L E G O

Deconstructed and remixed 1970s LEGO manual Art

LEGO Deconstruction Instructions : How to build a helicopter by Fringe Focus Guest Artist: Jarad Solomon

Get this LEGO Deconstructed print right now.

A guest artist?! But wait there’s more…

LEGO Deconstruction Instructions : How to build a grand piano by Fringe Focus Guest Artist: Jarad Solomon

Grab this LEGO print here.

Okay. Introducing Fringe Focus’s first Guest Artist, Jarad Solomon!

As you know, I (Rob Loukotka), often create insanely detailed works that take me a month at a time (sometimes… more). And I have a big workshop full of shipping materials and computers and lasers and CNC machines, etc.

So to make Fringe Focus a bit more vibrant, and to introduce ideas and visions I’d LOVE to have on my wall. I’m introducing some guest artists this year. This is the kind of art I’d buy personally, and I’ve been working with Jarad here in Chicago to find prints you all might really dig.

This, guest artist program, or whatever it is called, is now known as the Fantastic Factory. It is literally 25% of my physical workshop, and is zoned retail (we’re right up to the sidewalk!). My own artwork, Fringe Focus, and manufacturing / shipping remain my number 1 priorities. But why not slice off a little Fantastic Factory of art and have fun with it?

Fringe Focus is Rob Loukotka. Fringe Focus Fantastic Factory is my hand picked favorites, like an art gallery. Hey, it is literally an art gallery!

Here’s another print way zoomed in:

(Close-up) LEGO Deconstruction Instructions : How to build an Easter egg by Fringe Focus Guest Artist: Jarad Solomon

Check out the full print here.

Fantastic Factory Facebook | Fantastic Factory Twitter | Fantastic Factory Instagram

I spy with my little eye…

Tornado seeds! Giant magnets! Dynamite! Rocket powered roller skates! Anvils! Giant Rubber Bands!

‘I Spy’ Gold ACME Posters: Now on Kickstarter Gold

Kickstarter is celebrating their 8th year! And 3 Billion dollars raised for artists around the world. They said the ACME Poster that we (me and you all) helped launch in 2012 was a crazy success that they’d like to show again! It is now a part of Kickstarter Gold!

So I spent a lot of time figuring out how to redesign the poster entirely, into an 18×24″ ‘I Spy’ picture. All 126 ACME gadgets, arranged into chaos, with no titles, no description. I placed all 126 titles at the very bottom of the poster, making it a great challenge to find individual items. Where are the explosive tennis balls? Where are the Sproing Boots? Where are the Spy Car plans?

Illustrations are sized close to the huge 24×36″ poster (well 90% close), but all of the negative space and gaps and ‘order’ have been obliterated. It’s like an ACME dump truck filled a football field with bombs, and you have to find them all. And obviously, no descriptions, and the titles are far down below. Even I struggle to find stuff in this print. It’s fun!
This is an idea several folks who backed the original poster wanted, and I love making chaotic charts. Plus this poster is half the size (18×24″ compared to 24×36″) from the original, which is often easier to find space for.

Lastly, the metallic gold layer is going to look killer. Costs me a tad more to add colors, but all of the white ink is atop the metallic gold, and this should help the drawings really pop off the new ‘Tangy Orange’ French Paper. It’s not red, not orange. A bit warmer than my usual reds.

Oh man! We got some cool lookin’ Apollo 11 t-shirts up in here!

I love how the Apollo 11 posters turned out (the actual ink and paper just look great close-up). So I managed to fit every single Apollo 11 gadget illustration (without re-sizing) onto a single t-shirt! ‘Midnight Navy’ tees with metallic silver ink.

69 NASA gadgets and materials that flew to the moon in 1969, all on a comfy fitted Next Level t-shirt:

The text and descriptions of each object are much too small to be legible on fabric, so they have been removed to make the design a bit cleaner for something simple like a shirt. But all the details of every object drawing are still there! I also added a ‘July 20, 1969’ date to the shirt design, just because it’s cool and might make a good conversation starter.

All shirts are $29, come in sizes from Small through XX-Large, and are available right now.

Note: I am quite suddenly in the middle of moving my entire workshop (and the shipping operation) to a NEW location in Chicago. Your orders (and these shirts) will be shipping from:

Fringe Focus Inc.
2811 N Pine Grove Ave, Floor 1
Chicago, IL 60657

This new shipping office is much MUCH closer to my home, and more efficient. So I’m able to ship a few orders every day! So if you’re waiting on a package, know that I’ve just made a huge step towards making this much faster. Exciting!

Oh man, these are great! You’ve wanted them, here they are: ACME Corporation T-Shirts

Screen printed on ‘Cardinal’ red Next Level fitted tees, the ACME shirts feature your favorite fictional company’s Anvils, dynamite, and a giant magnet! The shirt fabric is soft slightly heathered, and should help make the design feel authentic and vintage (despite being created this month).

These will be shipping in late April, so please order your size (available in S through XXL) now so we have an adequate supply.

This poker poster is a major step for me and the company. I’ve been recovering from severe Major Depressive Disorder, and was unable to draw / ship / operate for several months. This poster is entirely an effort to bring funds (and normalcy) back to Fringe Focus, so I can order materials, ship tubes, ship frames, etc. In addition to depression being an insanely tough battle, I also have to pay for this leave of absence (literally) due to my lack of any art releases since June 2016.

My goal is to ship The Poker Lexicon posters later, towards the end of April. My priorities instead will be on older orders / packages (Apollos, Frames, etc.) throughout March. I hope to revamp customer service, answer emails, etc. Truly sorry about the trouble, and I hope to keep everyone posted now that I’m building things back up.

250 poker terms in one densely packed infographic poster.

The Poker Lexicon

While I haven’t been playing much recently, throughout my life I’ve been super fascinated and psyched about poker. My friends and I often had Texas Hold’em tournaments (home games, we sadly aren’t very good). There is insane depth and complexity to the game. It’s a profession, a culture, a way of life for some people… and all you really need is a deck of cards.

I wrote down everything I’ve learned over the years, and collected hundreds more poker terms into a spreadsheet. Then I boiled this down into roughly 250 terms across 52 categories. I organized all of these (somehow) into an illustrated 18 x 24″ infographic poster.

The Poker Lexicon is ridiculously densely packed. Like if you didn’t know much about poker, this is plenty to get you started. If you DO know a lot about poker, then this is a simply a way better looking alternative to any poker related art that I’ve seen.

• The Poker Lexicon | Poker Vocabulary Infographic Posters
• Title: The Poker Lexicon
• Signed by Rob Loukotka
• 18 x 24″
• 2 Color screen print

Available now for just $39

These open edition posters will be screen printed on thick 100C cover stock. Each big 18 x 24″ poster will be signed by hand (by me!). I loved researching this print and finally getting back to work. If you have any other ‘Lexicon’ (vocab) type posters you’d like to see me do, let me know! This one was fun.

— Rob Loukotka, Donk (that means I’m bad at poker)

PS – Thanks for all of your help and patience over the past year! I hope 2017 will be awesome.

“I draw pictures for a living, but I’m also clinically depressed. I posted about this in my Depression sucks! Also, where is my poster? Nov 16 post on Kickstarter. I am overjoyed and humbled and thankful for the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of messages and encouraging emails I have received since then.

My closest friends are a handful of people. My family is ~ dozens of people. But my customers and fans of my art in general are over 5,000 people! So it’s weirdly important for me to explain my situation to folks like you, who may not know me personally, but might have my art hanging in their hallways or offices.

I had the ACME Kickstarter with over 3,000 customers, and the Apollo 11 Kickstarter with nearly 1,000 people. In between then have been dozens of fun personal projects that thousands more folks have added to their homes. My company has grown from just my side project to a real company with employees, and I can’t even count how many countries we have shipped art to. It’s surreal and fun and amazing!

But in the past year my brain decided “welllllllll shit”. And I can barely function. I rarely see friends, make any art, or even get out of bed on a bad day. It happened gradually but still quickly enough to be absolutely terrifying. It’s been nearly impossible to have a good day, or create new artwork, or even just pay the bills and be a human being.

Depression REALLY sucks. Like, holy shit. And if you have friends or family members suffering from this, I deeply encourage you to reach out and say hi to them, and that you care about them. The tiniest forms of gratitude or encouragement have helped me quite a bit, and I’m sure the same is true for other people in your lives.

I don’t know what this email is about, or why as a business owner I’d email it to 5,000 people without promoting any product or artwork or whatever. But right now I need people to know I am working my ass off to fix myself. I went to an actual hospital and got a legit psychiatrist and therapist, I’ve joined an amazing depression support group, and I’ve been reading as many books as I can to learn more about how to stop this. (If you have advice or suggestions, PLEASE let me know).

I want to draw cool pictures, and print cool shit, and make everybody’s life .001% better. And the reason I haven’t done that much in 2016 is just my impaired brain. But I promise (with your help) that 2017 is going to be better. And I am excited! So stay tuned.

– Rob Loukotka – person.

PS – If you’ve ordered art this past quarter or so and it’s been delayed, this is why. I am doing my best and can obviously refund folks if gift deadlines were missed. I have recruited close friends to help me ship artwork, so please thank my girlfriend Jenn and my other friends when your art arrives, as they surely are responsible for anything positive right now.”

In the blog post following this one, I announce a new poster (first one in 8 months) that was created specifically to raise funds for Fringe Focus to ship all remaining old & late orders. Appreciate your patience!

I spent basically a whole month researching all of the original manifests and stowage lists of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. I collected over 200 items that we sent to the moon, and illustrated 69 of them on one poster (in reference to the historic 1969 moon landing).

200+ items, 69 illustrations, on one 18×24″ poster printed with metallic silver ink. Available now on Kickstarter.

This poster follows in the footsteps of my popular ACME Corporation poster (which collected 126 ACME Co. items). The ACME print took forever to draw, and raised $105,000 on Kickstarter. This Apollo poster is similarly ambitious, but a bit more factual / educational.

The Apollo 11 Collection has already been featured on Gizmodo / io9, Space.com, Mental Floss, Cool Material, Tested, and more!

Adam Savage (of Mythbusters / Tested) digs it too! Very humbling and cool because I’ve been a huge fan of Tested and Mythbusters forever, and I know Adam is an even bigger Apollo 11 nerd than I am (and I am a big nerd).

Basically, this poster is super fascinating if you have any interest in space tech, space history, or NASA gadgets in general. It’s going to look great up on a wall, and is available for just $29 (with free shipping in the US) on Kickstarter. 9 days left in the campaign as of right now, so get at it!

2015 marked the beginning of my most ambitious poster series yet, Famous Desks. At the time I’m writing this, I’ve released six huge posters in the store that each catalog gadgets and items from six different movie series (or cartoons).

I’ve always been fascinated by movie props, and how important some objects are to the plot. There’s so many movie posters featuring actor’s faces or explosions or whatever, but not much cataloging all the incredible devices / weapons / materials used on set. Each desk poster is really just my attempt to make the fictional world it is depicting more real. Making Wile E. Coyote’s cave full of ACME Corporation gadgets more real. Letting you sit sat Indiana Jones‘s desk, or work at Tony Stark’s workbench, or go inside the Ghostbusters firehouse. Seeing every single gadget Q ever made for 007, or all the gadgets that Doc Brown had in his dirty garage from Back to the Future.

View Large Image (And share if you like)

Each print has been crazy complex, and for the first time, I’m cataloging them all together in some easy-to-browse imagery for both the blog and social media stuff. It’s kind of hard to condense six 36″ long posters into an easy-to-comprehend image. This is like 18 feet of detailed artwork, all at once. All the images in this post I encourage you to post / share if you get a chance.

View Large Image (And share if you like)

These first six posters were an immense amount of work (taking the better part of a year), but I plan to continue the series in 2016. Some fictional desks, and perhaps some real desks as well. They take a long time to draw, but it’s worth it because these are the sort of prints you can stare at over and over and always find new little details. A lot of folks have been hanging them in their offices near THEIR desks, which is pretty cool.

Each 36×12″ Famous Desk poster is available as a print, or as a framed print with a wooden museum-style gallery plaque. View Large Image

If you haven’t checked out each of my Famous Desk illustrations already, here’s a quick link each illustration in the series:

The Desk of Mr. Stark (almost sold out!)

The Desk of Dr. Jones (also will sell out soon)

The Desk of Mr. Coyote

The Desk of Q

The Desk of Dr. Brown

The Desk of Dr. Venkman

Back off man, I’m a scientist.

Continuing with my series of Famous Desks posters, I sat down and drew all the gadgets from what is probably the greatest movie of all time (okay, it’s in the ballpark). I collected the proton pack, ghost trap, Ecto-1, and a ton of other goodies to make a Desk of Dr. Venkman poster. This unofficial fan poster ended up looking pretty awesome, and it was fun to take a super close look at the interior of the Ghostbusters firehouse. I tried to make the layout of the firehouse super accurate (within reason). Tweaked the perspective a bit so there’s great detail on the proton pack as well as the Ecto-1.

I think there’s 33 gadgets or items in this one, not counting structural elements like the poles, door, floor, etc. The items span from both Ghostbusters movies, albeit the majority are from the first film (since Ghostbusters 2 largely uses the same stuff).

I forgot how many hours of drawing this one was. Nothing terrible like 100 hours, this was probably closer to 60 hours by the time it went to print. You can see each and every step, from sketch to finished poster in the animation here. Or check out this 1000px wide animation of this poster.

The Desk of Dr. Venkman is a 2 color screen print that is 36 inches wide by 12 inches tall. It’s signed and numbered by me, with an edition size of just 325. Available now in the store!

Also available is this rarer “Slime” variant in which I drew a bunch of gross ectoplasm all over everything in the firehouse. It glows in the dark! During the day it looks just like regular edition, but at night you can see this slime peeking through. The slime variant poster has an edition of just 175 and is available now.

Good news everyone! A new season of shopping debauchery is upon us! Bask in the glowing warmth of “deals”!

I’m not one to shy away from fun free stuff, especially during the week where we’re all basically deciding what we need to buy our friends and families. So here’s the deal: Buy anything in my store on Black Friday (or the whole week), and I will include a free mystery print in your shipment. Pretty simple, but here’s more details:

The print is 8×8″. It’s hand printed by me, using a wood block print technique here in my workshop. Signed and numbered by me, limited to an edition of however many orders are places during Black Friday Week (November 27th to December 4th, 2015).

I know we are often busy on Friday and this weekend and on “Cyber Monday”. So I made this giveaway last all week. Figure out what sort of gifts you need for everybody, buy art if you can. If you do buy art, grab some here, and get this exclusive print. Cool? Cool. I think it is cool, anyway.

Also, ALSO. Since some folks are buying extra posters and frames and often exceeding $200+ per order, I am giving away whole sets of my ACME Crate Coasters (in addition to the free mystery print) for any orders over $200. This is an easy way to tack an extra gift onto your order, and I hope these two giveaways show my thanks to all of you who are buying art as gifts this holiday season. Rock on!

Note: The final day for US orders to ship and subsequently arrive time (say, by Christmas Eve) is December 18th. So urgent presents should be snagged soon, but you have until the final date of Dec 18th, 2015. Then I’m probably gonna take a week off and drink. Because shipping is hard. I love you though.

International orders: I’m sure Canada can keep ordering gifts, but Europe / Asia, etc. can randomly take between 2 weeks and 6 weeks. So no guarantees on timely holiday gift shipments outside of the US.

Great Scott!

October 21st 2015 was Back to the Future Day. To celebrate, I had spent the weeks leading up to that day illustrating a ton of gadgets in Doc Brown’s garage. The Desk of Dr. Brown has objects that span the entire trilogy, and I tried to ensure they all existed or could exist in Doc Brown’s workshop at some point. Time travel means none of it is anachronistic, because time travel, haha. So the rifle from part III, the metal sunglasses from part II, and the original time machine from part I are all hanging out in his lab at once.

It was a mad rush to get all these items looking great and ready by Back to the Future day, so I’m writing this blog post after the fact now that I have time. Here’s an animated gif of all the hours of work that went into drawing this piece, compressed into under a minute!

See if you can find these gadgets hiding in the poster:

CLOSED: As of September 10th, 2015, I am no longer accepting applications. A TON of people applied, so thank you! Am in the process of emails and interviews now, but no longer looking for any further applications for this position. Cool!

I need some pretty substantial administrative and shipping help at my Chicago workshop. I’m primarily an illustrator, but as my company has grown more successful selling artwork, the customer service and shipping needs have skyrocketed.

I’ve hired one great assistant before, and they’ve stayed with us for an entire year, but now the company needs a lot more help than the 10 hrs per week we had assigned them, so this post is a search for somebody who has 25 hours a week available to work. By this time next year it could become a full-time, permanent position. But until then, we’re looking for a flat 25 hours per week (at least through January). Hours could change mid next year, or possibly develop into a full-time position in 12 months or so. It’s a small company with wild ups and downs, but it’s super fun, and we’re selling more prints now than ever! So come on board.

The Fringe Focus workshop is CURRENTLY in Logan Square. But we’re aiming to move to Lakeview at some point in the next year, so being located near either neighborhood is ideal. Fringe Focus is an art studio, production center, office, and woodshop. Fringe Focus designs (and sells) screen prints, posters, and laser engraved housewares via https://fringefocus.com There are occasionally gallery shows or fairs as well. We just did Renegade Craft Fair and PAX Prime in Seattle. (Helping with shows or prep work is part of the gig, once in a while)

I am looking for an entry level part-time office administrator / workshop assistant. Honestly the title can be whatever, the work changes month-to-month anyway. I produce new work every month, and you’d be assisting me in producing art and housewares for customers all over the world.

This means cutting wood, gluing projects together, staining / finishing, and operating a wide variety of small power tools (table saw, drill press, hand tools). It means responding to a wide variety of customer emails as quickly as possible. And it means working with our pretty killer custom shipping software to mail art to people’s homes, pretty much every day. And ideally we’ll have some free time to invent new projects, make the shop more efficient, and do some marketing.

It’s very much a job for a generalist, or somebody who would like a good look at what it’s like to run a small company by themselves.

Did I mention there is a laser cutter? We’re gonna burn things.

Fringe Focus Inc. is a successful independent art studio. It’s not huge, but it’s a successful machine and requires great care. The workshop is the design and illustration office, the production studio, and the fulfillment center (all in one). The office administrator / workshop assistant would primarily be working in the shipping / packaging station, and at the computer making sure all customers get their art smoothly.

You’ll also learn quite a bit about running a small business, and working for yourself. Fringe Focus Inc. has no clients, and nobody to answer to. There are no conference rooms, no phone calls, and no exact schedule (we’re flexible, but there are windows each day we need somebody at the office for sure). If you’re very detail oriented and can follow instructions, you’ll be able to learn how to operate every machine in the woodshop (including the laser cutter).

So this is 40% admin and customer service job, 40% shipping labor, and 20% totally random stuff we’ll basically just make up as we go along.

Production tasks will vary, but may include:

• Cutting wood and other materials.
• Staining / Finishing / Painting.
• Operating a laser cutter.
• Gluing or fastening projects together.
• Drilling… holes… into stuff.
• (Production tasks will be repetitive, we may make thousands of one item)

Shipping tasks are daily, and include:

• Filling boxes with packing material and artwork.
• Packing tubes with rolled posters.
• Printing and applying shipping labels.
• Mailing postcards and small items.
• Usually need to ship under 10 packages a day, but around once a month we get a wave of 200+ packages at a time.

Organizational / Efficiency Tasks:

• Keeping workbenches organized
• Cleaning & vacuuming dust
• Printing detailed labels / instructions for various tools & machines
• Building jigs to make boring tasks easier for both of us
• Building workshop furniture, like shelves, racks, and tables (to be used as infrastructure here)
• Going on quick runs to the hardware store or art store for supplies.

Customer Service Tasks:

• Remembering tiny details about tons of different orders every week
• Customers are 98% happy. 2% are not. Be able to deal with that 2%
• Writing very quick / swift emails that get the job done

Let me start off by saying that illustrating every James Bond gadget is a really, really big task. Continuing my Famous Desks series, I wanted to include the mother of all gadget collections. The 007 franchise has probably more famous gadgets and weapons than any other series of anything, ever. So here’s the details on The Desk of Q

Research

I watched every official James Bond movie dating back to 1962 (Dr. No). I watched all 23 movies in a row, and included a gadget from the trailer of SPECTRE (The new 007 film coming out later this year). Note: Even though this is unofficial fan art, I did not watch or include any non-EON Bond films (there are some parodies and unofficial films that many folks don’t exactly count as canon).

That’s 24 movies of content, that I had to boil down to just the brief seconds or minutes a gadget appeared, so I could take notes. So, maybe 50 hours of that alone. I would often just draw the poster WHILE other films were on my TV, but would tend to pause whenever Q showed up.

Layout and Illustration Process Animation

Click image to view larger. This is a huge series of snapshots taken throughout the entire 100+ hour drawing process. Basically 5-6 weeks of drawing (Drawing was slow due to the research/detail required), all boiled down to like 1 minute of footage. The composition built itself over time, as I found the best places to hide more gadgets (big and small) on walls, shelves, desks, etc.

The room itself is a mix of the basement pillars from Skyfall, a testing area from Goldfinger (Connery Era), glass testing room from the Moore era, and the subway tunnel wall / pool table is from the Brosnan era. So even the entire location of Q branch is an anachronistic mix of all films.

The Gadgets List

If you have already bought the Q poster, or are considering it, here is an exhaustive list of what gadgets are present in the poster, so you can hunt them down on your wall.

What gadgets are NOT on the list: Gadgets that Bond creates or finds the field. Villain gadgets / villain transportation. Any transportation Bond uses that is not directly shown in a Q scene. Any gadgets from pre-title sequences that aren’t clearly from Q Branch (Things like a ski pole rifle, or the Jet Pack). Gadgets from non-EON 007 films.

What gadgets ARE included: Gadgets directly given to 007 by Q himself. Gadgets used that have any mention to Q Branch. Any gadget seen functioning within Q’s laboratory and workshop, even if 007 does not use it.  Gadgets clearly sent to 007 by Q Branch from afar, etc. And any gadgets Q happens to interact with or mention.

