A bit more o' the freelance.

So a local theatre company, the Bradford Little Theatre tapped me to do a few pieces of art for them for their upcoming 2010-2011 season.

First off, I had to create a logo for the actual season. The theme of this year's season is "outside the box". So that was the basis of my concept for their logo. Turned out rather well.

The second thing on tap for the BLT was some artwork for posters, programs, etc. for their first production of this season called "East of the Sun". It's an adaptation of an old Norwegian folk tale. The imagery and the story are rather interesting. Here's what I came up with. It ended up being very very close to my original sketch/concept for it. It's always nice to see an idea come to fruition how you'd like it to.

Some commercial work. A bit of a change of pace.

Full Page Advertisement. I created the fish cartoon beneath the magnifying glass.

This was the logo I did and got chosen for American Refining Group's 125th Anniversary in the oil business. I did not place the top font and was provided with the graphic. I was going up against an ad agency as far as which logo they were to choose. I think it's a pretty nice accomplishment.

This is a cookbook cover I did for the United Way in 2008 for one of their fundraisers. I was provided with a color scheme and a title. It turned out very nicely. The organization was very happy with the result.

This is the artwork that appeared on the program cover, t-shirt and posters for the Bradford Kiwanis club's annual production.

This is the cover for the Bradford Little Theatre's program cover for their 2009-2010 season. All the plays were comedies and the group wanted that conveyed through their logo for their 13th year. Laughing numbers.

As much as I would love to make a living doing things such as Mountain Witches, Glass Bears and Faberge Egg Jellyfish, I cannot. At least not at this point. (Fingers crossed), someday I can.

In the meantime, I get a decent amount of freelance work from around my area for all sorts of organizations. I've done things for our local Kiwanis Club, United Way, local theatre and various establishments/businesses around the area.

These are examples of some of those things. Logos, T-shirt Designs, Posters, Advertisements are just a few of those you see here.

HOAP Patch Design

Hand-drawn font for Old-school black and white patch design for the hombres in Head Of A Poet. It's nice and blocked out to fit in a square nicely. A nice simple design. I heart typography.

Eyeless Abomination stuff #2

After completing the entrail critter, the guys wanted me to come up with an idea for a t-shirt/print/something that will be used. I heard the phrase "mountain witch" and couldn't get it out of my head. The above sketches are what my brain processed upon hearing those two words put together. Again, completely inked sketch (on newsprint - which made the ink flow very smoothly), some in-progress photos, and finally the finished product. This really really turned out well. Everyone, including myself was very pleased with this.

Eyeless Abomination stuff

So, after creating Eyeless Abomination's logo (see a few posts below), they asked me to come up with a graphic for their newest batch of songs they were working on. I call it "digital album art". Just something they can put up. Cohesiveness. Consistency.

What I came up with after a bit of brainstorming with some of the gents was an "entrail critter." Since I'm a visual person, I hear words and come up with an immediate mental image and go from there. It's how I work most of the time.

Here's the inked sketch and the finished product. Both of which turned out very well in my opinion.

More HOAP Stuff

This is just a mock up of the front and back of the design. I think it looks wonderful.

As posted before, my Faberge Jellyfish design is going to be used for Head Of A Poet's first t-shirt. I will post all 3 colors. Blue was chosen for the one to be printed. I think it turned out beautifully and I can't wait to see it printed!

Lots and Lots more art

Hand Inked Concept for a friend's indie hip-hop project.

An acrylic painting I did a few years back dubbed "Strawberry Squid"

This painting was a present for my brother and his wife. It turned out nicely.

This post is just gonna be a bunch of stuff that I've done over the past few years that really isn't anywhere on my Facebook page, myspace page or otherwise... some of it may be repeats, but that's ok. I lose track of what art I do sometimes.

Faberge Jelly - Finished

Here is my Faberge Jellyfish design. This ended up getting used for Head Of A Poet's design for their first t-shirt to be printed. I will post the 3 alternate colors I came up with for their shirt design.

Enjoy!

H.O.A.P.

The fellas in Head Of A Poet had me come up with some logo designs for them as well awhile back. I came up with 4 original, hand-drawn ones and let them pick which one they would like me to redo and clean up (i.e. digitally) to use as their actual logo.

Ended up using two of the logos in the end. One for their main logo, and one for a patch design.

Here's design #1 for their main logo.

Death metal logo

Awhile back, some buddies of mine started a new death metal band called Eyeless Abomination. I was asked to come up with a logo for them. This is what became of that. Your traditional (YET readable!) death metal font/text. It turned out well and the dudes were very pleased with it.

Where o' where to begin...

Ok, I'm not gonna lie, I got quite a bit lazy with this blog. I had a bit of a lull in the action as far as my artwork was concerned. Shortly thereafter that lull, I had an explosion of stuff I had to do.

