This is a song from Skurj’s “Gops and Gooblins” CD. It is all about an 80’s flashback in New Jersey that ends with a post-modern, surreal guitar solo. Ohh yeah Barry White is the hook. The “Gops and Gooblins” cover is below. It is an illustration I did of a Motley Crue of monsters. No reason.

If you are a Barry White fan then I bet you are confused by this post. Sorry.

 

 barry white 80's: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The above picture is a CD cover I designed a few years ago. It was inspired by Skurj’s “Left Coast” contact: The Amazing Mike Timpson. Mike moved to LA from Baltimore to pursue his ambitions in the world of comedy. He has since become one of Skurj’s biggest heroes (next to George Clinton).

He won the WWE’s biggest fan contest a few years ago and a $25,000 check. He went to the Playboy Mansion and macked on the ladies successfully. He has worked with Doogie Howser, and he has even met Stacey Keech! Every year he does something that makes me envious.

whatabouttimpson

Through his journey Timpson has turned to Allen and I to help him out with theme songs for his skits at the Fake comedy club on Melrose Ave. I have included one of those songs at the bottom of this post.

I captured the main image I used at the Fake. I manipulated it and pieced together some images from an old book of 18th century woodcuts I had found at a thrift store. I decided to make it black and white to save on printing costs. I had done a color version, but I then decided to be thrifty. I have a better pic of the cover somewhere in my files. If you are reading this I am still searching for it. If you an 18th century woodcutter, sue me.

Timpson got the body suit from someone in LA who had worked on some 80’s monster movie about a huge man sized rat. The hat was his addition. When he walked on stage he stood 7 feet tall and then proceeded to make the room laugh till it hurt. I was lucky to have it together enough to snap this pic. It also helped that I was in LA with a camera.

The track included here is “Swamp Ass”. It is about a guy who always sweats through his shorts when he is playing basketball. (Sorry, I have no pics from this skit.) I really like the guitar work I did for this track. It is a cross between Stevie Ray Vaughn and Southern Culture on the Skids. It is a sound I really need to work into less sarcastic songs. Allen supplied the lyrics of course.

There is another more popular tune from a Timpson skit I will post later…Skurj fans and fans of Steve the Thrill Hill know what I am talking about.

 

 Swamp Ass: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Well I am not going to mention the site here. It is the one where people submit designs and people vote online for their favorites, and each month the company makes those shirts. I thought I would throw my hat in the ring with this design.

After I finished the design I realized it was really a perfect design for a child’s t-shirt or a girl’s t-shirt. It got decent reviews and votes, but not enough. I pretty much alienated the guy vote on this one with the high cute factor. I may try designing another shirt in the future if I have a good hipster idea. Maybe I’ll start a baby t-shirt company.

Well last year I was able to design my first billboard. I am an animator for the most part, so I had never been asked to do this type of thing before. We needed to promote our morning shows and corporate gave the thumbs up for billboards. It is pretty expensive to these things and our company doesn’t think it is worth the money most of the time. This year they did, so I designed a couple focusing on our traffic reporters/real SAPD officers, and one focusing on our anchors.

In the end the traffic ones didn’t make it. The SAPD thought it wasn’t in their interests to appear to be promoting a specific news outlet or promoting the fame of 2 of its officers. The GMSA anchor one did make it, and it sat above the highways around town for a few months. In retrospect I should have taken a photo of the actual billboards just for fun. Let’s just say it is weird to see something you did printed up so huge.

Working the high resolution files for this was a painful task. Everything I did in photoshop was tedious. Just opening the file took 5-10 minutes. Also since we were spending so much money I had all of the bosses staring over my shoulder. I am glad I got to do this at least once though.

At my current job I don’t get to do much explaining with my graphics. At my last job that is all I did. This assignment let me delve back into some of those skills. These graphics were created for a spec website my station is currently trying to find a sponsor for. San Antonio has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the country, and my station thought a website where we tell people about diabetes would be a good idea. I agree.

In retrospect I spent more time on these than I should have, but after spending 4 years at Knight Ridder/ Tribune ,sitting next to guys who do these kinds of graphics so well, the bar in my mind was set pretty high. I was given some graphics from other medical sites as references. I’m not bragging, but I think these came out better visually. I did all of the modeling for these except for the torso skeleton and the heart further down the page. I turned these out in about 4 KSAT days. At a job a where this was my only assignment, it would have been 2 days or less.

Whenever I do medical graphics I think about Peter Kohama. He was the guy in my old department who always did excellent medical animations. He actually read medical journals and could probably operate on someone if he had to.  I always wonder, “Would Dr. Kohama approve?” I guess he was my Yoda for medical graphics.

One more. Like I said, I did not model the heart. Someday maybe I’ll model a heart, but if you have a great one in your model library there isn’t any reason to. This assignment let me make a kidney, a stomach, a pancreas, and some blood vessels. Those I didn’t have. Look on turbosquid.com in the near future. I’m selling these guys.