Worcester Film Works

I was contacted recently about doing a logo for a local film project called Worcester Film Works. I completely misinterpreted the intention of the organization with the first round of sketches, assuming it was a local film company. The first attempt was pretty funny in a terrible way, I'd done a logo with a guy with a hammer and film reels and spotlights and stars and whatnot... In short, it came out looking like pure communist propaganda. Oops. Maybe I'll post it one day if I'm really desperate, but it's definitely nothing I'm proud of! After that, I did a little research and found out that the actual goal behind WFW is that they'll be SHOWING movies (free to the public) on Worcester Common... not MAKING them! Anywho, I did a bunch of sketches and threw as many movie inspired touches as I could think of. I boiled those down to what I thought were the few most fun ideas in this image:


And then had a little fun throwing it all together in this sketch:


... But then removed a lot of the clutter and just kept the simplified "W" made of film, and sent that off with a bunch of other interpretations in this grouping of logos:


I'd really meant for this to be more of a jumping off point to do some fun designs with, but in the end, they went for the WFW side-by-side letters. Oh well... it's a start!


If you're from Worcester, click the title of this post to check out their schedule for this summer.

I'm looking... forward... to Back To The Future!

-Mike

Rooftop Recordings on sale now!

Purchase Rooftop Recordings here



You must click "Calculate Shipping" to proceed to checkout. Enjoy!

-Mike

Rooftop Recordings Update

Only a few days left until the Rooftop Recording's Release Party at Nick's Worcester! Getting pretty excited for it already, as people's interest seems to be gaining. Nothing outrageous, but something good seems to be happening. There will be an article about the Rooftops out in the upcoming issue of WoMag, and next month there will be a feature in Pulse Magazine. WCHC 88.1 should have a few tracks in their rotation at this point, and there might even be a radio interview in our future. Just wanted to post some photos of the CD case itself, and assure readers that they WILL be able to buy a CD through this blog if they can't make it to the release party! Come back to McNemesis.com for that page on the morning of Monday, the 25th of October. Anyway, here are some images from the CD case itself:






So again that's Nick's Restaurant & Bar, 124 Millbury St., Worcester, October 24th, at 7pm. The line-up should be pretty impressive, featuring the following performers: Scott Ricciuti, Nicole Langlois, Roger Lavallee, Niki Luparelli, Dan Burke, Todd Rawley, Israel Saldana, Ari Charbonneau, Bryan Bedard and Julius Jones. Still hopeful, but not confirmed are Andy Cummings and Stu Pynn. How could it be a bad night?

-Mike

Rooftop Recordings pt. 2 : Flyers

Here are a few promos I'm working on for the Rooftop Recordings release. Ahh, alliteration... Here ya go:



So far, so good? I thought this one was nice as a digital fake of what appears to be a double-exposure. While it's kind of interesting, I still have issues with it. It somewhat gives the impression that multiple recordings for this project might have been going on at the same time on separate rooftops... which was clearly not the case. That or Dan Burke's gigantic apparition is somehow haunting another musician...


And here are two in color, planning to do them in larger format and posting them up around Worcester. Still not at %100 but I think I like them. At this point I'm beginning to lose perspective and need to take a break! The subtlest of changes start to seem important, and I'm just nudging blocks of text around an image anyway. First one is of Stu:

And then there's this one of Scott and Nicole, not really different in layout:

Keeping info on the project to a minimum for the moment, thinking of adding information to promos as the date gets closer. All photos courtesy of Jonathan K. Sun. That's it for now!

-Mike

Bocado Tapas Wine Bar pt.3 - more nudes

Special thanks to "Mama-Menemy" for keeping better track of my artwork than I do! Here are some photos of the rest of the nudes for Bocado from their original hanging in 2006. The frames have glass protecting the artwork, so there's a little problem with glare/reflections on the surface which made them difficult to photograph, but it's not so bad.






I didn't write about it in my last post, but I thought it took some guts for the owner, Michael Covino, to hang these in a restaurant dining room. A lot of people would be too up-tight to put nudes up in a public setting, tasteful or not. Thankfully, it went over really well, no one seemed to mind, and I've been fortunate enough to have my artwork on display in a successful restaurant for about five years now. So, thanks to Mike for the opportunity, and thanks to Mom for sending these photos to me!

-Kung Fu Mike

Bocado Tapas Wine Bar Artwork pt. 2 - nudes

Quick post today! Once again I'm realizing how few photos I have of these. I'm sure if I dug around a bit more I could find some more, but here are two pictures of pen & ink sketches I did for Bocado at the same time as I was finishing the paintings. I remember thinking that I was going to blow through these in an hour each or so but wound up staying up really late the night before they were supposed to be done. Sometimes anxiety about the quality of the work shows up at the worst possible moment. The model wishes to remain anonymous, and therefore has no face in any of these...



One of the original sketches:


And then I ran out of images to use. So next is a sketch for one of the dancers from an earlier post:


This next sketch I think deserves more explanation than I'm prepared to give. I put it up here because I'd promised some nudity in this post and haven't really been able to follow through! It's a little dirty I guess, but in my defense it was for a client who'd wanted a sexy new image for his computer repair business. Previously, he'd been fortunate enough to have a friend who would do this sort of thing for free, so when we got to the pricing part of the negotiation, I suddenly stopped hearing from him. Eeeenteresting. Oh, well.


-Kung Fu Mike

Artwork for Bocado Tapas Wine Bar

I approached this fine art project from the perspective of a commercial artist. I was commissioned by the owners of Bocado (click title for a link to their website) to do a number of Spanish themed paintings and drawings for their dining rooms and bar. It was a great experience and has been terrific promotion for my work in the Worcester area since its completion.





Upon starting this post, I realized what an awful job I've done at photo-documenting my work for Bocado. To attempt to make up for it, here are a few details from the paintings while still in progress:



























Up next: I'll leave you with what we all came here to see - hardcore nudity!

-Kung Fu Mike

Siegfried - Children's book

Here's a project I thought would shoot me to instant fame and success - my first children's book.


While it didn't do for my illustration career exactly what I'd hoped it would, Siegfried, a 32 page children's book (published by the EcoTarium in Worcester, Ma., 2008), was still a valuable experience overall (gotta get that first one out!). I looked at the project as a chance to make a picture book of my hometown, each page essentially a pen & ink postcard of one of Worcester's memorable locations as a runaway stegosaurus makes his way through town. To see how the story turns out, you'll have to go buy a book, below are just a few of my favorite scenes. Click on each for a larger view.






Because I think it's fun to see what happens to character designs as a project progresses, here's the initial sketch I sent to the author of the book, Cookie Nelson, before we were sure the project would be a go:

The book sold pretty well for what it is, and the release party was a lot of fun, considering the appeal to Worcesterites and those from surrounding areas, I feel that more could have been (and could still be) done with it, given some more aggressive marketing. Prove me wrong, children! Prove me wrong!