• 1962 Walther PPK
• 1963 Attache briefcase w/ Knife
• Talcum Powder Tear Gas Container
• 1964 Gas Emitting Parking Meter
• Aston Martin DB5
• Miniature Homing Beacons
• Shoe w/ Hidden Heel Compartment
• 1965 Wristwatch with Geiger Counter
• Infrared Underwater Camera
• Miniature Flare Gun
• Miniature Rebreather
• Radioactive Homing Pill
• 1967 Little Nellie (Helicopter)
• 1969 Radioactive Lint
• 1971 Voice Changing Algorithm Machine
• Slot Machine Ring
• (Grappling hook is included, to stand in for various grappling hook devices from all films)
• 1973 Buzzsaw Wristwatch w/ Magnetic Shielding
• 1974 Prosthetic Nipple (I know, I know)
• 1977 Underwater Submarine Lotus
• Tea Tray with Blade Edges
• Hookah / Machine Gun
• Seat with Knife Blade
• Cement Blasting Shooters
• Wet Bike
• 1979 Wrist Dart Gun
• Hydrofoil Boat
• Exploding Bolas (w/ Test Dummy)
• Sleeping Man w/ Machine Gun Inside
• Laser Rifles
• Explosive Wristwatch
• Mirror with Hidden Television
• Boat Mines
• Boat Torpedoes
• Hang-glider
• 1981 Fake Arm Cast
• Umbrella with Claw Spikes
• Indentigraph Machine
• Digital Communication Wristwatch
• Various radios and Red Phone
• 1983 Acrostar Jet
• Tracking Wristwatch
• Acid Pen
• Faberge Egg Homing Beacon
• Television Wristwatch
• A FUCKING CROCODILE THAT YOU CLIMB INSIDE OF
• Union Jack Hot Air Balloon
• Solid Rope
• Body Crushing Spikey Door
• 1985 Snooper Robot
• Image Combining Machine / Microscope
• 1987 Ghetto Blaster
• Aston Martin with Outriggers / Lasers, etc.
• Revolving Sofa Trap
• Gas Emitting Key Chain
• Skeleton Key
• Rake / Antenna
• 1989 Laser Polaroid Camera
• Alarm Clock Explosive
• Dentonite Toothpaste
• Cigarette Pack Explosive Trigger
• Camera Gun
• Radio Broom
• 1995 Grappling Belt
• Explosive Pen
• Wheelchair with Missile Launcher
• Phone Booth Booby Trap
• X-Ray Scanning Tea Tray
• Office Chair (that launches people in the air? I guess?)
• 1997 Ericcson Cell Phone with Remote Driving Screen for a BMW
• 1999 Q’s Boat
• Pool Table (Splits open to reveal a car)
• Bagpipe Weapon
• Inflatable Ski Jacket Ball
• 2002 Glass Shattering Ring
• Invisible Car (Good luck finding it!)
• Virtual Reality Sunglasses for Combat Training
• Wristwatch with Detonator
• 2006 (Technically no Q gadgets, because no Q)
• 2008 (Also no Q gadgets, no Q)
• 2012 Radio Transmitter
• Walther PPK with Hand Signature
• 2015 Aston Martin DB10

So that’s 81 gadgets on the list, plus a few other objects from Q’s workshop strewn about the design, for a total of around 90 things.

Here is a detail shot of the poster:

This took forever to draw, but I’m really happy that there’s finally a visual collection of Q gadgets all in one place. I have screen printed this poster with red ink, but also made a metallic gold variant that will have metallic gold flake.

All Desk of Q posters are limited edition, so get one while supplies last! All posters are 12 x 36″ screen prints, signed and numbered by me personally.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

As you may know, I’ve been illustrating a huge new series this year called Famous Desks. I’ve already done huge prints of The Desk of Tony Stark, The Desk of Indiana Jones, and The Desk of Wile E. Coyote. So now that I am working on (soon to be announced) fourth Famous Desk… I was playing a bit in Photoshop today to make sure all my compositions had a tiny bit of cohesion. Every poster is wildly different, yes, but due to the perspective, layout, and size it was really neat to create a big messy hybrid of all the desks laid on top of each other. So, behold, this abomination that I made in 5 minutes:

(Click image for full view, if you dare) Yes it looks ridiculous. But there’s definitely a clear relationship between the desks, object arrangements, areas of light and dark, etc. Anyway, look forward to another messy desk soon! I just thought this weird image was worth sharing. Have a good day.

The entire poster, start to finish, in an animated gif:

(Click animation to see a wider view at 1000px wide)

Here’s just under 100 hours of work compressed into a minute! Makes it look easy.

My newest poster is The Desk of Mr. Coyote. Think of it as a sequel to my popular ACME Corporation poster of 2012/2013. But this time I re-drew ALL 126 objects (or references to them) in higher detail, with more color, in perspective, in a gigantic desert cave. (Wile E. Coyote does indeed have a cave-home in some episodes, complete with his own mailbox!)

This poster is FULL of easter eggs, and I’m super excited to get these on everybody’s walls so you can inspect all of the Coyote’s stuff. This took absolutely forever to draw, but it’s worth it in the end.

• The Desk of Mr. Coyote is a 12 x 36″ screen printed poster.
• Signed and numbered by Rob Loukotka (that’s me)
• Edition of 450
• Available for $45 while supplies last.

Also available, with a small edition of just 150 (and nearly sold out as of the writing of this post) is this Luxury Metallic Sunset Variant of The Desk of Mr. Coyote. Warmer ink colors, with an extra gold metallic overlay on the red to make the whole poster sparkle a bit. It’s going to be very cool in person, and is available for $65 while supplies last (maybe 20 left, so good luck!)

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

We’re On A Mission From God

Now available, a Luxury METALLIC variant of my popular Blues Brothers poster We’re On A Mission From God.

The original sold out quickly, and this variant is already 2/3 sold out as of writing this post. It has an edition of 175, and is signed and numbered. The red and blue inks have been reversed from the original, and have a new metallic sparkle overlay that will look really cool in person. Check it out.

“Do you bleed? You will.”

Free Batman giveaway print for ALL orders in May!

The new Batman v Superman teaser trailer is cool as hell. So it Batman’s new armor. So I drew it, and am letting you get your hands on this portrait for $0. For everybody, for any order, for the entire month of May. Celebrate the beginning of the Justice League, or just order whatever posters you’d like from the store and get this print for free!

This print is an 8×8″ portrait with metallic inks! It’s dark blue with a cool silver metallic overlay by the fantastic VGKids. The edition size will be based on how many orders occur in May, but rest assured this print is a limited edition. Signed and numbered by me, Rob Loukotka. These are printing now and will ship in mid-May.

Read more about the Do You Bleed? Portrait.

Or check out the cool laser cut wood variant!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

“It belongs in a museum!”

Continuing my series of Famous Desks, I illustrated the desk of our favorite archaeologist: Dr. Indiana Jones. This poster has already been selling like crazy, so I wanted to say thanks and also show you this cool animated gif of the entire poster getting drawn! This was a LOT of work, on and off over 2 weeks, compressed into just 20 seconds!

I included an exhaustive list of items from all three Indiana Jones films. That’s right, there’s only three movies. Crystal Skull never happened.

The drawing process was largely a matter of placing 40+ items on a large desk in a way that felt natural, despite all of these items never actually being collected in one place. It’s a bit of a fantastical collection, and I had fun mixing items from different timelines around each other. The limited edition The Desk of Dr. Jones poster is 36 x 12″ and is available exclusively in my store while supplies last.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Fringe Focus ships out thousands of packages a year. That’s a HUGE opportunity to make thousands of pieces of art 100% sustainable (or close to it), with little to no negative effect on the environment! Some details on how Fringe Focus tries to make Earth better, instead of treating it like a toilet.

SHIPPING BOXES

• Fringe Focus shipping boxes are 100% recycled material. They’re also 100% recyclable (can be recycled again) & biodegradable (easily decomposed).
• You too can source 100% recycled boxes from Eco-Enclose. Highly recommended.

POSTER TUBES

• All Fringe Focus custom poster tubes are 100% recycled paperboard & are 100% recyclable. We recommend Yazoo Mills instead of shitty suppliers like ULine.
• Note: Currently just the tube end caps are made of plastic. Working on finding a sustainable end cap. Until then try keeping your Fringe Focus poster tube & using it for storage. Or protect your art when you move. Reduce, re-use, recycle!

PACKING MATERIALS

• There is a 100% recycled paper alternative to bubble wrap! It’s called ‘Greenwrap‘. Great for protecting frames & other fragile packages. Also available at Eco-Enclose.
• Fringe Focus uses kraft paper to protect prints, posters, and frames which is also 100% recycled & recyclable.

POSTERS AND PRINTS

• Most Fringe Focus posters are printed on cover stock from French Paper Co. in Michigan. This paper plant has run on 100% hydroelectric power since 1922! No fossil fuels are used making the poster paper at the factory! They also use recycled post-consumer fibers, but the percentage varies by color.
• While the majority of prints are on French Paper, a few prints need Mohawk paper which is technically 100% wind-powered. This wind power is purchased via credits post-production, thus good for the environment, but not as ideal as French’s solution.

WOOD

• All Fringe Focus wood artwork / housewares are produced on renewable hardwoods sourced from sustainable forests in the US.
• Currently our Cherry wood is harvested, and this is the truth, by the Amish… with horses! And hand saws. That means no power whatsoever. Imagine your art starting as a tree, cut down by hand, and pulled by horses!

PRINTING PROCESS

• Most Fringe Focus posters are screen printed sustainably by VGKids in Michigan. So inks on Fringe Focus posters are water-based and eco-friendly.
• VGKids does direct-to-screen writing. No films. Stops the usage & waste of TONS of plastic for exposing images. Hooray!
• When using the in-house laser cutter, Fringe Focus doesn’t produce any products by lasering plastics / acrylic (bad fumes, VOCs). And if we’re printing with wood blocks, we also use eco-friendly inks.

All of this info will remain permanently in the Fringe Focus FAQ for future reference. Will also add to it over time.

Today I added some nifty ways to save throughout the store. I know many of you buy my posters individually, but plenty also buy a handful of various prints to give as gifts. Posters are pretty great for birthdays, significant others, coworkers, whoever. I wanted to make the gift buying process less annoying by making many items in the store $5 cheaper when buying 3 of something, or even 2 of something.

Here is a list of items I’ve added NEW ‘volume discounts’ to:

The Desk of Mr. Stark – Now save $5 each when buying 3. (Note: 3 is the limit per person, due to the limited edition.)

12 x 36″ Frames –  Now save $5 each when buying 3 or more. (No limit. They’re frames! Always available.)

Miles and Miles and Miles – Now save $5 each when buying 3. (Note: 3 is the limit per person, due to the limited edition.)

Headless Horseman – Now save $5 each when buying 2 or more. (Note: 3 is the limit per person, due to the limited edition.)

The New Colossus – Now save $5 each when buying 2 or more. (Note: 3 is the limit per person, due to the limited edition.)

Older Items that already had volume discounts, and still do:

All coasters (Save when buying 6 packs, 8 packs, etc.)

Cause & Solution Bottle Openers (Save when buying a 4 pack, great for weddings!)

ACME Inventory Series (Save when buying multiples, even more for full sets)

Whiskey Series (Save when buying mutliples)

The Chimera Collection (Save when buying multiples, even more for full sets)

Marauders Calendars (Save when buying multiples)

Anyway. Hope that helps everybody in the future in case you’re stocking up for a holiday! Stay tuned for more posters (a lot more) in 2015!

My recently debuted The Desk of Mr. Stark (Iron Man Poster) took a very long time to draw. The first in hopefully a series of ‘famous desks’ art prints, I wanted the Tony Stark desk to be crazy full of details and easter eggs from the movies. While illustrating this print, I took progress screenshots all along the way. So here is like 50 hours of work compressed into under a minute:

As you can see, I didn’t follow a planned composition like I normally would. I drew each object in their own layer, and often moved them around on the surface of the desk until it was a good balance between messy and eye pleasing. This poster is 36″ inches wide and is available now so you can inspect all the details yourself when this is up on your wall.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Wanted to give you all a peek at my process for my most recent poster. I’ve been wanting to draw an astronaut golfing on the moon for a while and decided to print it as a 18 x 24″ screen print. I captured a few images before the poster was finished so folks could see the rough early sketches:

The first sketch was actually drawn on my phone while I was on the train. Then I moved to Photoshop to sketch using my actual drawing tablet. Each shot shows a few hours of work, the entire poster took a few days to complete. The animation compresses that work to like 20 seconds. Also I obviously looked at a lot of reference images from Apollo 14, so the moon surface and spacesuit are somewhat accurate.

Miles and Miles and Miles is a 24 x 18″ art print available now in the store. Cool cool cool.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Two new things up in the store. The first is a laser engraved Baby Groot in a real metal bucket. He’s holding two jingle bells and trying to be a Christmas Tree. Because duh.

The second is I have added gift cards to the store. You can buy $30, $60, or $100 gift cards for your friends and family. I’m offering instant digital cards, or wooden cards for those willing to wait for shipping. Both are a great idea for the holidays, as you can get your friends/family art without having to pick a specific print/poster just yet.

Last Day to order to ensure a pre-Christmas delivery is this Friday the 19th. So grab some art in the store, final week! Rock on.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Chicago: See me at Renegade! Dec 6th & 7th

Bridgeport Art Center – 1200 W 35th St

Chicago: I’ll be at booth #139 selling posters, portraits and some new gifts at one of the nation’s largest craft fairs. Renegade Craft Fair, if you haven’t been, is an absolutely fantastic show that features over 200 artists in multiple shows all over the world. I’ll be at this winter’s Chicago show, with a ton of new and old Fringe Focus stuff. There may be a chance to win one of my original ACME Posters. 🙂

If you like art, or if you even have a passing interest in looking at interesting things, come to the show! It’s not just me, it’s like 200 other booths that are bound to be even more fun. There will be FOOD, and BOOZE, and ART EVERYWHERE. Take a date there. Take a friend there. Take your family there. There’s music, and a photo booth, and a Doodlebooth, and  all kinds of cool shit. You could spend hours and hours there and have fun the whole time.

See you this Saturday and Sunday in Chicago! Booth #139. Bridgeport Art Center (1200 W 35th St). Show is from 11am to 6:30pm each day.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

You could buy a Groot, an ACME, a new Toy Series, ANY ORDER will come with one free mystery print I am printing exclusively for Black Friday. The mystery print is a hand printed woodcut on paper, signed and numbered by me. It is very limited edition, and very cool.

Black Friday Giveaway runs all day from12am Central to 11:59pm Central.That means 1am-1am for east coast, or 10pm-10pm for west coast.

This is great way to snag an extra gift for yourself or a friend. Mystery print is 8×8″, Signed and numbered.

In addition to the free print giveaway, all orders of $99 and up will ALSO receive a laser cut pop culture tree ornament(mystery design, but it is cool!). That means if you buy a $99 wood portrait (or whatever), you are ALSO getting a free print, free tree ornament, and free shipping. That’s a pretty good deal. Get on it.

Get yours now! https://fringefocus.com

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

“They call themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy.”

“What a bunch of A-holes.”

Starting to combine some of my woodworking projects with my poster projects in a new Wood Portraits Series. To kick things off, I’ve drawn some Guardians of the Galaxy and have been lasering them into cherry hardwood boards (nonstop) here at the shop.

My laser cutter is actually quite small, so I can only produce ONE portrait at a time. This means nearly every 45 minutes, I have reload the laser and start the process over again. That isn’t counting all of the sanding and finishing I do here at the workshop. Each portrait is only $59 which is an absolute steal for laser engraved artwork of any size. In fact, I may have to raise prices in the future because I’ve been working 14 hour days to prepare all of these portraits for everybody, haha. But for now, you can snag Star Lord, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot in my store for just $59 a pop.

These are super fun to draw. It’s unlike a screen print or digital work, and I have to use incredibly thin lines in some cases because the laser tends to blur out details that are too close to each other. The backgrounds have some subtle gradients that look pretty awesome in person. And every portrait is a different wood board, which mean every single one is unique! Your portrait won’t look exactly like the ones in the photos, but it also won’t look like anybody else’s portrait (not 100% anyway). The wood is full of wavy patterns that actually look like galaxies or dust clouds (perfect for this movie!)

If you would like to see me make MORE wood portraits, with different characters from other stuff, let me know! Hit me up on Twitter or something.

IMPORTANT: If you are subscribed to this RSS feed and not my actual Email Newsletter, I highly suggest you also subscribe to the newsletter. I make some announcements here on the blog, but the newsletter is faster and usually ensures you can hear about new projects before they sell out, etc. I’ll always continue to update the blog posts, but the official Fringe Focus Newsletter is totally the best way to stay up to date on new releases. Cool cool cool!

I drew Groot. And I lasered him into a cherry wood panel. You can buy this laser engraved wooden Groot right here: https://fringefocus.com/i/groot-wood-portrait/ (Limited edition of just 150). He is $59 unframed, or you can add a frame to your order for $40 (so $99 for a framed Groot with gallery plaque).

Framed Groot:

Unframed Groot:

Expect MORE wood portraits soon. I am actively drawing some new characters, and am open to suggestions. These look pretty incredible in person, and I’d love to make some more limited edition characters that are collectible.

I am Groot Wood Portrait

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

As of 9/30/2014: No longer accepting applications.

Hey. I need some help shipping things (and making things) at my Chicago workshop. Come work with me.

The Fringe Focus workshop in Logan Square is an art studio, production center, office, and woodshop. Fringe Focus designs (and sells) screen prints, posters, and laser engraved housewares via https://fringefocus.com There are occasionally gallery shows or fairs as well.

I am looking for an entry level part-time production assistant (only 10 hours per week). I produce new work every month, and you’d be assisting me in producing art and housewares for customers all over the world. This means cutting wood, gluing projects together, staining / finishing, and operating a wide variety of small power tools (table saw, drill press, hand tools). You’ll get to make products every week, and (importantly) ship products every week.

Did I mention there is a laser cutter? We’re gonna burn things.

Fringe Focus Inc. is a successful independent art studio. It’s not huge, but it’s a successful machine and requires great care. The workshop is the design and illustration office, the production studio, and the fulfillment center (all in one). The workshop assistant would primarily be working in the woodshop / finishing area, and the shipping / packaging station.

An apprenticeship means I’ll be producing work, and you’ll learn to replicate it. You’ll also learn quite a bit about running a small business, and working for yourself. Fringe Focus Inc. has no clients, and nobody to answer to. There are no conference rooms, no phone calls, and no set schedule. If you’re detail oriented and can follow instructions, you’ll be able to learn how to operate every machine in the woodshop (including the laser cutter).

There will be a bit of administration work, like printing shipping labels, packing lists, and organizing areas of the workshop. But most activities will have you using your hands, and we’ll try to keep your time sitting at a desk to an extreme minimum.

Production tasks will vary wildly every week, but may include:

Cutting wood and other materials.
Staining / Finishing / Painting.
Operating a laser cutter.
Gluing or fastening projects together.
Drilling… holes… into stuff.
(Production tasks will be repetitive, we may make thousands of one item)

Shipping tasks will be more standardized, and include:

Printing lists of all customer orders.
Filling boxes with packing material and artwork.
Packing tubes with rolled posters.
Printing and applying shipping labels.
Mailing postcards and small items.
(Shipping tasks are very repetitive, usually 20 to 100 orders at a time)

Organizational tasks may include:

Keeping workbenches organized
Cleaning & vacuuming dust
Printing detailed labels / instructions for various tools & machines
Building jigs to make boring tasks easier for both of us
Building workshop furniture, like shelves, racks, and tables (to be used as infrastructure here)
Going on quick runs to the hardware store or art store for supplies.

Skills & Qualifications:

Skills you’ll learn here! But if you have experience, that’s cool too.

• Operating wood shop power tools.
• Operating a laser cutter.
• Operating laser cutter software & and design software.
• Wood finishing techniques.
• Using a spray booth.
• Building furniture.
• Fulfilling online orders.
• Efficiently packing boxes, tubes, etc.

NECESSARY SKILLS AND TRAITS

• Having ‘an eye’. That means being detail oriented and having taste.
• Can follow strict instructions exactly.
• Focused, responsible, and awake when operating power tools.
• Have better handwriting than me.
• Enjoy, appreciate, and practice the visual arts (in any capacity).
• You’re confident, intelligent, and curious.
• Ideally you are looking to become a successful independent artist in the future.
• You like to make things with your hands.
• You’re cool with repetitive tasks. (Packing 200 boxes, sanding 400 coasters, etc.)

QUALIFICATIONS

• Graduated High School (mandatory).
• Graduated College is optional, if you’re currently a student that is fantastic as well.
• Can operate most Google apps, spreadsheets, etc.
• Familiar with Photoshop & Illustrator (any skill level is fine).
• Familiar with basic hand tools (drill, hammer, hand saws, etc.).
• You’re only looking for part time work (this position is ~10 hours per week).
• You live in Chicago.

To Apply:

As of 9/30/2014: No longer accepting applications.

Write an interesting email with the subject Workshop Apprentice to concierge <at> fringefocus <dot> com

If you have artwork, or pictures of previous hobbies, send those as well. Show me stuff!

This is a an entry level paid part-time job. Pay and any decisions regarding schedule & timeline will be determined later. But you should have 10 hours available per week. Schedule will be very flexible and can be shaped to your needs.

No phone calls. Ever. Ever. Ever.

As of 9/30/2014: No longer accepting applications.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Win a print. Join the newsletter.

If you’re already on my email newsletter list, then you are now entered in my random monthly giveaway. I’m just gonna mail a print or some artwork to somebody randomly on the list. If you signed up a year ago, you’re entered! If you signed up today, you’re entered! And you’re entered forever. A new winner, every month, of whatever I feel like giving away. Fun!

There are no more details. Just sign up, and maybe you’ll get free stuff. The newsletter is pretty great anyway, and I usually only send 1 or 2 a month. It’s very chill, and full of new art. That’s it. This is a just a thank you for all those who are subscribers.

I will email you asking your street address when you win. And if you don’t win, there’s always next month! Just stay on the list, and I’ll pick an email at random.

Available now: ACME Dynamite, ACME Magnet, and ACME Jet-Propelled Unicycle screen prints. Part of the ACME Inventory Series.

• Limited Edition: 100 each
• Size: 8 x 8″
• Paper: 100C French Paper
• Colors: 2 ink colors
• Signed & Numbered: Rob Loukotka
• $25 each for 2 or more ($30 alone)
• Available Now

I’ve also added rustic black picture frames to the store for your 8×8″ ACME Inventory prints. They include real glass, and a laser engraved gallery plaque with each print’s title.

