Give me some wine so I may say something witty!

One (1) "Party" Faucet

Plus

One (1) Blender

Plus

One (1) Bag of Wine


Equals

Camouflage For The Kitchen

(details and pictures to follow soon)

Time is tick tockin' away

So, the semesters started up!

Let the great experiment begin!

I've got lots of things coming down the pipe right now (including, hopefully, something having to do with wine!), and not enough time currently to blog about all of it. So I thought I'd post something new for me, a video.

It's for my TMP (themes, materials, and processes) III class, which is a time based media studio. Everything from movies to flipbooks. I've posted our introductory assignment which is just to familiarize us with Final Cut (they actually gave it to us!). It's under one minute and uses only still shots to create a story. I made mine on made up relations between people in different stills. It's also a homage to Monty Python, so what's not to like? Nothing.
Oh and we had 2 hours to make it. Trial by fire here at U of M A&D.



The music is "Shark Attack Theme" from the soundtrack to The Life Aquatic.

Thanks for reading, I'll be updating this blog much more regularly now that the semester has started back up.

ID Website

John Marshall recently turned me on to this industrial design website, Core77. I love it and just spent 2 hours looking at it. Best use of time ever.

I'm really looking forward to starting classes and getting working!

Thanks for reading!

It's Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)

So, a rare summer update!

I had previously posted about an opportunity to design guitars for a new company that one of my co-workers at Terra Trike, Ben, is starting up. The owners of Terra Trike also have this super small side start up guitar company called Etavonni. Ben is the lead guitar tech for them, but naturally wants to have full control of his own ideas and is starting up his own guitar company, Lumen, to take full advantage of his contacts in the guitar industry. The thing with Etavonni is that they cost $7,000, way out of most peoples price range. Ben wants to make a sweet looking, nice sounding, guitars that garage bands can afford.

Well when you need a guitar body designed, who's your favorite art student baby!

Ben came to me with the head stock picked out and a general idea that he wanted to make it swoopy and kickin. I just got to go to town on the design and have some fun. After a few sketches, this is what Ben settled on as what he wanted.


Yep, my design. Pretty cool huh? Ben has a guy in North Carolina making the body for him, this is the first prototype.

The other super cool thing about the look is not just the body design but where the guitars name sake is coming from. Ben found these super thin sheets of lights (not LCD exactly) which we are working on affixing to the front of the guitar. The sheets light up in a certain color and can do two tones. I'm working on some graphics for the front in lights, I'm a bit limited in size restrictions as the larger the design the more expensive it gets. If this really takes off, we'll look into some of my more intricate, larger designs.

Currently the graphics are just in the sketch form. Keep in mind these are going to be in lights, like say neon green on a gloss black painted guitar. Super cool for your weekend gig!


Thanks for looking, I'll keep you all abreast of happenings with Lumen over the coming year.

Summer Lovin / Bummin

Well, schools out. I've been home going on a month already actually. The last semester wrapped up nicely, I was pretty happy with final grades. No surprises, well actually I was expecting an A- in my Humor Class (one of my advanced studio classes), but I got an A. So a good surprise.

I'm actually missing art school allot, I had such a great semester. Met lots of really creative and fun people and made some pretty sweet art. I miss it. I'm working full time (I actually like what I'm doing, more on that in a bit) and making the monies and riding my bike, but there is a lack of artiness for sure. I aught to get on designing my wedding invitations or save the date cards, or start taking my camera with me more.

I'm working for a trike company called WizWheelz, we make the Terra Trike.

A TerraTrike

I do assembly, shipping, R&D, and anything else that needs to be done pretty much. It's a pretty sweet job, but I still miss art school.

Speaking of art school, I have pictures from my final TMP II project that I never uploaded. It was the expanded image piece. Overall, Dennis, my prof (who was great) loved it. I was less happy with the final result. He gave it an A-. I gave it a C-. I think that he liked the amount of time I put into this mother and the fact that I stayed late on the day we had to work on it and finished it at 11pm on a Friday when I still had a week to do it.


It's three of my friends/roommates ascending the stairs of the house I lived in last year at Michigan. I really like the top of the piece and the sides where you can see the banister and the baseboards of the stairs. They were used to give the piece some cohesion. That worked, all three of them are climbing stairs, but I have way to many pictures of them and not stairs up the middle and that mucks it all up.

I made this by taking tons of pictures, printing them glossy 8.5x11 and then cutting each one into roughly 2/3 " strips and gluing them to the foam core to expand them climbing the stairs. The idea was that it would look like several were climbing the stairs at one time and all at the same time.


In retrospect, I'd like to try this again but with only one person and less pictures of them. Don't make is so cluttered and obvious.

the stairs and bannister, I like this part of the piece

Well, I'll post more when I start working on wedding invitations. I've got some ideas and some sketches. We'll see what I can come up with.

