop to scan and adjust inks slightly), but I think in some cases it can be quite a bit more quick and efficient to use Photoshop.
But to really put the pixel-based bastard to good use I need some practice first. Here's some of it.
I decided to color in one of the sketches I did in Korea, but without inking it, so I could use the pencil-shading I did on it.

First the original:

Then I put it on a straight forward gradient to sort of set the tone. and put the blend mode of the sketch layer on multiply.

Then give the important bits a quick flat color. I also tried coloring thhe jacket and the flute and all the rest of it, but that made it all flat and boring.

Next I threw in some high-lights. Almost done.

I did some experimenting with rendering the jacket and the tree and the urn on the guy's back but that took all the attention away from the faces so i just kept it simple. I did make the overall tone of the thing somewhat cooler because all that brown was getting a tad too poo-colored.

So that was that. Another lesson in "keep it simple, you idiot".

Aaaaaaand we're back!

2007-05-27T15:59:00.000+02:00

Yes folks, we're back... well I am anyway.
Still a bit jetlagged but those weeks in South Korea were great. The country is a breathtakingly beautiful, weird, dirty, spiritual, futuristic, traditional, spicy, friendly, proud, lovely place to be. It's so full of cool things to look at that I just couldn't stop taking pictures. I had to stop in the end because me little Nikon Coolpix 460 started complaining that it couldn't read the memory card.
I managed to get in just over 1400 (most of them crap) and in the end the memory card was fine and all the pictures made it back home. I will post pictures as soon as I've had a chance to sift through them all.

For now, here are some of the sketches I did to keep myself busy on the various trains, planes and automobiles.
Enjoy, gamsahamnidaaaaa!

South Korea...

2007-04-26T16:23:00.000+02:00

Hey friends...
There won't be any posting on here for a few weeks because I'll be in South Korea for a month.
But check back in June because I'll most likely have tons of pics, sketches and inspiration to post on when I'm back.
Hint: you can also use that nifty rss feed, then you don't have to remeber anything... ah isn't life easy sometimes...

Bye.

Those pesky clowns again...

2007-04-11T10:45:00.000+02:00

In the nick of time I got them all done for ethe Garage Sale show. Which was this weekend.
I'm sorry I didn't post them any sooner. I couldn't be bothered.
The show made for a nice weekend, didn't sell much (apart from a a bunch of posters and some t-shirts). There was a couple of people interested in the Clowns but seeing as that the paint had litterally just dried the day before I had decided not to sell them. I want to look at them for a bit before I flog them off.
Here are the finished products.

This is how they were displayed during the show. Showing the whole saga of Paco's last day on this planet, in the right order.

I think the 'One-shot experiment' was a succes and I will definitely have do some more of these painting in future. But next time I want to try a slightly less weathered surface, and maybe some more color. We'll see.

Send in the Clowns!!

2007-04-02T18:44:00.000+02:00

Don't you just hate those face-painted psycho's emerging from tiny broken down fire-engines and squirting water all over everybody? With their grins and noses, walking down imaginary cellar steps, before utterly disappointing you by just standing up. It was all fake. He just crouched down. Somebody should have shot him in the neck when he was down there..... (or am i being harsh?)
So, back in my fantasy world of crayons I decided to set one on fire and after seeing his hair and career go down in flames, drink himself to death. Here's the play by play....

It all started with a doodle in my sketchbook.

And it pleased me enough to turn it into a series... Coincidentally I had 4 used skateboard decks lying around, and I thought it'd be nice idea to combine the two (get it? Clowns... skateboards).
Anyway I sketched on for the rest of the decks.

With the sketches done it was time to think about how I was going to stick them on the skateboard decks. I still had a tin of One Shot enamel and reckoned that stuff would be perfect... After some messing about, trying to transfer the images onto the wood I started to slap on the enamel paint.

As you can see I'm in the middle of painting the thing (and finishing up the drawing for the last deck) so I will continue blogging this particular subject at a later stage. But I hope I'll get them finished by the end of this week because I want to show them at the GarageSale art show, of which I will (hopefully) be a part....
Anyway keep 'em peeled.

