theartofmypetskeleton

2010... a new beginning...

2009-12-20T21:35:00.005-05:00

Hello all,

I'm developing a new blog, a new site and a new way of posting... in the meantime follow me on "twitter" via "mypetskeleton" for regular updates...

stay tuned...

v

My Pet Skeleton at the Festival of Fear

2009-08-28T00:43:00.003-04:00

Hello all,

Well, I've just packaged my very last print and am about to hit the sack before heading to the "Festival of Fear". I wanted to give you all a quick heads up this weekend to let you know that I will have a booth (dead centre) at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This is an incredible convention, where you could easily spend 2 days checking all of the artists, actors, directors and merchants. I'm bringing a lot of work to clear out my inventory at some reduced FOF prices (including old etchings that I've finally decided to part with), and the very last run of my tee shirt designs (2 for $30!). I will also be introducing my short film "The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow" along with Rodrigo Gudino of Rue Morgue Cinema.

This years featured guest is Bruce Campbell.

More info here...

http://www.rue-morgue.com/rmp_fof.php

If you end up spending some time at the convention make sure you drop by and say "howdy!".

Autumn Story

2009-07-16T11:37:00.007-04:00

Thanks for pointing this out to me Shawn. Another amazing piece... I love the powdery chalky residue, it leaves a kind of powdery echo... (new tutorial coming soon...)

Drawing in the Sand...

2009-07-03T12:11:00.003-04:00

This is absolutely incredible, I just had to share it here...

Limited Edition Prints Now Available at Rue Morgue.

2009-05-09T23:06:00.009-04:00

Hello all,

I'm very happy to announce that Rue Morgue Magazine (one of my all time favourite magazines) is featuring my new limited edition Giclee prints at their Necropolitan Museum. You can purchase 'em here...

My Pet Skeleton Art Show ~ Strange Days

2009-03-31T19:32:00.008-04:00

Hello All,

I'm very pleased to officially announce that I'm having an art show at "Peter Martin's Twenty King" on April 24th. The event that has been entitled "Strange Days", will be showcasing a new collection of limited edition prints that have been created over the last 10 years of my career. For those of you who are in the Kitchener~Waterloo area (which is about an hour from Toronto, Ontario, Canada) please feel free to drop by and say hello. There will be food and wine and an assortment of prints for sale (including various etchings and rare prints of my earlier work that have not previously been available for purchase).

For more details, please email mypetskeletonproductions@gmail.com.

Struwwelpeter ~ The German Mother Goose

2009-03-22T17:21:00.008-04:00

My Oma told me stories when I was a little boy. They weren't your typical fairy tales that offered up warm happy endings. The Prince and Princess didn't live happily ever after. The poor son did not inherit a kingdom of wealth and love. There were no "Fairy God Mothers" who offered their powers and service in times of adversity. The fairy tales that were told to me were weird and spooky and cold and deadly.

My Oma would tell me the tales of “Stuwwelpeter” and reminisced of children being chased by lanky ogerish men weilding scissors who sought to cut off their thumbs. Or children who would burn to death because they played with matches when they were told not to. She would deliver these tales with tension and above all else, a great sense of humour.

This is the Struwwelpeter that lives in my head. He will be appearing at my art show in April (available as a limited edition).

Art Show Announcement...

2009-03-22T10:32:00.002-04:00

Hey all,

A quick message to let you all know that I'm currently picking the new pieces of my work to feature in an upcoming local exhibit. More details to be announced later this week regarding the location and event details. Stay tuned...

An Easy Way to Make Your Own Ascii Art

2009-02-14T18:59:00.018-05:00

[ahem...insert annoying over enunciated infomercial voice...]

Are you looking to create some fun new ASCII art? Have you spent HOURS pouring over your keyboard to find JUST the right key to demonstrate a particular shade of gray? Frustrated? Tired? Fingers Bloody?

Go HERE!

...

Ok I'm back, I didn't know how to start this post, so apparently I needed to be a jackass for a moment...

I have to say that this site is pretty GREAT! The key to getting some good results with this Ascii Art generator is to follow 3 basic points...

1) Pick simple images with clear backgrounds. Portraits work best.

2) Black and White or duotone images work very well, so you may consider removing colour information before using this l'il generator.

3) Try to use as much contrast as possible in your imagery and remove as much grey as you can from the spectrum (use the levels tool to remove those unwanted shades).

Simply upload your image at 60 pixels wide by 50 pixels long to find out what your picture looks like matrix style.

