Microfiche and Microfiction

Hello Crowlers and Crowlettes, a little experiment this time around. Playing around with microfiction and text design, came up with this. Turned out okay, it might well be something I develop further. Though naturally I should really just be doing some comics or something proper like that. Let's see if I manage.

Arson About

Hey hey hey, long time no see. No, I ain't been inside. No, I ain't joined the navy, neither. Here's a little bit of old material, a couple of posters designed to promote a course production of Max Frisch's The Arsonists, also known as the Fire-Raisers, the Firebugs and the Fire-Starter-Twisted-Fire-Starter, yuk yuk.

This was the teaser poster with a little slogan the production team came up with, which works pretty well, reflecting the tone and subject matter of the play. It does 'wry' and 'sinister' well.

This was the finished article, plastered all over the walls of York University to advertise our bold new step forward in theatre. That being "make a set, get people near to it, say the words loud".

Serial Failure

Hello team! Sorry, I forgot and was busy. These are the reasons nobody ever succeeds at that "I'm doing one thing every day" self-imposed blogging challenge. So instead I'm going to do what everybody else does: shove stuff up here as and when it suits me. So today your treat is a lovely Fringe Festival preview!

The talented people at Jackinabox Productions wanted some original logo and illustration work done for their physical and dance adaptation of Hokey Cokey Andersen's The Little Mermaid, so I did this for them. They seemed pretty happy! I hope you like it too, whoever you are out there in radioland.

Fun with the Lights Out

Only a little update today since I'm swamped with producing new stuff for to take to the Fringe Festival. For now here's the poster I did for a York production of Black Comedy that I was in. I can be seen at the bottom left of the photograph in character as Colonel Melkett. It was a big host of laughs and everybody said I was extremely convincing as a shellshocked racist.

I did all the text with my brush pen, inspired by some old film posters of the persuasion "just paint over a production still", and I think it turned out okay! Not quite convinced by the colour on the drop shadow on the title, looks a bit "shitty gold", but never mind, eh. The lighting design and photograph on the poster came courtesy of its sexy dangerous production team, Sam Briggs and Katie Lambert.

Shedding my Responsibilities

Technically this is already late since it's now tomorrow. Nonetheless, here we go!



As the poster claims I also wrote and directed this play as well as designing the poster, in a stunning break from habit. Since it's late, here's the trailer I shot and edited as a special bonus feature. (Audio stolen from the Dead Pirates)

Updatez

Things change. People change. University courses end and suddenly people have time to update their art blogs even though they've been busy little beavers. It's in the spirit of this that I promise to upload one image per day from the last year's backlog of fine posters, illustrations and sketches until such time as I run out. Starting NOW!


This is a blue and red pencil/marker pen illustration of Roseanna Brear in her role as Philomele Smith in good friend Heather Wilmot's play Knightingale. The front lobby of the Drama Society's Barn venue was covered in sheets of paper and dolled up to look like it was covered in the childhood drawings of Phil and her brother Sam, and looked brilliant.

Kicking and Screaming

Hello, that title not only relates to the act of acquiescing to progress, but also suggests the kind of conditions under which I ever put anything I've done on the internet.

HOWEVER! I've just got one of those handy-dandy fancy-pantsy smartphones, with one of those facilities for taking an image and putting it on what's known, these days, as the Internet! If that's not "smart", I don't know what is. However, all this is built more around the device known as Twitter and its limited capacity for self-expression, so the bottom line is that while I'm going to try to get any big finished projects up on here, you're more likely to find tasty little nibbles like what's below at http://twitter.com/crowleeey in the coming age of technological enlightenment. Hopefully this means I'll actually put something up occasionally! WE'LL SEE!?

Anyway, enough hollow promises (echoing as if from the deepest, driest well), this is a page of sketches from today, done in the Caffe Nero in Muswell Hill. Stalkers take note.

Paperclip Jones #4

This only took me two hours! Well, two hours and ten months since the last one. But after I got over that whole no-action-for-nearly-a-year hump, it was barely any time at all.

No Sugar, Sherlock

I'm really enjoying Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss' new Sherlock series. Yet more evidence that someday Moffat might save British television. Or at least the BBC's output.

Brotherhood of the Leaky Boot

This is what's been taking up all my time for the last Nearlymonth and will continue to feel the full force of my love and effort for the next month and a week at the Edinburgh Fringe! Promotional material below, all wrought by my own fair hand. Show info here: COME SEE IT FOR FREE! (A bargain at twice the price)

Back of the flyer!

Front of the flyer!

The poster!

If you're thinking we're an attractive bunch of young men with some exciting new ideas, then you are a very astute person.

Edinburgh Flyer Dump

I am having a dump all over your computer monitor, of all the design work I've been doing for various Edinburgh shows. See if you can spot how many of them selfishly credit myself for making them!

Pekarrotype, Inglorious Technicolour

I stole that joke from Paul Putner's new Edinburgh show, so sorry Paul.

Pekarrotype

Ladies and gentlemen, Harvey Pekar, jazz curmudgeon, indie comics pioneer and cultivator of fine eyebrows, 1939-2010.

A man so deserving of tribute that it made me update my blog!

Brotherhood of the Leaky Boot!

Hello you,

Very soon indeed, with the onset of the Easter holidays, my day-to-day life will be made of sketching and attempting to write this: http://www.twitter.com/leakyboot

"Brotherhood of the Leaky Boot" is the project I'm working on for the Fringe Festival 2010 (under the auspices, and what auspices, of PBH's Free Fringe). It's award-almost-winning stand-up comedian Nathaniel Metcalfe alongside Four Sad Faces' me and Tobias Neutromino Wilson in a mixture of sketch, stand-up and live stunt weaving (if we can get the loom rights). If you want to follow our progress or have a butcher's at any of the inane rubbish that's floating around our noggins, follow us on the Twitter above. The only actual material we've got to show is a tiny drawing I've done for the Fringe brochure. So here it is!

Christmas!

Post-its are well behind, but I'm willing to excuse that because I've been doing masses of drawing anyway! Here's a little thing I threw together as an all-purpose gift tag/Christmas card design.

Not incredibly fancy, but it looks pretty nice all printed out. To anybody who didn't get one on a piece of card - MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hundred Days - Day 4

In a coincidental move, here's day two of a miniature Lebowksifest.

Hundred Days - Day 3

100 Days to Make Me a Better Person - Days 1 and 2

Spearheaded by the wonderful comedian Josie Long, the Hundred Days project is a splendid exercise in personal discipline and random acts of will. The idea is, you pick one task to perform once every day for a hundred days from the 1st December. I've chosen the task of drawing a birthday post-it every day for either somebody I know or some other personality (probably found via IMDB or Wikipedia). I've started a day late, but here are my first two days of cards: the 1st December for Stephen Poliakoff and Woody Allen, two of my favourite writers-of-Jewish-extraction-whose-work-has-recently-gone-off-the-boil, and the second for Heather Wilmot, a fine writer, actor, comedian and good pal o' mine.

Mostly Posters

One for a Dramasoc Open Drama night, a small, no-budget production of Doctor Horrible's Singalong Blog which went down pretty well, evilly masterminded by the marvellous Stuart Hall. Prettily-penned review here: http://www.theyorker.co.uk/news/theatre/3839

Another for a show happening tonight, a big double-header of two of Comedy Society's most popular events:

Fly Poster

Here's another simple York Uni Comedy Society poster I threw together. I'm acting in a couple of sketches for Sketch Hopper so helping promote it wasn't exactly a selfless action. Oh, it's tonight. Better run!