Type added

2007-03-21T15:26:00.000+01:00

A while back I posted something about a t-shirt design I was working on which had 3 caricatures on it....
See it here if you must.
Anyway I still needed to the lettering.... so I did.
I tried out a few different styles but soon enough arrived at a chunky script which was loose yet bold enough to correctly balance out the whole piece.

The on on the left (the lazy option) was too fascist looking. The other one to scrawny (and wobbly for that matter).

For the final version I did some sketches using a brush, which I have never done before. I've been practicing my brush-scripts, but I never actually used it.... well I haven't really used it this time but it helpful to kind of study the shapes and then base drawings on them. Just to make my lettershapes a bit more natural. One day I just have to retouch and scan in my brushed work, but seeing as I'm a clumsy lefty that day won't be tomorrow soon...
Anyway check out the sketches and the subsequent result.

For the "Noordwijk's own" and "TATTOO" I used the 'Poster' from the Housemovements collection (which came free with the House Industries Book). Did the trick beautifully. Don't you think?

Easter Garage Sale!!!

2007-03-08T10:23:00.000+01:00

On April 7,8 & 9 we'll be holding a garage sale!
It's the yearly reoccuring art-show by some of Amsterdam's finest low-brow artist. This year I've been asked to also take part. A great honour, but I really have to scramble to get some work together.
At the same time there's a show in a different part of the city in which I also take part (Ars Macabra Hollandica: see my previous post) so all of a sudden I needed new stuff to show. I can't bear showing old work so I'm working on all new pieces.
Well on one I've been already working for a while. The painting I've posted on earlier which I'll do more posts one later and hope to finish in time for the show.
One little side project which is going to be part of the Garage Sale Art Sho(p)w is a series of 4 23x23 cm Piëzo-(a.k.a. giclee-)prints by every participating artist. Those will be available for a great bargain: only 50 Euros!!
Anyway here's my entry:

I started this thing years ago. Well the drawing of the girl and the inks too. But I abandoned it after I did a really shabby 'experimental' coloring of it. So I decided to re-color it for this occasion, and put it to a background (which I did for this especially. sure kids, there's none of that 'graphic-ornaments-stock-book-with-CD-inside' bullshit going on here).
I did one thing I don;t usually do which is blur the background and add blurry shadows and stuff. I works... sort of.
Anyway, I hope you like it (you can come and buy one) and if you don't, let me know why... you miserable bastard.

ARS MACABRA HOLANDICA

2007-03-05T16:36:00.000+01:00

In April this is one of the shows where some of my work will be on display...
Grand-opening: April first.
This is the flyer, which was done by Erik Kriek (also curator of the exhibition).
The front:

aaaaand the back:

Caricatures inked

2007-02-22T10:33:00.000+01:00

I put ink all over the caricatures that I drew a couple of weeks ago. I also put them together and drew some stuff around them (actually I did that before I put the ink on, you might be interested to know). Anyway here's the result.

I still need to put some type around it. I'll keep you posted on developments....

New sights, new sounds...

2007-02-20T10:33:00.000+01:00

Same beats though...
The operation was a success, ma'am. We successfully transplanted my office from The hague to Amsterdam. We took two days and today we jump-started all the equipment back into life and we're rolling again.
Here's a pics of my new digs, and as you can see I'm not done unpacking yet.

I share the studio with a bunch of other designers and programmers, in case you're wondering who; just check the newly added links to the right.

Even more of MY ADIDAS

2007-02-13T23:16:00.000+01:00

The advertising agency (180 Amsterdam) send me some more pics of different so called mega-site that were put up for the ADIDAS campaign. As you might have read in earlier posts, I did the custom lettering for them.
These are all in Brazil, I guess they like it big over there.

I apologise for the quality of some of the shots...

Horror show returns

2007-02-05T18:47:00.000+01:00

I finished the third part of the horror trilogy. It's another creepy one.
Not quite sure how I'm going to have them reproduced. Maybe have them screen-printed, although that's quite expensive. I'm also considering using a duplicator because that gives it a nice cheap and grubby look (screen-printing it might make them look too clean and crisp). Maybe present the inks as one-offs but then I won't have the color.... Anyway they have to be done and dusted by March 27.