I cropped various pieces of my work to see how they would translate...

If you missed the site, here's the full URL:
www.typorganism.com/asciiomatic/

29th Annual Genie Nomination for "Mr.Hollow"

2009-02-10T21:23:00.005-05:00

The nominees for the 29th Annual Genie Awards were announced today by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and I am very happy to report that it includes THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF MISTER HOLLOW in the category of Animated Short. The 2009 Genie Awards will take place Saturday April 4 at the Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa, Ontario and will be broadcast on Global Television. Check local listings or visit http://genieawards.ca/Genie29/main.cfm

In other news, THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF MISTER HOLLOW was awarded the Public First Prize in Bologna, Italy's Future Film Festival.

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF MISTER HOLLOW screens at this year's Boston Underground Film Festival (March 19-26 http://bostonundergroundfilmfestival.com) and at the Ashland Independent Film Festival (April 2-6 http://www.ashlandfilm.org).

Take a look at the trailer:

Doodle Art

2009-02-08T21:07:00.008-05:00

A twisty little doodle that crawled it's way from a dilapidated neuron path that was birthed, heaved and pushed out by my cerebral cortex. I take no responsibility for the opinions it expresses. I'm just a vessel.

Thank you for the words Eric, they suit my twisty doodle quite nicely.

A Digital Artist Is a Collector of Small Details...

2009-02-05T18:03:00.009-05:00

Frost has been the bane of my existence lately. Every morning when I get into my car, the interior windows are skinned with a thin layer of ice. I start my day grasping frantically for abandoned cd cases that find refuge amongst the slush soaked floor mats beneath the seats of my car. They hide from me because they know that I have a nasty habit of cracking their delicate plastic spines to attack the ice.

If there is a hell, it will be ruled by giant empty jewel cases who will use my face to scrape away icy debris of all types...

The point... the point... the point... the point of this blog.... ah yes... the patterns in the frost...

As I was microplowing the ice away from the windows, I noticed some amazing patterns. Here's one that caught my eye:

My first thought... 'it would take HOURS to hand paint these swirls!' I dropped the jewel case and quickly reached into my pocket to take some high res snaps of the frosty textures in front of me. The closer that I went into them, the more impressed I was with their form and structure:

I'm very excited about the prospects of how I can use these images in photoshop. My personal image library is the foundation of my work as a digital artist. It keeps my work original and fresh. I suppose this post is less of a tutorial and more of a word of advice. Always keep your camera in your pocket, and your eyes open wide...

...there are beautiful details to be captured right in front of your face.

(note * I used the "overlay" layer adjustment in photoshop over a quick snap shot on my webcam to create this image)

The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow

2009-01-20T19:00:00.011-05:00

I have a short that is currently running the film festival circuit around the world. It's called "The Facts in the Case of Mr.Hollow", codirected by Rodrigo Gudino and myself... the interview we did for Bravo describes it much better than my finger-mumbles...

It's an odd little piece, where the narrative is locked inside the details of a single photograph. Our short is one extended shot, which challenges traditional story telling by enticing the viewer to pick up important clues. Well, after months of being shown in different festivals all over the world, it turns out that our monstrous mutant bundle of joy has done quite well for itself. It's picked up several laurels on it's travels:

Fantasia Montreal, Canada ~ BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Puchon International Film Festival, Puchon, South Korea ~ BEST SHORT
Fantastic Fest, Austin, Texax ~JURY AWARD FOR TECHNICAL MERIT
Catalunya Sitges, Spain ~ BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Shnit Shortfimfestival Berne, Switzerland ~ BEST SHORT
After Dark Film Festival Toronto, ~ Silver Award Best Short Film
South African HORRORFEST South Africa ~ BEST ANIMATED SHORT

For those of you who have been emailing regarding the title of the film...yes, there is a “Johnny Hollow” connection… The film starts off with a letter left by "Johnny" and uses the song "Alchemy" from the album "Dirty Hands".

Anyway, I thought it was about time to talk about it, and today... well, it just "felt right". Rodrigo and I had a lot of fun putting this together. And I can't help but send 3 major kudos out (as tacky as that may be): Tomasz Dysinski whom I've worked with for years. He puppeteers my images with devilish wonderful precision. Marco Pecota, who's shown us what it means to have a great producer on your side. And finally BravoFact! who funded all of our efforts on this project!

Here's the official poster that I painted a year ago, accomponied by a synopsis of the film.