Picture Frames: $40 (Frame + $25 print = $65 total. Art will arrive framed and ready to gift!) $180 for any 3 prints with frames! Lastly, there is a MYSTERY 7th ACME item print that will included your order for FREE if you buy all 6 ACME prints, or any 3 ACME prints with 3 frames.

AVAILABLE NOW

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Upcycled hipster bullshit pallet desk! Here’s how to make a thing.

I needed a nice big desk (I’m 6’4″) at the workshop so I could illustrate posters in peace, away from all the saws and dust. Buying a gigantic desk is expensive, and I happened to have tons of wooden pallets from all my Fringe Focus poster tube deliveries. Killed two birds with one stone, and chopped the pallets up into a mighty big desk. Plus I own a workshop, so DIY is the way to go.

How to make your pallet desk:

1. Get some pallets

Honestly, despite what the internet seems to indicate, pallets are not a magical resource ideal for furniture. They’re warped, chemically treated, full of staples, dirt, nails, and rust. They’re ugly, really. BUT if you’re looking to build a desk or table with a lot of character, something that can take a beating, then pallets are great! And it’s great to recycle! If you want a gorgeous flat piece of wood, look elsewhere. I had a ton of pallets in the basement because I receive all of poster tubes on pallets. You could find some at a grocery store if you don’t have any? Or Craigslist?

2. Rip apart the pallets

This isn’t the worst step of the process, but it’s up there. Use a claw hammer and wedge it beneath the board. Slowly rock the hammer to peel the board up, but be careful not to snap the board (pallets are brittle). I suggest moving across the entire board, slowly lifting it up by fractions of an inch at different locations. Many nails will be rusted or break, WEAR GLOVES. A crowbar helps for leverage, if you have one. If your pallet is particularly difficult, use a hack saw, jig saw, or whatever saw to detach the end points first! You lose about 1 inch on either end, but then you only have 3 nails to remove, instead of 9-10.

3. Choose your favorite pallet boards

You’ll want to chuck out severely damaged boards. I found that half of my boards were very dark, and the other half were light (two different pallets). So I chose to lay out the most interesting looking boards in this stripe pattern. Yours could be a lot cleaner, I was aiming for a dirty look.

4. Plan your desk size

I’m not gonna give exact dimensions here, because pallet furniture by nature is all going to vary a lot. But I wanted a very deep and wide desk. I have a large drawing tablet, two monitors, and usually lots of mess on my desk. I decided on an angled design, as that allows the edge facing me to be a tad longer. Even though the desk is 69″ wide, the edge facing me is around 76″ because it’s at an angle. The wide end was 3 feet deep, the shallow end about 2 feet deep. This also gives a wild forced perspective look, as I’m using progressively skinnier boards as they approach the shallow side. Plus I won’t have to struggle to reach a shelf on the wall on the 2 foot side (whereas a 3 foot deep desk requires you to stretch when reaching across).

 5. Plane, joint, or rip your pallet boards

If you are lucky, your pallet boards will be exceptionally straight, blemish free, and without warps. I was not lucky. Many of the boards absolutely required jointing or planing so I could lay them flush with each other to form a table top. But I do not own a jointer or a planer. Solution? I ripped these mofos on the table saw. I did a few of them with a custom built table slaw sled. But many other boards I just ripped freehand or with the saw fence. This let an edge that bowed out half an inch or so become square. It was NOT perfect, but it was much better than attempting to build a desk surface with warped boards. You could also use hand planes on the surface, but the risk of damage is high with so many hidden nails / staples in pallet stock.

6. Stain your pallet boards

Because I had half dark boards and half light boards, I wanted to accentuate the contrast. I took all of my dark pallet wood, and applied a custom pickling stain to it. Basically it’s white vinegar with steel wool and tea bags in it! You let the steel wool begin to rust in the vinegar for a few days, then steep the tea bags. What you’re left with is a stain that rapidly ages your wood. It can make brand new wood look gray, and it made my dark boards even darker. You could also paint your boards, use traditional stain, or leave them untouched. I used my steel / vinegar mixture and it looked great.

 7. Glue up your pallet boards

So it might be good to add joints & biscuits in your boards, but I just laid my pallet boards flush and glued them up. There’s a lot of surface area (and a lot of glue) so it worked. I clamped the wide boards in pairs, and I clamped the smaller boards in threes as seen above. IMPORTANT: My boards had wildly different thicknesses, so I am laying them upside-down to be flush with the work bench. The underside of the desk shows huge thickness differences, but the top is relatively even. You could avoid this by picking better stock, or planing the boards, but I figured I’m only using the top of the desk… so the bottom side can fuck off.

8. Bracket the hell out of your desk top

As I said, I chose very warped / destroyed / old pallet boards. So without a planer I had to rely on some trickery to ensure a level table top I can actually work on. This was done by clamping (and gluing) several 2x4s on the underside of the desktop. Again, the desk surface is flush with my workbench, but the underside has unevenness. I actually placed shims & wedges between the thin boards and the 2x4s to ensure an even fit. Each 2×4 is secured with steel brackets on ANY board that was too uneven / warping. Make sure you keep your clamps on until the glue is fully dry. Also, I put like 5 million screws through the 2x4s into the pallet boards for extra rigidity. Maybe overkill.

9. Cut the desk top down to size

Using the 2x4s as a guide, the desk top can be cut down to size. The ragged edges need to be cut flush. If you made a rectangular desk you could maybe skip this step, but since my desk has a 10 degree angle I had a lot to cut! If you have a large table saw, you could cut the entire desk top flush there. My saw and shop are simply too small, so using a handheld power saw (ideally circular saw) like a jig saw can work in a pinch. This desk is ‘rustic’ so cutting the edges even with a jig saw then sanding (with an orbital sander) worked fine! You can see my flush edge to the table top above (and some more dark stain). If you’re going for a clean look, you’ll absolutely need a table saw or jointer. I just said “whatever” and it was close enough.

10. Add an edge / border to the desk top

Since my pallet desk top was raggedly attached to some 2x4s, I had to hide the slop behind a nice edge. I had some 1x4s leftover from another project, and stained them dark brown for this desk. I used a miter saw to cut the 1x4s at the appropriate angles, and wrapped this 1×4 edge around the entire perimeter of the desk top. Basically 4 boards (each a different length). 45 degree miters on the back (straight) edge, with different angles for the front edge. Glue up the 1x4s (or whatever edge you like), and clamp like crazy. You could edge your desk with trim from Home Depot, paneling, or even tiles. But I went with stained 1x4s because that is what I had (I spent $0 on wood for this project).

11. Sand the pallet desk top

I used an orbital sander with roughly 200 grit sandpaper on the entire surface of the desk. In same cases I went so deep I took the stain right off (partially intentionally). There are a lot of divots, scratches, slivers, etc. in these boards. I wanted the surface rather smooth since I will be interacting with it daily. If your boards are relatively clean, this will be easy. If not, have patience, and wear a respirator! Pallet wood dust can be dangerous, so wear a mask and vacuum up all the dust.

12. Add legs to the desk!

Unless you like working on the floor, you should add legs to your desk. I forgot my phone/camera the day I added the legs, but here is finished system for my leg brackets. I had some 4x4s laying around, so that informed my leg choices. You could easily use steel rods, or 2x4s, or even traditional lathed legs. But I used a 4×4 in each corner, with steel brackets securing it to both the 2×4 support beams AND the 1×4 edge beams. The 4x4s are placed directly under the 2×4 supports, to ensure the weight is distributed across the whole surface. Don’t just plop your legs under the thin pallet wood. For stability, I cut 45 degree angles with the miter saw on some 4×4 braces. These braces are secured with 2″ screws. You can make braces like this at any length you choose, it’s as much an aesthetic choice as it is a structural one. (The 4x4s were stained and sanded in the same fashion as the desk top)

13. Finish your pallet desk (literally)

For finishing woodworking projects, I stick to a lot of the same procedures. I use my custom pickling stain (vinegar, steel wool, tea) for aging the wood when necessary, and I use Danish oil for most surfaces. I mix the Danish oil myself (in a jar). My Danish oil is 1/3 boiled linseed oil, 1/3 polyurethane, and 1/3 mineral spirits. This should be applied with a rag (or a brush) quickly across the entire surface, you want to ‘flood’ the wood so it absorbs the oil leaving no dry spots whatsoever. Let this soak in for 30 minutes, then remove the excess with a dry rag. Then re-apply in the same fashion and let this dry for 15 minutes or so. You can keep flooding with Danish oil on repeat for a while, but I find 2 or 3 coats to work. For coasters and small projects, I’d stop here.

For my desk, I added a final layer of brush-on (oil based) polyurethane a day after the Danish oil had dried. I applied a glossy polyurethane to the pallet desk top and edges, but NOT the legs, to give some contrast. This draws your eye to the glossy top, and makes it feel as if the bright desk surface is floating since you ignore the matte 4×4 legs. Depending on your desired finish (and quality of your wood) you can sand the desk with 0000 steel wool between coats, or 320 grit sandpaper for the polyurethane. Let the poly cure for at least a day before use. And you’ll want ventilation for these steps, as the fumes from the poly aren’t exactly good for you.

There, now go build a desk! Or check out more of my woodworking and fabrication projects.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Good news, A few ACME Corporation Posters are available in the store! All 126 ACME gadgets on one screen print.

I already announced the sale on my email newsletter last week, but I wanted to make sure blog subscribers got the notice as well. Here’s the details: 

Due to a dropped shipping box last year… there are still 200 (now just a few dozen) leftover posters from the original run! (They are unsigned & have a tiny bend in the corner). These original high-quality ACME screen prints are in 99.9% perfect condition, but a small <1cm bend exists on the corner (or edge) of the paper (that will not be visible when framed, yay!). MOST are not numbered or signed. SOME were signed/numbered & crossed out after I noticed the tiny corner bend in 2013. All are really great quality and will be assigned at random. Limit two (2) ACME Corporation poster per person. No limits to the ACME Inventory Series though, you can grab as many as you like!

This is a great opportunity for folks who missed the original (sold-out) ACME Corporation posters and have been trying to get one!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Your favorite ACME gadgets, one print at a time!

I’m introducing a brand new print series, The ACME Inventory Series! The first three released in the series are the Anvil, the Hi-Speed Tonic, and the Tornado Kit.

The ACME Inventory Series is a collection of the greatest ACME products. Each 8 x 8″ signed screen print features a wacky gadget from the fictional ACME Corporation. I once drew a giant poster of all 126 products made by ACME. This upgraded series shows each product in more detail. I hope this series serves to make our favorite dream factory a bit more real.

I’m really happy with how these prints turned out! These first three collectible prints are testing the waters for more. If y’all really like these prints, I’d be happy to release even more ACME prints at a later date. They should look awesome in a hallway, living room, office, etc. The initial release is an open edition, which means (unlike my previous ACME posters) these should be available in the store for a while without selling out. But future prints could indeed be limited edition. Grab your ACME Inventory prints now. Starting at just $25.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

On March 11th 2014, I launched another ‘Make Day’. The theme was Dinosaurs, and you all submitted 21 creative project ideas to me that morning! Thank you.

The finalists were a dinosaur wine bottle holder, mini dinosaurs for potted plants, and dinosaur bookends. I decided that my idea for the dinosaur bookends was the most exciting, so I started developing it immediately. I bought a bunch of red oak from the lumber store, and began drawing dinosaur fossils in Photoshop.

The end result is a carefully layered block of red oak, with four different time periods laser engraved into the end grain. These scientific fossil bookends feature the Dimetrodon from the Permian, Eoraptors from the Triassic, Stegosaurus from the Jurassic, and of course a T-Rex skull from the Cretaceous! They’re all layered in order and weigh just under 2 pounds. These look GREAT on a bookshelf and are available individually or as a set in the Fringe Focus Store.

• Dinosaur Fossil Bookends
• 4.75″ x 5.5″ x 4.25″
• Made from natural Red Oak.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

I am the law!

In November/December of 2013 I began work on a private commision with the awesome members of Statue Forum. They wanted me to apply my style to one of the better reboots of history, Dredd. I love Judge Dredd like I love Robocop, so I jumped on the project.

Working with the group privately, we picked what elements belong in the poster, and I even had folks vote on the paper colors.

The print focuses on the hallway-vibe of the movie, with Dredd and Judge Anderson defending themselves back to back, lawgiver ablaze with bullet fire.

Metallic Paper Version:

There were only 28 prints made on red paper, and 28 prints on metallic paper which sold out a long time ago in private. But I have FIVE artist’s proofs of the regular red AND metallic red editions, which I am putting up for sale Tuesday, March 11th at Noon CST. Cool? Cool.

• 36″x12″ on Wild Cherry Red Paper / Red Metallic Paper
• AP Edition of 5 each
• Signed + Numbered

Available in the Fringe Focus Store.

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Sun, Feb 2nd at 7pm

Meet cool people! Art on the wall! Beer in your mouth!

On February 2nd, Fringe Focus will be having a Prints & Pints party at The Rocking Horse in Chicago!

Join me, my friends, colleagues, and customers at a really great bar in Logan Square. We’re all gonna party! You are invited.

I’ll have nearly ALL of my screen prints framed up on the walls. Plenty of posters will be for sale, including possibly a few sold out prints I’ve been keeping. Most importantly, there will be cool folks everywhere, and some $4 beer specials so we’re all happy.

Meet artists & designers in Chicago, meet me, meet beer in your beer hole. Everybody’s invited. And I guess you can look at my art too. But the beer thing is most important.

The Rocking Horse

2535 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60647

The Rocking Horse is located in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. It’s close the Logan Square Blue Line stop.

Follow The Rocking Horse on Twitter. Or check out their website. Great people! Great beer!

1. Yes this party is on Super Bowl Sunday. A lot of y’all don’t watch football and neither do I, but the Super Bowl WILL be on the TVs near the bar in case you need to catch the score!

2. If you buy art from me at the event, I will have them in tubes, ready to go! You can pay in cash or with Square (credit card reader). Cool!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Screw normal business cards.

My new business cards are wooden coins! Two laser cut designs exist currently: Astronaut & Diver. The  illustrations match my Explorers shipping tubes. These coins are new for 2014, and are an improvement over my business coins from 2012.

I designed, laser cut, and finished these coins myself. They’re incredibly thick & hefty. So if you meet me in person, be sure to ask me for a business coin! I keep them in my pocket instead of cards.

Each coin is 45mm wide, and sealed with a mix of linseed oil / sealer. The front side has the Fringe Focus logo and my name. The back side features either an astronaut or an old timey deep sea diver.

ONE EXPLORERS BUSINESS COIN IS INCLUDED WITH EVERY ORDER!

Limited Time Offer: If you want to get your hands on my wooden business coins, just grab a print in the store. I’ll try include an astronaut coin OR diver coin (at random, for free) in every order!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

The great Box Jellyfish Irukandji is incredibly small. Its body is often smaller than your fingernail, but its tentacles can stretch up to an entire meter. And those tentacles are covered in stingers (nematocysts).

Horrific Pain

Getting stung by an Irukandji is rated among the most intense / horrific pains known to main. On the Discover Channel, and Australian women said of the stings: “I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to endure that level of pain without turning into a vegetable.”

Another victim indicated that a sting from this tiny jellyfish is worse than childbirth: “It’s like when you’re in labor, having a baby, and you’ve reached the peak of a contraction—that absolute peak—and you feel like you just can’t do it anymore. That’s the minimum that [Irukandji] pain is at, and it just builds from there.”

Why did I draw the Box Jellyfish Irukandji? WHY NOT. It’s the most terrifying little blob of pain in the ocean.

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As you may or may not know, Fringe Focus has its own workshop space in Chicago. This is where I store and ship posters, operate my laser cutter, and make stuff. Since I haven’t had many folks over to visit, I thought I’d start with a small photo tour. My apologies for the mess.I share my Fringe Focus workshop space with Max Temkin of Cards Against Humanity & Maxistentialism. He’s a good dude.

Flat file full of posters! So many posters.

My poster tubes are stored up in the rafters. I usually have hundreds more, but you get the idea.

The shop space has a CNC router, laser cutter, table saw, spray booth, and a bunch of other tools so I can crank out coasters and new stuff for Fringe Focus Make Days. Stay tuned and I’m sure I can give a more in depth walk through of my shop in the future.

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I believe I found this tree in the forest outside Arenal volcano. It was truly massive, the trunk may have been 12 feet wide or more. Anyway… this is a tree. Look at it. Or check out the Costa Rica project, prints coming soon.

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Here’s another shot of the valley outside Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica. This was taken on May 21st, 2013. It was overcast most of the day, but right at this moment the sun broke through and it was incredibly hot / humid. Beats January in Chicago though!

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Check out the large version of this shot in the Costa Rica gallery. I wanted to include another shot from the many I took outside Cuajiniquil, Costa Rica. It was just so damn peaceful! This shot is also from the bay, but shows quite a bit more of the small mountain range that made up the Pacific coast.

I’ll probably put together the Costa Rica video soon, and I’ll release that video when a few prints are ready!

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“Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.”

— Henry David Thoreau | Walden, 1854

As an artist and entrepreneur, I think I speak for my peers when I say that we have radically different motivations than the general population. My closest friends and colleagues are business owners, graphic designers, and strangely creative whackos. We’re motivated by a creative itch. An urge to solve really complicated problems. It’s pretty rare that we discuss material possessions, and even rarer that we’d measure success based on income. I don’t even know what my personal income was last year (I will surely know soon when I do taxes though, haha).

I am successful and fulfilled in life when these conditions are met:

• I don’t use an alarm clock in the morning.
• My bills are paid.
• I am creating cool looking shit most days.
• I don’t feel incredibly stressed.
• I can take one long trip per year (usually a month) to another country.

That’s it.

MEASURE SUCCESS WITH YOUR OWN METRICS

I found this quote from Walden fascinating because even in 1854 Thoreau recognized we can just define success for ourselves. For him it was successfully removing himself from society and chilling in a cabin. For me it’s making art and not having a boss.

Maybe your metric for success is inspiring people. Maybe it’s doing good for those who need it. Maybe your success is just graduating school (for now). Maybe success IS a fat pile of cash. But it’s your choice!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

You’ll probably want to view the large version of Monteverde Valley since this is a panorama.

There were a lot of overcast days during my time in Costa Rica. I arrived at the very beginning of the rainy season. Great for hostel / hotel prices, not as great for blue skies (except for around 9am). Daily afternoon rains were actually pretty refreshing since it’s so hot down there. This shot was during a hike through the Monteverde Cloud Forest in May 2013. Decided to release this one more monotone / black & white because the haze was sometimes more attractive than the forest itself.

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So this photo was actually taken right before getting the rental car stuck in the mud. And when I say stuck in the mud, I’m talking Jurassic Park stuck in the mud. I was stuck for an hour. I was saved by a Chinese guy driving his Jeep. He was the nicest drunk driver I ever met (holding a beer and operating the steering wheel with the same hand). He got his buddies to tie a massive rope around the front bumper and drag us out. The car was dragged a good 500 feet through a muddy ditch before it was finally free.

Anyway that’s all I really see in this photo. It may have been a rice field, who knows. Check out my full Costa Rica gallery.

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“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.”

— Henry David Thoreau | Walden, 1854

Many of us travel with friends or family more often than we travel alone. An unfortunate consequence is that your freedom to explore hangs on the speed, opinions, or preferences of your travel partner. Simple tasks like choosing a restaurant for the evening can feel like being mired in quicksand when you’re with a group of friends. Walking with a lot of people seems to get slower and slower as your group size increases.

I’ve noticed this phenomenon outside of travelling as well. Business decisions can take much much longer with a partner. Any quick task can eat up more time than you’re willing to give if you have to wait on the actions of others.

So if you’re waiting to take that trip to Japan, try going by yourself! If you’re excited about snowboarding this season, pack up and go alone if your friends are too busy. If you can’t find somebody to go the movie theater on a given night, go anyway. Obviously socializing is great, but don’t let everyone else’s schedule dictate your life if you can help it. Head out on your own, and there’s nothing stopping you from starting today.

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Macaws have to be pretty high up on the list of ridiculously beautiful animals. It was fascinating and exciting to see them up close in Costa Rica. They’re actually quite loud and obnoxious to each other, always playing / biting / squawking. I saw a lot of these Scarlet Macaws and a few Blue & Gold Macaws as well. Check out the rest of my Costa Rica photos.

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Nothing like a relaxing night alone with your massaging shower head and a bottle of wine.

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Check out a larger version of this shot on the Costa Rica project page.

We were driving to some beach town elsewhere on the Pacific coast, when I got sidetracked in this bay somewhere near Cuajiniquil, Costa Rica. The sun was setting, so instead of getting to our destination with some daylight left, I decided to take a bunch of photos of this bay. There were a few fishing boats, and lots of stray dogs running around. I recall a small dog that ran into the middle of the road and barked at our car to get us to stop (we did) when we drove through this area. Anyway, the sunset was beautiful, the end. This was taken on May 27th, 2013.

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Saw this little poison dart frog while hiking in Costa Rica. He’s basically the size of your fingernail, and has poison strong enough to kill people. But it’s not really absorbed through the skin, so being near these little guys isn’t dangerous unless you tried to eat it… which I did not. This particular species of dart frog has the nickname ‘Blue Jeans’ because of their blue little legs.

I saw a lot of these dart frogs hopping around when I was in the rainforest. It’s so wet all the time that they can survive pretty much anywhere in the forest, as there’s always water. I’ll be adding more photos and prints to the Costa Rica project page this month.

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Click here for a larger shot of Arenal. In May/June 2013, I spent a whole month in Costa Rica. Part landscape photography trip, part vacation.

I got pretty busy and haven’t had time to edit the photos and video from the trip. So my plan is to edit and release a few of these photos as prints sometime this January. There’s also a pretty great video coming, similar to my New Zealand project.

This photo is of Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica, taken in May 2013. Stay tuned on the Costa Rica project page this month for more photos, and hopefully some prints. We’ll see!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

I spent most of 2012 and 2013 taking big risks with my career. Let’s list them!

• Founded a design company with actual employees and overhead.
• Left said design company after 2.5 years with no backup plan other than ‘art’.
• Spent an entire month drawing ONE poster, and another month promoting it.
• Got rid of 100% of paying clients. Again to ensure more time for ‘art’.
• Got a two year lease on the Fringe Focus workshop.
• Bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment for use in future projects.
• Spent nearly four months on a secret woodworking project.
• Spent an average of two weeks on each poster I drew in 2013.