My First Caricatures

2007-01-19T21:10:00.001+01:00

Marco Bratt is the man who I turn to when I need ink etched under my skin in elaborate Japanese designs. In the way I am the man he turns to when he needs any illustration and or dsign work done. Usually things like t-shirts, flyers and stickers; promotional stuff. The same with the latest assignment a t-shirt with a caricatue of him and his two buddies, Travis and Paul (who he shares his shop with) on the front of it.
The thing is I have never really done any caricatures before. Not on purpose anyway (I did a drawing once of a guy who, in the right light, looked like the late great Pope John Paul II). But I never back down from a challenge so I said "Sure! No problem at all!" And hit the pencils and pads as soon as I got home.
Then nothing really came out for about a month or two, plus I had to do it in between other projects because I had said I was going to do it for free. Every once in a while I would get back to it, but nothing would come out really.
Untill about a week or so ago. I was checking out a few blogs, one I check regularly Chris Wahl's and also Wouter Tulp's and Greg McCullough's blogs in parcticular. These guys are just plain geniusseses at it. So I was looking at their work and I was looking at the photographs I had of my subjects and it just sort of seemded to click. Then the drawings just fell out of my pencil.

The thing I found hard to decide on was which bit of the face to exagorate and which parts to keep (kind of) realistic. Especially for Marco's face, since he doesn't really have any one very 'obivous' feature, like a nose or eyes or whatever.
First I made his mouth and jaw bigger then the rest, but that wasn't it. Then I tried the same thing with his forehead. Still no success. But then the coin dropped, it had to be both... his obvious thing was that he just has a big head.

With Travis aand Paul the fact that I had their faces on 3/4 view helped a lot. Then it's just easier to have feature stick out of shrinck in more. I gave Travis' eyes a bit more of a relaxed look because in the final composition (they are all going to be combined into one piece) he'll be holding a spliff (something he only likes to do in his spare time I hasten to add). Paul will be holgin a dirty spattering tattoo machine (because doesn't use a foot switch but has his machine on constant current he makes a bit of a mess of his work station, his clothes and himself... but not his art though! Marco by the way willl be giving us the finger, something that best suits his personality....

Travis
...and Paul

This really made me respect the guys who can just do this at first glance. I really have to study the face and then think and sketch and decide and then slowly I come to something that comes to a recognisable (because there-in lies the trick) caricature.
As I said these are the first ones I've ever done so I don't know how the seasoned caricature pros do it, but although it took me some time, I'm quite happy with the results.
If any of you pros out there read this I would very much appredicate comment and or critiques.

I'll show the inkings and the development of the rest of the thing (as I wrote above: they'll all be combined into one piece) in future postings. Keep 'em peeled.

Movin' and shakin'... well movin' anyway

2007-01-18T09:01:00.000+01:00

Times they are a-changing. And if not the times then certainly the addresses.
Me and the missus have decided to move to Amsterdam. Sick of commuting (my girlfriend works in Amsterdam) and always up for a new challenge we decided to move to the capital.
The big move will be in February and since I work from home, my business is moving too. Although I won't be working from home after the move. Anyway I thought I might as well tell my clients about it, so I decided to have a nice card printed to send 'round.
Coming up with an original 'concept' prooved to be quite tricky. I mean what about 'moving' hasn't been said about a million times before. And when it started to take a bit too much time I just went with looks instead of brains.

The look I wanted was sort of grubby or 'industrial' or D.I.Y.-ish even. So the color-scheme was easily decided. Red and yellow. Nice and loud. I also wanted the inking of the illustration on the front to be a bit more 'free' or more sketchy then what I ususally do. I've been trying to loosen up my brush inks and I thought this a good opportunity to practice.

In addition to the loose inking I decided to also have coloring a bit more 'freehand' the what I usually do (color it in Illustrator using paths). So I drew and inked the shading on paper firstthen scanned it and left is as it was, so no tidying up.

