SF Sketchfest
SF Sketchfest, the San Francisco comedy festival is back! I was asked to do something special for the screening of Waiting for Guffman. OK! Bob Balaban, Christopher Guest, Parker Posey, Fred Willard and Kevin Pollak were on-hand for a Q&A session after the movie. I wish I could have seen any of that, but it was cool hanging out in the lobby of the Castro too...I met Parker Posey! So there is that.
I printed a run of 100 and they nearly sold out. Posters come with a "program" for Red White and Blaine.
Dana Gould at Cap City Comedy Club - poster
This is the third poster I've done for Dana Gould. So fun! For this NYE show I went with a fancy, art deco feel.
Cap City Comedy Club, Austin Texas. Get tickets here:
Picture This! and Deal Killer
Picture This!
Comedians: Joey Devine, Casey Ley, Kate Willett, Drew Platt, Jesse Hett, plus a Very Special Guest
Artists: Ben Walker-Storey, Reuben Rude, Zachary Sweet, Ryan Hungerford, Christine Macternan, Nigel Sussman
Sat, November 28, 2015
Doors: 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm
Doc's Lab
San Francisco, CA
$10.00 - $12.00
Get Tickets here
Picture This! is happening again at Doc's Lab, November 28th! Check out the great lineup of artists I've wrangled. Lots of first-timers. Come see comedy and cartoons collide.
And Deal Killer
And after Picture This!, stick around for my new after-show, Deal Killer! It's a cartoon-driven comedy game show about dating and relationships. Kate Willett, Amanda Walker-Storey and DJ Real will answer my ridiculous questions about things that might happen on a date or in romantic relationships.
Dana Gould Live at the Great Scott
Another poster for Dana Gould!
BOSTON. 1 NIGHT ONLY
FRI, NOV. 13th
Dana Gould @ GREAT SCOTT
You don't know how much joy it brings me to see DanaGould.com taken over with my artwork!
Dana Gould Live at Punch Line S.F.
The beginning of October has launched me into the busiest time of my life. Let's see, I started a job as an boys Tee designer at Tea Collection. The freelance work is blowing up. I've been doing a bunch of multimedia-comedy shows (More on these soon). And the artwork for Cobb's Comedy club and Punchline keeps coming! I'm so excited about this latest poster for Dana Gould. He is one of my favorite comedians working today. You may know him from the decades he's been killing it on stage, or from the opening credits of The Simpsons.
Or from his podcast, The Dana Gould Hour. One thing I really like about his podcast is when he geeks out on old horror and sci-fi movies. I'm constantly putting down my paint brushes to scrawl down movie titles. Plus he does this thing that I call the "bridge" of his podcast, Dana calls the "middle part" where he tells listeners a bit of history on film, Hollywood, crime, etc. It's great for guys like me who aren't good at book-reading. Anyway, thanks to these geek-outs and middle parts its clear that Dana and I share a lot of interests. While my first rough mockup was a straight-up spoof of the poster for The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, I ended up loosening up the composition, adding as many essential and deep-cut movie references as I could fit. It's all done in real-life brush and ink on paper. with the color added in Photoshop.
Posters are being made available on ComedyFilmNerds.com (they're working out some technical difficulties, hopefully won't be long).
So I spent the weekend taking in the shows and selling posters in the lobby with Dana. Uh, that was cool! Emma Arnold is Hilarious! I'm so glad I got to get to know her too. Kate Willett is also a fantastic San Francisco-based comic you will be hearing more and more about. We run a show together at Doc's Lab. If you haven't seen Picture This! yet, you should.
The Gould poster has also been immortalized as the "cover art" for the most anticipated podcast of the year, The Halloween episode of The Dana Gould Hour! Give it a listen, monster-kids!
Convent Comedy sketches
Last Sunday, August 23rd Kate Willett hosted a comedy show and private party at The Convent in San Francisco. The whole thing was taped by VICE. It seemed like every young, SF comedian was there. Like some kind of embedded reporter, I spent the whole night scratching out records of the night.
Cobb's Comedy Club: Green Room portraits
This time last year I made a proclamation. I only want to work on stuff that I love. I want to be involved in comedy. I didn't really know how specifically I would wedge my Chuck Taylor into this world. I just started showing up at the clubs and open mics in San Francisco. At some point I realized I should email some comedy clubs (and SF Sketchfest) to see if they could use some show posters (Tip: It helps to attach a poster that's finished and ready to help them make money!) It's kinda nuts how quickly things have moved since then. After getting to know the folks at Cobb's Comedy club and Punch Line, they asked me to help them redecorate the green room at Cobb's with a series of caricatures. These are the comedians who left us too soon. So I launched into painting these iconic comics in watercolor and inks.
When I was first commissioned, I had visions of these pieces being ultra-simplified Hirschfeld-esqe caricature. But strangely enough they are turning out to look more like my drawings. Oh well, the world already has Hirschfeld-esque drawings. They were drawn by Al Hirschfeld.
Check out the first seven comedians.
Greg Giraldo
Joan Rivers
Mitch Hedberg
Redd Foxx
Comedy & Cartoons Collide! Picture This SF
Come to Picture This! July 17th at Doc's Lab (North Beach)
Picture This! is a new kind of comedy show featuring live cartooning. Picture This! San Francisco is hosted by Kate Willett and Joey Devine, and me! (heading up the art side)
Comedians: Kate Willett, Joey Devine, Torio Van Grol, Stroy Moyd, Cameron! Vannini, Jono Zalay & Irene Tu
Check out this amazing line-up of Animators: Ben Walker-Storey (art host), Rob Reger (creator of Emily The Strange), Amanda Walker-Storey (Yahoo! Beauty), Jesse Balmer (comic book illustrator), Zachary Sweet (Super7) and Sean Keeton (Sega) and Fred Noland (SF Weekly)
More about the Animators on the Facebook Event page
PICTURE THIS! is a show created by Brandie Posey & Sam Varela: two girls who push the boundaries of what a comedy show can be. Picture This! is a live comedy show with hilarious stand-ups performing while some of the best animators, cartoonists, and other artists draw live. Their doodles are projected behind the comics! The comedians don’t know what the animators are drawing and the animators don’t know how the comedians will react. It may be weird. It may different. But it will be FUNNY!
$10 advanced/ $12 at the door Get Tickets Here
Duds for Bugs - Animated short
Check out my newest animation, Duds for Bugs! Meet 10 bugs who wear clothes...that rhyme. Subscribe to my new YouTube channel, Mega Big Time!
Timmy and the Dinosaur by Adam Carolla
On a recent episode of the Adam Carolla Show, Adam took about a minute to write a children's book (Chris D'Elia episode). I immediately dropped everything and began illustrating the tale of Timmy and the Dinosaur.
Here it is.
UPDATE:
Timmy and the Dinosaur was featured on the May 13th episode of The Adam Carolla show. Thank you guys!
Process
I handled this project like a storyboarding/animatic exercise (Yes, I'm looking for work in animation. Please share this with your industry friends). The pages were sketched out quickly in Photoshop. It's great because you can move, add and scale things easily.
The artwork was created in Adobe Illustrator then imported into Flash. The line art just looks better when it's done this way. I used the custom brushes and techniques laid out by Clay Butler in this Youtube tutorial. I saved an Action that automates the steps it takes to go from this weird looking, overlapped lines to artwork that's cleaned up and ready to color.
Thanks to Jun Sugiyama for making his music available for stuff like this.