A single image that tells an entire story, THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF MISTER HOLLOW is the groundbreaking new film by Rue Morgue founding editor Rodrigo Gudiño (The Demonology of Desire, The Eyes of Edward James) and award-winning visual artist Vincent Marcone (MyPetSkeleton.com, Johnny Hollow). The visually stunning film centers on an unusual photograph dating back to the 1930s. An investigation of its particulars reveals a tapestry of secrets hidden in the details, and a tale of kidnapping and murder captured in a haunting moment.

Johnny Hollow Presents Squid Lid!

2009-01-14T13:05:00.010-05:00

Hello all!

I've taken a few weeks to hibernate over the holidays... but now I'm back, bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to vomit content all over this bloggy thingy...

I'd like to announce an upcoming show at the Cameron House in Toronto on January the 23rd. Johnny Hollow will be sharing the stage with the very fucked up and circus like electrical stylings of "Squid Lid". Come one... Come all... it should be a lot of fun!

James Fisher, whom I affectionately refer to as Twitchy (half of 'Squid Lid'), and I designed the poster above to showcase the event. Twitch is a good friend and a very talented performance artist and musician. The 2 of us go waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back... and worked together on my very first music video (my directorial debut)... He was my scarecrow for Mushroomhead's "Sun Doesn't Rise"... I almost killed the poor fellah by fashioning him in a costume that was really more of a torture device than a scarecrow suit. Poor l'il guy... I really don't think there were enough air holes in the pumpkin head that I made him wear...

Watch TWITCHY suffer HERE

As a side note, I was spelunking for video content to add to this here blog... and I found that someone recorded our cover of John Carpenters "Halloween"... It's not the best quality, but in the spirit of accepting that we live in a youtube world, I thought I'd post it anyway... all gritty and unpolished and horrifyingly unedited and unmixed... enjoy...

A New Raven Desktop by My Pet Skeleton

2008-12-29T11:35:00.012-05:00

I thought I'd put up a new desktop at every resolution imaginable for anyone to download... well, except for 800 by 600... cuz well, if you are still using one of them beige 800 by 600 monitors, then you are less likely concerned about the aesthetics of your computers interface and more than likely hunched over your computer in a damp and darkened room... slightly illuminated by a flickering "Buffalo Bill" style overhanging lamp... as you you plan and plot and pluck some sort of freakish blue print together to 'show the world' that you aren't the acne speckled high school geek that everyone made you out to be... erm... ahem... cough cough.... I better go refresh my meds...

I created this raven a while ago and fashioned him with a little 'My Pet Skeleton" dog tag and collar. Enjoy...

Choose a resolution and download:

1024 by 768
1152 by 864
1280 by 960
1280 by 1024
1600 by 1200
1920 by 1200

Strange Details in Google Earth

2008-12-09T10:15:00.007-05:00

This is amazing. On Sunday, during my weekly ritual of web spelunking for "Johnny Hollow" (yes, some people go to church on Sunday, whilst others abuse the web to indulge their egotistical pursuits... ahem... cough cough ...F.U. ALL FOR JUDGING ME!!!!)... erm... anyway... I found this video which uses our "People are Strange"* cover of the "The Doors". A person by the name of "MKBarth", created this video of various strange images that can be found by analyzing certain coordinates within Google's Earth. It's very spooky.... especially the flying car in Nevada.

Note* we have a much better version of "people are strange" HERE (under track 12)

Johnny Hollow's Dirty Secret

2008-12-04T15:34:00.004-05:00

I've received a few requests to blog a little about my band "Johnny Hollow". So, I thought I'd start with a dirty little secret regarding the album cover that I painted just a little over a year ago.

I've been holding this one back for a little while... but the skeletons have to come out sometime... my band mates don't even know about this one... ok... so here goes...

The cover for Johnny Hollow's "Dirty Hands" was inspired by....

gulp...

nervous twitch...

Iron Maiden.

[the goth collective releases a roar of spooky gasps]

Please, please, before you start throwing your Bauhaus coffee mugs at me... let me explain.

I'm not much of an 80's metal fan. If truth be told, I had always kind of secretly wondered [hoped?] about the prospect of coupling a lit match with the severely teased and hair sprayed laden bangs of "Poison"...

I like big fires... though I'm not sure I could handle the stench of singed hair combined with the odour of melted rubber tights... anyway... when I was a little boy you could often find me flipping through my cousin Joe's extensive heavy metal collection of records. I was astounded and somewhat fearful of the images that governed those black discs. They gave me nightmares.