For the background of the truck I did a pattern made up of bolts (get it?) combined a big splotch of shading (which I did with a bit charcoal on paper, you might be surprised to know...not really).

Throw all these fine ingredients into a biig pot bring to the boil, stir and let simmer for about a day... then strain, sift and declare it finished (otherwise it just takes up to much time).

Now then that's one side of the card. Next: the other side.
As type is the other big part of the work I produce I thought I'd do a bit of custom type for the back. Not too much though, because the thinking and pondering and philophisising about the theme for the card had already taken way too much time. Anyway here are the sketches of type I did for the back.

The arrow I did in the sketch was too flowy and weak looking, so I straightened it out, because it would also suite the overall look and feel (the industrial and DIY thing) of the card. Which is also the reason I made the type and arrow look a bit weathered.

Et Voilá. I can now safely move offices without being afraid everybody will forget about me... I hope.

Horror show

2007-01-11T09:03:00.000+01:00

Not too long ago, I was asked by Erik Kriek if I wanted to show some work at an exhibition he was (or rather is) curating. I happily obliged because this woul be good reason to finish the painting I have been working of too long now, and get some ideas for drawings out aswell...
Speaking of which...
These are two of the illustration I'm going to exhibit. They are part of a series of either three or five, not sure about that yet.

I want to have them screen printed on some nice paper and ona decent size too... both of which are to be decided later.
For the exact dates of the exhibition kep you greedy eye-balls peeled to this station.

Some more of my ADIDAS

2007-01-11T08:53:00.000+01:00

These are some of final color Adidas print-ads in the differen languages.
To save space I constructed this nifty gif animation (plus this prevents you from getting too close a look and noticing all kinds of ugly details).

The colors...

2006-12-27T08:53:00.000+01:00

I've always been an Illustrator man.
The tightness of the edges and the endless scaling possibilities. I usually streamline my inks and color the whole shebang in Illustrator. But over recent months I've been admiring the works of people like James Jean and Asaf and Tomer Hanuka and I've been flirting with the idea of maybe *gulp*...switching.
I know, I know, I can just use both, but where's your sense of drama!?
Anyway I wanted to try coloring one of my illustrations in Photoshop, but I don't have much experience with it. I have, of course, been using photoshop for years, doing all kinds of odd jobs (scanning, retouching making images ready for prints etc.), but never actually for illustrating. I had made some failed attempts before but they were... well failed. This time I wanted to make real go of it.

A nice opportunity arose when one of my illustrations was deemed "too heavy" by the client after I had already inked it (some mix-up about the meaning of the words "sketch approved"). It was the style drawing I wanted to color because it was kind of realistic. For the more cartoony stuff I still like the flat tightness of illustrator.

Quite a few artist who use photoshop don't even ink their art, but use really clean, partly shaded pencils. I might try that at some stage, but I really like inking and I don't want to loose too much of the clean tightness that comes with good ink.

I didn't know where to start but I just went about it the way I would do a painting (with paint and brushes and stuff). So that meant the big shapes first. As with most of my experiments, I put in exactly 0.0 planning. So I made up the colors as went along... which is why they're not the most interesting of color schemes.

After the big gestures, start adding more and more of the smaller details.

And that's where I decided to call it a day. I could add more detail, change some colors, redo some of the renderings, but as far as the experiment goes I think it's quite a successful one. I really want to get into this some more and also do a couple of 'professional' pieces. Although that's where I bump into one of big disadvantages of Photoshop... pixels. Which means none of that nifty infinite scaling that vectors offer. So that means thinking ahead a bit better and maybe buying a few more GB's or RAM.

MY ADIDAS!

2006-12-23T09:48:00.000+01:00

Father, it's been 2 months since my last confession... I do apologies.
In June of this past year I was approached by the 180 advertising agency in Amsterdam to help them out with the some custom typography for one of the campaigns the were working on. I went into their offices to be briefed (and sign a bunch of NDA's) and what I thought was about a 2 months worth of work turned into and almost al consuming project of a good 6 months.
They wanted me to do some custom lettering for the Adidas football boot campaign.
It meant having to design and draw two pieces of typography in (what became) 24 different languages... These included next to most western languages, Chinese, Japanese Arabic, Russian and Korean.
It was an offer I couldn't refuse so I went at it with all I had and the first applications are now being shown to the public....

