Always Go Her Way

First of all, Happy New Year everybody! (I don’t care if we’re passed the New Year’s cut-off.)

I made this cartoon for this year’s Valentine’s Day. The idea behind it doesn’t need any explanation, I’m sure — so let’s skip that.

But I can tell you this that I wanted to make something with use of shades of gray alone because I feel the reliance on colors can become a “crutch.” And since I tend to rely a lot on colors alone, I wanted to train myself more in adding tone and spotting blacks.

I must say, I kinda like the end result, so maybe I’ll continue in this style. (But that’s a big maybe.)

So what else can you expect from me this year? Well, I can show you some character designs soon for some (mini) comics I’m working on. And I may find myself working again on some black metal band art — for an actual Norwegian black band even — no, really! — sometime within the next few weeks!

If anything else interesting pops up, you’ll be the first to know!

When Super Mario Meets Dark Souls

Some time ago, I did a course through CalArts on video game character design. The course homework assignments had us course participants peer review each other’s work, which went well until we had to take an existing, established video game character and put it, as it were, in another game universe. Here problems arose because to no surprise — people have strong emotional feelings about characters they have spent hours of their life playing as or with.

So when I decided to take everyone’s favorite Italian plumber, Mario, and give him the Dark Souls treatment by turning him hollow and handing him a battle axe (see below) — some had harsh words for my final rendition, basically all boiling down to, it’s too cartoony to be “inspired by Dark Souls.” To me though, that was no big deal — it so happened this is just my style.

What did bother me, however, was that there was something off about the construction of the character: there’s too much “camouflaging” of extremities, the eyebrows lack texture, the head sits ill on the romp, and the belt doesn’t compliment the roundness of the belly. But I couldn’t be bothered starting anew … until a few days ago.

You see, I’m currently in the process of redoing some oldies but “goldies,” just to compare them side-by-side — to see if and how much I’ve managed to improve. Below you can see the new version of my medieval fantasy Mario. Is it an improvement over the original? I’ll let you judge for yourself.

Steve Pliers: The Most Metal of Metalheads

Some time ago some Norwegian rando kept calling me Steve for some reason. Don’t ask me why.

Later me and some friends came up with stage names for ourselves for our hypothetical band. Everyone went with cool names, nearly all ending with either ‘Axe’ or ‘Chainsaw.’ Me, on the other, I went with the most Metal of tools in the repair box — the pliers.

Today, I felt urge to design a logo with a 1980s chrome look to it. Just for my own gratification and to find out for myself the steps needed to achieve such a look. And here’s what I came up with:

There’s still room for improvement, but for a first attempt, it turned out alright, if I say so myself.

This will probably be my last logo this year. In the upcoming weeks, I will just focus on cartooning and character design.

Repuka: A Quest for Vindication

I made this as a birthday present to a friend of mine. It also marks my first real attempt at digital painting.

I still have a lot to learn, when it comes to painting, but I’m not completely green anymore (heh).

Is there anything else to be said about this piece? Well, actually, initially I had this idea for something a bit different than what you see pictured here. I once pitched this logo design that featured a gaping voodoo-like skull. But the band wasn’t having it. They told me they thought it would look good printed on an album or a T-shirt. But I held on to the idea of someday designing such a logo. Later, some other band said “no” to one of my design choices for a T-shirt design, telling me to overlay the logo on top of the graphic instead of below it, that it wouldn’t look good, otherwise. Again, I begged to differ, but decided to keep my further thoughts to myself and just get the job done. Here enters my friend with a funny nickname, Repuka, and whose birthday was coming. It gave me the excuse I was looking for to revisit these rejected ideas, if only to prove there was merit to them after all.

Toxocara, v.5.2

One day later … 

I asked my friends on Facebook which version they liked best. Most of them agreed that this time around, I actually improved upon the original design. One of them thought it would look even better if the skull were similarly colored to the rest of the logo. I indulged him, by trying it out (see below). Reactions to this one were very favorable.

I, however, thought that it would look better if all the letters were partly colored yellow, as seen below. This has the benefit that the semi-realistic details of the skull don’t get washed out. Not only that, the color gradient makes for more vibrant, almost fiery lettering.

One this matter, too, your feedback would be most welcome and helpful. So leave a comment to let me know what you think, and don’t hesitate to let me know what you like and what you don’t like.

Toxocara, v.5: How Many Logos?

Back in 2004, I was commissioned to design a logo for Toxocara, a Dutch death metal band (see logo below). It was one of the first major gigs I landed — “major” being relative here –, and the band members were enormously appreciative, handing over merchandise with every album release, which is why I hold the band in such high regard, even to this day. The band is now defunct, sadly — although their Facebook page recently showed some activity, so really, who knows?

Anyway. The logo was done entirely (save for one minor tweak) in an “old-school” fashion, i.e., with pen and paper, without too much thought behind it. This should be no surprise — it’s why it looks so rough.

