New Blog over at my website

Hi there,

Around about last year I updated my website and was toying around with the idea of making a blog which is integral to the then new portfolio site.

After some experimenting I've decided to go with this option and so here is the link to the new blog below:

http://scottbalmer.co.uk/blog

I may look into repurposing this blog into something else but who knows.

And now, its mario's turn

Just as with the zelda items piece, this is based around the items/enemies featured in the mario universe.

(update March 2017) it's been over a year since these wallpapers were removed from my website, seems like it was not that long ago when I made this piece back in 2012 which gave it a run of about 4 years of being available to adorn numerous desktop and smart phone screens as a nice background.

I'm glad that there were people who enjoyed using these wallpapers as their desktop/phone backgrounds and I appreciate that. 

Though these wallpapers are never coming back, mostly due to their age but also (and largely) due to the people who thought it was a good idea to steal my work and sell it on whatever product they thought would make a quick buck.

 All in all, it had a good run and if you are still using my wallpaper as your desktop/phone background I hope you still enjoy it.

Tattoo the Girl

made this for the Tattoo the girl blog

tattoothegirl.tumblr.com/

goat (unpublished)

an unused image, bit hard to read in places but still a fun little piece

So You Created A Wormhole... Group Show

 

Come one and all to the show 'So You Created A Wormhole' Curated by the nice folks at iam8bit and held in Sunny LA.

Celebrating the launch of the new book 'So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler's Guide to Time Travel' by Mr. Phil Hornshaw & Mr. Nick Hurwitch (published by Berkley/Penguin).

The show opens this Friday (the 13th I might add for those with some superstition oooooo.) 

With the likes of Jack Huson, Scott C, Jesse Balmer, Lisa Hanawalt and myself as well as some few surprises along the way. 

its going to be ace. 

http://iam8bit.com/the-gallery/time-travel/

so if your in LA (or going there) then pop in and see wonders of time and space that awaits you.

Cagoule Magazine

Time seems to be whizzing by so here is a bit of a belated Happy New Year Message an a long overdue post for this blog just to say that things are fine.

Anyway, the two images above were done for the first ever issue of Cagoule Magazine who are responsible for its sister publication Anorak Magazine.

Cagoule magazine is more of an Anorak magazine aimed at adults but has the same level of design flair and content but for an older audience.

What i had to illustrate here was an article on a very brief history of the bra, but what made this a great and fun piece to work on was being unleashed to have as much creative freedom (within reason of course) to produce anything i felt was a perfect fit to the article.

I always try to keep some small parts in the unknown as it adds a certain thrill working out the problem in real time. I guess i'm addicted to having to think up things in a matter of seconds.

Cagoule should be available at your friendly neighbourhood creative book store or can be bought over at PresentJoy's online shop http://shop.presentjoys.com/product/cagoule

Privacy

just felt like creating a personal illustration based on a more editorial-esque manner.

this is loosely based around the notion of internet privacy, with more and more people sharing things on social networks private or otherwise. This image depicts a tablet as a window with the viewer pinching open the blinds in an anonymous fashion kind of like a nosey neighbour watching whats going on.

Its a bit cheeky but also a lot of fun, i think i might venture with some more experimentation with photos within my work.

illostribute: a tribute to David Klein

Here's my contribute to the latest illostribute tribute.

This time its the fantastic works of David Klein.

I was really drawn in to the wealth of expressive and varied travel posters that Klein had produced in his lifetime. I was debating on whether to recreate the rome one which focused more on buildings or the greece one which all the mythos captured so colourfully.

well i ended up doing the image above. had a really good time trying to capture the essence of Klein's piece.

illostribute.com/2011/04/david-klein/

Some work from Hylozoism exhibition

The Hylozoism show is coming to an end (ends this week on the 27th so there's still time to see the works of both Jake Blanchard and myself) so here are a few pieces which appeared in the show.

Hylozoism Exhibition opens this thursday

I've teamed up with Jake Blanchard for this joint exhibition Hylozoism. A journey of ancient majestic tribes, beasts and even the odd artefact or two.

As stated the opening night is this thursday so if your in the London area your more than welcome to join us on this expedition of a cosmic kind. but fret not the exhibition is going to be running for five weeks and all work is up for sale.

here's a facebook page for more info

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=201886083163980

intergalactic protect-zoids

This was done for society6's SuperHeroes San Fran exhibition and is available to buy not only as a print but also as a laptop/iphone/ipad skin for here:

http://www.society6.com/studio/scottbalmer/Superheroes_SF

Push Cycles print & printing party

Push cycles who have just celebrated their first year, decided to mark the occasion by creating the PUSH Art Club in which the first run of five prints from five different illustrators/artists are on sale right now. Each print is a limited edition of 30 and cost £30.