The campaign was developed to promote the latest edition of the Adidas soccerboots; the Predator and the F50.
The Predator is a the shoe for the methodical, tactical, technical player whereas the F50 was designed with the more flamboyant, fast and playful player in mind. The concept behind the campaign was based on the idea of these shoes representing two different teams, the punch-line being "Two team,two attitudes, choose your side". This had to be reflected in the type.

(Click the image for a closer look)

The type was based on two existing type-faces. One being the Flix and the other one the Cuba (a horribly cheap and crappy product and therefore needed a LOT of work before it was of any use). The reason for this was that they wanted to have other supporting typography in a similar style but were too cheap to let me design two faces from scratch... it wasn't that really, it would've just taken me too much time.

This is one of the first applications of the campaign. This one is in Germany and similar so-called 'mega-sites' will also be done in Brazil and Honk Kong. My typography is part of the print campaign. To check the commercials and other part of the whole thing check the Adidas website.

Sneaker Tweaker

2006-10-29T10:42:00.000+01:00

Well I have arrived... I finally did just about the hippest thing (or so I'm told) one can do as an artist nowadays.
I cuZtomized a shoe... a sneaker to be exact.
I was asked, together with my friends from StayGold and a guy called Jill, by the organizers of a little art/culture festival called 'Stoelendans' to come and sit in the middle of a dance-floor and doodle on shoes.
It was great fun. The venue was a club that during the day is bar/restaurant and then turns into a throbbing dance/booze/sex extravaganza at night. We were there during the day... rats! As I said we were in the middle of what at night is the dance-floor on couches which was nice enough... apart from the lighting.

So it was really hard to judge the colors... I decides to stick to black, white and red straight from the can.
This was the first time I did this so it was a little bit scary to take a sharpy to some-one else's brand-new virgin white sneaker at first, but my old vandalizing tendencies from my graffiti days came flooding back to me soon enough.
I did take my time though. Jill, a newly befriended veteran shoe-customizer (the guy next to the empty spot on the couch) only did one half of the pair... so he got to do a lot more shoes. He wasn't to concerned with details neither. Big, bold shapes, two colors, real block-buster style. Great work! And a good lesson for me, if I ever get to do it again: don't sweat the small stuff.

The first pair took me most of about 2,5 hours... masking, spray-paint, thinking, doubting, hesitating, some drawing, do a few high-lites and then multiply that be 2 and here's the result.

The second pair went a bit faster. I did them for a girl who wanted something not too 'big' or 'heavy'.
I did simple little ornaments in silver and black, with a flower and a bee on the noses of the shoe (sorry for the blurry inset, something must have gone wrong with the flash I guess)

Anyway it was a lot of fun. A friend of mine to do his classic Adidas shell-toe high-tops, that he never wears (so "I might as well hang them on the wall"). When I finish them I'll post some pics on here too...

Growing paints

2006-10-25T15:29:00.000+02:00

First off, excuse me for the title of this post, but I wanted to share some pics of a painting I'm working and the thing has been in development for a while. Ahh, I remember as though it was a day ago... (imagine the wobbly flash-back effect here).
It all started with a sketch I did in one of my sketch books a couple of years ago, which looked like this:

Nothing further was ever intended to happen with that sketch then to just sit there in the sketch book... But then I got an e-mail from Mark Beemer of Shirts for a Cure, a charity organization that offers financial aid to women with breast cancer and poor health insurance (check out the website), for whom I had been designing t-shirts for quite some time (I still do). He asked me if I was interested to do a design for the band The Draft and I happily obliged.
So I inked the thing and made design for the shirt.