Got a pretty nice freelance gig doing some art for a local company that does laser engraving into wood. I get to flex my creative muscle a little bit and offer some input so it's quite nice.

As for everything else, I've been a busy one.

I'm gonna try and break up these posts in chronological order.

Music as of late:

(Today actually) Allegaeon - Fragments of Form and Function

Led Zeppelin - albums I-IV

The Acacia Strain - Wormwood

"You won't need much. Just a tiiiny taste..." Head Of A Poet UPDATE

And here's the even more updated version of this guy... he needs a few more things done to him and then he's done. Then onto phase 2: the menacing gate/castle behind him. Phase 3: the hordes storming the gates... dig.

New tunes (to me at least) – Easy Star All-Stars' rendition of Sgt. Pepper's... holy be-jesus... I'm speechless. Good "nice weather" tunes.

Ok, my boys in Head Of A Poet wanted me to do up a design for their first t-shirt. My direction was "epic dude in armor awaiting a giant battle standing in front of a gate and a scary castle"... Ok, done and done. This is gonna probably be a 3-parter as far as pieces of artwork are concerned. One of the warrior guy, one of the gate/castle, and one of the dudes coming after him. Here' s the beginning of phase one of this master plan of a t-shirt. I think it's gonna look quite epic. Quite epic indeed. Check it.

"Ears and noses will be the trophies of the day. But no hand shall touch him." Calamity Stuff

Not much to post as of late, more to come very soon though. Lots of things to work on!

Ok, well my man Carmen scrapped the CC's thing... he wanted to go simply simpler than that. Which is totally cool. Gives it a nice clean, professional look. So we decided to go with just a nice font and some nice little dagger/cross embellishments on the sides. Picture it big across the top-front or top-back of a t-shirt...

Music I'm lovin':

Carnifex - Hell Chose Me (some evil, evil lyrics in this one)

High On Fires - Snakes For The Divine (Matt Pike is a GOD)

"And like broken glass you'll shatter. With bloody fists I'll batter" Ten Ton Tiki UPDATE

Ok, here's the tiki graphic as stated below for my 'Ten Ton Tiki Design' logo. I may never use it. But I really wanted to see what it looked like complete. I dig for sure. I just love the browns and orange together. So very 70's.

Anywhoozle, here it is.

"All right look, there's only one return, okay, and it ain't "of the King," it's "of the Jedi."

Well, here's what I ended up with for 'my logo'. Feels weird even typing that. I dig it, as far as logos go. I should. It is my logo. I like that font, messed with a bit in Illustrator. When I'm creating a logo from scratch, I like things clean looking. Not a lot of frilly-ness. If you're a graphic designer of any caliber, you (in my opinion) kinda become a font nerd. Typography in general.

Reason for the title of the post, the 'M' reminds me of Boba Fett's helmet... completely unintentional. Just a nice little surprise.

Some logo designs – for me-self...

So now that I've started to really get some work going (freelance-wise that is), I've had a local youth baseball group ask me to come up with some logo for "my company" (i.e. me doing design stuff). I did a logo for them, they're going to make a vinyl banner out of it – their name is the Bradford Drillers Youth Baseball Club. They want to give me some sort of recognition for it, so they wanna stick my logo on there. Well, I don't have a logo. Never have. Didn't need one. Never had enough freelance to do so. In any event, I've come up with a few ideas for logos. I love that font I used for my blog header, and since consistency is key, I've decided to use that same font (Mojo, for anyone that cares) for my logo.

I also love alliteration, tikis, and retro color combos and fonts. If you don't know where I got the "Ten Ton" from... then I can't help you. Note: There will a tiki graphic in the top right blank area of the "Ten Ton Tiki" logo idea. I just need to figure out what one will fit.

Albums of note that I can't stop listening to:

Only one really... this band is THE SHIT! If you like the whole revival of this retro-rock stuff coming from all over the globe, check out Sweden's Elope. Their album '3WD' hasn't left my stereo at home, work, or the car since Friday of last week. A-MAZING. Very Beatles-ish... check it out.

Just a bit of an oldie, but still a goodie – GLASS BEAR

Well, a good friend of mine in this band here sent me a message the other day about this one. All it said was "Dude, Glass Bear is bad ass." It's nice to hear things like that about your art, no matter how simple that statement may seem. So, long story short, I'm proud of it and these guys liked it a lot (which makes it even better), and I worked my balls off to make this extra-crazy but still brutal. So there you have it – Glass Bear. This is worked up in this fashion to be a full-front screen print on a t-shirt.

More Calamity Stuff!

Ok, so now that I've fully recovered from the death flu and am able to hold a stable thought in my head, I'm posting the completed Calamity Clothing wings design. As stated before, this design will go on the sleeve of the skull/battle axe design. I have made up a darker one and a plain white one. Being a sleeve design, I would like to see it as the grey design, as to not take away from the main design on the shirt. I have passed along this sentiment about the design to my man Carmen at Calamity.

