I highly suggest you watch this video in fullscreen. And in HD.

This video is part of my Fringe Focus Landscape Prints Kickstarter project. Get yourself some great prints from the locations in this video!

I shot this video throughout the month of February 2012 in New Zealand. It’s a compilation of quick shots from my travels. Hikes, campsites, trails, rivers, mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, even an animal or two.

I did a lot of one-day hikes throughout the country, as well as several 3-4 day hikes. I carried all of my gear in an ultralight backpack, with a small titanium stove, and tons of other tiny pieces of gear. I ate straight peanut butter with my fingers, got bloody toes, and smelled generally terrible.

It was an exhausting and incredibly rewarding journey. I hope this quick video is inspirational to you, since it really captures the intensity and vastness of a region far away. I’m looking forward to exploring more places, and as an independent artist I’ll need all the help I can get.

If you’re interested in grabbing some awesome photo prints of New Zealand, back my landscape project on Kickstarter. If you have any questions, hit me up on Twitter!

Kepler Rock - I started this mountain hike too late, just clearing the treeline at sunset. My late start allowed me to capture this beautiful lighting that most hikers wouldn’t see. Kepler Track, Fjordlands National Park, 2012.

The Ice Cave - This retreating glacier moves rapidly, so chilly ice caves like this one form and collapse all the time. By now this cave no longer exists. Franz Josef Glacier, 2012.

The Crevasse - As we stared into this deep, eerie chasm, a girl dropped her iPhone. In 300 years the phone might be found, but the glacier will have ground it into dust. Franz Josef Glacier, 2012.

Kepler Ridge - I climbed a mountain alone all day, surrounded by dense beech forest. I’ve never been more tired and isolated than I was when finally reaching this clearing. It was absolutely worth it. Kepler Track, Fjordlands National Park, 2012.

Kepler Path - The second day of this hike had winds approaching 50mph. My large backpack acted like a sail, so I was pretty worried I would get blown off narrow paths like this. Kepler Track, Fjordlands National Park, 2012.

Glacial River Mists - Terrible weather meant I couldn’t even see the mountain I had come to photograph. But dramatic views like this were possible in the brief seconds I allowed my camera to get wet. Mt. Cook National Park, 2012.

Picton Clouds - The steep mountain faces and notoriously bad weather in this area often create rapidly rolling fog. Picton, Marlborough Sounds, 2012.

The Lonely Mountain - These mountains surround the valley in which the Franz Josef glacier is formed. One of the fastest moving and lowest altitude glaciers in the world. Franz Josef Glacier, 2012.

South Island Horses - New Zealand has no native mammals (except for bats and seals). Mammals didn’t evolve on the isolated islands, so animals like these horses were all brought by human settlers. Kaikoura, 2012.

South Island Fields - Much of New Zealand’s rich farmland is on the South Island. The blur effect in the foreground is actually motion, as I shot this out of a moving bus.

In February 2012, I left my job, friends, and family for one month to live in the New Zealand woods. I slept in a tent (and a lot of hostels), climbed mountains, jumped off cliffs, and drank fresh glacial melt water. Leaving the city to have this kind of adventure was basically the best feeling I’ve ever had, and I want to share that with you. Check out these prints on my landscape prints Kickstarter!

Fringe Focus started as my blog, portfolio, and as a replacement for my ridiculous last name: Loukotka. While I had settled on a color palette, it was difficult to define where my art was going, and how my work should be branded. After exploring poster design, illustration, photography, sculpture, and everything else under the sun… I’ve made a proper mark to tie it all together.

The mark is essentially a really deconstructed set of F’s, comprised of serifs that have been chopped into oblivion. This of course stands for the alliterated ‘Frine Focus’. The arrow shapes themselves also suggest scattered movement or directions. Since Fringe Focus isn’t any one idea or art form, this works pretty well. Plus it looks slick as hell.

The type is House Industries’ Luxury Gold. I wanted wide type that felt classy and timeless, and Luxury Gold fits the bill perfectly. Expect to see it more often on branded bits I come out with later this year.

