I whipped up the above design for Volume Bicycles "Thrasher" frame. This is a redesign of what they currently have and apparently they want more colors and it to be more "graphic-ey" than what I've provided. Anyway, I thought it was a cool theme and its based off a Burzum tape I found. I felt like Burzum embodied all that is "Thrasher" and the stark black on white frame color scheme would've added to its evil. Also, we listen to Burzum a lot when we ride bikes. None of my friends are nazi's---we just like brutal music.

New updates

Lots of things have been going on!! So much so that I have had little to no time to post anything up here.
Anywho, after having an animation featured in the Xavier:Renegade Angel contest on Adult Swim, I have been getting pretty steady gigs for work.
btw you can view my animation by going here

One new project we're working on is a video for Zach Hill (Hella, Team Sleep, The Advantage)'s new project Chll Pll. It will be about 80% animation and about 10% live action.
I should probably clarify what I mean by "we" at this point.
"We" is a collective of artists that I knew from the Houston, TX area that have jumped on board to help animate video projects and print projects I get.
"We" go by the name Funwunce.
Everyone I work with are phenomenal artists-- go check out their work at the link above.

Another project we have started is a video for the band Black Moth Super Rainbow. We are doing an animated video for the song "Tooth Decay" off of their forthcoming album Eating Us.
We get the chance to work with PFFR on this one so we're all totally stoked.

Alllllsooo - I got commissioned to do the new European Tour shirts for Philadelphia, PA based Psych-Grind band An Albatross.
Here is a picture of the early draft of said shirt.


Also, I will be posting screen shots of the aformentioned video(s) soon.

Stay posted!!!

Stills from New Animations Part 1 - FM Static

Above are some stills from the FM Static video I've been working on with director Van Blumreich. I did all the hand drawing and water coloring was done by Tim Dorsey.

Sketches from new FM Static video

I'm working on doing some animation for some upcoming videos for the band FM Static (Tooth and Nail). These are some early sketches I did of the main character/notebook sketches that follow the art direction of the CD packaging.I will be working on the video with director Van Blumreich, who I did videos for Copeland and The Presidents of the United States of America with. More to come soon!

Westheimer Block Party Poster

This is the step-by-step process I went through to complete a Screen Printed Poster for Houston, TX Westheimer Block Party. The first few drawings are blue pencil/graphite sketches and then it proceeds to the photo of the pencil drawing, and text layout/editing in Adobe Illustrator.
Comments appreciated

Dallas, TX High-Rise Graphic Install

These are some photos of a Vinyl installation my friend Gabriel Cavazos and I did. We do work for sign companies and we got contracted to design and install vinyl graphics in each 4 floor stairwell in the building. The stairwells were on the corners of the building and were surrounded in glass so that from the freeway you could see baroque designs traveling up the stairs of the building. It looked really cool when we were done and overall was a 2-3 week project from concept to completion. Click on the image for larger view.

Sargent House Shirt Designs

These are 3 shirt designs I did for a record label/ management company out of Echo Park, LA called Sargent House, home to These Arms Are Snakes, Daughters, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and many more. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to propose 3 designs for their label shirts. Comments appreciated!

New ScreenPrints/ Posters

"Wires and Buttons" and "Delilah" videos DONE!!!

Young Mammals - "Wires and Buttons"

"Wires and Buttons" - Mark Armes from mark armes on Vimeo.




Young Mammals - "Delilah"
The Young Mammals won Song of the Year, Best new Band, and Best Indie Rock at the 2007 Houston Press Music Awards as a result of their very hard work and the independent release of the "Delilah" video.

"Delilah" Young Mammals from mark armes on Vimeo.

I had the very fortunate opportunity to work with the director Mark Armes and the Young Mammals to produce two amazing videos. On the video for "Wires and Buttons' I was absent from the set but I helped Color Correct the B&W footage in post and attempted to re-create the sharp contrasts used in old Zombie movies. In the "Delilah" video I basically created the rigs that brought the snack foods to life and helped with overall art direction.

ENJOY!!!!

Pencil Test GIFs

So here are some small pencil tests I've done in recently that I just kind of did the lead frames for and scanned in to Photoshop and made into a GIF to make sure my fluidity is right. So far, I do not think it is as spot on as I would like it to be but, I am ready to crack down and learn everything I can about animation. I have an intense amount of fun doing this and I would have to say there are few experiences in life that Ive had that parallel replicating movement and life from a series of drawings. Pretty rad.
Anyway, here they go---(click the links)

Pencil test #1

Pencil test #2

Pencil test #3
this one is supposed to be God playing baseball with your mind.

FPH Magazine Web Pencil Sketch
For Houston based monthly publication Free Press Houston

Comments are much appreciated!!!

Vector Art

These are two vector art pieces I designed in Adobe Illustrator. More than anything they were just exercises but I really liked the way they turned out. The top picture is a design I made a few months ago, and the bottom one I just designed tonight for a friend (who liked the top one), and wanted me to design something like that for her house. I'm going to print it on Photo Paper on an HP8000 Solvent printer tomorrow at 14"x14". The top picture also won a few awards for vector art on DeviantArt.
Click either for large view

Links to Copeland and Presidents of the United States of America videos

Hello everyone,
I'm posting links to Quicktime versions of two videos I recently worked on with some super talented individuals.
Both videos were directed by Van Blumreich with animation by Mark Armes and myself.

Copeland - Should You Return (Dir: Van Blumreich, Animation: Mark Armes, Shelby Hohl)

Presidents of the United States of America - Rot in the Sun (Dir: Van Blumreich, Animation/ Art Direction: Shelby Hohl)

Some scenes from the new cartoon

Mark Armes and I have been arduosly trying to chug out a couple of animations so that we can start submitting our hand drawn stuff to some film festivals. Anywho, here are some scenes of a cartoon we're currently working on.

Drawn Smogether

About to meet up with Mark Armes to start adding some scenes to an animated short we've been working on. We're hoping the run time ends up to be about 2-3 minutes so that we can start submitting it some animation festivals.
I have that in the works and I have a music video for a Houston, TX-based hip hop artist Perseph One that's coming up. Really stoked on the Perseph video because I'm basically getting free reign to do whatever kind of animation I want in it.
I'll have some stills posted up for both once I get to a scanner.

Some early pictures of the Presidents of the USA puppets for the video

The video is completed now but I wanted to post up some pictures of the puppets that I made. We ended up roto-scoping footage we shot of the musicians heads onto footage we shot of the puppet bodies moving and rocking.
The little black button looking things are actually thumbtacks with cork backings that I colored black as well. It was my way of making hinges for the joints of the body. I spaced the cork backing kinda far off of the character so there was a very free range of motion a la "Randy" from Pee Wee's Playhouse.
Unfortunately, we ended up lighting all the puppets on fire for the video but we ended up using After Effects to simulate fire because it is a major pain trying to key out the green screen areas when something is burning. :(
I'll have a link to the Hi-Res version of the video up soon, as well as the Copeland video.
---Sorry the photos are all blurry---

Good Morning

So last night I went to a film premiere for my buddy Van Blumreich at Dean's. Pretty rad turn out. He played two music videos I had the honor of working on but unfortunately, I showed up kinda late so I only got to see one of them. We had a chance to make music videos for Copeland and the Presidents of the United States of America (i know right?!). The videos were fun to work on but required some very tedious time hand-cutting little objects out of polystyrene. For the Copeland video, Mark Armes and I produced Stop-Motion Animation for the last, Id say 3rd, of the video. I built all the props/puppets and did Live Action Animation on the Presidents of the United States video. Both will have pics and links up soon.