Calamity Clothing Update NEW

Ok, so apparently either some evil death flu had stricken my body or I got food poisoning from a restaurant that shall remain nameless...

Either way, I haven't been up to par for doing much of anything lately.

This update is a few days late on my Calamity Clothing jaunt... the wings are almost done being inked and the cross needs a bit more line thickening and some more "worn" texture on it.

Enjoy!

Faberge Jelly

Here's a pic of another thing I've been working on. The Faberge Jelly. I really like patterns. Just red and black ink on paper. I have trouble doing one thing at once. Nice to change it up and still create. Either that or I've got one ripping case of ADD that I'm in denial about...

Either way, here it is. Just need to repeat the pattern on the other side and it's complete.

Orange-Jelly Update (AKA 'Marmalade Mariner')

Here's a nice close-up photo of one of the gilded skull shell corners on my Orange-jellyfish painting. They look pretty bad A. I am starting to really like using a metallic element in things now. Makes it look 'sophisto'.

Enjoy!

New Death Metal I'm diggin': Ingested - Surpassing The Boundaries Of Human Suffering

The song titles are awesome.

More Updates!

As stated a few days ago... some buddies of mine wanted me to work on an idea for their band Head Of A Poet. Well, I just couldn't get the image of some Edgar Allan Poe-esque type being out of my head... but a little weirder. Since they're called 'Head' of a Poet – why not just his head? With a third eye? Hooked to someone else's brain? And electrified?

Why not? Right?

"Oh, Intro – Jellyman, offspring. Offspring, Jellyman."

This is my newest baby that I've been working on. I've figured out (yes, I do mean figured out), how to just send pics from my smellular to my email. It's actually pretty simple. I tend to overthink sometimes.

In any event, here it is... the Orange-Jellyfish. I think I'm going to title the painting 'Marmalade Mariner'... I love alliteration.

I've got a few more things to do to it. The corners are being done in gold metallic paint. And I need to do more to the background. All in good time, all in good time.

Anywho, enjoy.

Calamity Clothing Update

In the tradition of t-shirt designs these days, my man Carmen wanted a sleeve design for his first Calamity shirt (see skull and crossed battle axes below). This is what's going on the sleeve. The wings are going to be much more 'tattered' looking and the cross is going to have either a wood or stone texture to it. Getting the inking going as we speak. Enjoy!

New art stuff in the works...

Well, I can honestly say that I'm almost too busy with art as of late. Which is a wonderful wonderful thing.

I've got a few things lined up that I'm working on right now that I'm pretty excited about. One, being the "Calamity Clothing" art you see posted below. Over the past few months, I've been working with my man Carmen on t-shirt designs for his clothing line. It's coming along quite nicely. He's looking to have 5 or 6 original designs (by moi, of course). So, that's one.

Two, I've got a few of my own personal art projects I'm working on – that I'm hoping someone else appreciates and may want to purchase. One being an orange (as in fruit) jellyfish painting... which is looking pretty sweet. And since I hate most of my own stuff, I'll take that as it's looking pretty good. Another personal art project I've been working on is a two-color (red and black), pen and ink drawing of a jellyfish busting out of a faberge egg. I like underwater things, just deal with it. I will post pics of both when I can.

Three, I've got a few music/band-related things I'm working on. Some friends of mine want me to work on something for their band Head Of A Poet. Which is coming along quite nicely as of last night. (Third-eye Edgar Allan Poe anyone?). I've done work for them in the past, two of the members were in Knife Down Danger, and those fine young gents are happy with everything I give them which makes my job very very easy.

So, that in a nutshell is what I've been doing art-wise.

And as stated in my "mission statement" of my blog... I can't leave it without mentioning some music I've been listening to.

My albums I can't stop listening to as of the past few days:

Annotations Of An Autopsy - The Reign of Darkness

Emmure - Felony

The Mars Volta - De-Loused In The Comatorium

Despised Icon - Day Of Mourning

More artwork.

Here's some more artwork. Various degrees of done-ness... Some old. Some new.

Well, here it goes...

Hi. My name is Matt Shaffer (obviously). This is my blog. It's not here floating in the ether of the interwebs so you can read about "what really grinds my gears". I can do that in real life thank you.

This blog is here in order to share my artwork with people. It's a very easy, (and yes) very cheap way to do that.

This blog is gonna be mostly updates on my art, and other art-related art things. I'm sure I'll end up complaining about a thing here or there, or posting something about some amazing death metal or stoner rock band I found... but that's all part of my idea with this blog. Creative freedom. In all aspects. It's how we're influenced. Movies, music, people, conversations, anything. Influence can come from anywhere.

Something always influences something else.

Would I still have drawn this if I listened to James Taylor or Peter Cetera instead of Pantera or Tool?

Good question...