Every risk there worked out very well except for one: My biggest risk in terms of time wasted – “Spent nearly four months on a secret woodworking project.”

Working independently, I measure risk based on how much time I spend on a risky project (all projects are risks in that sense). There are only 24 hours in a day, so every hour used on a failed project is an hour you do not get back. Ideas that don’t pan out, materials that are wasted, hours spent producing items that won’t sell, all of those take away from your successful projects.

Time invested in starting my workshop was a success. Time invested in my ACME Corporation poster was a success. Time invested in my screen prints were a success. But that forward momentum can be halted by spending too much time on a bad project. I spent four months on a project that didn’t work. I never launched it at all.

The 4 Month Boondoggle

From June 2013 through August 2013 I spent a lot of my time on a secret woodworking (game set) project called Marauders.

The project involved a lot of illustration, materials research, and production. I bought a 20,000lb shop press, I bought a CNC router, I drew some fun things. I invested in some custom leather belts and piles of hickory. Towards my intended launch in September 2013, I realized my method of production was not working. I had inevitable wood warping problems, finishing problems due to how the game set would be handled, and it simply took too much time to produce each set. I had a GREAT idea, but the final product would have been too expensive for me to produce. So I shelved it for now. Marauders WILL launch someday, it’s pretty damn cool looking.

Lesson learned: Cut your losses

It’s good to start projects where you don’t know if it will succeed. If we didn’t take risks, we wouldn’t find success. But after months of trying to make one big idea work, I let it go. I could have spent more time and launched it, but the potential upside was lower than the time invested. Short of a gigantic insane success, there’s no way Marauders would have made enough money to justify 6 or 9 months of work. My screen prints are time well spent. My photo prints are usually time well spent. Making housewares on my laser is time well spent. Kill the big project if it isn’t working.  Eventually I used some of the artwork from this project on Marauders coasters because that’s some small positive from a big loss.

Lesson learned: Small failures are good

A project you wasted 4 months on not making a profit? BAD. A project you wasted 1 week on not making a profit? Annoying but not bad. A project you wasted 1 day on and not making a profit? Who cares! You gave it a shot, and only one day is lost.

Lesson learned: Take small risks

If you can develop an entire idea in one day, do it. You may not know if your drawing / blog post / website edit will be successful at all, but the potential upside is almost always greater than one wasted day. Spend one day updating your contact page, or one day taking photographs, or one day writing a new post. There are people developing mobile apps in one day, people overhauling their company’s homepage in one day, and people making great artwork all in one day. The positive potential is huge, and the downside minimal. Put something new in your store tomorrow, reach out to a bunch of potential clients with goddamn infographic you drew, I dunno! But things made quickly still have value.

My small plans for 2014

I did a lot of BIG posters last year that take a lot of time, this year I’m going to introduce some 8×8″ mini prints that I can get to you sooner.

Fringe Focus Make Days in which I gather your ideas in the morning, design it during the day, and get materials / build the product / launch it in the evening.

My 365 ‘make something’ whatever project for this blog.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

I drew a comic about a rodeo clown. He’s very confident, I’ll give him that.

Check out the reddit discussion here from me /u/fringefocus.

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Happy New Year!

2013 was a great year (and the first full year) for Fringe Focus. The ACME Corporation poster was a huge success in late 2012, and that helped fund an entire workshop for me in Chicago. I now store and ship all of my prints from that workshop in Chicago, and have acquired a laser engraver to bring my art to wooden goodies! I sold enough art to survive and keep Fringe Focus afloat with ZERO client work whatsoever. Fringe Focus is 100% art-focused and customer supported, with no commercial work. It’s good for me, it’s good for you, even if it is more difficult than a traditional client-based design company like I had in 2010-2012.

2013 had a small number of BIG projects, which isn’t quite as fun as working on something new every day. There’s a lot of risk involved with having a gigantic project fail, and in 2014 I’d like to mitigate that risk by doing a lot of SMALL projects. So I’m setting up a very loose structure this year to release something every day, for 365 days.

Makin’ Stuff for 365 Days:

I won’t be making a poster every day or anything insane like that. I will continue to make really detailed artwork, and posters that require 2 weeks of illustration time. But in between those huge releases, I’d like to do a post every day, right here on this blog. It could be a single interesting photograph, a quote from an author I’m reading, a comic strip, a small poster, a video, a tutorial, and the list goes on… I don’t care what I put out each day, as long as I’m thinking and producing something. March Edit: Releasing a blog post every single day worked for a while, but was eating up too much of my drawing time. So now it’s a more relaxed “several projects a week” plan instead of a 365 project. Good art takes more than 24 hours, unfortunately. So continue to check everything out, but most daily updates will be on Twitter.

Expect big projects. Expect a gigantic and exciting screen print series called ‘The Uprising’ from me… it has robots! But also expect more small things.

Things I know I’ll be releasing in 2014:

• A few running series of 8×8″ prints. Smaller work means a faster turnaround of ideas, lower prices, and collectability.
• One of these series is related to my ACME Corporation poster!
• Another series is HUGE, both in scope and theme. It has robots.
• In addition to coasters, I may start making lamps using my laser & CNC.
• I may end up taking one singular client, a brewery, to be chosen by me at a later date.
• iPhone / iPad / Android skins and cases. My art, on wood, on your phone!
• Lots and lots of MAKE DAYS. Expect at least 2 in January alone. We can work together to release products in one 24 hour period, with a lot of weird themes.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

The coolest packaging this side of the universe.

Cardboard boxes are pretty boring, and shipping tubes are boring-er yet. Plain white end caps, brown paper, and pretty much nothing else. Shipping materials are an eyesore in my shop and in your home, but not anymore!

I’ve customized the shit out of these all new Fringe Focus shipping tubes, with an infinite wraparound print of the coolest explorers: astronauts and old timey deep sea divers. There’s an obvious visual connection between dive suits and space suits, and I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to draw on tubes that will travel to every corner of the earth. I’m introducing these shipping tubes now, so if you buy a print or poster in the Fringe Focus store, it should come in one of these. Housewares & wood items still come in cardboard boxes, but I expect to make cool versions of those someday as well.

I’ve found that a lot of folks KEEP shipping tubes in their closets, cabinets, and shelves in the event that they want to protect a poster during a move, or give a gift to a friend. Now those ugly tubes you have held onto can look awesome instead. I tried to make the illustration on the tubes cool enough that you’ll feel really guilty throwing it away at all. Haha.

The Astronaut/Diver ‘Explorers’ shipping tubes are free. They’ll just come automatically with whatever posters you order from me. Shipping is still free as well for US orders over $70, and just $6 flat for smaller orders. ‘Explorers’ Tubes are 4″ wide / 18″ long for small posters, 24″ long for medium posters, and 32″ long for really big posters. The design is essentially an infinite loop of black ink on kraft paper. Each tube has black end caps (since they look cooler than white ones). ‘Explorers’ tubes will be shipped to the US and internationally, so yay!

Anyway, grab a poster to get your hands on these tubes. There’s no limit or deadline, these will be around for a while. So maybe I could do new tube designs every year or two? Who knows!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Free Shipping on your order of $70 more. Hopefully forever?

This isn’t a limited offer. So many of you buy posters from me and then add on an additional print for a friend, so I’m trying to return the favor. Shipping is an annoying and expensive part of the online shopping experience, so from now on I’m going to try to introduce some easiness to buying art. If you order has multiple posters, or multiple items, that makes shipping easy and inexpensive on my end, so I’d like to make free on your end!

Any order in the Fringe Focus Store (of any items) that reaches $70 in the cart, will have free shipping (in the United States only). I hope this makes it easier for folks when buying gifts!

Free shipping will be automatically applied to your order if you are shipping to the United States. No code necessary, no nothin’. If you’re only buying one item, I STILL have good news, shipping is now a flat $6 for your order (anywhere in the US).

(International folks: Free shipping doesn’t apply to international orders, but I HAVE knocked down world shipping to $20 flat. Any country, any distance, $20 flat no matter what. That’s pretty good!)

The Future:

Like I said, I hope this is a permanent change, or at least the beginning of a platform where I can mail you art with as little resistance as possible (that’s what my new website is for). Art can be expensive to create, protect, and ship around the world. So between limited editions, fighting to get a copy, and paying outrageous shipping fees… buying art becomes quite a chore. Free shipping (of some kind) on the Fringe Focus website is just step one of me trying to make the art buying process easier. Stay tuned in 2013/2014 for more announcements, including crazy attractive packaging, free goodies, and open/timed editioned prints.

Thanks for being awesome. Enjoy my small but positive gesture at comforting your wallet. Oh, and now’s a good time to buy some art, obviously.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

June 6th, 1944 – D-Day

There are a handful of events in human history that are almost too massive to comprehend, things so complicated and dangerous it’s hard to believe they actually happened. Some of those moments are positive, like landing on the moon in 1969, and others are equally epic but a bit gruesome. The Normandy invasions of 1944 marked the beginning of a turning point in World War 2, and basically changed the course of history.

The Allied invasion of Normandy beaches on June 6th, 1944 was the largest amphibious invasion in world history. 160,000 soldiers invaded by land, sea, and air. Some people often assume the ‘D’ in ‘D-Day’ stands for something specific, but it actually just stands for ‘Day’. ‘D-Day, H-Hour’ is used for planning a military operation with unknown dates or times. The massive invasion was subject to inclement weather (among a million other potential problems), so ‘D-Day’ was simply a stand-in term for the date of the invasion which was subject to change (and a lot of secrecy).

Among all of the pivotal moments in history, this one simply sticks out to me because it was so visually stunning. Under total secrecy, it places an entire global conflict on one strand of beaches. Entire armies bottlenecked into one location, facing an insane myriad of obstacles, traps, mines, and machine gun fire. It was a surreal, terrifying hellscape of a battle that no one photo or image can really capture.

1998’s Saving Private Ryan and 2001’s Band of Brothers miniseries absolutely do the best job of visually capturing the scope and terror of D-Day, so I watched both in preparation for creating this illustration. Saving Private Ryan places the viewer directly inside a landing boat on Omaha beach, and Band of Brothers shows the paratroopers dropping in at night above Normandy. Day invasion, night invasion, and I was recently asked to make a glow in the dark print for a gallery show, so you can see where this is headed.

The print is a 4 color screen print, using 3 grays in addition to glow in the dark ink. The ‘day’ visible print shows the Allied invasion from the sea. Hundreds of soldiers fighting their way through artillery, machine gun fire, land mines, and Czech Hedgehogs (those x-shaped steel thingies used to stop vehicles). The ‘night’ visible part of the print used glow in the dark ink to show Allied bombers and paratroopers dropping in on Normandy (and being shot down). I referenced dozens of official photos from the invasion in 1944 in addition to the films. The poster is incredibly detailed and took quite some time to draw, but I felt it was important to be accurate to the scale of it all.

The print was made for Bottleneck Gallery‘s glow in the dark show, titled “When the Lights Go Out.” My 36×12″ poster is available for sale exclusively at the gallery and their online store. If you check out the show in Brooklyn, there are 60+ more artists featured and black lights throughout the gallery. It looks crazy fun, and maybe you’ll get a free glow stick. 🙂

Day

Night (Glow in the Dark)

• Title: Day of Days
• Artist: Rob Loukotka
• Size: 36×12″
• 3 color screen print on Madero Beach French Paper + Glow in the Dark ink layer
• Limited Edition of 180
• Signed and numbered (by me!)
• Price: $40

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.

As a resident of Chicago, you can’t help but love this movie. As an American, or a music lover, or car lover, or sunglasses wearer, you can’t help but love this movie. Blues Brothers is a ridiculously over the top (and over budget) “action-comedy-musical”. Set in 1980, Blues Brothers may just have the best soundtrack to a film of all time (sorry, Daft Punk) thanks to incredible (singing) cameos by James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and a hell of a lot more. It’s so. Fucking. Good.

I drank some beers, blasted a LOT of blues music, and drew the Blues Brothers print that I’ve always wanted to see. A print that captures our disheveled yet suave outlaws, Jake and Elwood Blues (John Belushi and Dan Akroyd). Black suits, skinny black ties, black fedoras, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and white socks. Okay, the socks aren’t in the print, but they are still awesome. I drew Jake and Elwood driving the Bluesmobile, being chased by no less than 23 Chicago cop cars, and they don’t really seem to care.

I made this print as a part of Gallery1988‘s surprise SNL themed gallery show in Los Angeles, titled “Is This Thing On #2 Too | A tribute to SNL”. The gallery show is open March 29th – April 29th, so if you’re in Los Angeles, go check it out. But you can buy my Blues Brothers print online.

Rather than strict black and white, this print uses dark brown ink on warm ‘Sand’ Speckletone French Paper along with the red and blue ink. I thought there would be no better way to light Jake and Elwood’s faces than with police lights in the background, so I basically split the whole piece using red on the left, and blue on the right. It looks REAL GOOD up close in person. 🙂

• Title: We’re on a Mission from God
• Size: 36×12″ (three feet wide!)
• Edition of 180
• 3-color screen print on Sand Speckleton French Paper
• Signed and numbered by Rob Loukotka (that’s me!)
• Price: $40

Click the detail shot below to look at a 1680px wide shot of my Blues Brothers poster.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

I don’t want Fop, goddamn it! I’m a Dapper Dan man!

Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? is an timeless collection of beautiful scenery, insane characters, and great music. Everybody remembers The Soggy Bottom Boys, Pete getting turned into a toad, and Dapper Dan hair pomade. For Gallery1988‘s “Product Placement” show, Dapper Dan pomade seemed like a perfect subject to illustrate. The theme was to create a real advertisement for a fictional product.

Since the movie was set in 1937, I tried to capture the look and feel of a poster plastered on a wall in a Depression-era Five and Dime store. I borrowed the exact copy from the Dapper Dan pomade can and added a bit of marketing jargon that felt appropriate for the era. I even added a bit in the corner that reads “Genuine pomade used by The Soggy Bottom Boys!” which is technically true?

Printed by VGKids on Cream Speckletone from the French Paper Company, there’s lots of little fibers, dark spots, and flecks appropriate for something that has been laying around since the ’30s. I think this poster would be a great fit for a bar, but I don’t have a bar 🙁

Anyway, these Dapper Dan Men’s Pomade prints are available exclusively at Gallery1988 in Los Angeles, or in their online store.

• Dapper Dan Men’s Pomade
• 24×18″
• 3 color screen print
• 80lb Cream Speckletone paper
• Edition size: 90
• Signed and numbered (by me!)
• Price: $40

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

“Whoa.”

I illustrated this out of a great love for the movie. My work doesn’t generally capture love stories, but the bond between two robots felt too compelling not to illustrate. It’s truly a better love story than almost any other film I can think of. Little robots are so cute that it physically hurts me to watch the movie. “Look he thinks he’s people! Look at him put on his shoes! Oh god! SO CUTE. AGHHH!”

As usual, I’m fascinated as much by the environments in this film as I am the characters. The ‘Trash Planet’ Earth is as pretty as it is dirty. So 95% of this gigantic illustration is my take on the pollution. Trash mountains, dust storms, cubes, even a dense cloud of artificial satellites forming the barrier between earth and space.

Anyway, this is just my take on an already beautiful movie. This is unofficial fan art, but I think it captures a lot of great details. Always fun to watch a movie on a weekend and draw fun stuff.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to drive.”

My newest limited edition print: 007 DB5. James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 is a classic, so when I was approached by Bottleneck Gallery for their Gadgets & Gizmos show, I knew exactly what fictional technology deserved my time and energy. Bond’s gadget filled Aston Martin was unveiled in 1964’s Goldfinger, but also made appearances in Thunderball, Goldeneye, Casino Royale, and 2012’s Skyfall.

Similar to Skyfall, I wanted my print to be deeply rooted in the past. No fancy computers, no buildings, just a DB5 blasting its classic dual machine guns. The custom DB5 (license BMT 216A) was also equipped with battering rams, smoke screens, bulletproof windows, shields, tire shredders, oil slick, rotating license plates, and an ejector seat. You can even catch a glimpse of 007 himself driving the car.

How to get a 007 DB5 print:

This piece is limited to exactly 180 prints available exclusively from Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn (online and at their physical location). It’s a gorgeous two color screen print by VGKids in Michigan, using white and shiny metallic gold ink. The gold ink rocks on the muzzle flares and draws from the DB5’s debut in Goldfinger. It’s printed on gigantic 12×36″ ‘Blacktop’ construction paper from the French Paper Company. Prints are available here at Bottleneck Gallery’s website.

And here’s a shot of the final print file with halftones for screen printing:

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Print isn’t dead!

My ACME Corporation poster is featured in the Wall Street Journal (January 5th, 2013). ACME’s Best Product Ever is featured on page C14 of the weekend edition! Special thanks to WSJ reporter Stefanie Cohen for the great interview and writing.

The article features my idea and design process, as well as my plans to build an art studio in Chicago with the funds from the ACME Kickstarter project.

How to buy an ACME poster:

Be the FIRST to know when the final ACME Posters are up for sale:

My limited edition ACME Corporation posters are almost sold out! 3,254 posters were purchased on Kickstarter, and I’m limiting the edition to just 3,400. That means roughly 100 posters will be up for sale towards the end of January / early February. The only way to be notified when these final ACME posters go up for sale is to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or my email newsletter.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

We wish you a January Christmas!

A good number of the 3,000 ACME Corporation posters on my Kickstarter have been purchased as gifts. An illustrated 24×36″ poster of 126 different ACME gadgets makes an awesome Christmas gift indeed! But I’ll be printing and shipping the posters in January, long after the holidays are over. The tree will have withered, the ornaments will be broken, the fruitcake hardened into stone, only then will your beautiful (and gigantic) ACME print arrive.

Solution: Free ACME Christmas e-cards for everybody! I’m offering two different versions of this ‘We wish you a January Christmas’ card. One is an e-card suitable for typing in names and emailing to friends/family. The other is a print file you can print out on your home printer, fold, and give to that special someone on Christmas morning. Or whatever morning.

ACME E-Card

E-Card Insructions:

1. Download the E-Card .PDF
2. Type the ‘To:’ and ‘From:’ names into the fields provided.
3. Type a message into the field provided.
4. Save the now edited .PDF
5. Send it to your giftee via email or the web! Do whatever you wish with it. 🙂

ACME Print Card – Front & Back &

ACME Print Card – Inside

Print Card Instructions:

1. Download the Print Card’s Front & Back .PDF, and the Inside .PDF
2. Print the Front/Back file on a regular sheet of 8.5×11″ computer paper.
3. Flip that paper over, put it back in your printer, then print the Inside file on the opposite side.
4. Fold the now double-sided page in half (right down the middle).
5. You have a printed Christmas card! Write on it, put it in an envelope, the world is your oyster!
6. Give it to your giftee and explain that Christmas comes in January. 🙂

Want to order a second ACME poster as a gift? Simply increase your pledge from $30 to $60 and I’ll send you two posters in January. International orders would be $40 for one, and $70 for two. (You can also order 3 posters, etc. by increasing your pledge further)

Feel free to use these cards however you want. Email them, tweet them, Facebook them, print them large or small. As long as your giftee knows you got them a rad poster, you’re good!

If you haven’t bought an ACME Corporation poster yet, time is running out! Only 4 days left. These limited edition prints will NEVER be reprinted, so you only have until December 24th at 4pm CST. 🙂

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die.

When Silver Screen Society approached me to create some work for their ‘Alternate Endings’ show, I knew it had to be Batman. ‘Alternate Endings‘ is a collection of prints and posters depicting movie that have ended a bit… differently. Lost characters surviving, new plot twists added, heroes dying, that sort of thing.

(Spolier Alert!) As a huge Batman fan (and Christopher Nolan fan), I jumped on the idea and wanted to depict Gotham if Batman couldn’t save it. Depict Gotham as the nuclear wasteland that Bane and Talia had intended. You no longer have to ‘Imagine the Fire’.

The (gigantic) map that I drew is based on the official maps that appeared in movie and the viral campaigns for The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises. Though fictional, nearly every building and street location is 100% accurate. I froze stills of the movie, compared viral campaign maps to movie maps, and found key locations in the city. Gotham Rogues Stadium, Wayne Tower, Gotham Opera House, and tons of bridges are all destroyed but present in the illustration.

Screen printed by VGKids in Michigan, this limited edition print is available exclusively from Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn. The ‘Alternate Endings’ show is open December 14th to January 4th. So get your ass over to Brooklyn and check it out, or just buy a print online. Special thanks to Silver Screen Society and Bottleneck Gallery for putting this on.

“Ruins of Gotham” is printed on beautiful Madero Beach Speckletone paper from the French Paper Company.

Title: “Ruins of Gotham” – Artist: Rob Loukotka (Fringe Focus) – Size: 12×36″ – One Color Screen Print – Limited Edition of 100 (numbered) – $40

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

A giant poster of every ACME product, ever.

126 drawings of explosives, gadgets, rockets, and more!

I watched every Coyote & Road Runner episode, then hand drew all 126 wacky gadgets, explosives, and items that appeared in the cartoons.

Tornado seeds! Giant magnets! Dynamite! Rocket powered roller skates! Anvils! Giant Rubber Bands! I spent over 100 hours illustrating, designing, and researching this one poster.

The fictional ACME Corporation appeared in nearly all 43 Coyote & Road Runner cartoons from 1949-1994. They make any product you can imagine. I’ve loved The ACME Corporation since I was a kid because they’re a true dream factory.

How amazing would it be if The ACME Corporation were real? That’s why I made this poster; to make our world a little crazier.

Only a giant 24×36″ poster can capture the incredible detail of these fun items. The posters will be beautifully screen printed on thick ‘Wild Cherry Red’ French Paper, signed and numbered by me. One poster is $30 and includes shipping anywhere in the US; $40 for anywhere else in the world.

This is my largest and most detailed project of my life, and I would love for you to be a part of it! This poster is available NOW only on Kickstarter.

Hit me on Twitter if you’d like to chat about this project, or Grab an ACME print now on Kickstarter! Thanks.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

No More Business Cards

I’ve always been fascinated by old wooden nickels. I got a wooden token from a bar once, and kept it in my pocket for weeks until I finally broke down and traded it in for a free beer. They’re bizarre, have a great texture, and feel like some sort of pirate currency

So when faced with the task of designing new business cards for Fringe Focus, I decided to skip that task entirely and make wooden tokens instead. These coins are laser engraved 2″ discs of wood. They’re incredibly lightweight, strong, and can take a beating.