Oh other, artistic news. WizWheelz (my summer job) also makes guitars, Etavonni (innovate backwards) under the same ownership. Pretty sweet carbon and aluminum guitars. Pretty sweet $10,000 guitars. While the carbon and aluminum may seem sacrilege to some guitar people, they're all technical and tone chambered up. I guess, I don't actually play.
But anyway, Ben and Jeff, who work for both companies are starting up their own guitar company (normal wooden guitars). Ben, who is the Production Manager for WizWheelz and Etavonni and a video game fiend (we play during lunch hour), has asked me to help them design a body for their new guitar. Super Sweet! I'll post what happens!

Oh and another thing, I'm now a published author. Kinda. In a newsletter, The Bent Rim Bugle, for an organization that I belong to, The Michigan Mountain Bikers Association, I was published. I wrote a piece about racing at Mt. Snow, Vermont and submitted it. They really liked it! I'll have to scan it in since there is no web version. But still, cool none the less that I can say I'm published.

Kinda.

Thanks for reading!

Festifools Parade!

The Festifools parade was last weekend here in A2 and my group and I took part with our gypsy fortune teller, Fromalda.

The parade was great fun, taking over two blocks of Main St. We had allot of fun giving kids their fortunes and generally playing around for one and half hours!

Warming up in the back alley.

My ADP II professor, Nick Tobier. We did these puppets for the parade as part of his class. Art school rocks.

Vinny did a hell of a job carrying that thing the whole time.

Team Can Opener

This little girl who was drumming the whole parade had a Dick Cheney mask on. She regaled us with her ability to do the splits, which was hilarious in that mask. I love Ann Arbor.

Thanks for reading!

Festifools Puppet!

So, my ADP class, I believe is the only one I've not posted about at all this semester because it is an "academic" class. Which means it's a lecture. It can thus be really quite boring. But Nick Tobier (the professor) won't let that happen to much! We are making puppets for the Festifools parade this weekend here in A2. Also, Nick keeps class interesting by doing crazy stuff like canceling the final! Super sweet.

Anyway, the puppet float. Our group (Team Can Opener we've christened ourselves, long story), is making a gypsy fortune teller who is going to hold a crystal ball in one hand and wave the other over the ball to make it see into the future! I know, super cool.
The puppets are made out of cardboard, lots of paper mache, fabric, and other odds and ends and are held up by bamboo sticks.
We started painting today.

The Hands with the base coat.

Long, bony fingers.

Luara (right) and Lucy (left) painting on the first greenish skin color coat. It wasn't working. We kept reminding ourselves that we could just paint over the last coat if it sucked. We repainted it twice.

Katie, our resident painter in the group, shows up and saves the day.

Applying the face.

The face as it is currently, with its not completed shaw hanging on it. We've got alot of work to do still on this thing before Sunday. Yikes.

Improv Everywhere

Everyone freezes on cue in Grand Central Station. Amazing.
I wish I could be a part of one of these flash mob things, I wonder if they have any in A2?

Hug + Blanket = Hugket

For CFC (context, form, concept) I've mapped a hug for our place mapping assignment. I wanted to get at the warmth, security, and enveloping love feeling you get from a good hug. I did this with a blanket (they don't call them security blankets for nothing).

The Hug Blanket

As I posted before, the whole idea was two separate people coming together. So I (rather literally) put two people on the blanket, their silhouettes that is. They are of course, myself and Kara (my fiancee). I hand sewed the cloth silhouettes onto the blanket, this took forever and I'll think twice about doing it again. But the final product was much more successful I believe because I took the time and the imperfections associated with hand crafted works. I chose the color red to represent love and passion. I mean, do you buy yellow roses for the woman you love or red?

When the person interacting with my hug blanket piece wraps themselves in the blanket they bring the two sides together thus bringing the two bodies together to form one body. I don't have pictures of people in it, my classmates took some pictures, hopefully I can get some from them to illustrate it being experienced.

I presented the piece today in class and had a critique, I think they for the most part liked it. I think I was successful in getting across my feelings for the place, what I found to be important about at hug. Maybe it was because other people picked places that were not supper important to them or places hard to define, but I feel that mine was one of the most successful.

Justin Finkmaster Flex (his nickname, I'm not even sure of his real last name, Finkleman I'm pretty sure), did a piece that I was really quite impressed with. The link on his name goes to his blog posting of his project. He did being scared out of your mind at a police station (being scared for being in trouble). It was really well done and I really felt uneasy and felt his anxiety and tunnel vision with the way he projected the animation and the sound. I just realized that it's actually me looking into the tube on the last picture. Sweet.

At any rate, A few more of my piece being put together.

Pinned down, waiting to be sewn.

Close up of the stitching (all done by hand).

Thanks for looking!

All Wrapped Up In Paper, Now What?

So, we have our latest assignment in CFC (content, form, and context...Michigan likes acronyms).

"The purpose of this assignment is to make a perceptual investigation of a physical space. Your task is to reveal aspects of this place that you find significant and to make a work as an expression of your experience of this. You will develop a strategy to subjectively remap a place as an 'experimental terrain' (i.e. you will experience, perceive, record, and map not only the physical aspects of the selected 'space' but also the mental aspects that make it a 'place' for you)....This project provides the opportunity to study the relationship that exists between the material and social fabrics that from our built environment."