But you'll have to wait until the second or third run until you can get your hands on this:

But what about the Printing Party I hear you say... well tomorrow (that is Saturday) Push Cycles will be holding a special event where you can print from a selection of four 1 colour designs onto tees by your very own hand (i think) so you could be walking away with this 1 colour wonder on a tee:

Be the envy of everyone and be there at Push Cycles

based at 35c Newington Green N169PR London for a chance to walk away with this guy on your chest.

illostribute: A tribute to Earl Oliver Hurst

illostribute has just put up its 4th tribute post, this time paying tribute to Earl Oliver Hurst and his stunning body of work.

Above is my tribute piece to Hurst which, while looking for the potential candidate to base the tribute on. This one caught my eye with the subject matter being placed further away rather than the up close and personal subjects that feature in most of hurst's work.

This post has some really great tributes created by the likes of Ben Newman, Curt Melo, Cesar Barcelo, Gabriel Corbera and of course, illostribute's founder Toby Than Neighbors.

BusinessWeek Christmas Characters

Looks like its safe to post about this commission now that i've seen it on their website. These festive characters were created for BusinessWeek US magazine to be in a feature about business books which you can basically wing it and get away scot free without reading a single page.

The brief was to design 8-9 characters at the christmas office party interacting with each other but also made independently so that the layout guy can play about with where to position them in the feature. There were also some props such as holly and mistletoe to be designed as well, which was to be used to decorate the page.

These guys didn't take long to create which was a good thing considering that i was only given a few days from rough to finals, but it was all in good fun.

here's a few more images focusing on individual characters.

More of this project can be seen on my flickr account.

Play Calendar

It feels that this was done an eon ago, it was around about june that I was contacted to see if I would be interested in doing an illustration for the Play! calendar which was being produced by the folks at Eiga Design in Germany.

After the piece above was done, all i knew as that the calendar would be released later in the year. Time passed and i Had forgotten about this until that email pinged in my inbox showing links to the finished product.

the calendar/book is a really nice piece of work lovingly put together and is well worth a look.

I've only got 2 links on where to order this. (one from amazon.de and another outlet) if you are interested:

www.nbvd.de/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=25

www.amazon.de/Play-Design-Kids-Henning-Otto/dp/3939028215/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287647068&sr=8-2

Joe 90

inspired by the opening credits of Gerry Anderson's classic Joe 90.

This is my take on the fancy machinery that gives joe his amazing intellect to diffuse bombs and such.

man, i wish they still did shows like this, would be great to work on.

the intro to the show can be found on youtube here.

feels like we're being watched

its kind of halloweeny, i guess

the making of the happy journey collective piece

As promised, here's roughly a stage by stage making of the piece for the happy journey collective. I'm doing this just to give an insight into some of the processes I go through while creating my work.

first off is the idea generating stage.

I basically draw something like little thumbnails (either contained or open) where I'm not really interested on the quality of the drawing but on the initial idea as a whole. Also how compositionally sound the structure of the piece would be.

Early on, before even putting pencil to paper I usually have a few ideas that I think would work with the brief given. Sometimes I just grab any piece of paper and draw all over it so that I have a record of what I was thinking when it popped into my head at the time, just like above which was drawn on the back of a print out which was close to hand. The reason that I do this is that its quicker to generate as much ideas as possible without being hung up on things such as style and detail, its just the idea at its purest form and its also a quick way of seeing if it would be worth going down that direction for the final.

Usually after doing these thumbnails roughs, I select the ones which have potential and then develop them further into more structured roughs that would sent be off to clients. Because this was more of a personal project and I knew what I was after, I just moved on to drawing the parts for the final.

So here I started just drawing the character above since I knew on what I wanted the style of the piece to represent. I decided to create the packaging and other objects on the fly while I worked on doing the line work in illustrator with the use of my wacom tablet.

after working on the line work and creating the set pieces such as the packaging, the piece looked like this.

I was going to put in some type with things like 'karate chop action' and 'eagle-eye sight' but decided against that as I wanted the backing card to recede into the background rather than fighting with what was meant to be in the foreground.

Its just a matter of selecting the right colours to compliment the piece. I always have an idea of what colours I want to use, I usually go by the rule on 'what does the colour think should come next' it just basically means that I start off with one colour and then judging by how another colour sits with the initial one in a complimentary sort of way and then build up from there. I also add a limit to the amount of colour used as this adds to the complimentary aspects. the colour selection was used to recede part of the image like the backing card as well as to pull the figure and the plastic coffin shell into the foreground.

resulting into the final piece.

This might not be as in depth but it shows the basic stages that i go through in the creation of my work. I was thinking i might do one of those stage by stage videos where the image builds up at some point in the future, but we'll see.

illostribute: Norman Saunders tribute

here's my tribute illustration for illostribute based on the works of pulp fiction cover artist Norman Saunders.

This post and more can be seen over at illostribute.com

pencil breath

here's a weird creation that i've done recently, a nice and unusual character design of a walking mouth with a pencil for a tongue. I was thinking about adding ears into the mix but decided not to since its already a very simple and clean design.