I’m planning a LOT of cool projects for 2012, so this mark/type change represents how I want to shape things moving forward. Excited to show you what I’m working on, so stay tuned this summer.

Feel free to hit me up on Twitter / @FringeFocus anytime!

I was invited by the Silver Screen Society to design a piece based on Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. The Silver Screen Society is essentially a gallery of work inspired by films (a new film each month). There’s some incredible talent over there, so it was great to be involved with September’s film.

If you haven’t seen Requiem for a Dream, you absolutely should. It’s by no means a happy film, it’s actually rather stressful, but it’s amazingly well done. The film revolves around four characters and their addictions to drugs, but tackles the genre unlike any other film before it. The editing, score, acting, and story are amazingly brilliant.

My design plays off of the quick cuts in the film, as well as the fact that its timeline is separated into seasons (Summer, Fall, and Winter). I searched my photography hard drive for a bunch of discarded shots, and spliced them together to show the three seasons of the story. The center shows a character in a fetal position, which is actually the closing shot of the film. The colors and composition are intended to be dreamlike, while showing the stress/nightmare of the center character.

The movie predominantly takes place near Coney Island, so I used some old shots I took in Dallas and in Chicago to make it feel urban. It feels good to finally have a use for a bunch of photos that may have never seen the light of day otherwise.

I really dig how this piece turned out, but let me know what you think in the comments! Or hit me up on Twitter @FringeFocus.

Also, check out the Fringe Focus Poster Store for more designs.

My brilliant design buddy, Kevin Scarbrough (of Robot, Monster, and Ghost Co.), asked me to do a photo shoot with him. Fortunately the photos were not of Kevin, but rather two lovely ladies working with him on his Paper Doll Pinups project. Long story short, Paper Doll Pinups is a burlesque and pinups stationery company. Notebooks, calligraphy and illustrations are all a part of the project, but this photo series will eventually serve as marketing to tie everything together. (Also check out Halloween Pinups, Kevin’s new book project.)

So expect to see more from Kevin and Paper Doll in the future, but for now, here’s a peek at some of my favorite shots. I’m no pinup photographer (at least I wasn’t until now), but we all had a ton of fun putting this together.  I did all of the photography, lighting, and post-processing, but this series was very much a group effort. I’d like to thank Kevin for his planning / organization / awesomeness, and the girls for handling their own makeup / hair / costumes on top of the intense amount of shots we packed into one day at a hotel.

Fun fact: My favorite part of this shoot was me eating an entire bag of cheese cubes while we worked.

Let me know what you think of this shoot in the comments! Stay updated by following @FringeFocus on Twitter, and especially @PaperDollPinups.

I’ve been producing a lot of work this year, and I came to the realization that I needed a more rapid turnaround on updating my portfolio. Cargo Collective is used by a great number of incredible artists, so I decided to bite the bullet and try it out. I was thoroughly impressed by their functionality, and have just finished replacing my entire portfolio with a new one built upon Cargo.

The new design is my customized version of their SpaceCollective theme. The organization may not be original, but it’s dead simple to update, and even simpler to browse. No doubt you’ve seen it before (James White’s Signal Noise Gallery).

From now on, my personal and professional portfolio will reside at: http://cargocollective.com/fringefocus. Exciting! Because Cargo is sexy is hell.

As designers (and developers) we always have the option of building our own system.
Custom code, or a WordPress theme, we sometimes create a more complicated solution. But if your professional life depends on speed and reliability it’s totally justifiable to move towards a third-party system. This new portfolio means the difference between “Eh, I’ll post it next week” and “Hey, I’ll post it now.”

For those of you with difficult websites or dated portfolios: Try out Cargo Collective, Squarespace, or any other third-party if you feel like you need a change. You could even go further and live entirely off of Flickr, Dribbble, Forrst, etc. to show your work. We no longer have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to showing off our work, there are plenty of new outlets that get the job done. If you still dig doing your own thing, stick to it, it’s all good!

Fringe Focus will remain as my blog & portal for everything, but my permanent gallery has moved to Cargo, that is all.

I hope you dig the new work, let me know what you think in the comments!

