Cloud Study

My Life as a Musician and the Importance of Failure

After college, I was pretty sure I’d end up being a musician of some sort. The last year of film school really took it out of me. I got overly ambitious with projects and continually shot myself in the foot with intended scale, failure to adapt and refusal to scale back. I failed about as hard as I ever have that final semester and the summer after, about all I did was sit on porches reading comic books and rode a bicycle. In hindsight, I do think the experience was good for me. Since then I’ve learned to get things out, not only to have them done and off my plate, but to push myself to produce more and worry less about any work’s reception. It’s a balancing act of perfection and timeliness, a constant struggle that makes or breaks me daily as a designer and illustrator.

But back to music, I spent about a year after school concepting and working on an EP in my childhood home in Maryland. I’d write and record music for most of each day. Many months of this ended up in my being broke and a bit burnt-out on music. I kept producing the EP but started looking for a part time job. I was lucky enough to have a friend who had moved to New York after school and had a small illustration gig for me, illustrating tarot cards for some website for maybe a movie I think. Anyway, it went alright and it got me back into something I’d done my entire life but hadn’t much considered since highschool: drawing. I took the moderate success of the illustration gig and started scouring Craigslist for freelance design gigs. I suppose the rest is history, to skim over the agonizing period where I hunted awful Craigslist ads to work on my chops. As this started becoming more and more something I saw myself doing, maybe even for a career, the album started working on me in a bad way. I felt like I didn’t have enough time to finish it and I’d devoted so much time and energy on it already. So in a last crazed push, I slapped the thing together, called it Brighten Up Sourpuss (a directive and goal for me at at time of pretty extreme isolation) and sat on it. I had always intended to “shop it around”, whatever that means, and go on tour with it… I know. So, I went on with the design life, moved to Brooklyn and set about carving out a place where I could work for myself doing something I liked (something that didn’t make me as crazy as music did) and gave me the time to enjoy other things too (friends most importantly).

Well, here is the result of those many months in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by drums, cables, microphones, guitars, a xylophone, a banjo, a recorder, harmonicas, and anything else that I needed to commit to audio. It was a good time (again, in hindsight) and I’m rather proud of what I produced. I hope you enjoy it.

Season 3 Episode 2 in which long-time bad guy, the (Cigarette) Smoking Man, comes to the forefront of evilness. He has to bargain and bluff some other bad dudes and the good guys too and creates some pretty stressful situations for all. 

This is part of an ongoing project to catalogue the villains from the television series X Files. Check out the others here!

TV - Adventure Time

I’ve been at my Home home in Maryland the past few weeks. I’ve been doing a whole lot of bicycling (they have hills here, real hills) and catching up on some design work. Being that there isn’t a whole lot of night life (not something I take much advantage of in NYC when I’m there but it’s nice to pretend I would), I’ve also been catching up on some television. I was completely unaware of one of the awesomest animated things ever made: Adventure Time. Completely hooked. Extra funny, some awesome character design, and moments of great stretchy animation. To a lesser extent, I’ve been playing some cell phone games too, one being Sword & Sorcery. And now, these two things combined.

Download the AE Luxury Scorecards here.

I've recently been turned on to scoring baseball games. It involves intricate note-taking, pens and attention to detail (i.e. just the right thing for me.) I was a bit stressed though, having to use the provided scoresheet in the program. It was too small to allow for any flourishes of the pen whatsoever and did not keep track of how many hot dogs and beer I consumed or how many high-fives I gave out or got. This is why I chose to make my own.

Not to mince words - this is the Cadillac of scoresheets. Each team has two 8.5x11 sheets of luxurious score-keeping real estate. I've added in special marks too, like whether a pitcher is a lefty or righty, an icon for pitcher change (oh so important to note to keep accurate pitcher stats), and most importantly, a wonderfully large at-bat cell, with room to draw hit trajectories and cleanly label out sequences. If you don't really care about size, you can always look to the wonderful Eephus League package, but I needed a bit more room and details.

You can download the AE Luxury Scorecards here. Hope you like 'em. Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions on the set.

The ae shop is now open! There is a great poster up there for you all to grab - a first edition of 22. It's a man on a tiny planet, breathing deep to calm his stuff down. It's a version of a page from my comic "Friend Mold." 8" x 10" archival ink giclee print on 100% cotton rag. (270 gsm, 15 mil., archival for those interested) For space-likers, sighers, planeteers, and appreciaters of stargazing. Enjoy, thanks!

Another gig poster for the now Chicago-based DJ Lani Love. Changed up the style a bit this time to better portray her intended pop, disco and 80s setlist. I liked the look of the background on this so I made some wallpapers. You can get two versions of the wallpaper for your iPhone 4 or big old Droid right here.

Continuing on this Record Store Week "release all my music" bonanza comes Prescription Strength Hugs' Detuskit EP. I'd consider this part of my "Serengeti" phase - lots of drums, recorders, saws and various percussions. Check out the album art and listen to the tracks! You can get the album on my Bandcamp page, thanks!

<a href="http://prescriptionstrengthhugs.bandcamp.com/album/detuskit" data-mce-href="http://prescriptionstrengthhugs.bandcamp.com/album/detuskit">Detuskit by Prescription Strength Hugs</a>

Season 3 Episode 13 in which two highschool girls experience the true power of planetary alignment! They kill baby Ryan Reynolds and are accused of Satanic conjuring by an increasingly agitated town. Some dude gets murdered by a spring... great episode.

This is part of an ongoing project to catalogue the villains from the television series X Files. Check out the others here!

Screenshots of the video project I recently completed, in which I drew many, many buildings.

Another "Hey, Koo!" to add to the soon-to-be collection of haiku comics written by Kalia Armbruster and arted by me. Still settling into this line-art style with flat color. It's a great exercise and I'm having fun working within the restraints. More to come, ya'll.