I designed both faces of the coin, added my contact info, and had them deeply laser engraved. Then I aged the wood by staining and sanding each coin by hand. Definitely damaged my fingers with all that sandpaper, but it’s worth it. The final coins lack the computerized burn-in from a laser engraver, and look instead to be 100 years old. They even smell good!

If you see me in Chicago sometime, having a beer, you could probably get your hands on of these coins if you’re interested. I will also be including them with every poster order in the Fringe Focus Store, for free! Because… fun. Backers of my Landscape Photography Kickstarter Project will also receive wooden tokens with their prints.

Check out some process shots below as I was staining:

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

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

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

“I don’t think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.”

“What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn’t he?”

Okay, that quote doesn’t really have anything to do with the Shire. But hobbits said it, and I find it awesome. We should all have second breakfasts more often.

This poster is the third and final design in my Lord of the Rings series. I started with Mordor, and have worked my way backwards to start of the tale. Each poster showcases a different setting that is integral to the story. The hobbits have the Shire, the humans have Helm’s Deep, and the orcs have Mordor. There are plenty of other important environments and cities, but I tried to pick areas that somewhat reflected each book/film.

While these aren’t explicitly posters for the films or the books, they are meant to be chronological. The Fellowship of the Ring begins in the Shire with Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo and the other hobbits. The second poster shows Helm’s Deep, the site of an important battle in The Two Towers. Finally, the series concludes where the Ring’s journey ultimately ends: Mordor.

More than anything, these posters reflect how the movies feel to me. Fellowship of the Ring is green, warm, and inviting. Two Towers is tough, brutal, and dark (also quite blue). Return of the King is black, firey, and chaotic.

Prints of the Mordor poster are still up for grabs on my Kickstarter Poster Project! I’m getting a number of my other designs printed, so getting all three of this series onto paper will have to wait a while. Let me know if you’re interested in these though, if enough LotR fans want posters we’ll make some prints happen. For Frodo! (I’m a nerd…)

Let me know what you think the comments!

Or check me out on Twitter: @FringeFocus

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

“This night the land will be stained with the blood of Rohan. March to Helm’s Deep. Leave none alive. To war!”

I really dug the feeling of the Mordor Poster I designed last week. Showing a well-known epic environment using simple geometric shapes, with tons of sexy cinematic color on top. If Return of the King was represented by Mordor, then Two Towers would surely showcase Helm’s Deep.

Helm’s Deep is home to the Hornburg, essentially a huge fortress set in the side of the mountains. Human civilians took refuge there, as the fortress was believed to be invulnerable. Ultimately a ridiculously badass war between the Uruk-Hai and humans took place. The movie battle was in a rainstorm with tons of catapults, fire, battering rams, and explosions.

Because this poster is capturing what’s memorable from the movie, the actual design of the fortress here is borrowed from the film. This isn’t any specific scene from the movie, but I tried to capture the dark, wet, desperate look of the surrounding area.

Will there be another Lord of the Rings poster to round this out to an even three? Perhaps. More work ahead!

This poster is not YET printed or for sale. You can, however, support my Kickstarter Poster Project to help print my other posters! If that goes successfully, designs like this one might end up being printed later in the year. So check it out!

Let me know what you think of this design in the comments! Or talk to me on Twitter: @fringefocus

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

“One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

I’ve always been a huge fan of the epic environments of Middle-earth. The areas in Tolkien’s books, as well as in the newer The Lord of the Rings movies are some of the most awe inspiring settings imaginable. The Mines of Moria, Helm’s Deep, and especially Mordor are some of the few places in film and literature that are truly worthy of the word epic.

There’s tons of insanely badass imagery to draw from in The Lord of the Rings, and I decided to start at the top: Mount Doom. Also known as Orodruin, this is the volcano where the One Ring was forged, and the only place it can be destroyed.

I wanted to capture the evil of Mordor, the cragged rocks, the soot, the fire, and the despair. Even without showing the armies of orcs or any weaponry the area is incredibly wicked and dangerous. This poster is meant to tie the Ring imagery with its journey (the path Sam and Frodo must take to destroy the Ring). Mordor represents the end of that journey.

This poster is not strictly for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King book or film. I wanted to draw how badass I felt Mordor felt, and this is the result. I have a ton of ideas related to The Lord of the Rings, so it remains to be seen whether this poster will be part of a trilogy for the books, or a smaller piece of something larger. More posters are coming, but I can’t say what or when just yet.

Get this poster now!

Want to buy this poster? You can buy this poster right now on my Kickstarter Project! You’ve all helped me so much, so I said if we broke our goal and raised $3,000, I could afford to print a sixth poster. This is that sixth design. With your help, we’ll be able to get 24″ prints of this Mordor poster, and you can have it hanging on your wall pretty soon.

I also said that if we raise $4,000, I’ll be giving a FREE extra poster to anybody who’s purchased one from me on Kickstarter. Check out my goals update on Kickstarter. Thank you all so so much for your support! You’re the best!

Let me know what you think of this design in the comments! Or hit me up on Twitter: @FringeFocus

My Kickstarter Poster Project (To raise funds to print six of my poster designs)

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

The past couple months, I’ve spent a lot of time designing posters. The overwhelming response from you, the internet, has been that I should print them. I couldn’t agree more, this could be awesome. Let’s do it.

I started a Kickstarter project, so that we can make these prints happen! If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, it’s essentially a website where creative projects of all shapes and sizes can be funded. There are tons of talented artists, filmmakers, photographers, writers, and musicians raising funds for all types of endeavors. I don’t think there’s any better way to get a project like this started.

Whether or not any of my work gets printed is entirely up to you guys. Readers, followers, friends, colleagues, random strangers that like the color yellow, I’m grateful to anybody that is interested.

The Rewards

Oh, I forgot to mention the best part? We all get stuff!

• Hand-wrriten thank you notes.
• Thank you in an upcoming special blog post about this project.
• 6″ signed prints of my photography.
• 24″ signed posters (FIVE different designs available).
• 24″ wood-mounted posters.
• Custom poster design on a subject of your choice.

Every penny helps bring my work closer to being printed, and I can’t thank everybody enough for how awesome you’re being by pitching in your hard earned dollars. I hope these rewards are a sufficient thank you.

Check out my Kickstarter page to grab a poster!

And here’s a video!

One more thing…

We have to raise $2,000 by March 16th (at 6pm), otherwise nothing gets printed at all. That’s the nature of Kickstarter. An all or nothing model that protects artists and fans alike. Don’t worry, you won’t be charged anything unless we hit our goal. There’s no maximum limit though. So my additional proposal is that if we hit $4,000, I will print a sixth poster (the design of which is currently unreleased).

Printing five posters at once, with extra photo prints, shipping tubes, and free shipping anywhere in the US adds up really quickly. Without all of you guys, and the Kickstarter platform, I’d never have this opportunity. So again, thanks so much, rock on!

Donate to my Kickstarter Poster Project!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

In case you were wondering, yes, the red guys are zombies. I wanted to design something where a person faced certain death from a horde of zack.

I’m a huge fan of The Walking Dead comic book series, as well as zombie lore in general. If you haven’t read Max Brooks’ World War Z, do yourself a favor and read it immediately.

I wanted to capture the big picture of a zombie uprising. Sure one zombie in a dark corner is scary, but showing the potential extinction of the human race is scarier. And much more badass. The hero character in the center has two machine guns laying on the ground, although I suppose it’s up to the viewer whether or not you believe they have any bullets in them. Not that it would matter with this many undead.

Want a print of this poster? You’re in luck I have a Kickstarter Project to get my posters printed up right now! Check out my Kickstarter Poster Project.

Additionally, here’s some close up shots. These will be printed at 24″, so there will be plenty of detail.

Let me know what you think the comments. Or buy a print!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly.

There isn’t much of a deeper meaning here, I wanted to draw hotness. I was inspired by a lot of things, researching a bunch of James Bond title sequences and ’70s pinup & porn artwork. The James Bond titles are famous for iconic Bond girl silhouettes, and I definitely had that in mind when drawing this girl. This isn’t meant to be exploitative or pornographic, just hot for hotness’ sake.

The title within the design is borrowed from humanity’s greatest masterpiece: Bootylicious. I think we all need to use this word more often. The photo in the background is one that I took last summer on Mackinac Island. So while this may look a sexy Brazilian beach, it started as freezing cold lake water in Michigan. Let’s ignore that.

I’m in the process this month of getting some poster designs printed. Let me know if you’re interested in this one as well. Plenty more designs in my brain, if I can only find the time!

Let me know what you think of this poster in the comments! Or catch me on Twitter: @FringeFocus

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

I’m no professional photographer, but obsession was indeed strong enough to risk life and limb and venture out into the blizzard last night. With nicknames like “Snowmagedon”, “Snowpacalypse”, “SNOWMG”, and “Snowtorious B.I.G.”, you would be expected to stay indoors. I threw on a lot of extra clothing, and went out in hopes that I wouldn’t break my camera. Some of these shots turned out alright, so I thought I’d share them here.

Some of these photos are available as prints! You can get your hands on some by backing my Kickstarter Poster Project! (Which also includes 6″ photo prints like these)

Even with the tripod at full height, it was often buried up the middle in snow. By the end of the night my viewfinder, and rest of my camera, had ice packed all over it. I believe I saved it with paper towels.

The images above all link to my Flickr as well.

Let me know what you think about these shots, or tell me your blizzard story in the comments! You can also hit me up on Twitter.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Update: This 24″ poster is now available for purchase on my Kickstarter Poster Project!

My newest poster design is an idea I’ve been wanting to tackle for a while.  I wanted to create a design that’s self-referential, that describes its own creation to the viewer. I had a lot of fun making this one. It’s really dry humor.

The main focal point of the image describes itself as “This is the focus”, while one of the bright lines creating the shapes says “Contrast attracts your eyes, you like it.” There are a dozen other little pieces that describe how the poster was made, and what role each part of the design plays. Negative space, lines, texture, radial symmetry, the rule of thirds, it’s all in there.

This is absolutely meant be a sort-of inside joke for creatives and designers. It pulls from the principles and elements of design, Photoshop functions, and even the exact fonts used to create the piece. It’s almost like a blueprint for making itself. The background is actually a photo I took myself of a random cornfield in Illinois.

This poster is inspired by a Deadmau5 song, “This Is the Hook” from his At Play album. It’s an absolutely killer dance track, with a robotic voice that says things like “I like the bass”, “This is the hook, it’s catchy, you like it”, and “The open high hat creates the counter syncopation, making you want to dance.” Dance music is and always will be cooler than poster design, but I wanted my design to capture the same self-referential silliness of his song.

I’m sure the poster text is a little to small to read on the blog, but the design is intended to be printed at ~ 15.5 x 24″. Here’s some more closeup shots!

I’m still working on getting my poster store up and running. I will definitely be getting prints done of my previous “Predators” series, and I have a lot of interest in getting this one printed as well. I absolutely want this hanging on the wall in my office. You can also this poster on my Flickr.

As always, here’s iPhone / iPad / Android Wallpapers:

• “This Is the Focus” iPhone Wallpaper
• “This Is the Focus” iPad & Android Wallpaper

If you’re interested in a print, or have any thoughts, leave a comment!

Or hit me up on Twitter: @FringeFocus

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Update: This 24″ poster is now available for purchase on my Kickstarter Poster Project!

Triptych anyone? This is the third poster in my recently dubbed “Predators” series. Earlier this month I was working on designs with sharks (sea) and wolves (land), so now I’ve moved on to birds (sky). These birds are no particular species, just my own mix of eagle / hawk / raven / nightmare.

I spent a lot of time to make sure the sharks and wolves in the previous posters looked like vicious predators. With birds it’s a bit tougher, because unless you’re a rabbit or mouse, they’re not all that terrifying. Nevertheless, I think I captured the energy of an attack here.

All for One, One for All

Blue, white, red, and lots of colors in between. These posters were all made to mirror each other, and I put a lot of effort into making sure they all borrowed a similar composition. Crazy hypno-patterns, distant bright light, predators and in some cases, prey. Go ahead and check out a large shot of all three posters together on my Flickr.

All three designs feature apex predators, hypnotic patterns, and pretty intense ranges of color. I really dug drawing these birds, probably went through a dozen or so variations of the feathers before I settled on the final look.

If I got these printed, would you be interested in the whole set of three? I could also try printing only one of the three. Or an alternate route would be to print one GIANT poster that integrated all three designs. What do you think?

I’ll work on more posters this month, next month, and beyond. Going to explore some more ideas outside of this series, so stay tuned!

As always, here’s iPhone / iPad / Android wallpapers.

• “Birds of Prey” iPhone Wallpaper
• “Birds of Prey” iPad / Android Wallpaper

What do you think of this poster? Hit me up in the comments!

Or catch me on Twitter: @FringeFocus

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Update: This 24″ poster is now available for purchase on my Kickstarter Poster Project!

“Frostbite” is the newest poster in my newly created “Predators” series. This is a follow-up to the popular “Infested Waters” poster I designed last week. I really enjoyed creating the chaotic patterns and drawing the sharks, so I decided I’d run with that visual theme. There’s a lot of tension showing predators and their potential prey, so I wanted to capture that again with wolves.

The background is a lot of tedious vector work, but it totally pays off. I kept the wolves as simple and sleek as I did the sharks, which brings a lot of the focus to their sinister faces. The textures and color palette are important, but less is more in this case. Overall I think it looks pretty badass.

I’ve already had a number of requests for prints of the “Infested Waters” poster. I’m absolutely looking into this. Posters let me explore concepts I’d never get to use in client work, so expect to see more of this stuff this year. If and when I go to print, rest assured that the prints will be devastatingly cool. First step is to keep drawing. You can also check out this poster on my Flickr.

Lastly, last week I had requests for iPod / iPad wallpapers. I’ve whipped those together for this design as well. Feel free to download the wallpaper and subsequently cover up all the good parts with icons for Angry Birds and Google Maps. 🙂

• “Frostbite” iPhone Wallpaper
• “Frostbite” iPad Wallpaper (also good for Android phones)

What do you think of this poster? Drop me some comments!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Update: This 24″ poster is now available for purchase on my Kickstarter Poster Project!

Sharks are actually one of my worst fears, right behind scorpions. The difference with sharks, is that they’re majestic and badass. I created this poster to illustrate their seemingly gravity-defying terror. I tried to capture the warmth of the ocean surface, as well as the dark depths filled with predators. A beautiful way to die.

My plans for 2011 include a lot more poster designs, so stay tuned! May even get some of these printed if there’s any interest.

Let me know what you think of this design in the comments!

Edit: iPhone & iPad Wallpapers!

By request, I have made iPhone and iPad wallpapers of my “Infested Waters” poster. Feel free to download them and sex up your mobile devices now!

• iPhone Wallpaper
• iPad Wallpaper

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

This is an incredible shot I pulled off following a storm here in Chicago. The sky was eerily chaotic and orange. There probably wasn’t a single person in the city that wasn’t freaking out and taking pictures at this exact moment.

Sort of a Photographer

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a baby with a cellphone, and 10 being Ansel Adams, you could rate my photography skills at perhaps a 3 or 4. Nevertheless, I find photography to be an awesome hobby. Normally I’m trapped behind a computer all day, so being creative outside among the other humans is pretty exhilarating.

My Best of 2010

Including the shot of Chicago above, here’s a collection of my favorite photos that I shot in 2010.

Another great shot of Chicago. The sky really was that pink during the sunrise. Looks like cotton candy.

Crazy storm one night, with lightning striking buildings every few seconds. I made sure to have the color scheme feel like Gotham City rather than Chicago.

Update: Some of these photos are available as 6″ Photo Prints on my Kickstarter Poster Project!

Well there you have it. My best attempts at photography of this year. If you want to see more, check out Fringe Focus on Flickr. I’ll be sure to upload tons more photos in 2011.

What do you think of these shots? Constructive criticism is allowed, haha. Drop your thoughts in the comments!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Good news everyone!

The FringeFocus T-Shirt Store has launched!

I’ve long been a fan of t-shirts as a creative medium. They can be powerful, with beautiful illustrations that encourage activism for a particular cause. They can be exceptionally well designed and find their place in expensive wardrobes. They can even be downright stupid and serve as a sort of napkin for your whole body. I’ve made the latter.

Pirates, Dinosaurs, and Whales oh my!

I actually started making t-shirts years and years ago, we’re talking 2003. Before I lived in Chicago, I sold plenty of funny, ridiculous, and downright stupid t-shirts online. I’ve since abandoned the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of t-shirts I’ve made to focus on web design, posters, and running my business.

Fortunately, I’ve decided to bring back some of my personal favorites to the FringeFocus store. There are eight shirt designs available now for you to take a look at, so feel free to laugh briefly at my bizarre humor. Or buy one and use it to wipe ketchup off of your fingers.

All eight designs are cartoons or illustrations I made myself of things I found personally amusing. I like to make shirts that I’d wear myself, so hopefully you’ll get a kick out of at least a couple of them. If you all like the direction this is headed, perhaps I’ll start drawing up brand new shirts soon!

Check out the FringeFocus T-Shirt Store to see all of the designs!

Let me know what you think of the shirts in the comments!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Digital Love

Daft Punk. Air. Water. Those are my three most important things for survival, in order of importance. I love Daft Punk like Gollum loves the One Ring. This post, however, is not just a window into my worship of our robot DJ gods: It’s also a kickass instructional guide on how to make both Daft Punk helmets. That photo above, by the way, is me.

A number of pictures and articles can be found online about DIY Daft Punk suits, but the vast majority lack technical detail, or end up looking like a deformed baseball helmet. The few sculptors that have made perfect replicas spent thousands of dollars, and use expensive prop-making tools that the majority of us don’t have. That said, I absolutely love their work, but this post is about getting 90% of the way there at 10% of the cost and time.

I made both Daft Punk helmets back in 2007, with no prior knowledge of the tools required. This article will shed some light on that process, and show you how to make your own kickass helmets. I wouldn’t describe this process as ‘easy’, but it’s totally doable and fun as hell!

Tools Required

Everything you can imagine.

Seriously, I needed a lot of things. Screwdrivers, hammers, saws, shears, torches, heat guns, a million other things, and sandpaper. Ohhh, the sandpaper. Each step requires its own materials, so expect a lot of trips to the hardware store. At the very least, you’ll need a garage to work in. A workshop would be amazing, but I did it in my friend’s garage.

Time Required

3 weeks—3 months (It’s up to you)

You could blast through this in a couple weeks if you don’t have a job or school. Unfortunately, most of us only have nights and weekends, so this project will require some insane dedication. I did over the course of many weekends in 2007, and a few more in 2008 when I made an updated helmet. Fortunately the payoff is walking around like Daft Punk, so it is worth it. If you’re in rush to make a Daft Punk Halloween costume, you can never start too early.

I occasionally release tutorials for builds like this on my Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

1. Planning & Drawing

Before anything is built, you’ll need to know what you’re building. Ultimately you’ll end up with helmets that you can wear, but there are plenty of other devices to be built along the way.

You’ll be building the following items: a wire cutter (unless you have one), a styrofoam helmet mold, a bondo helmet mold, a vacuum-form machine (unless you have one), and the final helmets.

The first major piece will be the first mold. And if its going to fit on your head, you better figure out how big your head is. I built both helmets with my friend Brandon, so we took turns taking pictures of each others’ heads. Basically a side-view of your skull that you can drop into Photoshop. Then we displayed side-views of Daft Punk’s helmets on top of our heads, and positioned them to make sure they fit.

Also, laying down and having your friend trace your head is a fun and wonderful way to make sure you get a 100% accurate size of your noggin. Spend a lot of time drawing your head and a general helmet over it to make sure your final helmet will actually fit.

2. Hot Wire Cutter

The first mold will be made of Styrofoam, and you’ll need a hot wire cutter to shape it. Large versions are often used by sculptors and architects to make models. Essentially it’s a long, hot piece of wire that melts the foam as you push it against the wire. You can buy a fancy one online, or be quick and dirty and build your own. We built our own. When I say ‘we’ I’m referring to my friend Brandon who built the helmets with me.

Wire Cutter Construction:

These are less complicated than they sound. We built a simple platform and arm out of wood. A sheet of plywood with a hole drilled in the middle served as the base. Some 2x4s and 2x2s are used, but anything will do. The wire is a guitar string. You’ll want a string with medium thickness, as the thin ones will break, and the thick ones are too hard to maneuver. You’ll basically tie the string around a screw or post at either end and keep it very tight. Buy a handful of strings, they will break.

How does the guitar string heat up? Well, you’ll need a transformer: 25 volt / 2 amps works, but so do plenty of others. Ideally you’ll want one with a knob or switch, so you can control the current. The electrical current will be applied directly to both ends of the guitar string usually by wires with alligator clips at the end. Turn on the transformer, and it will create a circuit. Guitar strings, however, aren’t good conductors. Unlike copper wire, steel wire will heat up significantly when electricity is applied. It’ll glow red hot.

There are million instructions on how to make a hot wire cutter, so use these as references: Making Foam Tools, and Building a Hot Wire Foam Cutter. There’s plenty on Google

3. Styrofoam Cubes

You’ll need to shape your mold out of at least a 12×12″ foam cube. I’d suggest 14×14″ or even bigger, just to give you some wiggle room. Where exactly do you pick up giant cubes of foam? You don’t. This is a specialty item, and we didn’t want to wait for an online shipment. So we made our own cube.

Styrofoam cube construction:

Buy a large sheet of thick foam from Lowe’s or Home Depot. These are generally used as insulation in walls, and come in six foot sheets, twelve foot sheets, etc. You’ll want to ask the staff to saw them in half – at least – so you’ll fit them in your car. Ultimately you’ll need to make roughly 12x12x~2″ (or 14x16x~2″) squares out of this, but it’s best to buy the foam in as large of sheets as possible.

Use your wire cutter to cut squares of equal size. Depending on thickness, you may need anywhere from eight to fifteen squares to stack up a full cube. We used spray adhesive to join the squares together. Spray, then stack, then wait. Continue the process until you have cubes large enough to sculpt a helmet from. Adding significant weight on top of your foam cubes ensures a good bond.

4. Foam Mold Construction

Brandon at our messy foam workstation, circa 2007.

This is where your hard work ends, and your harder work begins. Sculpting the first mold is both artistically and technically challenging, so expect to spend a lot of time getting this perfect.