Posters Everywhere!

A lot of my time this year has been devoted to my poster series. I’ve had a lot of fun doing illustrations in a ton of styles, and it even led to a Kickstarter project. 94 people gave $4,472 to help bring my ideas from my computer to reality. I bought a ton of poster tubes, got seven of my poster designs printed, and even did some photography prints as well. Organizing and shipping posters across the entire planet for nearly 100 people was incredibly time consuming, demanding, and rewarding.

Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to thank everybody involved, and show a few pictures of where these prints ended up!

Check Out These Walls:

Adam from Ontario, Canada

Brian from Texas

Kevin from North Carolina

Mattias from Sweden

Mike from Michigan

ME from Chicago, IL

Thanks E’erbody

One of the most fun things about sending your art around the world, is seeing how far it travels. So here’s a thank-you for everyone who helped out with my Kickstarter project. You’re all my buddies now, even if I’ve never set foot on your continent (YET).

Thanks to:

• Australia – Amintore
• Australia – Matt
• Austria – Oliver
• Canada – Adam
• Canada – Alexander
• Canada – Anna
• Canada – Amir
• Canada – Daniel
• Canada – Jenni
• Canada – Matt
• Canada – Nathan
• Canada – Olivier
• Canada – Olivier!
• Denmark – Matias
• England – Ian
• Germany – Alex
• Germany – Hendrik
• Ireland – Stephen
• Netherlands – Jonno
• Netherlands – Richard
• Sweden – Mattias

• Alabama – Josh
• Arizona – Safwat
• California – Adad
• California – Jeremy
• California – Matt
• California – Michelangelo
• California – Monica
• California – Rick
• California – Stas
• California – Stuart
• California – Winson
• California – Yune
• Colorado – Matthew
• DC – Abraham
• Florida – Bob
• Florida – Daniel
• Florida – Ronald
• Georgia – Christopher
• Georgia – Daniel
• Georgia – Paul
• Georgia – Robert
• Georgia – Todd
• Illinois – Anthony
• Illinois – Brandon
• Illinois – Eugene
• Illinois – Jeffrey
• Illinois – Kelli
• Illinois – Matt
• Illinois – Nick
• Illinois – Nick!
• Maryland – Nicolas
• Massachusetts – Ali
• Massachusetts – Peter
• Massachusetts – Rodrigo
• Michigan – Brandon
• Michigan – Mike
• Michigan – Jamey
• Michigan – Joan
• Minnesota – Cory
• Minnesota – Russell
• New Jersey – Adam
• New York – Allison
• New York – Angie
• New York – Janeen
• New York – Jonathan
• New York – Kevin
• New York – Mike
• New York – Tieg
• New York – Will
• North Carolina – Kevin
• North Carolina – Lenny
• North Carolina – Walter
• Ohio – John
• Oregon – Clyde
• Pennsylvania – David
• Pennsylvania – Robert
• Rhode Island – Adam
• Tennessee – Russell
• Texas – Brian
• Texas – Daniel
• Texas – Lee
• Washington – Laremy
• Washington – Matt
• Virginia – Rick

Grab Your Own Poster

The fun doesn’t stop here! All posters are available for sale in the Fringe Focus Poster Print Store!

Earlier this year, I ran an exciting and successful Kickstarter project. It was tons of fun, and it resulted in printing a ton of my designs and shipping them all over the world. Thanks to everyone who pitched in!

Now, I have extra prints of various designs, and I’ve made them all for sale in case you’re interested / missed the Kickstarter / want more posters.

ALL prints are limited edition, so once these designs sell out, they won’t be available ever again. This is because it’s more fun for me to design new artworks, and nobody wants a print that’s one of a million copies. Most of the designs consist of 30 prints, Although some are 70, 80, or 100. ‘Eight Balls’ is almost entirely sold out, but there’s a decent stack of the other prints.

Now that the store is up, I can spend more time on new designs. I have a ton of ideas, and I’ll tackle them whenever I start to get some free hours. Could be a while, but the good news is I have enough ideas to last a lifetime / kill me. :/

Here’s a link to the Fringe Focus Poster Store.