One disc in particular caught my eye and and kept it's razor sharp talon lodged there. It was a portrait of what seemed to be a zombie monster. His name was "Evil Eddie" and he had a mess of stringy white hair which perfectly crowned a relentless red stare from beneath the soft glow of a yellow street lamp. I was horrified but compelled at the same time... the image kept me up at night and harvested countless bad dreams. I was after all, only 7.

Twenty seven years later, I was home alone and polishing up the last touches of our very own mascot "Johnny Hollow". It was an ordeal to get him 'just right', but he finally seemed to be settling in comfortably within his very own post apocalyptic wonderland (which meant I knew that the cover was almost done). Johnny was very finicky about his hat, but approved (finally) the latest fashion I had offered him up.

I decided to take a break and do a little research on the history of mascot imagery within the world of rock and roll pop culture.

I clicked googles 'search' and once again I found myself in front of a pair of red burning eyes.

Not only did a nostalgic wave hit me, but I noticed that there was something very familiar about the cover... a little too familiar. I pulled up the cover I had just created and compared the 2. The compositions were VERY close!!! The street lamp was where Johnny's Lilly was. Evil Eddie and Johnny hollow were both basically cut off at the torso to emphasize the shoulders and head. And each cover had a very strong horizon line!

After all these years, the meat grinder that is my head, seemed to regurgitate this cover in a way that can only be my own, though still spawned by... Iron Maiden...

Ah well, one thing I am certain, for all his decrepit bravado and for all of his ghoulish threats... Evil Eddie would get his ass kicked in a fight with our dear Johnny. Our gothic boy wonder would send his flaming hummingbirds to pluck out those ruby red eyes before Evil could scream for his zombie momma...

New Subsription...

2008-12-04T15:05:00.000-05:00

Hey all, I recently has some problems with the subcriber link, but I think it's all fixed now. So, by all means please add yourself to the list...

The Lost Art of Record Design

2008-12-01T22:40:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time, long long ago, music was pressed and released onto "a record album". Not only was the sound of an album that much more full and sexy... but so was the artwork. The cardboard graphic made a full 12 by 12 inch impression, which gave the artist/designer the opportunity to leave a great big sloppy kiss over pop cultures grimacing face. It's not the same anymore. The cover of a CD is only 14% the size of a record, where the title and band name takes another third of that surface area. Designing, painting and illustrating can be a little claustrophobic by comparison. Where am I going with all of this...?

Well, when I had designed Au4's CD cover * I decided to paint a dramatic scene that insinuated a moment in a grand storyline. A young boy and his dog following his wind blown kite into a strange new place... I was following the lead of amazing illustrator Rodney Matthews. He would paint elaborate backdrops to house his incredible characters. One could only imagine the plot that surrounded the extraterrestrials that governed the album sleeves that Rodney had created.

I'm very happy with this piece, but found myself getting nostalgic about records when I held the printed CD package in my hand. How wonderful would it have been to have this printed over the surface of a full record sleeve? To hold it with 2 hands, rather than one palm?

Though, having said that, perhaps I am lucky to have a printed copy at all... It looks as though Compact Discs may become as relevant as records 5 years from now...

*Au4 has become one of my favorite bands, they are a talented group from Vancouver Canada. It was a pleasure working with them as it is to LISTEN to them.

New Work...

2008-11-27T17:49:00.001-05:00

I've been posting older pieces as of late, so I thought I'd switch it up and show some newer work. I created this angry looking rook in Photoshop by assembling his form with a bunch of photographs that I had in my personal stock of various churches and statues. My goal was to make him look as though he was trapped within his own stony architecture... furious and quaking... willing himself a new skin...

Coming Soon...

2008-11-23T16:50:00.001-05:00

We are currently putting the new online store together...

Creative Pirates...

2008-11-22T20:45:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while someone decides to do something really innovative with some of work that we've done here at MPS. To be honest, more often than naught when someone steals a clip or piece of the work from My Pet Skeleton... it's god awful... and it makes me angry.

Having said that, when I found this remixed bit of footage on youtube, I felt "delighted". It's true. This piece made me giggle, and I can't help but want to show it off. The original animation was created as a projection for Johnny Hollow...it's our very own Goliath Teddy Bear that stomps and tares about as Janine sings about her fantasies of burning down the houses of fallen lovers... [go to the player and listen to track 05 'worse things' if you'd like to hear the song in context]...

Anyway, this is "NOC!V's" edited piece and has bastardized our poor little Teddy for all of you to enjoy...