You’ll need the drawings of your head and the helmet for the foam cube. We started by drawing a side-view of the helmet, a front-view, and a top-view onto our cubes. If you’ve ever taken a drafting class, this will be familiar. The side-view is a profile, the front-view looks like the face of the helmet, and the top-view will essentially be an oval.

We looked at tons of photos. Do a Google image searches for Daft Punk and save every single angle you can find. Some great resources: Hedi Slimane, Google image searches for “Electroma”, and searches for “Daft Punk Helmets”.

Now you need to carve your three views with the hot wire cutter. Obviously if you carve one view entirely, and rip off the excess foam, then your other two drawings will be gone. My approach was to carve 3/4 of a view, then stop, go back, and do 3/4 of the next view, and so on.  That way less pieces fall off, and you can use your drawings as a guide for a bit longer.  Keep in mind, that very quickly, most of your drawing will be laying in bits on the floor. The views on each side of the cube are helpful, but you’ll have a lot of artistic license.

Important note: Go very slowly with the hot wire cutter.  Moving too fast cause the string to bend into a bow shape, which means the center of the string is lagging behind the top. This can cause awkward waves resulting in the top looking fine, but the bottom being extremely warped.  You are cutting through a lot of foam, so give yourself a bit of excess space. The exact helmet shape will be sanded, the wire cutting is just for a big, rough outline.

2007 – Left: Brandon working on the Guy helmet. Right: Me working on the Bangalter Helmet. Oh the hair.

Sand. Sand. Sand.

After wire cutting your cube, you’ll have an amorphous Daft Punk-esque blob. It will takes hours upon hours, even days upon days of sanding to make a perfect model.

Start by carving with knives and razors. This is great for cutting off big unnecessary chunks. For both helmets, I suggest cutting off the ears. On Thomas Bangalter’s (silver) helmet the ears are concentric circles, and on Guy-Manuel’s (gold) helmet they’re large ‘U’ shapes with protruding circles. These are much easier to make separately and attach later.

To sand the mold down, we needed sanding blocks.  Using paper with your hand alone gets aggravating really quickly. The blocks will save your fingertips and your sanity, all while producing a cleaner, more accurate surface.

Thomas Bangalter’s silver helmet will hereby be known as “Bangalter”, while Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s gold helmet will be known as “Guy”, alright?

Bangalter’s helmet has a large visor on the front, so sanding in large horizontal motions works really well. Guy’s helmet is almost entirely a large dome, so moving in sweeping large circles repeatedly is a great way to achieve a smooth surface. Bangalter’s helmet has a lot of hard edges and ridges in the face, so I used the edge of the sanding block pretty often to get all of the tight corners.

Sanding the foam will produce a lot of dust, so be careful. Sweep dust away, work outside, or use a mask to prevent breathing the dust in. Clearing dust away also helps you get a clearer look at the overall shape.

You’ll want to start with high grit sandpaper: 80-100 grit. Get the general shape outlined, then move on to 200 grit, 400 grit, etc. Get as absolutely precise as you can, but there are a lot more layers added later.

Helmet Ears

Use the hot wire cutter to carve the shapes of the ears. Then sand them as accurately as possible, using photos as a guide.  These can be attached with spray adhesive or bondo.

5. Bondo. Lots of Bondo.

As you can see, a lot of time spent sanding leads to some pretty kickass results. Constantly monitor your source photos. Pay attention to all the details, and you’ll have a pretty stunning foam helmet. Unfortunately foam is just the base. You’ll need a mold that’s as hard as concrete if you want it to withstand the casting later on, which means you’ll need Bondo.

Bondo is a polyester resin normally used for auto body repair. More accurately, its a stinky, toxic silly putty that turns hard as rock in a matter of hours. Let me reiterate that: Bondo gets very hard, very fast. That’s what she said. Sanding the foam helmet is easy, sanding the Bondo helmet is a bitch. Get as accurate as you can with the foam model, but realize you’ll be spending a lot more time on the hardened Bondo than you’d expect.

You can buy Bondo from any large hardware store. It consists of a grey putty, and a red hardener. Mix the two together and you’ll have thick, viscous brown butter that can be applied to your foam helmet. We used disposable plastic cups and knives to mix and apply our Bondo. Bondo can set in as little as fifteen minutes so you’ll go through a lot of cups and knives.  Don’t use the Bondo on any expensive tools unless you want to throw those tools away later.

Spread the Bondo carefully, thickly, and evenly. I can’t stress being careful enough. What may seem like a little wet drip on some corner of the helmet could turn into 45 minutes of sanding a few hours later. The smoother your wet Bondo is, the easier it is to sand. Start sanding as soon as it feels dry to the touch. Bondo gets progressively hard over a few hours, so the sooner you start the easier it will be on your arms.

Crappy 2007 cellphone photos – Left: Brandon Bondo-ing Guy’s helmet. Right: Me Bondo-ing Bangalter’s helmet.

Keep applying Bondo. Every nook, every cranny. The foam is really just a platform for an indestructible rock-like mold. Make sure the Bondo layer isn’t too thin. Thin areas will lead to cracks, which would wreck the mold.

Both helmets after having received round one of Bondo and a good sanding.

Sanding the Bondo layer is rough. Any bumps or divets can be painful to get rid of. Sanding can take days. Above you can see green lines on Guy’s helmet. This was to indicate where we had not added enough Bondo. When we sanded it broke through back to the foam, where the spray adhesive ridges are. It is very very important to cover these up completely. We attempted a plastic cast later on, and these ridges – although almost invisible – were greatly amplified. That cast had to be thrown away.

Keep mixing more Bondo, and keep applying it to any thin areas, and especially areas with divets or holes. You can always sand a bump down, but a divet is impossible to fix without filling it in. Using the sanding block on both Bangalter and Guy’s helmets at this stage is essential. Bondo is too hard to sand by hand, plus the sanding blocks will give a smoother finish.

Close up of the round one Bondo coating.

6. Even More Bondo

2007 – Left: Holding my Daft Punk baby. Right: Brandon holding his Daft Punk baby.

The first hard layer of the molds is pretty rough (somewhere between concrete and sandstone). While definitely durable, all of the little scratches and ridges would totally wreck the plastic cast. This is where the final layer comes in: Sealer.

What goes on top of the Bondo is type of sealant. In our case it was a lot like the Bondo hardener, a red putty that would spread and harden. The difference is that its harder, thus it can be sanded with a much finer grit. We’re talking 400 grit up to 1000 just be safe. This sealer was used specifically to cover scratches, fill gaps, and cover divets.

Same process: Cover the mold, and sand it for hours. The sanding block and hand sanding are beneficial at this point. Keep in mind that this is the final mold – any scratches at all will be present in the final helmet – so details are really important.  The ears are probably the most problematic section. You don’t want the ears to appear goopy or uneven, so a lot of time should be spent thickening and perfecting the sharp ear shapes on both models.

Have patience. Sanding the sealer goes slowly, but it’s extremely important. Get both molds perfect, as you absolutely will not want to come back to sanding after you start casting.

Almost finished molds.

You may or may not notice some discolorations in your mold. This is due to sanding through the sealer and into the original Bondo. This isn’t that bad, but can make for an awkward look. We did whatever we had to do to get a smooth finish, so this meant sanding through sealer until everything was even.

7. Vacuum-Form Machine

If you’re really lucky – and I mean really lucky – you already have access to a professional vacuum forming machine. Professional prop makers have them, so do fabrication companies, and the Mythbusters. That’s about it, so you’ll probably have to make your own. Fortunately that’s what I did: Here’s how to do it.

A vacuum formed cast requires two things: Heat and suction. The heat is applied to a large sheet of plastic which causes it to sag. The suction is applied below the plastic, which is sucked tightly around the mold. The plastic quickly cools and you have a perfect plastic copy of your mold. This actually would allow you to make dozens of Daft Punk helmets if you wished. We probably made a dozen, but only two or three that ever turned out awesome enough to keep.

The machine consists of two main parts:  A vacuum / suction table, and a frame for the plastic.  The vacuum table is essentially a large box – attached to a shop vac – with holes drilled on the top to allow air through. The frame is not unlike a picture frame, wrapping around the edges of the plastic to hold it in place as it sags.

Our vacuum table was essentially 4 2x4s with plywood on either side. Every corner is sealed with a hot glue gun, to ensure good suction (that’s what she said). There is a large 1″ hole on top to mount a pole that the mold can rest on, and a ~1″ hold to plug the shop vac tube into. You absolutely need to have the mold floating a bit above the surface, as seen here, otherwise the plastic can’t get sucked around the edges. You can mount the mold on a pole by drilling a large hole into the bottom of the Styrofoam.

That baby powder is also a tool. Sprinkling baby powder (talcum powder) on the mold will help prevent the cast from sticking and give you a better release when you’re finished (that’s what she said).

Unfortunately, I never knew I’d write a blog post about this work three years after I did it, so I don’t have any pictures of the plastic frame. But it’s dead simple. You need to take a measurement of your oven because its where you’ll heat up the plastic. Find the largest size frame you could fit into your oven: That’s the size you’ll make your frame and your vacuum table.

Let’s say the size is 18×24″ (could be larger or smaller). You’ll need to cut plastic sheets (more on that in a second) at 18×24″ with a frame and table that are 18×24″. It’s okay if the table is larger, but the frame needs to be the same size or smaller so you can press it against the table to form a seal.

The frame we built was a large 1″ wide rectangle. One on top of the plastic sheet and one below. These were screwed together through the plastic to discourage slippage. This means every cast required screwing and unscrewing – which wasn’t ideal – but we had limited options.

10. The Plastic Helmet

Now it’s helmet making time. Everything else is a prelude to this step.

The plastic we used was Polyethylene Terepthalate Glycol. Also known as Pet-G. It’s awesome plastic for thermoforming, which is what a vacuum form machine does. This plastic starts sag (melt) at a relatively low temperature, and hardens pretty strong. Additionally, there are transparent versions of Pet-G, which is necessary becuase we’ll need to see out of these Daft Punk helmets. Yay Polyethylene Terepthalate Glycol Halloween costumes!

You can find the exact .060″ thick 24×48″ sheets we purchased here: US Plastics – .060″ Pet-G

I cut these 24×48″ sheets into three 16×24″ pieces each. You’ll make a lot of mistakes with your first casts so its important to buy several sheets, enough for a dozen casts.

Mount a sheet in a frame, and pre-heat the oven. If you’re not comfortable using your own oven – as this releases a bit of toxic fumes – use somebody else’s oven! They’ll never know. Like I said earlier, make sure your frame and sheets are sized to fit exactly into whatever oven you’re using (with perhaps 1/2″ wiggle room so you don’t get stuck, that’s what she said).

An ideal temperature for this plastic was around 275 degrees Fahrenheit, but you may want to play with that. Place the frame with the plastic inside the heated oven. Now watch carefully for 3-6 minutes, you’ll need an oven with a window to monitor the sag. The ‘sag’ is how much the middle of your plastic sheet droops. The hotter and weaker the plastic sheet gets, the more its pulled down by gravity.  There is a minimum sag needed, a few inches, in order properly wrap the hot plastic around the whole helmet. There is also a maximum sag, a point where the plastic becomes so weak that it falls to the oven floor.  I suggest lining the bottom of your oven with tin foil to prevent major damage.

Get your plastic sheet to an optimum weakness / sag (perhaps 6″). Ideally you’ll have partner ready with the vacuum table.  Your mold should be mounted on the table, with a bit of baby powder. The shop vac should be plugged in and turned on. It’ll be really loud, but this only takes a few seconds.

For both helmets, you’ll need to cast twice. One for the front, and one for the back. The entire helmet cannot be removed from the mold in one piece.  Try angling the helmet on the table specifically for a front cast or a back cast.  The real Thomas Bangalter seems to be two pieces as well, so this necessary and accurate. The Guy helmet can be split in front of or behind the ears.

Pull the hot plastic out of the oven with oven mitts. Immediately, and I mean immediately place the frame over the vacuum table with the vacuum table already on.  Press down on all edges to ensure a tight seal and watch as the hot plastic wraps tightly around the mold.  After 30 seconds it should be safe to turn off the vacuum.

There are dozens of websites online that teach the details of vacuum forming. These should help: Vacuumforming Plastic, and Make a Good, Cheap Vacuum Former.

Vacuum forming is hard.  If the plastic is not hot enough, it wont pull tightly. If it’s too hot it will rip. Trial and error is the best way to learn, so buy lots of plastic.

11. Removing the Plastic

By now you have a sexy plastic helmet wrapped around your mold. Unfortunately you now have a large, hard plastic bowl wrapped around a dome. It may seem impossible to get off. There is a solution, and that solution is exacto-knives and strength.

Cut very cleanly with an exacto-knife, around the edges of the helmet.  You should have a lot of excess plastic, so cut right down to the bare minimum of what the helmet needs. Be extremely careful not to press the knife down into the mold itself, you don’t want to start sanding again!

Clear plastic cast of the Bangalter helmet. Still dusty with baby powder.

This is another process with a lot of trial and error. For the Bangalter helmet you’ll be making a clean cut across the very top of the helmet. Look at reference photos for the exact location.  Be sure sure to include 1/2—1″ of overlap so the pieces can be joined together later.

Front and back pieces of the Bangalter helmet.

12. Painting & Other Bits

Almost there. After all of the effort you’ve put in you could choose to have your plastic helmet chromed by professionals. There are companies that specialize in giving metallic mirror finishes to plastic. Due to time, budget, and logistical constraints it may make far more sense to simply paint the helmets. We chose to paint both of our helmets.

Before you open up your spray-paint, the halves have to be joined. The most durable solution is fiberglass. This is a relatively simple procedure and all of the materials can be bought at almost any hardware store.  You’ll need sheets of fiberglass, the actual fiberglass resin, and chip brushes. Chip brushes are crappy paint brushes that cost a few cents and are great for fiberglass because they can be thrown away. Fiberglass will wreck almost anything it touches if you let it dry. So you’ll want to use it only on the inside helmet seam and the chip brushes.

The Banglater helmet was joined by a couple of 12″ long strips of fiberglass running along the inside seam. You may want to hold the halves in place with scotch tape on the outside prior to applying the fiberglass.  Unlike Bondo, fiberglass is very slippery and unstable before it is dry.  Make sure you lock the halves in place, placing the back half of the helmet inside and under the front half.  A small amount of overlap is necessary for strength.

You’ll apply the resin on top of the fiberglass strip – making sure to fully soak the fabric – and make contact with the plastic.  After it dries you’ll have a rock solid helmet.

Painting:

The Guy helmet painted gold.

Metallic spray-paint is the obvious choice for both helmets. The first step is to mask the visors. This is a simple process for the Bangalter helmet. A few strips of masking tape cut to a point with an exacto knife.  The Guy Helmet will require a bit more tape, and covering the front with newspaper should speed up the process. No paint should get on the visor, obviously.

Mount the helmet on a pole or anything to get it off of the floor. Chrome spray-paint was used on the Bangalter helmet, metallic gold on the Guy helmet. Do several very thin coats.  Thick coats will drip, and Daft Punk is not drippy.

A note about the chrome spray-paint. It sounds magical, but unfortunately, it’s at its best in very thin coats on surfaces that aren’t to be handled much. I made two separate Bangalter helmets, and even after allowing the paint to dry for days I still got really nasty fingerprints in the paint after trying the helmet on. It’s possible that chrome paint takes a very long time to settle.  Metallic silver might be more forgiving, but a bit less shiny.  The metallic gold on the Guy helmet has no fingerprint issues, but isn’t quite as reflective.

Try buying a few different paints and experimenting with some test plastic.  Nothing saves time and headache like a test.

Visors:

Arguably the sexiest and most important feature of the helmets are the visors.  Guy’s black dome and Bangalter’s dark stripe visor. We tinted both visors in different ways with different results.  The Bangalter helmet uses window-tinting film, found at any auto store.  Normally this is applied on the inside of your back windshield but I used it on the inside of the visor. Its incredibly clear but a nightmare to put on.  Additionally – if you aren’t extremely careful – you’ll create small bubble that can’t be gotten rid of.  My helmet to this day still has small bubbles in the visor. Be very careful with the window film.

A more elegant solution is used on the Guy helmet: Brake-light tint spray. This is a spray that’s used on car brake-lights to make them appear black when they’re off but still allow the light through when the brake-lights turn on. A generous coating on the inside of the dome makes the Guy helmet perfectly black; no bubbles or defects whatsoever. But there is a major downside: Blurriness. Brake-light spray isn’t made for windows or clarity, it’s just for light to pass through. The Guy helmet’s visor is dark, but quite blurry and a bit of a nightmare to wear indoors. The Bangalter visor is a bit messy in bright light due to the bubbles but still gives clear sight.

All that said, both will suffer from the breathing problem. When you wear a plastic dome around your head – in an all leather suit – you’re going to get hot. A hot head with warm breath means your visor will fog up. The actual Daft Punk helmets have fans to cool the guys down. I haven’t installed fans (and don’t intend to) but it may work. Another solution I’ve thought of, but haven’t installed is small mask inside the helmet.  A painter’s mask with a tube directed downward might direct the wearer’s breath outside.

Other Bits:

On the inside of the helmets it’s necessary to add padding.  Weather stripping from a hardware store is a great solution. Its essentially foam strips that are sticky on one side. Padding the sides of each helmet, as well as the back and mouth areas, ensure that the helmet keeps a tight fit.

The Bangalter helmet has a mouth strip and nose strips that have been cut out with an exacto knife. The real Thomas Bangalter helmet does in fact have several nose slits under the visor, they’re just hard to see. This is pretty much essential if you like breathing when you wear the helmet.

The Guy helmet has rows of wires on the back, and microchips on the ears.  Any old motherboard or remote control can be chopped up for the ears and glued in. The wires can be purchased from a hardware store, and glued in as well. Try getting alternating colors like white, red, green, blue, black, etc.

The Completed Daft Punk Suits Suits

Leather jackets can be bought at any large department store. Leather pants can be found online. Leather boots and leather gloves are easy to find. Go to an outdoor goods store, and you’ll find masks for skiers that project the head and neck. Wearing this black skier mask under the helmet gives you the complete look, and works way better than a turtleneck. Note that awesome leather pants might take a while to find (searching for “motorcycle pants” seems to yield decent results eventually).

So, without further adieu, Brandon wearing Guy-Manuel’s helmet:

And myself wearing Thomas Bangalter’s helmet:

Also check out:

Daft Punk: Final! – Volpin Props

Cosplay.com

Awesome Daft Punk Inspiration – Abduzeedo

Shoot Sucka – Brandon’s DJ Blog

Any thoughts about these Daft Punk helmets? Message me on Twitter.

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We’re Project Gluttons

As creatives, we’re always hungry for new ideas, new challenges, and new opportunities. Whether you’re a full-time designer at an agency, an established creative director, or a freelance web developer, your ears perk up when there’s an opportunity to make something new. Not unlike wild beasts, designers learn from their hungry times to pounce on new opportunities when they arrive. But like any glutton, gorging ourselves on delicious ‘new project’ meat can often cause more harm than good.

Time constraints, budgets, creative burnout, and other responsibilities are often reasons for not pursuing new work. Usually, however, new opportunities approach us. Whether it’s a phone call, an e-mail, or a meeting, sometimes you have to tell a potential client: “No.” Even a moderately successful business or freelancer will have to turn down many more projects than they accept, there are only so many hours in a day.

Saying No is Hard

That said, we’re in a service business so “No” just doesn’t cut it. Most people that approach me are really friendly, cool people just looking for design help, so it can be a huge pain to say: “Sorry, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

Even worse are situations where current clients ask for work that you simply can’t do. It could be outside of the current project’s scope, it could be rushed timing, it could be ethically questionable, or just something you hate doing (MySpace designs, anyone?). Since you already have a good relationship with your client, it can be very difficult to jeopardize that relationship by saying “No” to something they really want you to do.

Saying Yes Might Kill You

Abundant opportunities, and our disposition towards rejecting them, usually lead to insane hours and headaches. As a freelancer, I once took on so much work that I was routinely working 16 hour days, and this eventually led to my first migraine. I went blind a little, for real. Turns out barely sleeping – and programming all the time – is what doctors call ‘stress’.

When approached with a new project (however awesome), think about the emotional, physical, or mental stress it may cause. If it’s more harm than good, then a solid “No” is in order. But how do we do that?

Tips to Help You Not Do Stuff

1. Be Honest. This is true for most things in life, but especially in cases where you need to list plausible excuses. Don’t get caught up in lying about why you can’t do something – it’s much easier to remember the truth – and any good potential client will respect you for that.  Is the budget too low? Explain why. Is it creatively uninteresting? Say that you’re focusing on specific project types like album covers, posters, and logos. Say you’re not looking to add [insert boring spreadsheet project here] to your portfolio at this time.

2. Be Nice. If you have to say no, and you have to be brutally honest, then at least be nice and comforting about the ordeal. Some people may be super excited about their project, and don’t want to feel that you believe it’s not interesting. It may actually be a totally awesome idea, so let them know that! A few compliments go a long way in taking the edge off of a rejection (unless that rejection comes after proposing to your girlfriend).

3. Be Firm. You’ve been honest, you’ve been nice, but sometimes that doesn’t seal the deal. It may lead to a compromise proposal: “Well how about we throw in $100 more?” or “What if we promise to put a link to your website on our corporate bumper sticker?” If that fixes it, then you’ve got yourself a new project! Usually though, it just means you have reinforce what you said earlier. Often this is stage where a no can cave into a yes, but if a project isn’t the right fit – or would hurt you financially – you have to be firm. Some examples to throw in: “As I discussed earlier, I simply don’t have enough time available to work on any additional projects this week/month/season.” or “I’m truly sorry, but again, I’m only actively working on 80’s hair band album covers at this time.”

4. Be Smart. Think about your decision long before you give your answer. If you’re flaky, you’ll tend to err on the side of “Yes”. If you think taking the project might severely hurt your current clients’ timelines, or might cost you thousands of dollars, or might cause you temporary blindness, weigh that against the benefits of actually doing the project. I have never ever regretted saying no to an opportunity, but I have definitely regretted saying yes. There’s always more fish in the sea, but there’s nothing worse than a big annoying fish that makes you design PowerPoint presentations. If you’ve put a lot of thought into your decision, you will be more likely to stay sane and firm in your rejection.

