Sinat Michael Jackson: The Prodigy

Here's a stained glass window of Michael Jackson as a child and a saint.

Lazercutter Redprints

This is my Sins of the Internet that I put through the lasercutter. It looks pretty cool on cardboard. It was a prototype as I will be trying to find out a way of making an actual stained glass window of this and future designs soon.

Sins of the Internet

What I'm working on right now for the end of the term (and my new BFA project?) is based on canonization (the period of time with stained glass windows, manuiscripts, reliquaries, etc). I want to play with traditional Biblical themes in modern settings, the saintification of modern do-gooders and the near saint quality we attribute to celebrities. I know that's a lot, but I'm just gonna play with it all at first and go with whichever produces the strongest work. This first stained glass piece is from the foremost category, where the Seven Sins are represented through a man's interaction with the computer and the internet. The are (from left to right, top to bottom)

Vanity (Myspace), Lust (Pornography), Coveting (Cyber-Piracy), Greed (Ebay), Gluttony and Sloth (lounging and pigging out at the computer) and Anger (swearing on forums)

I find that projects I do well on are either based off of humor, a narrative, and my faith. So let's see how this goes.

SHARK WEEK!

This was my sister's gift for Christmas. She loves sharks and believes that you should live every week like it's "Shark Week." So I made he a mug with this image wrapped around it.

The Hatter

As you may have noticed, I have been doing a lot of penned sketches lately. I just came into possession of a few Photo-Blue Pencils which have been awesome. Basically I just draw something out with them, then trace over them in pen. When I scan the drawing into Photoshop I can get rid of the cyan tone with just a little layer mask. This character is from my Dreamer poster and comic.

Urban Font

For my Urban Survival Guide (which is now on hiatus) I designed a font using http://www.yourfonts.com/print.html. Basically you print of a template, write the characters in and scan it back in. The site analyzes the template and creates a custom, handwritten font for you. It then e-mails the font back to for about $10. I thought it was pretty cool.

Raptor

This is sketch of a robot from the aforementioned sci-fi comic with the bug motif. At some point an ancient robotic race will be unleashed that a hybrid of birds and locusts (symbolically speaking at least) called Raptors. The birds as in they are the seemingly unstoppable predators of insects, and locusts because they are the bugs notorious for wiping entire kingdoms clean of all food. Since they were robots I wanted them to look a little more sinister and actually resemble the raptor/locust hybrid but not blatantly. I think this Raptor turned out well between the pointed head and the 6 claw-appendages.

Fly

Another comic I have in the works takes place in Sci-Fi universe where different psionic powers and abilities have led to similar behaviors and characteristics found in insects. For example, this main character named Keenan (I think, not sure. Might name him Connor) is a Fly. He can run and jump on walls through manipulating his gravitational orientation, and is able to see invisible rays when he puts on his compound goggles. He is also very short (like a hobbit) even though he is in his mid twenties. He is not able to fly though (not yet at least).

Guitarist

This was meant to be my brother's gift. He likes the guitar so I was gonna make him a vinyl shirt with this design. I haven't made it for him yet though because I still don't know how (it's ok, he hasn't gotten me anything yet for Christmas too).

The Common Loon

For my family's secret Santa I drew my Uncle Bob. I heard he liked the Common Loon (kind of random, but whatever) so I decided to make him a framed illustration. Come to think of it, is there any other animal that has both stripes and spots? I can't think of anything except maybe the Tazmanian Tiger? I don't know.

Ark

For Christmas I made most of my family their various gifts. I made my mom a little tote bag from zazzle.com with an illustration of Noah's Ark. As you may have guessed my Biblical interests and beliefs stem from my upbringing.

Another side project I've been working on. As can be seen in several of my other projects, the Armageddon is something that I find interesting. There's a comic that I'm working on (it's slow going, even though I most of it all planned out in my head) where the events that happen in the Bible are reinterpreted in a parallel universe, but where divinity/holy spirit is conveyed through color. For example, God is the ColorMaker, and mankind has lost it's color, etc. Anyways, the four horses of the Apocalypse are conveniently color coded already, so it was easy to transfer them over (in my story they're called the Generals instead of the Horsemen). From top to bottom there's the Pale General of Death, The Black General of Famine, and the Red General of War. I didn't know how best to color the color of Pale, so I went with Pale blue. As you may have noticed as well, I only have three. There's only three because I think that the first horsemen is actually Jesus prophecied to come back for Rapture. I know that traditionally (at least in American culture, narrative and cinema) that the other horsemen is "Pestilence", but in the passage of Revelations he is called "The Conqueror." Maybe the Bible mentions somewhere else about the whole pestilence thing, but oh well. I personally think that as the Apocalypse grew in popularity in stories that having "Jesus" wasn't epic enough, so they swapped him out for Pestilence. Maybe I should into that. I attached the passage below

"I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest."
Revelation 6:1-2

Anyways, long story. But these are some designs of the three other Generals that I was hoping to put on a new pair of shoes.


PS I also wanted to have the four generals (in this case including The Conqueror) represent the cherubim mentioned in Ezekiel, the one with the face of a man, ram, lion and eagle. So the White Rider would be the Man, the Red Rider has the mane of a Lion, the Black Rider the horn of a Ram (to call forth the winds of Famine) and the Pale Rider has the wings of an eagle. Anyways, this was a long post. Later!

The Lion of Judah Beta

This is something I just started working on. It uses the words of various words and verses from the Bible describing God as a Lion. Many times I think we Christians think of Jesus as a meek little lamb, but forget that he is also described as this fierce and strong Lion (like Aslan!). I certainly like the idea, but am gonna start again with a different approach. I'm gonna redo this with more of a full body shape so that I can use just one color of text and you could still tell that it's a lion. Right now if you make all of the text the same color it just looks like a blob.

Site Design

I've been working on my new site for a while now, and this is my current design for it. It's subject to change, but fortunately I'm redoing my site with templates so if I want to change it later I will just need to edit the template. Then all of my pages will be updated automatically! :) By the way, my new site is www.griffinblue.com and it still under construction.

GAH! I NEED TO POST STUFF!

I know, I know, I haven't posted to this blog in a while. I just got a little behind in posting stuff, and kept putting it off and didn't want to play catch up. But I should and will, so prepare to amazed as I throw everything up that I've been working on this term!

Site Designs

Hey! Here's another possible design for my site.
http://www.griffinblue.com/html/test.html

New Site

I know I haven't been posting a lot to my blog lately, but no worries. I have been doing a lot, just haven't gotten around to posting images/links here yet. A lot of my new stuff I have been posting to my new site, www.griffinblue.com. Please check it out.