And while we're at it, I can't help but show this edited version by Devin Schiro. He took our reel full of animated bits and pieces and remixed it to Danny Elfman's "Serenada Schizophrana"... and aptly entitles this piece the "Scarecrow Serenada". I have really enjoyed his version as well.

The X-Files (Where's Waldo?)

2008-11-19T23:27:00.001-05:00

I loved this show... and I still miss it. The brilliant Chris Carter would have his characters Scully and Mulder go spelunking for monsters of all types week after week after week. Every Sunday a new beast would rise from the ether and slither it's way into the 21 century urban mythos. This series has definitely left a set of dirty fingerprints on my psyche and has influenced the imagery in my work.

So, way back in 2001 you can imagine how thrilled I was to have the official X-files magazine give me a call to illustrate a spread for them. The art director at the time, Kimberly Thornton, wanted me to come up with a digital painting that represented the 7th season of the series. After reviewing all the VCR tapes that they had fedexed me (which, by the way, was the most fun research I've ever had to do for a project to date - and yes, they were VCR tapes at that time, NOT DVD's)... I found that there were spiritual undertones within the season that I could take advantage of. Scully, was having a change of faith, or rather, beginning to 'believe'. The tone of her character was moving from an unapologetic scientist, who believed that there was an earthly logical explanation for every mystery out there, to a woman who was becoming comfortable with the strange energies surrounding her. This coupled with the fact that she was also pregnant, gave me the idea to paint her as a saint inside a church full of hidden objects. At the time, they were keeping the babies Father a secret, and so the Virgin Mary pose seemed to work well for the piece.

The magazine loved the idea, and decided to promote it as a game to the fans. They wanted me to create 13 clues for 13 episodes. My goal was to create 13 stragically placed objects within the illustration, where each "thing" would be a calling card to one particular episode. Just for fun... and just to test the fans, I decided to place an extra clue, just to see if it would be spotted.

All 14 clues were spotted on the first day that the mag was placed on the shelves... X-File fans are not easy to trick...

Do you think you can find all of the hidden objects? Click here...

Johnny Hollow Radio

2008-11-17T13:47:00.000-05:00

This has been up for a little while now... but Johnny Hollow really hasn't had much of a chance to promote it. So, for our first edition of "free stuff", you can listen to the entire "Dirty Hands" album right here at your convenience.

Pinhole Photo Tutorial in Photoshop - 6 Steps

2008-11-15T09:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I thought I'd do a tutorial on how to get that kind of pinhole photography look and feel and apply it to a regular photograph. I took this photo when I was in England last year. It was rather gray and muted and, well.... boring. I wanted to emphasize the contours of the white stone to give the statue a phantom like quality...

01 First, make a copy of the image by dragging the layer over the "copy" symbol in your layers palette (bottom right hand corner).

02 Now, use the "hue/saturation" box to strip this new layer of it's original colours. You can call up this box with the shortcut CONTROL/SHIFT/U (press each key at the same time). In the bottom right hand corner add a check mark to the box that says "colorize". Then drag the arrow on the hue bar until your image has a sepia feel to it. Make sure you also drag the saturation bar to about "25" (depending on your photograph), so that the layer feels rather "dull". It's important that this layer remains muted or you will not get the desired affect once you overlay the layer.

03 In your layers palette, in the top right hand corner, it will read "Normal". Change this layer mode to "Overlay". By doing this, you will notice that you have added a lot of contrast to the photo, and that the sepia bleeds through over the original photo.

Sometimes it's nice to bring more attention to the center of the composition by adding a soft vignette...

04 Use the "Lasso" in your tool bar, and draw an oval selection around the center of your image. Then reverse the selection by using the shortcut ~ CONTROL/SHIFT/I. Then you need to make a copy of this selection ~ (shortcut) CONTROL C and paste (shortcut) CONTROL V. A new layer will appear in your layers palette.

05 From the top of the menu bar under "Filters" select "Blur". From there select "Gaussian Blur" to open the blur box. You really want to have a strong blur, so drag the "radius pixel bar" to about 20 or so.

06 Now soften the edges of your blur layer by erasing the perimeter around the 'hole'. Select the "eraser" from your tool bar, and take the opacity down to 50%. Make sure the brush is large so that you are erasing large surface areas at a time. Continue to erase the perimeter until it's no longer visible. Your image feel like it was taken from a pin hole camera.

Et voila... the image is now much more interesting having done a little digital manipulation in Photoshop.