I did several designs the band decided to donate another design to Shirts for a Cure and use this one for themselves, for a small buy-out fee.
By then I had grown quite fond of the thing and the idea of doing it on a larger size sprouted somewhere in the back of my mind. I hadn't really worked on any decent sized painting since my college days and really needed to stock up on supplies and equipment. I got an easel from the basement of my girlfriend's granny's basement and I bought some new brushes and acrylics. I considered oils, but I'm working in my house now and I don't want to stink up the whole place. All I needed was a way to get the inked piece on blown up to the size of the canvas (100x100cms). I found an overhead projector on the Marktplaats (the Dutch local e-Bay), so I could finally start working on it.

After I penciled the illustration on the canvas, I did a base color using ultramarine blue before I started painting. It will end up a different color but whatever that is going to be (probably black) this will make it a nice and deep dark color.
By this point I really didn't have clue of what I color I was going to paint the rest of the thing, so after I had finally finished the base color the painting was not much more the a annoyingly big thing in the middle of my room for about 4 months.
Then I decided to just fill in the background with a transparent red basecolor, to give whatever color that goes over it some depth. I don't have a picture of this. I took it, but misplaced.

Anyway another 3 months and a move later there has been some development. I'm still not completely sold on the colors and the background. The little controller guy should become more fiery and the zombie has to be more greenish, more the color of oxidized copper. I'm pondering the possibility of a pattern in the background... but not sure yet.
It's nice to just let the thing grow as I go. It's a good to surprise myself which makes it fun.

Flat bodies everywhere....

2006-10-20T10:43:00.000+02:00

Well after a bit of radio silence ("It's madness at the office, honey, sorry I'm late") I think I should post some more sketches...
Since my last sketch post (in which I realized that I mostly draw faces) I consciously focused on drawing bodies more. And also try to put them into sort of interesting position. I found that it's something I REALLY have to work at and I'm going to do some live figure drawing classes. Because as every good artist knows there's nothing that will hone your skills sharper then drawing flabby naked 'eccentric' people from life. Anyway...

The far arm is too flat and not in the right place... nor is the far leg for that matter....

I also really need to actually do some drawings with more full bodies, instead of just sketches.

Ok this one is mainly a face but I liked it anyway...

I wish I had paid more attention when I was still at arts college, but since I did graphic design, figure drawing and painting was only a small part of the curriculum. If only I could do it all over again...
As soon as the live figure-drawing classes start I'll post the results on here.

Work in progress continued...

2006-10-02T19:12:00.001+02:00

So I finally got some hours scrounged together to work some more on an illustration that had been on the table for quite a while.
It had inked the main characters in this piece, but I was still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the space. It's not the first time I got impatient and started inking before the whole drawing was finished, but it's a habit I really have to kick.
The think turned out a bit busy which can be toned down when color, but I initially didn't want to use color and now I have to... rats.

There was a lot sketching before I decided to keep it 'simple' with just the beams of light and the condensation coming off the robot and the guy being fried, just like in the sketch. I had also considered putting trees in the background and plants in the foreground but that would just be to much. More for even color to help out with.
Now all that's left to be done is the type... There's going to be a big "BLAM" or "BOOM" or even a "ZEEEEEEEE" over the top of the scene... Any suggestion for better sounds please send them to me.

Blind Girl's Bluff

2006-09-24T12:05:00.000+02:00

Well as promissed here's a posting on the development of the Blind Girl's Bluff illustration.
It's the third in a series of pieces that I've been working on for quite some time now. The first two I finished about 3 years ago, so this one has been a long time coming. For the first two check my previous posting.

The level of detail on these is quite high so I had to ink the different parts seperately and re-assemble the thing in illustrator.

Since this is going to be blown up to a large size I'm going to have to convert this bit to vectors by hand. I sometimes use Adobe Streamline to convert the scans to vectors but this needs to be tight all the way up to the 110 x 145 cm of the final size.

This skull is only going to be little ornament at the top of the composition and only about a third the size of the portrait of the nurse. So that's why I couldn't fit all of it on one piece of paper. And even if I could, scanning that bastard would be a real pain in the ass on my little A4 Epson scanner.

The lettering is always a fun part to work on. Here I did a sort of faux-sanscrit roman to help hint at the cultural background of our leading lady.

