Nightmare

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!

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

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...

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

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

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!

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

Ruben vs. Sophie

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...

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

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

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?

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...

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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.