Obviously some like it rough. The members of the band — and perhaps especially the driving force behind the band who had part of the logo tattooed on his arm — were clearly happy with how it turned out. Furthermore, an anecdote goes that Christophe Szpajdel, the “Lord of Logos” himself, once complimented the band on it. But me, I always felt I could do better.

Sadly though, my idea of better was far from what the members of the band thought of as better. Over the years this led to a series of uncommissioned redesigns (see below for an example), some of which were fine logos in their own right, others were blatant misfires. Eventually, I gave up on the idea of ever improving on my original design of the logo.

Fast forward to 2017. I’m now busy churning out logos for various projects and purposes; I recently got myself new drawing hardware; Toxocara’s Facebook page showing activity; one of the band’s key members had his birthday yesterday … The time seemed right for one more attempt. And this is what I came up with.

This time, I tried to stay as close to the original as possible, changing only those things that seemed “off” to me. Mind you, it’s still far from perfect. But at this point, it’s more of a proof of concept than anything else. Which brings me to the biggest change to the design, which is of course the skull in the top center of the logo. It’s not just a fun nod to Toxocara’s album AtmosFear, I was also curious to see if I could incorporate a painterly skull image in a logo design instead of “sporting” it too with figuratively drawn skull (see below for an example). I think it looks okay, good even. But what do I know?

So, uh, let me know which version you like best. Do you like the original logo or the redesign? And what kind of skull image do you think goes best with a logo design — a painterly one or one that is figuratively drawn? Or do you prefer your logos simple, clean and tight, without any graphics at all?

Marquis of Snakes, V.2

Remember this Marquis of Snakes-logo I posted a few months ago?

Well, anyway, I was never really happy with how the letters turned out. So I decided to re-do them — from scratch. At the time of writing, I’m about half-way done (see below) — and it shows an improvement over the original lettering.

Last time, I didn’t get around to adding all the graphics that I originally intended to add. This time however, I already went ahead with sketching the demon in the back of the logo (see below).

I’m really looking forward to finishing this logo. And if you’re excited as I am to seeing this one finished — then stay tuned for future updates!

Various Character Designs

Lately, I’ve been doing some character design for a couple of projects, some commissioned and some personal. Below, you can see some examples.

 

Wergild: Logo Breakdown

There’s a new black metal band in town called Wergild and I was asked to design a logo for them — which is what I did. Below I’ll break down the process of designing it.

Full disclosure: At the time of writing, I’m not sure if any of the logos seen here will see actual use. But that’s not relevant for this breakdown.

First thing I did was establish a sense of symmetry. Why? Because black metallers usually have a hard-on for symmetrical logos.

I liked the logo’s silhouette, but something was amiss with the overall shape of the letters. The letter “W” in particular bothered me. As you can see above, it reads more like a “C” or an “N,” so I needed to remedy that.

Also, I decided on making things a bit more jaggy and messy-looking. Generally speaking, this is not a must per se. In fact, plenty of black metal logo designs are neat and tight in design. But one of the band members expressed a preference for something a bit more illegible.

The problem, however, with textured letters is that they don’t look as good when you invert the logo. (The reason, of course, that logos get inverted is because band shirts are usually black.)

So one simple solution is to simply keep the letters black, placed on a contrasting white background that follows the silhouette of the logo.

 

As you can see, I also added some goatheads and a screaming skull because — just because, really. No, that’s not entirely true. It’s part homage to Christophe Spzajdel, the self-proclaimed “Lord of Logos,” whose logo-designs for Horna and Tsjuder have been of inspiration to me, and part conscious design choice to help improve the silhouette.

Destined for Death (Metal)

I can finally reveal the cover I illustrated for Dauthuz‘ first full-length album — in all its original black-and-white glory and goriness.

Mind you, this version — the one I prefer and give you here — differs signifcantly from the definitive cover art, as can be seen on their website.

I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus. The band couldn’t get behind the design as originally intended by me, and so they had some changes made (by someone else than me). I don’t like it — but there’s no pleasing everyone, and that’s just the way is. So I’m not going to complain or throw a fit. But I do feel a need to explain what I feel has gotten lost in the final design.

For starters, gone now is the simple triangular composition, and with it the tight negative space surrounding the skull and corpses; gone now the eye in the right socket, and with it a centrifugal focal point. On that last note, the focal potential of the center skull is even further undermined by the bright candy red color scheme of the background — an area that due to its radiance, now “pops” to the foreground.

And it’s not just the layout that took a hit. Subtle references to some of my favorite artists and bands are no longer there anymore. Take the eye, for instance. It was meant to be a design nod to Mark Riddick, one of the industry’s greats, whose work has been of great influence to me. Now it’s just a gaping hole, void of any reference.

Oh well, it is as it is. But it does make me think about how I want to go about things in the future. And, well, I still got a solid portfolio piece out of it, which also counts for something.

The album titled by the way, Destined by Death will be out in November.