Thoughts? Comments? Hit me up in the comments! Or follow me on Twitter: @FringeFocus

MVP

If you’re  familiar with basketball, you’ve probably heard the name Derrick Rose recently. Chicago Bulls’ point guard Derrick Rose was recently named the NBA’s 2011 MVP. He’s like Michael Jordan good.

I met up with a great guy here in Chicago a few weeks ago, who wanted to capture the energy and excitement of Derrick Rose in a t-shirt. These are unofficial shirts, so they’re not available everywhere, nor do they contain any official NBA names/logos. They’re for fans here in Chicago.

Not only does Derrick play for the Bulls, he was born and raised  in Chicago. Now that he’s taken his team to the playoffs, you can see why more than a few people here love him. The shirts say ‘Homegrown’ to recognize his local upbringing (and his floral last name…)

Process Shots

When I started illustrating this t-shirt design, I thought it would be fun to take some process shots. I’ve included everything from sketches, incomplete designs, to the finished shirt.

These sketches were done on my Wacom tablet, to quickly figure out ways to organize the imagery. We knew the shirts would say ‘Homegrown’, and that there would be a bull’s head in the shadow of the rose. The rose busting out of the concrete is actually my reference to a poem by 2pac. (I’m not cool, I just happen to know one poem by him)

Derrick Rose was raised on the south side of Chicago. So not only did the shirt need to show an urban environment, I had to make sure the skyline was accurate, and not showing Chicago from some bizarre angle out in the lake. These pictures are early on in the process, where I usually change colors and arrangements quickly. Ultimately I decided a grey shirt worked much better than a red one.

These shots show how each part of the illustration was pushed and pulled. The skyline needed some contrast, so I gave it a red sunset to draw focus to the rose. Later I dialed down the sunset a bit so it wasn’t too bright.

Here you can the next-to-last phase of the design. The colors are finished and I decided against using a separate color for the rose stem. The arrangement is fine, but the design was still a bit too clean. The rose itself also didn’t scream the fact that is was a rose. ‘Homegrown’ found its proper place in perspective on the ground. The previous sketches had given too much attention to the text. The final design solves this by visually pulling you in towards the rose.

Here is the completed design, with tweaks to most of the lines and the rose. The finished illustration uses only 3 colors, each of which would get their own discharge print on an American Apparel t-shirt.

The printing company even captured some great footage of the shirt being printed! Check it out.

The final shirt looks incredible, and is really soft. Great fit, great colors, and it was fun to work on! All work was done through my design company: Collision Labs

Here’s the Adams Barber Shop crew in Chicago wearing the shirts. Pretty exciting to see an idea/illustration take off like this.

One last thing: Derrick Rose himself actually wears my shirt! Although I don’t have any photos of him wearing it yet. Pretty crazy cool though.

I’m not selling these shirts personally, but you can buy them directly from my cool client right here: ThinkingFanDesign.com

Thoughts on the shirt? Drop me a comment, or hit me up on Twitter: @FringeFocus

Tentacles are fun to draw, so I drew eight of them. And the only logical conclusion when drawing eight of something is to draw eight more of something else. Thus you have what we have here, a sneaky octopus stealing pool balls from a table in a bar.

Octopuses (that’s grammatically correct, shockingly) are well known for their affinity with human table-based games. This poster captures the incredibly dexterity of the thief. Fortunately, if you caught him, he could put all the balls back in the rack simultaneously. The wet stains left on the felt are another story.

I started this design not knowing much about billiards or our tentacled friends, and I finished it about the same way. I did learn that the suction cups on their tentacles are generally just referred to as “suction cups”, which was a bit of a letdown.

This poster is being printed at 11×17″ and will be delivered to all of my Kickstarter backers (who bought another poster) for FREE. That project has ended, so there isn’t a way to order this poster for yourself just yet. If there are extras available, or if I print a larger version in the future, a limited edition series would be made available here on the site in the future.

Drop me your thoughts about this octopus in the comments, or find me on Twitter: @FringeFocus