5. Pass the Buck. In very sticky situations, being honest, nice, firm, and smart still won’t help you. The potential project could be from a very close friend or family member, it could be from co-worker down the hall, or it could be for a good cause that would make you feel bad for not doing it (unfortunately you may feel even worse if you did do it). If you work at small company like me, you can always blame your partner, boss, etc. Note that I think this is somewhat disingenuous, and should be used as a last resort. Freelancers, you can often cite deadlines imposed by other clients as legitimate reason that seems out of your control. Again I don’t think this is a great option, but if circumstances are out of your control, then that would be a good thing to remind your brother/girlfriend/dog-sitter/client of.

6. Be Selfish. In an effort for these tips to get progressively less professional and nice, I’ll leave you with selfishness. No matter if you’re an illustrator, a typographer, or a developer, you’re probably in your profession because you love it. If you have a passion for your work, and a potential project just isn’t lighting that fire, then say no. You’re talented, but that doesn’t mean you owe everyone favors. If you don’t want to do something, then don’t. Even one bad project can cause loads of stress that can ruin creativity across the board. I know that personally, I need to be in a pretty good mood to come up with great ideas. If a project will hurt your heart, your mind, or your wallet, you’re always justified in (politely) saying no.

Can’t tell if you should be saying no or yes to a project? Be sure to read my 8 Ways To Get Shitty Clients article.

Remember, be nice, be honest, but it’s important to stick to your guns.

Or check these articles out for additional advice:

Just Say No to Clients – Think Vitamin

Learning To Say “No” Nicely — How to Keep From Burning Bridges – Freelance Folder

How To Say No To Spec Work Requests – Grace Smith

Why the NO SPEC Movement Isn’t Working. And, Why That’s so Awesome! – Greyscale Gorilla

Hiring a designer: a client’s perspective – David Airey

Have any ‘No’ stories you’d like to share? Drop your tips / thoughts / comments below!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

You’re Doing it Wrong.

Many of us, for quite a long time, have been using the word ‘analog’ improperly. As designers, we often refer to analog technologies as being anything preceding digital technology. That’s definitely not the case. So this post is to collectively save us all from ever sounding stupid to technology nerds ever again. And don’t worry, it’s not just us, I’ve seen the same mistake made in the New York Times.

I recall a video that referred to 1950’s classrooms as ‘analog learning’ as opposed to our modern classrooms’ use of computers and the internet. I’ve heard the work of contemporary digital artists and designers compared to the ‘analog art’ of painters. The real kicker, and reason for this post, is those who position film as the ‘analog’ opposite of digital photography.

Film isn’t Analog.

Film is not analog, period. I used to shoot film on a Canon AE-1 from the ’70s. Now I have a digital SLR from Canon, and they’re obviously extremely different. But we have to be careful not to confuse ‘old’ and ‘new’, with two very specific terms like analog and digital.

The word digital, to most people, refers to a device that can capture, store, or display data in a binary fashion. Ones and zeros, on and off, digital is all about numbers. Digital shouldn’t be confused with binary, of course, as digital simply means concrete values. Any system that utilizes solid values (or digits) is digital, binary is simply the most common system. Digital cameras capture light with a sensor, that light is converted into data (numbers), so the use of the word ‘digital’ for your cell phone camera or DSLR is accurate.

Analog, however, is a very abused word. I would venture a guess that the significant amount of readers have used the word ‘analog’ to refer to film cameras. If the new, fancy robot cameras are ‘digital’ then our aging film cameras are ‘analog’, right?  Not at all. Older cameras capture light with film, which is basically plastic, gelatin, and silver halide. When you take a photo (perhaps of your dog drinking a beer), photons hit this material and produce a latent (invisible) image, that can later be brought into view by bathing the film in various chemicals. You could write hundreds of blog posts on film development alone, but the point is that film photography is a chemical process.

Digital sensors and film capture light quite differently, but I’d rather hear the word ‘chemical’, ‘organic’, or ‘magic’ given to film technology before ‘analog’.

Wait, What the Fuck is Analog Then?

Analog, as its name suggests, refers to being analogous to something. If we’re referring to the adjective used in technology, the definition of analog is:

Of, relating to, or being a device in which data are represented by continuously variable, measurable, physical quantities, such as length, width, voltage, or pressure. – Wordnik

So a great example of an analog technology would be a vinyl record. The audio is stored as waves (variable data) within the grooves of the vinyl. Digital audio stores the data as numbers, as finite units of data per second. If that audio is George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, then funk on my brotha’. What’s important is that a vinyl record is legitimately something that deserves to be called ‘analog’. Film is not. Film captures the image physically, there is no data (waves or otherwise) to be found as there is on the record.

Plenty of older (and current) technologies are analog. Just be sure to ask yourself if that device has variable signals/data, or if that device is just really old. A television with a cathode ray tube (CRT) is an analog device; a cave painting of a man stabbing a mastodon with a spear is not. Sound waves being converted into an electrical signal is analog, a film negative is not.

Stop Saying Analog?

I know its hip to be anti-digital sometimes. But before we all drink a PBR and hop on our fixed gear bikes to the thrift store, we have to remember that just because something is old, doesn’t make it ‘analog’. 35MM cameras, oscilloscopes, and the cotton gin are all old technologies, but only one of them is an analog device.

We pride ourselves in the design industry for knowing tons of interesting things about art, advertising, and technology, but this is one adjective we should all cut back on a bit. The good news is we will always have our favorite noun: analogue! We can still say: “A picture is an analogue of a memory”, or “A cubic zirconia is an analogue of a diamond”, and “McDonalds is an analogue of real food.”

Somewhat Related Stuff:

Shake It Photo (iPhone App, makes your digital photos look like Polaroids)

35MM Mondays (Film shots, on a blog by Luke Williams, every week)

Alt/1977 (Alex Varenese’s badass retro posters)

Thoughts? Leave a digital comment!

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Leave a Comment to Win!

Dribbble is an invite-only design network, that allows you to post snapshots ( ‘Dribbbles’ ) of your current work.  They’re a maximum of 400×300 pixels, which allows you throw your work out there quickly, even unfinished designs can get feedback.

Those of you who have heard of Dribbble should be psyched to know that my account was given an invite. If you haven’t heard of it, I encourage you to check Dribbble out.  It’s surprisingly tons of fun, and I’ve seen hundreds of amazing artists using the service.  It’s a great way to connect with active designers, and one of the only ways to see works in progress from so many of our peers.

Here’s a quick look at the service. Each piece you upload can be viewed, commented on, or liked. It’s an amazing way to get almost instant feedback on what you’re working on.  Need an opinion on a website navigation? Dribbble it. Need to hear some criticism on a texture you used on a poster? Dribbble it. Think of it like Twitter, excepts with images, and everybody is kickass. Plus I’m on there too, I guess.

I was given one invite, which allows me to make anyone a ‘Draftee’. And I’m giving that away here!

Rules:

1. Comment on this post!

2. Leave your URL or a link to your portfolio.

3. Tell us something about yourself.

4. DEADLINE – FRIDAY AT MIDNIGHT. JULY 30th 2010.

I’ll pick somebody awesome from the comments after Friday, and they can join me on Dribbble! Even if you don’t win, feel free to check out everybody’s portfolios in the comments. That way everybody can get some feedback and fresh eyes on their work, which is always good.

So what are you waiting for? Comment!

Update: Congratulations to our winner, Lenny from Hey Monkey! Design. He’s doing some great work, plus we both really like macaroni and cheese, and I’m psyched to see what he’ll show us on Dribbble. There were 18 entries, and it was very (very) hard to pick just one. You all had a great collection of work, I wish I had 18 invites to give away. Hopefully Dribbble will open up their registration process in the future, it would be awesome to hang with all of you outside of the blog and Twitter.

Thanks, and feel free to subscribe to the Fringe Focus RSS in case I’m lucky enough to have this contest again in the future.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

If you know me personally, or follow me on twitter, you may have noticed that I’ve been working on a big personal project recently. This project is actually much more than just a website, I’ve actually shifted entirely away from freelancing and now own my own design company. I co-own the venture with my incredibly talented design partner, Lisa Bun.

Plans for starting this studio began in 2009, or possibly in 2008 when Lisa and I worked together at a small web design firm. It wasn’t until early 2010, after having both freelancers for quite some time (and going a tad insane after being home alone 24/7), that our discussions reached a fever pitch and we decided to just roll with it. Lisa is super smart and independent, and I’m not comfortable unless I radically change my entire life every 12 months or so.

Our official name is Collision Labs, Inc. and we’ve technically been operational since March of this year. We’ve even had few great projects already come through our door, all before launching our website. As we all know, personal projects can suck every ounce of time and energy that you have for what seems like forever. Fortunately, forever is over:

You can visit Collision at www.CollisionLabs.com

Collision is a full service design studio, or more accurately: an awesome world where I’ll get to continue my graphic design, web design, photography, and motion work… except in a kickass office. An office where I recently drew a T-Rex DJ:

I’ll keep writing articles on Fringe Focus about freelancing, but it’s really interesting to learn the ins and outs of owning a real business.  I’ll give you a hint, it’s boring! Well, the paperwork is boring, the work is fun as hell.

By the way, if you’re in Chicago, come pay us a visit.  We have a killer office with brick walls and such.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Kill It With Fire.

You already know what I’m going to say. You’re thinking about that work you did two years ago, that project you just had to throw up onto your portfolio. You might have thought “This isn’t the best website/logo/poster/thing I’ve ever done, but it’s alright.  Besides, I need more work to show clients.” Or maybe your first thought was “This is awesome, everyone will want to see this.” Except a few months or years later, you can point out a dozen things you could have done better. Maybe the shadows are too dark, maybe the textures are weak, maybe your attention to typographic details was lacking; for whatever reason, this just isn’t your best piece of work.

I want you take that work and place it carefully into your arms. Embrace it tenderly. Take it out back, and whisper “I’ve never loved anybody but you.” Then shoot it in the back of the head. Burn the evidence. If anybody ever asks you about that work again, just say “What work? I never made anything like that” or move to Canada as a fugitive.

Portfolios & Donuts. A Dozen is Enough.

You wouldn’t walk into Krispy Kreme and ask for 29 different donuts. Your clients won’t visit your website and look at 29 different projects.  12 is often enough.

The amount of work any freelancer or company should display is also dependent on your field. A motion graphics artist might get away with five or six pieces, due to both the length of time it takes to produce them, and having the luxury of compressing work into a 30 second to 2 minute demo reel. A print designer, however, could get away with 15 or 16 pieces, if some were smaller projects like business cards or flyers. Ideally, small pieces of larger projects should be combined. If you designed business cards, letterhead, and condom wrappers for a client; show them all in one shot or page. Ultimately, 12 projects should suffice.

Why?

Let’s say you had 29 projects.  A potential employer or client might spend time taking an honest look at five or six of them before either deciding to contact you or moving onto another designer’s portfolio.  What if that person were to look at your WORST five or six projects? Sure they’re probably not terrible, but you want to increase the likelihood that they’ll view your best projects.  So cut it down.

Killing the One.

Most of your portfolios are likely already a good size.  If you have a broad range of services, you may need 12-15.  If you’re a specialist you could show 6-8. The subject of this post is about finding the single, worst piece of work you currently have online (or on paper), and killing it in cold blood.

You most likely already know which piece I’m talking about.  If not, look at your portfolio right now. One of those pieces is lacking behind the others. It could be old work that doesn’t reflect your current skill level, or new work that just doesn’t feel right, or was rushed.

Delete it.

If you have an easily updatable website (WordPress, Squarespace, Cargo Collective, anything with a CMS) this should be easy. And if you built something more complicated from scratch, don’t worry about building a whole new portfolio right now.  Just spend time today deleting the images, the page, and every link or reference to it.  Never speak of it again.

Remember!

Just because you deleted a page, doesn’t mean the internet has forgotten.  There may be blogs, websites, or tweets linking to your project! If you remove a linked page, be sure to set up a 301 redirect for it. If you don’t know what that is, it essentially is a bit of code you place on your site that automatically redirects users on missing pages to a proper one.  So if they click a link to the old project they’d be redirected to your homepage (or portfolio page, etc.)

You could also simply delete links or reference to the project, but LEAVE the actual page intact. No new visitors would see it, but old links wouldn’t be broken.  But it would be like being haunted by the ghost of your dead project.

Enjoy the Funeral.

Delete the project (or rip that page out of your printed portfolio), and feel better knowing that the rest of your portfolio has just improved. Finally freed of the scourge that was a kind of shitty project, your new portfolio will soar to grand new heights of… whatever, thanks for reading. Have fun killing.

Tell us what you killed! Leave a comment!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

I love this piece because it’s the kind of work I get to do when a client says: “Do whatever you want, I’m sure it will look awesome.“

This is a poster I designed for a long-term client of mine last week. I’ve actually been working with them for a whole year, and it has been nothing short of a pleasure.  I designed their website, did all the backend WordPress work, and designed their business cards and flyers, so when Mike Houser approached me to design a poster I jumped at the oppurtunity.

The branding direction I chose for their blog is centered around a rainbow of colors, heavily treated with grunge effects. I always try to portray Los Angeles in these pieces as warm and exciting, yet uniquely urban.  LA Music Blog focuses on the artists of southern California, and most importantly on the live concert scene.  I designed this poster in order to evoke the feeling of a sun recently setting, with the logo acting as a bright light on a summer night… or whatever.

The normal rainbow palette is extremely subtle here.  I used 3D techniques, painting in perspective, and dozens upon dozens of textures to complete the final look. This poster is being printed at 27″ x 40″ which means it’s an absolutely gigantic file. Ultimately it will be framed and hung in their offices, serving no other purpose other than to look sweet as hell.  And that’s the best any artist can ask for, right?

Some additional notes: The original logo is not my design, but if you’re wondering, it’s several weights of Futura stacked on top each other.  And the bottom area of this poster might be used for written copy later, hence the large blank area. You can check out LA Music Blog at www.LAMusicBlog.com

What do you think of this poster? I’m eager to make more in this style, maybe even a tutorial someday; drop me a line in the comments!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

You’re sitting there, in a remarkably comfortable office chair that you wish was your own. You’re thinking about how many business cards you’ll need to hand out, and whether or not any of them were accidentally bent in your wallet. You’ve brought your laptop, but have no idea if it was necessary to bring it along. Suddenly, two guys dressed a lot more casually than you are enter the room. You’re told: “So you’re a designer, tell me about yourself.”

Job interviews are always a challenge, and they’re made even worse in the current economy, where dozens of applicants are interviewing for the same position. Designers may have an even harder time, with thousands of new design graduates each year and only a handful of positions.

Not every aspiring designer will land a job. In fact, many will give up and move onto other career paths. Fortunately for you, you’re reading my blog, so here’s some tips to help you land that killer job. These apply to job-seekers, interns, and freelancers alike.

1. Don’t be nervous, nerd.

Maybe it’s your first interview, or maybe it’s your twentieth: either way the process can be pretty stressful. You never know if you’ll be speaking to one person or five, if you’ll need to answer questions about your work, or your favorite font; you may even be asked to draw something on the spot. The bottom line is that there’s a lot to think about, which leads to a lot of anxiety.  Here’s the good news: having given a few interviews, I can tell you this: We care a lot less about this interview than you do. If it’s before 12, we’re thinking about lunch… if it’s after 12, we’re thinking about what we already ate for lunch. Job interviews are probably the most relaxing part of the day for your interviewer.

Employers are used to lackluster interviews; they’re used to sitting through a lineup of mediocre talent, and they’re  waiting for someone interesting to come along.  So be interesting! Express your opinions, project your voice, make jokes, make it an interesting conversation. The fact that you’re in the room at all means they liked your portfolio, you just need to show you’re smart and capable. So be yourself, pretend you’re talking to your friends. Handle yourself the way you would if you were working there on a day-to-day basis, because that’s what they need to see. If you have fun with it, and you work is good, you may have just landed yourself a job.

2. Have a website

This should be obvious, and the fact that you’re even getting an interview means somebody probably went through your website already. But perhaps you don’t have a website and you simply wrote a good cover letter, or you were a referral from a friend, or they saw a specific piece of yours out in the wild.

I know this is more of a tip to help you get an interview than it is to help once you’re there, but I’ve been to plenty of interviews where they’ll throw your website up on a projector or laptop. If you’ve put together a great collection of your work online, and they ask to see it in the interview, then you’ve scored a solid 10 minutes where you have a lot of great things to talk about. Let’s face it, we’re all very visual people,  so the more time you can spend talking about yourself with a visual aid, the better.

A lot of these ideas apply to print portfolios as well, but honestly, most people would rather browse your website than flip through a booklet.

If you’re not a web designer, don’t worry. All you need is a clean collection of your work online. Use a WordPress theme, or try Squarespace. There are also  quite popular and easy to use portfolio services such as Krop, Cargo Collective, or Indexhibit.

3. Tell stories

Simply answering questions in rapid succession is a good way to make your interview go fast, but it’s not a good way to get hired. Opening up and telling a story is a good way to avoid awkward silences, and it can usually help you loosen up.

Obviously you shouldn’t just go on about anything; try to think of an interesting story with a past client or project. Maybe it was a  past mistake of yours—maybe something really funny happened to one of your websites—just think of something that can keep people interested for a few minutes.  And while you have their attention (this is important part), make sure you include plenty of details that show your mastery of your craft.  If you’re a UI designer, tell a story about how you solved some crazy e-commerce checkout problem. If you’re print designer, talk about how you fixed a bunch of files with a ridiculous deadline because the client’s printer was a huge problem.

Telling a story allows you to be interesting and intelligent at the same time, which is always a good thing. Plus, a good story can reveal things about you or your work than your interviewer may have never known otherwise.  Remember, those who are hiring you are often not expert recruiters—they’re just trying to get a handle on who you are. They might not always ask the best or most pertinent questions. It’s up to you to make sure they hear everything they need to hear, and stories are a great way guide that conversation. Just don’t talk too long.

4. Care about the company

We already know you enjoy Facebook stalking your friends—here’s where that pays off. Google your potential employer, look through everything in their portfolio, read about their clients, and definitely read their ‘About Us’ section.  Reading about the history of the company can give you a good understanding of their values—and more importantly, the kind of people they’d like to work with.

Ultimately the purpose of an interview is about determining whether or not you’re a good fit. Stalk everyone’s LinkedIn profiles, check out the company’s Yelp rating (if it actually has one), be as creepy as you need to be. Just make sure you don’t walk in only knowing the company’s name. The more you know about what they do, the more you’re able to tailor your conversation to what they’re looking for.

The unfortunate drawback to this step is that after Googling your potential employer for a while, you might find that you do not want to actually work in that environment. This could result in you cancelling your interview, but I would highly suggest going to speak with them anyway.  You never know if a company’s website is a gross misrepresentation of who they are.

(That’s me. You should get those glasses.)

5. Dress like a designer

If you wear a suit, you’re going to feel awfully out of place. You can wear a tie, but only if it’s a really sweet tie that you actually enjoy wearing. If you feel out of your element, this can affect your demeanor, and lead to an awkward interview. Ladies, this means don’t dress like Hillary Clinton… not that I’ve ever seen anyone come in dressed in a pant suit anyway.

Ultimately, it’s all about honesty. Dress like you normally would, talk about real projects, and care about the company if you genuinely like them.  If you’re a talented and cool person, you’ll go far in this industry.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

I was contacted by a local college prep school to give some design tips to their students.  The students were in an after school club that produces an annual creative magazine (full of poetry, short stories, and art).

After a quick rundown of my work, I gave six quick tips to improve their design skills. While some are obvious to an advanced designer, this presentation still is full of great tips for anybody looking to improve their work.

Apologies for the audio/video quality, this was shot on a webcam, haha.

What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Mo’ Images = Mo’ Problems

My work folder currently has 32,000 files in it. An unbelievable amount of them are images or image related (JPEGS, GIFs, PNGs, PSDs, AIs, etc.). As an interactive designer, I can easily accrue hundreds of images throughout the design (and development) process. While I may let all my local files multiply like rabbits, it’s important not to bring this chaos onto the web. The number of images used in a website design can get wild pretty quickly, so it’s important for us as designers to have a weapon to reign them in, not unlike the Ghostbusters.

What’s a CSS Sprite, Daddy?

Well technically a sprite is just an image.  CSS is then used for separation and reorganization of that image. The sprite itself is generally used to combine many small images into one large image. This is done not only save precious loading time and bandwidth, but also to keep your site structure clean and manageable.

How Image Sprites Save Time

Suppose you have fancy navigation bar on your website, with 8 links. Suppose said links each had a fancy rollover, the kind with that ‘glow’ and ‘twinkle’ that makes your clients drool. In the past (or today if you aren’t yet using the CSS sprite technique) this would require 8 separate images, with another 8 images for the hover state. That’s a total of 16 images for the navigation alone.  That’s 16 files you’d have to create, optimize, name, and save. 16 files you’d have to call in your stylesheet, and upload through FTP. Worst of all, that’s 16 HTTP requests on your server from a visitor. While the images may be very small, each request takes time, and ultimately increases the loading time for your page.

Instead, one could create a sprite showing all of the links with each of their rollover states  as one image. This means one HTTP request. When dealing with dozens of small images, this technique can often cut loading time for images in half.

How the CSS Sprite Technique Keeps it Clean

Here’s some example CSS for 4 links with rollovers. 8 images are called because there is no use of the sprite technique. Each link has its own image, and each link has its own rollover image… these links are greedy.

.link_one {background-image:url(img/link_one.png);}
.link_two {background-image:url(img/link_two.png);}
.link_three {background-image:url(img/link_three.png);}
.link_four {background-image:url(img/link_four.png);}
.link_one:hover {background-image:url(img/link_one_hover.png);}
.link_two:hover {background-image:url(img/link_two_hover.png);}
.link_three:hover {background-image:url(img/link_three_hover.png);}
.link_four:hover {background-image:url(img/link_four_hover.png);}

While that may not seems like a huge problem, imagine if you wanted to change the color of ALL those image links one day.  That’s 8 separate times you’d have to open a file, change a color, and save it. Do this for larger menus, sidebar items, or footer areas, and you’ll quickly have a massive pile of images that you have to maintain. This almost always leads to designers abandoning beneficial changes on their websites because “It’ll take too long!”