Most of the different elements have been inked and scanned. I'm about half-way through vectorizing the scans, and then I can seriously start coloring it. I already did some tests but that jealded nothing satisfactory.
Anyweay I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Todays Art

2006-09-23T07:47:00.000+02:00

This weekend there was a big art festival going on in The Hague. All kinds of performances, films (projected on the sides of buildings) installations, visual arts, dance sculpture etc. are being displayed all around the city. Basically exactly what you would expect from an art festival.
I was asked by one of the organiser if I had some work I could show. And I had some lying around, but the finished result of my work is always a digital file. So granted it wasn't exactly lying around, bu tI had some. So we decided to have it printed on big-size printer. The prints came to 110 X 145cm. I would have liked them to be even bigger but that's as wide as te printer would go.

These illustrations aren't really all that recent. I did them a few years ago, but the public hadn't really been exposed to them so I thought it was ok to get them out.

There's a few more of these weird kids on the way. Right now I'm working on a blind nurse with a seeing-eye cat, and there plans for two more brewing.

I'll show some of the progress on that nurse on the next episode of the BOLTblog.
'Till then, in the words of the legendary Don Pardo: sweet dreams and happy tomorrows...

Digging for type....

2006-09-06T21:02:00.000+02:00

Every type -nut (and you know who you are) is familiar with the dusty smell of old secondhand bookstores. Every type-nut (go on, it's ok to admit it) knows that special feeling of when they find that little book or card or poster that will soothe their craving just long enough to last untill the next visit to the bookstore/market/attic. Every type-nut (yes you are) will always be a type nut....So I was on my knees going through the bottom shelf of the typography section over at my local bookpusher, when I came across the book "Lettering Today" by John Brinkley.
Published in 1963 by Studio Vista, it shows a whole range of hand-drawn type and calligraphy by mainly European designers (among others Gerrit Noordzij, Max Caflisch, Chris Brand and Hermann Zapf). It was just what the doctor ordered to still my hunger...
Here are few hits.

Bookjacket by Hans Tisdall (original in several colors)

Bookjacket by Hannes Jähn (original in red and black)

Book jacket by Herbert Lindgren

Not sure but I'm guessing this one is by John Woodcock, another book jacket

Lettering for a book jacket bt Frau Inge Gack

Three elegant little bookplates by Will Carter, Will Carter and Francis Minns respectively.

It's awonderfull book get it if you can, it's full of wonderfull type and lettering. Apart from where is veers of into some hideous viny-plotted seventies signage... Anyway keep your browser locked to this station because I'll most likely post more of this stuff in the future.

Faces

2006-09-05T21:25:00.000+02:00

For some reason I never doodle doodles anymore.
When I draw without thinking I draw heads and faces. Usually they all look alike which is very annoying, but sometimes some gems pop out. Here are some of the shinyer ones.

I use red and blue pencil for everything (not just drawing) mainly because it doesn't smudge or get your hand (as) dirty.

Are you starting to notice a pattern yet?

I think I should force myself to try some different angles.

Wasn't that riveting?
And imagine these were the more shiny gems... imagine the blandness of all the other crap I fill my sketchbooks with.
Next week... drying paint.

Here goes....

2006-09-03T23:06:00.000+02:00

Well this is the first posting. I'll try and get this as interesting as possible...
Lately I've been working on this illustration the image of which had been floating around in my brain for quite a while.
About a month ago I finally got it sketched out, on to paper and out of my head. Ever since then I've been trying to work on it in between commissioned work (which has taken up most of my time).

Here's the first rough sketch...

Based on this I did a slightly tighter blue-pencil.

But when I wanted to start on the robot I didn't really know what it shoud look like. So I went back and sketched out the robot first, added it and inked it.

On uncomissioned pieces I tend to go back and forth between inking and pencilling. I would pencil and add stuff after other parts were already inked. I'm still trying to decide if I'm gonna put a foreground and/or a background to this. I'm pretty sure it's going to have type although again I'm not sure what... I think a big "BRRRRRRRR" or "BZZZZZZ" over the head of the robot.

I'll keep you up to date on further developements...