So, when this was assigned I was stuck off the bat. I decided eventually to do a piece where my place was besides Kara, in a hug. A very safe, comforting, enveloping and loving place for me (she is my fiancee after all!). I kinda wanted to do a projection piece where pictures of us (extreme closeups) would be projected around the viewers and our voices murmur sweet nothings in the background.

This was my first sketch, the cube. People would stand around it.

I then evolved that into the surround version. The screens would surround the viewers.


I actually wrote in my notebook...
My prof, John Marshall, then kindly informed me that besides this idea not really getting at the enveloping good, safe feeling I was getting at, it was just creepy for anyone who was not me or Kara. He had a very good point.

So, back to the sketch book. John started me off with the idea of a blanket. I went absolutely nowhere from there and last Tuesday, he wrapped me up in a paper 'blanket' so that I could experiment. I'm laying there with paper above and below of me with a sharpie in hand and was instructed to "map myself". What? All I can see is an inch in front of my face. K...map myself. I'll trace my body! So I did, badly as well. It's hard to trace your own head when laying down.
So after I trace myself, I stand there drinking my coffee and decide to have a classmate trace me on the other side of the paper that was on top of me. After this is done it hits me. Ever seen those magazine adds or illustrations where you fold the two point A's together and the two point B's together along the dotted lines and something comes out of the image at the end? That is more or less what I'm going thinking. But with a blanket. You have two cloth cut outs sewn onto an open blanket. Fold the blanket together, close it, and you've got one body showing from the two halves of each body. When the blanket is open the hug has not happened, the bodies are separate. When the hug is happening, the blanket is closed, the two bodies have become one body.

A few pictures of the idea from my sketch book.


I'm really terrible at sketching people. Sorry.


I'm looking forward to figuring out the rest with Kara this weekend. I mean I really can't figure out a hug without being in a hug can I?

Thanks for reading.

Manifest Destiny: The American Dream

So, Laura and I finished our American dream poster this afternoon. We're both quite happy with it. When the whole project was assigned, I was a bit dubious about the assignment being on the American dream. As I said in a previous post, how hackneyed can you get? I had images of apple pie, immigrants and the statue of liberty.

Laura and I skewered that whole idea. Manifest Destiny baby. Spread by the bullet of course. I would say were commenting on the whole idea of American imperialism. Of course we don't call it that anymore, we call it "spreading democracy" or "protecting freedom", but it's a watered down version of colonialism. This time with 24 hour press coverage. And bombs. But the bullets have always been there.

The visual style of our piece was inspired by the British graffiti artist Banksy that I had talked about earlier. The piece below is what directly inspired me. It's in the solider.

So we took our idea on manifest destiny as the American dream and our Banksy inspiration and came up with this piece. The solider is shooting red, white, and blue bullets at a American flag world. Cause we want to own/command it (if that wasn't obvious).
We photoshoped it onto a wall because of our graffiti artist inspiration, both of us saw this as a graffitiesque subversive piece I think and putting it on a wall incorporated that idea for us. The text is read as off the wall because it is the title for the poster that this will be printed as (it prints with a white 1/2 inch border). Oh the whole poster size it 17"x11" printed. We did it mostly in Adobe Photoshop with some Illustrator as well.
It may not be a 'normal' poster, but I really like it and think it would be a good bit of fun to actually graffiti it somewhere in A2. We'll see if that ever happens.


Thanks for looking!

The American Dream

For TMP graphic design, all the sections are in some completion on the American dream. I have no idea if it is just school wide or larger, but these are a few of the ideas I came up with.

I was originally none to excited about this project, I mean, the American dream? That's so many different things to so many people and it's really been done before. Many many times before.
But I guess there is a reason it's been done so many times before. It's quite interesting what comes out of you when you start thinking about the American dream. Also, it's a group project which can be not so much fun (my partner is good for this project though, so that's good).

I started wanting to skewer the whole idea of the dream and landed on the idea of manifest destiny (the idea that the early U.S. had the right and the duty to govern from Atlantic to Pacific) and American Imperialism in the past few decades.

I also have started into how broken the dream is here at home. Specifically the level of poverty and homelessness in this country being so high is appalling. I wanted to comment on that for the last piece.

I'm not sure which one my partner and I will chose to work on further and submit, but I'll keep posting!






Thank you for looking!

Banksy

So at Mars Hill (church) this weekend, the pastor Rob Bell, who is the coolest, hipest pastor you'll likely meet (and not in that "Hey I'm like you kids! I like your music and have boy/girl problems to! Hey! Meet my buddy Jesus!" That's just lame.) Ok back on track here, he talked about the British graffiti artist Banksy. All the pictures in this post are of Banksy works.
I had heard the name before in class, but had never seen some of his work before. Rob showed us some of it, wow, really some really great stuff, some provocative some just funny. Talk about graphic design inspiration! I highly recommend you check out his site and some of his work, my favorite stuff is under the outside tab. Just click his name up there.

Some of my favorites of his work.