Here’s what some of your CSS would look like were you to move all those images into a single sprite:

.link {background-image:url(img/link.png);}

.one {background-position:0px 0px;}
.two {background-position:20px 0px;}
.three {background-position:40px 0px;}
.four {background-position:60px 0px;}
.one:hover {background-position:0px -20px;}
.two:hover {background-position:-20px -20px;}
.three:hover {background-position:-40px -20px;}
.four:hover {background-position:-60px -20px;}

Obviously this is a bit cleaner, but the important takeaway is that if you wanted to edit the look of ALL of these links at once, you could. Simply drop that sprite into Photoshop, re-save, and you’ve fixed them all at once.

Alright, so you understand that it WOULD save you time and energy, but you don’t know how to make a sprite? Who could possibly teach you how to do this on your very own? Perhaps its…

TERRIFIC TUTORIAL TIME!

How to make a CSS sprite based navigation of your very own:

1. Let’s say you want to make a simple navigation with 4 links. We’ll go with the most basic essential links here: ‘Home’, ‘About’, ‘Pterodactyl’, and ‘Contact’. Go ahead and create a quick mockup in Photoshop of some navigation like this, or apply the following steps to your own current web projects.

2. Make sure you have one layer set as the default ‘normal’ state. This is how the links will generally appear in your design. Also create another layer that shows all of the links in their ‘hover’ state. In this case I’ve altered the styling, color, and added an underline. Ideally your link size shouldn’t change (If you’re smart you can technically get away with it, just make sure you give ample space for that growth in the sprite, we’ll touch on that later).

3. We need to single out the navigation now, and make it its own image. You can copy your navigation only, create a new image by hitting Ctrl+N (Cmd+N for Mac Folk), and paste it in. Please note in my example I’ve done a more complex selection around the links, preserving the transparency. You can learn how to do that in my Transparency in .PNGs article, but dragging a simple rectangular selection around your menu items is perfectly fine as well.

4. Double the canvas size of your navigation image by choosing Image > Canvas Size… (Alt+Ctrl+C or Alt+Cmd+C). You can double the height without doing any math by simply checking off ‘Relative’ and increasing the height by 100% (or don’t click it, and increase by 200%, I won’t stop you). Your resulting canvas should now have enough room to paste in your ‘hover’ version below your ‘normal’ version.

5. Uh oh! Remember I said the link size shouldn’t change, and this is why. Adding an underline technically makes the ‘hover’ links a bit taller than the ‘normal’ links. Simply giving room for the bottom underline will cause a huge headache later on in the CSS. We’ll need to add space on the bottom of each row.

6. In this case, adding 3 pixels to the bottom of each row did the trick. If your links have added hover effects, just be sure to include extra space in the sprite so that the corresponding normal link is the same size. That’s true for both horizontal and vertical space.

7. Now you can eliminate the negative space in your image. This slightly decreases your file size, but more importantly it makes the bit of math we’ll do in the CSS much easier. You won’t have to count the pixels in between the margins of your sprite if you simply line everything up next to each other. The amount of background-position shifting will simply equal the width of the previous link! That was the most boring statement to ever warrant an exclamation point.

.______ {
display:block;
height:__px;
background-image:url(______);
margin__:__px;
float:____;
}

.nav {
display:block;
height:24px;
background-image:url(img/navsprite.png);
margin-left:24px;
float:left;
}

8. The first CSS class you need to write is your parent class. This is the main class that holds all of the similar properties for your navigation. In my case, all of my links are 24 pixels high with a margin of 24px between them. The margin might not be necessary depending on how you styled your links, but in this scenario a quick ‘margin-left’ will work. The background image will obviously be the same for all of our links (that’s the whole point), and the ‘display’ block is simply used because we will be defining a height and width to each of our links.

.______ {
width:__px;
background-position:__px __px;
}

.home {
width:68px;
background-position:0px 0px;
}

9. The second class you need to write applies to the individual link itself. You’ll need to write one for each link in your navigation, as well as another for each hover state (which we’ll get to in a moment). In this case the ‘home’ link has a width of 68 pixels. The ‘background-position’ refers to the point that the background-image will begin to display from. Since ‘home’ is in the upper-left, both the x-axis (horizontal) and y-axis (vertical) will start at 0 pixels.

.home {
width:68px;
background-position:0px 0px;
}
.about {
width:81px;
background-position:-68px 0px;
}
.pterodactyl {
width:165px;
background-position:-149px 0px;
}
.contact {
width:109px;
background-position:-314px 0px;
}

10. As you can see, all 4 links now have their own widths. You can measure the width of each link with your ruler tool. The key here is that each subsequent link is being shifted by a negative number on the x-axis. On the ‘about’ link, it’s essentially telling the background to start 68 pixels deep into the image (where the ‘about’ link just happens to start in the sprite).

Note: Remember that the background-position is cumulative. You must add the measurement of each previous link each time you enter in the position for the next. In this case 68 pixels and 81 pixels is 149 pixels.  Then the ‘pterodactyl’ link is quite wide, another 165 pixels, meaning our ‘contact’ link’s x-axis position starts at -314 pixels. It’s only addition (or subtraction), but a mistake in one early link will mess up the math for all your subsequent links. So double-check frequently!

.home:hover {
background-position:0px -24px;
}
.about:hover  {
background-position:-68px -24px;
}
.pterodactyl:hover  {
background-position:-149px -24px;
}
.contact:hover  {
background-position:-314px -24px;
}

12. To create a ‘hover’ state for your link, simply copy the class and add ‘:hover’ after the class name. It’s unnecessary to repeat the ‘width’ property. Because all of the hover links are directly under the normal links, the y-axis shift is the same as the link height: 24 pixels. It’s a lot simpler here, as you can just paste that in over and over again.

.nav {
display:block;
height:24px;
background-image:url(img/navsprite.png);
margin-left:24px;
float:left;
}

.home {width:68px;background-position:0px 0px;}
.about {width:81px;background-position:-68px 0px;}
.pterodactyl {width:165px;background-position:-149px 0px;}
.contact {width:109px;background-position:-314px 0px;}

.home:hover {background-position:0px -24px;}
.about:hover {background-position:-68px -24px;}
.pterodactyl:hover  {background-position:-149px -24px;}
.contact:hover  {background-position:-314px -24px;}

13. Here’s the completed CSS for the example. All that’s left is to add the links themselves into the HTML.

<a class="nav home"></a>
<a class="nav about"></a>
<a class="nav pterodactyl"></a>
<a class="nav contact"></a>

14. Simply apply both the parent and child classes to each link. In this case ‘nav’ and ‘home’, or ‘nav’ and ‘pterodactyl’ etc.

You just learned something! Specifically, how the CSS sprite technique works, why it is used, and how to create a slick, efficient navigation out of it. Go get yourself a drink. Or get me one, this baby was looonnng.

Give me your thoughts on this technique in the comments!

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1. Use Craigslist

2. Show Old Work

3. Lower Your Rates

4. Offer Discounts

5. Be Shy

6. Do Spec Work

7. Work for Family

Doing work for family members is an easy first step into working with shitty clients. The close relationship or love you may have for your family member allow you to easily get taken advantage of both creatively and financially. You often know each other’s addresses (or may even live in the same house), so details like proposals or contracts aren’t even necessary!  Be careful not to work for a successful entrepreneur in the family (they may end up being a good client).  Ideally you should only work on projects involving their recent idea to launch an ‘e-book’, or something with ‘candle making’.

8. Say Yes to Everything

Last but not least, always say ‘Yes’. Every client, every budget, every revision. Being confident enough to say ‘Yes’ to a bad proposal is a good first step, but don’t stop there!  When confronted with low budgets and endless revisions, always say ‘Yes’ to keep your shitty client happy. This will ensure you an endless network of shitty clients that you can work with in the future!

If for some reason you prefer ‘Good Clients’, check out these links…

Freelance Folder – Ten Characteristics of a Good Client

Clients From Hell – Clients From Hell

Freelance Switch – 12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them

Greyscale Gorilla – Seven Rules for Building Online Portfolios

Just Creative Design – Why logo design does not cost $5.00

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Banding is one of the universal annoyances that every designer has to deal with.  Although it’s certainly more common among web designers, banding has also given plenty of headaches to print designers and photographers. Banding is a newer problem; unique to the digital realm, as old-school methods of photography and publishing weren’t limited to the digital color space. As the problem and its causes have only been recently defined, many designers may lack the techniques necessary to combat this subtle and tricky problem. If you’re not familiar with the term or are sick of reading this sentence, let’s cut to an image.

Some Banding in Action due to Compression:

This is an overly exaggerated example of banding effects on a photo I took.  In the compressed version on the right, the sky doesn’t contain enough blues to portray a smooth transition. This is because the compressed version is trying to save space by limiting the number of colors used.  This actually works really well in the building section of the photograph because our eyes don’t pick up on subtle brightness changes when looking at busy or high-contrast areas. It’s only when the color jumps from “Slightly Light Blue” to “Slightly Less Light Blue” that we really notice.

It’s as if the compression algorithm thought “Hey man, that looks like solid blue. Six colors ought to cover it–done!” Idiot.

While compression is a common cause of banding, it’s important to remember that all digital images share this property of stepping harshly from one color to the next.  Indeed, each pixel is its own little square, not blending with any pixels around it. Fortunately pixels are much too small for our eyes to detect that stepping.  It’s only when compressors force similar areas of color into much larger groups that we pick up on the changes.

Banding with the Gradient Tool:

The gradient on the left side was created by picking two colors and fading them together with Photoshop’s gradient tool. The gradient on the right side only used one color, and simply faded itself from 100% to 0% opacity.  Obviously they both achieve very similar results, and perhaps that’s why most designers may use the techniques interchangeably. If you look very closely, however, the gradient on the right actually shows some harsh stepping from one shade to the next.

Add some levels adjustments, and you can really see the difference:

The good news is that Photoshop’s gradient tool handles gradients pretty well with multiple colors.  Photoshop does the math and immediately rasterizes the outcome.  Through a combination of dithering and subtle noise the fade is rendered pretty smoothly.  You can even hit the levels or curves adjustments later and it looks decent.  The gradient on the right, however, didn’t have two colors that Photoshop could do the math for, so no dithering or noise could be applied.  Without knowing what color it would be fading to, it simply renders the gradient in bands ranging from 100% opacity to 0% opacity.

Noise is the Solution! Sometimes…

The solution that is often thrown about is “Add a bunch of noise dude!”. While it’s true that adding noise to break up the bands is effective, you have to be careful that you aren’t bringing a bazooka to a knife fight. Adding too much noise unnecessarily will degrade your image and take clarity out of your highlights and shadows.

Fix #1 – Use Two Color Gradients

To prevent banding while using Photoshop’s gradient tool, always use at least two colors. Fading a single color to transparency will not yield pretty results.  If you absolutely must fade a color to transparency, make sure the gradient is small, or that the range of color difference in the gradient is high.  It’s the long and subtle gradients that cause problems.

Fix #2 – Use Noise in One Channel

If you’re experiencing banding when compressing or saving your images, you may want to add noise to prevent noticeable stepping.  If you want to do this without harming ALL of your color data try applying noise to only one channel–ideally, the channel where the most banding is occurring.

1. Select the ‘Channels’ tab next to your layers palette.

2. Click on a color channel.  Perhaps red if you have banding in a sunset photo, or blue if there’s banding in a bright blue sky.  Choose whichever channel works best in your situation.

3. Choose Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Check ‘Gaussian’ as the distribution format. Choose 1-2% as the amount, as you can always add more noise later if necessary.

Save your image out as you did before, and ideally this method should have decreased your level of banding.

Fix #3 – Use Noise in Another Layer

If you absolutely need to maintain a lot of integrity in your photo, but still need to remove banding in some area, try adding the noise to its own layer.

1. Create a new layer and fill it with 50% gray.  That’s about #808080 if you’re working in RGB.

2. Place this layer above the image you’re adding noise to. In the layers palette, choose ‘Overlay’ as the blending mode.

3. Add noise to this gray layer, 2-3% should suffice.

You’ll notice that the noise does not affect any very bright or dark areas of your image.  Because the noise is in ‘Overlay’ mode, you’re free to crank up the noise as high as needed, without destroying the quality of your highlights or shadows.

Another benefit to having the noise in its own layer is that you can use your eraser tool to remove noise from areas where it is not needed.  You could even take one step further, creating a complex mask and applying it to the noise layer, giving you full control over which areas are affected.

No More Banding!

Hopefully some of these ideas got rid of your nasty banding issues.  If you have any other tips or tricks to solve this problem, drop me a line in the comments.

Other Resources to Regarding Banding:

Wikipedia – Posterization

Greyscale Gorilla – How to Remove Banding Artifacts in After Effects

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

Even though this website was launched only very recently, I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on its look. I’m relatively happy with it as well, but that was no easy task. If any of you have ever worked on a personal project, you’ve probably already learned that you are your own worst client. When you have no deadlines, no rules, and a huge imagination, it can be pretty tough to settle on your final look. You might start on one design in the morning only to immediately throw it away and start from scratch that afternoon. This post is dedicated to all of my wasted ideas and productivity, and hopefully some tips on how you can avoid a similar situation in the future.

Start With a Brief, Don’t Be an Idiot

One way to avoid an insane amount of redesigns is to treat yourself like your own client.  What are your goals, what is your target market, your intended ‘look & feel’ ? If you start with a vague idea like ‘Website about art something’, you may find yourself spending days and weeks on projects that will never see the light of day. I believe I started on the right track by thinking about my goals. Here are some key ideas/features I knew I wanted:

• Full WordPress integration. I wanted to handle all of my content, including my portfolio, quickly and easily from any location.
• A slick & memorable design that was still easy to read.
• Black and yellow. Like Batman. Seriously.
• Community features. This means a quick and easy way to comment on posts, because it’s fun to talk to my readers. It also helps me avoid sitting alone in my apartment and talking to my food.
• Integrate my design portfolio.
• Any name that’s better than ‘Loukotka’, yet felt design related.  You’d be surprised how many Google searches spell my name wrong, so this site is meant to be easy to remember and spell.

The problem was that my goals changed over time, and I should have stuck to these principles instead of designing away like a mad man. There’s plenty more ideas I could list, but let’s get to what’s important—images of all of the designs I didn’t use or show anybody, because I went insane and couldn’t settle on the right look.

A few months ago this was my first attempt at a design thought. I started blocking out areas of yellow or black, but immediately discarded everything because an all yellow website would be pretty tough to read.

This was an experiment with a minimalist look for my portfolio, but I quickly realized that dark and empty weren’t at all how I wanted my new site to feel.

Now we’re getting somewhere. This design borrows the background and name of my other website, Loukotka.com.t the time, my portfolio website was green and white, so I found this color change refreshing. Ultimately this felt too much like a showcase and less like a blog or valuable news source. This version was scrapped for the blog, but I used its ideas in the current version of Loukotka.com.

Another radical shift in thought. I was definitely digging the white with the yellow, but still felt the horizontal slide areas would only work for a portfolio, and not for an interactive blog. I even decided on the name “Neverlens”. I bought the domain, only to trash this name much later due to its similarities to “Neverland” and “Netherlands”. Oops.

I stuck with the name for a while and eventually continued down the “yellow brick road”. This version was grungy, and incredibly yellow. This certainly was memorable and open, so I explored it further. This is also the first design that actually contains some element of the current site (a small sliver of the textured header bar).

This design probably had more time put into it than any of my other trashed designs, and for good reason.  It’s strong, memorable, and edgy. My ‘home’ icon had a picture of the White House, and I had a really slick typewriter for my ‘need work done?’ link. For a while I was in love with this, but sometimes designs have to be scrapped because they don’t complete your goals.  This was visually interesting, but I felt like the strong colors and silly icons made the site feel like it was advertising itself.  This structure works great for a company, but if I added blog posts to the design, they’d have to compete with my own header for attention. I realized I had to give my written content a lot more focus.

I toned down the colors to a cool-gray. This certainly would help give focus to the written content, but I still didn’t want the structure of my site to be dictated by its textures. The background looks great, but it was quite large and would still compete with everything I was going to write.  I want to go to a blog to read articles, not to stare at a stone wall.  At least, that was my logic at the time.

I knew I was getting close here. This design gave a lot of weight to the logo, but still allowed the reader to easily jump over to reading the post.  You could navigate easily, read easily, and it still had some ‘batman’ feel with the logo.  That said, I was still mourning the loss of my previous designs, and knew I needed a little texture to bring it to life.

The name Fringe Focus is born. It’s easy to say, spell, and remember. But the site was feeling a bit too black and white—where’s my yellow?

Yeah, that’s it.

Have Hope, You’ll Finish it Some Decade.

Obviously seeing this many redesigns might not be the most inspiring moment, but I assure you there is an end in sight. If you’ve redesigned something a million times, take a moment to step back and look at those designs collectively (assuming you’re saving all of them, as you should be).  Identify the traits you like in all of them, and eliminate whatever seems to be bringing them all down.  In my case, it was that I hadn’t made my content the focus of the design.  In your case, it could be anything.  Your designs could be too bold, too timid, too warm, too cold, too crowded, too open, red fish, blue fish. Yes, that’s a Dr. Suess reference.

Even better, have your friends or other designers take a look at your past attempts.  Perhaps they will see the value in something you previously wanted to throw away.

In the End, It’s About Goals

If you spend all of your time randomly designing, hoping you’ll magically hit the right look, it may never happen.  Break out the paper, or the text editor, and write down what it is that you’re really after. Make your next design meet all of these goals (it is possible), and make yourself a drink with an umbrella in it.  You’re done.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.

If you’ve designed a website in the past decade (I know, there aren’t many decades to choose from), then you’ve probably run across a situation where you needed an image with transparency. Perhaps you need to see the background through the image, or the image has gaps that need to be transparent. Even more often, you’ll have a relatively solid image, but with complex edges that simply won’t work in a big rectangular JPEG. Logos and other design elements that might move when the browser window is resized, often need transparent edges to look right no matter where they are on the page. Fortunately all of these problems, as you may know, have already been solved with the development of the .PNG image format.

So we’re done! No tips, no tutorial, PNGs have saved the day! Not exactly.

The Pros of the PNG

• Full range of opacity (0%-100%)
• Full range of color (16.7 Million, anyway)

The Dirty Secrets (Cons) of the PNG

• Relatively large file size
• Doesn’t support blending modes
• Doesn’t work in IE6 (If you care about that ugly monster)

These points only apply to 24-bit PNGs, as 24-bit PNGs are the only common format to allow full alpha transparency. Its younger brother, the 8-bit PNG, doesn’t share the same problems (but only supports binary transparency).

Whoa, alpha binary what? Bit? Slow down Star Trek!

Alpha transparency, in short, is the kind of transparency you’re used to in Photoshop. There are varying degrees of opacity, that are all mapped in an alpha channel, those black and white images in your channels palette. PNGs include an alpha channel, so any given pixel in the image can be any given opacity (0%, 32%, 99%, etc.). This is great for shadows, glows, or anything translucent.

Binary transparency, is when robots are invisible. Actually, it’s what it sounds like. Binary means you have two options: 1 or 0, on or off. The same goes for the opacity in a binary transparent image. A pixel is either 100% visible, or totally off. 8-bit PNGs, and GIFs support this simple level of transparency.

Lastly, we won’t get into too much math here, but 24-bit ultimately means the image contains the full range of color data for all 3 color channels. 8 bits of red, 8 bits of blue, 8 bits of green. Add that up, and you can see why it’s 24-bit. 8-bit image formats only support 256 colors, while 24-bit image formats can support 16.7 million.

Problems with your 24-bit PNGs

Obviously full alpha-transparency has its benefits in web design. But with great awesomeness, comes great file sizes. Alpha transparent PNGs are often three or four times larger than their binary counterparts. If your logo, borders, backgrounds, and sprites are all huge 24-bit PNGs, loading times can get slow… fast. While internet speeds are increasing, and this may not seem like a problem, the speeds on mobile phones, netbooks, and 3G wireless networks aren’t quite there yet.

Additionally, it is rarely the case that alpha transparency on its own will solve our design problems. With all of the beautiful uses for the overlay, screen, or multiply blending modes (to name a few)… simply having an image at 50% opacity might seem a little boring.

Old School 8-bit to the rescue!

While alpha transparency is definitely helpful in some cases, let me show you my process for making 8-bit PNGs or GIFs look just as good, at smaller sizes.

Let’s say you wanted a logo to appear on top of a grungy background like the above image. We have a logo with blurred edges, that needs to show strong detail behind it. A 24-bit PNG would certainly do the trick, but we can show all of that detail in an 8-bit PNG or GIF with a few simple steps.

1. Turning off your background layer, your first assumption would be that this image couldn’t possibly work with binary, jagged edges.  Let’s try…

2. Go to File > Save For Web & Devices.  Under presets, choose 8-bit PNG.  Make sure ‘Transparency” is checked.  Then choose a matte color, in this case, black.

3. This is close, but pretty janky.  Even if that black was a little lighter, you’d still not be able to see all the texture in between the letters.  So let’s try something better.

4. Select the logo layer’s alpha by Ctrl+Click-ing on that layer (that’s Cmd+Click on a Mac obviously).  Then copy the merged layers by hitting Shift+Ctrl+C (Shift+Cmd+C for Macs). Open a new file, and paste the merged logo there.

5. Now that the merged file is pasted here, you can see that some of that background data was pulled.  But simply saving the image with no matte would still cause problems, so we first have to bring all of the opacity up to 100%.  Do this by Alt+Click-ing on your logo layer and dragging up or down.  This creates a duplicate of your layer.   Now that you have two copies, select both of the layers by Shift+Click-ing on each of them, and then merge them by hitting Ctrl+E (or Cmd+E).  You now have one slightly more opaque version of what you had before.  Repeat this process four or five times.  Duplicating, merging, duplicating, merging, duplicating, merging until you see that the image is 100% opaque.

6. Your image should now have a janky, but detail rich fringe matte (no pun intended). Go ahead and save it out as a transparent 8-bit PNG, or even a GIF if that floats your boat.  Keep in mind 8-bit PNGs generally have smaller file sizes than GIFs.

7. Voila! You now have a relatively tiny, 8-bit PNG looking just as sexy as its 24-bit counterpart.  Of course, this technique only works if your background stays stationary, but if your background was a horizontal or vertical gradient, then these steps would still work.

Go ahead and try this with your navigation menus, sprites, or borders.  It can save countless kilobytes!

If you have any additional tips, ideas, or thoughts about image transparency, drop me a line in the comments.

You can be first to know about new art prints & limited edition poster releases on the Fringe Focus Newsletter! New art each month. You are also entered to win a poster giveaway (at random) each month! Join thousands of Fringe Focus subscribers.