The Alison Rules - This was my first book cover and boy was I excited! To get the exact look of the girl, I had to arrange a photo shoot. I shot the photos on the edge of the lake by the house. It was a brutally cold, windy late November day, and since the book deals with lots of somber themes (lonliness, death, depression, Jolly Ranchers), I wanted my "Alison" to look a little sad and distant. Luckily, the model Danielle didn't have to channel too many emotions, since the wind made her eyes tear up, giving her a face an extra bit of tenderness and sadness that would fit the character perfectly.

Afterwards, I put together a composite of the best poses for the illustration. I knew I didn't have a lot of space, so I had immediately decided to render the bridge just as a dark color on the light color background--so you'd know exactly what it was, but I didn't have to spend lots of time putting in detail that wouldn't add anything, or, worse yet, conflict with the main figure.

I tried several different color schemes, but the blue tones we all felt got the mood of the book across best. I fiddled with an outline, no outline, etc., on the figure, but again did both--outlined the body, but left it off the face, which with the outline looked too thick. The character of Alison is considered by everyone to be extremely beautiful, so I didn't want to add too much detail.

I submitted the final, HC added the text, and now the book is finally on sale at bookstores everywhere! This project was an enormous challenge, but I'm proud of how it came out, and I hope to do more book covers in the future.

Pitney Bowes - "Communication" - This was a six-illustration project for the Pitney Bowes company through the international advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather.

O&M came up with a campaign dealing with the importance of communication, so the theme was played out by using a series of famous, historical phrases, but slightly altered to relay the idea of how different these words would be even if just one of them was heard wrong.

Working with Ogilvy & Mather, I came up with the ideas on how to best represent those phrases and then had to illustrate them. Some, like "We have nothing to fear.." (at left), were easier than others. The ads had been designed to be very simple, strong, and only using two basic colors. After experimenting, I decided to keep the illustrations basically monochromatic as well, that way they looked like part of the ad. I didn't want them to be too colorful or busy and draw attention to themselves, away from the copy. I ended up creating illustrations of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Capitol building, Paul Revere, Mark Antony, a movie marquee, and a hand holding a "guaranteed" contract.

This was a nation-wide campaign; the ads appeared in full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal, and double-page spreads in Forbes, The New Yorker, and other magazines. They were also be part of a series of displays in airports all over the country.

Food, Glorious Food - I've been doing lots of advertising-type images recently, and I felt these were some of the best of my efforts.

The Hot Chocolate and Iced Tea illustrations are the same basic ideas; to promote a beverage in a hip and exciting way. The HC in particular I pictured hanging in a really cool, funky coffee shop.

The Fruit pieces were something I thought could be stamped on crates of said fruit or on labels, to maybe give them a little more exciting feel. Fruits are so darn good for you, after all! I've been told these also make nice little design motifs for someone's kitchen.

Hewitt LLC Christmas Card - I was contacted by Hewitt LLC corporation, who I've done work for before, to produce the illustration for their 2004 Holiday card. The idea of the dove was theirs, but I was asked to make it look sharp, colorful, and hopeful. After several takes of it in a square shape, I thought of doing something less rigid-looking and have it popping out of the borders of a nice, cool circle.

The finished piece was printed on thick paper stock, and the bird was embossed so it pops even more off of the card. Hewitt was happy with it, and I thought the finished product looked just great.

Dan Souder - Lay Down the Valley - I was honored to have my buddy Dan Souder ask me to do the cover for his new CD, Lay Down the Valley. Dan's been working on this for a long while, and I'm really happy to be a small part of it. A few years ago I had done the concert poster for him, and wanted to do something even better this time around.

Dan gave me a photo to work from that he had wanted to use (that's him on the right, as the Best Man), and it was remarkable to be how easily the whole thing came together. Once I got the photo, I instantly got a vision in my head of what I wanted it to look like--a sort of classic yet modern graphic design, with the type up top and and photo slightly cropped. I wanted them to pop off the background so I dropped the transparency way down. I messed around with other graphic details, like character outlines and such; ultimately I left all that stuff off and just ended up where I started.

Dan is a very talented writer and musician, unbearably funny and smart, and a good friend. You can get more info about the album and getting yourself a copy at Dan's site, www.thetrentaffair.com.

Treasury Comics.com - Shazam! - One of my personal goals when I went totally freelance was to have the time to devote to side projects. One of those side projects was the creation of treasurycomics.com, a site devoted to the late great treasury/tabloid/over-sized comics that were most popular during the 70s and early 80s (right when I was growing up). During one snowed-in weekend, I bit the creative bullet and put the whole site together, and posted it.

I had no idea that the site would become so popular--it has readers all over the world--and that so many people (read: guys) would write to me to say how much they loved those books, and love the site. People have sent contributions, like books I didn't yet have, cover scans of foreign editions, trivia, and other goodies. It's made working on the site a complete delight knowing so many people enjoy it.

Over time, the site moved from just being a fan site to being sort of a journalistic one--I've conducted interviews with some of the fine creative folk who worked on these books, and I've tracked down books that were of this size but published long before I was around to read them. I even went so far to get business cards made up for the site, and I give them out at comic cons to people I'd like to interview. It all feels so professional.

One of the other things I wanted to do was come up with some promo material--for what use yet, I'm not quite sure, but I figure I'll find some use for it. My first attempt was this, a portrait of actor Jackson Bostwick, who played Captain Marvel in the 70s Sat-morning show Shazam!, and whose image graced the cover of DC's Limited Collectors Edition #C35. The only design element I was sure I wanted was to have that white frame in the background, and to have the good captain and my treasurycomics.com logo bursting out of it, to convey the sense of bigness and excitement that were these books' stock and trade. I'm really happy how it came out--it screams fun to me, in bold and bright colors. Shazam!

I built this piece on a cold Monday morning, with Johnny next to my chair, listening to one of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour shows. Cold not have been a nicer way to start the day...

Thurgood Marshall Federal Building Anniversary - I was contacted by the biggest possible client of the them all--The United States Government! It was the Public Affairs branch, to be specific, and they wanted to produce a mug to comemmorate the 10th anniversary of moving into their new building, one named in honor of legendary Supreme Court judge Thurgood Marshall.

Trying to replicate the "look" of a building with my style was quite interesting; and it was nice to know just how many different kinds of things--people, animals, and now even objects--I could portray visually with just color and shape. After a great many revisions along the way, the mug got changed to a paperweight, and a double-sided one at that (I had designed the entire piece, in addition to producing the illustration of the building).

I received a box of the finished paperweights; the clear Lucite block makes it look really classy (the pictures I took don't do it justice)--now I don't need to use my ruler to keep papers from blowing off my art table anymore!