Stiles of Art: October 2021

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

BIG FUN: THE MALL MADDNESS TOUR ‘89

Look at me taking yet another opportunity to design something for a gallery show that’s close to my heart. For those not ‘in the know’, I love the late 80’s film ‘Heathers’(written by Daniel Waters, and directed by Michael Lehmann). You can see evidence here of other works (yes works as in plural), dedicated to this macabre movie. Gallery1988 would once again be privy to this piece inspired by the aforementioned film with their show prompt ‘Fake Gigs (2)’.

Jeremy Applegate as 'Peter Dawson' & an unidentified co-star.

The concept for the gallery’s exhibit is loosely based around creating posters or adverts for music, movies, products, and more, based on a fictitious concept from film or television. In this case, I chose to create a concert poster for the band ‘Big Fun’ that is often referred to, rarely seen (at all), and who’s insufferable hit single “Teenage Suicide…Don’t Do It”, is ironically ‘tearing’ up the airwaves. The music group form the film which never existed (although another band has taken the moniker), was actually made up of: Don Dixon, Mitch Easter, Angie Carlson, and Marti Jones. How is that ironic? Watch the film, but be warned it deals with suicide rather light-heartedly, even if none of the deaths could be legitimately counted as such. The film has an interesting message that touches on identity and alienation in society. It also kicks off the nihilism that would become a badge of honor for an entire generation. Or at least that’s my analysis.

One of the many references I curated while designing the layout.

When I saw the prompt for this show, I had a few selections, but quickly whittled it down to this one. Having seen the film multiple times I had a clear idea of the genre of music ‘Big Fun’ performed. As a ‘New Wave’ type band, I began scouring the internet for classic band posters, flyers, etc., that I could use as inspiration or even a template. Eventually I settled on an angled layout utilizing the color scheme from the movie (as the poster is present in a few scenes, but it is beyond blurry), as well as mimicking it’s format. I took some inspiration from the research materials of old authentic posters and included dates along with sponsors. Here I took some liberties, as well as, having to adjust things for copyright reasons (primarily logos).

7-11 inspired teen hang-out 'Snappy Snack Shack'.

In order to add as many ‘Easter Eggs’ as possible to this piece I started first by deciding who would ‘present’ the tour along with associated sponsors. It made sense that ‘Snappy Snack Shack’, would sponsor the tour since ‘Jason Dean AKA J.D.’ (Christian Slater), mentions they were the one consistent thing about moving around the country with his father. They’d be the best candidate to sponsor a tour anyways as they catered to teens to begin with in the movie like a 7-Eleven style convenience store (which is funny because that’s what it was originally supposed to be and is in the musical). Both the ‘Swötch’ (based on the Swiss line ‘Swatch’), and ‘Cornuts’(purposely misspelled), are products consumed by ‘Veronica Sawyer’ (Winona Ryder), and the ‘Heathers’. The ‘ich lüge’ ammunition also plays a considerable role in the film, that I won’t spoil. My final logo design for this was for ‘Ticket Faster’, a knock-off of the very well known, Ticket Master logo.

Digital late 80's personality 'Max Headroom', as played by Matt Frewer.

The last element to include here were the tour dates. This required the most work because I wanted the dates to be meaningful. The movie was originally released in March of 1989, so that’s when the tour takes place, along with the 31^st being the US release date (and the last date on the tour). The first date is our first fatality in the story, and in reality. ‘Heather Chandler’ (Kim Walker), is the first of our ‘Heathers’ to be dethroned in the film and sadly the actress Walker died tragically young on March 6^th, 2001. I decided it was the best way I could honor her and the performance in the film. I doubt anyone will even notice it, but it’s there. She was an amazing talent, and who knows what her career could have been. Regardless, I will always remember her in this film. Some of the other dates were based on the logic of a ‘tour’ and centered around a specific area (Ohio where the film takes place). The location names were either referenced in the movie, or match a character’s name. For instance, the 12^th(of April) is Shannen Doherty’s birthday (she plays ‘Heather Duke’), and the 29^th (of October & August respectively), is both Ryder’s, and Jeremy Applegate’s (‘Peter Dawson’) birthdate. Applegate sadly is no longer with us as well, and it seemed like a nice way to honor both him and Walker. There are others as well, but I think you get the point. Locations were also used as a device, as some of them share a name with a corresponding character (‘Duke’ University, or ‘Sawyer’ Place Mall). Finally, I tried to keep the font style as consistent as possible, sticking to the typography from the film. The only time I deviated was when I had to represent a ‘business logo’.

The middle illustration of the band was a composite of several influences, including 'Max Headroom', as well as some adverts of different models or musician's from that time. I sketched the initial image in Procreate, and then vectored it in Adobe Illustrator, before finishing it up back in Procreate.

Most of this design was done in Adobe Illustrator on my desktop, with the layout and center illustration being completed in Procreate. The center illustration was then taken into Illustrator on the iPad, and vectored there along with some of the logos. The pieces were then all arrange together on my desktop in Illustrator. I was going to distress the poster but realized I would lose too much vital information, so I discarded the idea. I then proofed the image (in one go) and had SGX print my final set for the gallery.

The 11” x 17” piece on 14pt paper, is available exclusively at Gallery 1988, and was featured in their “Fake Gigs (2)” exhibition, which ran from November 5^th, 2021 until November 18^th, 2021. The print was a limited run of 10, so please check the gallery’s website for all remaining works related to the show including mine.

For more information, or to see a catalog of my other work, please visit my online store here. You can also find me on various social media platforms below doing a multitude of other artistic things that include hand lettering, and the occasional sculpting/crafting.

Website: www.michaelstiles.com

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Sunday, October 3, 2021

BLOOD SUCKER

This piece was another gem I salvaged from the old idea scrap yard. Specifically, this image is part of a collection of puns I do, or at least that’s where I would categorize it in my portfolio.You can read more about them, their development and inspiration here on my blog. This piece was originally developed as part of a ‘Halloween’ themed sub-series I wanted to do with my ‘Just for Pun’ ™️ cartoons. ‘Sand Witch’ was also developed as part of that gang, she however moved quickly into development primarily because of the simplicity of the image. ‘Blood Sucker’, as it would come to be called was first developed back in 2018 with a sketch in Procreate (October 7^th, 2018 to be exact), where it would remain as a loose and somewhat rough concept for the next three-ish years.

initial sketch with drippy Rollo style candy.

Until…

In late September (2021), I received a rather urgent notification in my email from Hero Complex Gallery, asking about my participation in their ‘Shadows in the Dark II’, horror themed group show. I hastily accepted their invitation, knowing full well it was going to be something I’d have to do quickly as the due date was October 7^th, 2021 (cue dramatic music for the creepy fact that it’s the piece’s conception anniversary). The gallery had reached out to me previously and this was going to be my first show with them, so I wanted to make sure to participate as a sign of good faith. They were taking a chance on me and while I had some horror themed works already done which had never been in a show, I wanted it to be original. I always thought the concept behind ‘Blood Sucker’ was a good one, but I never returned to the project because I just never had the opportunity to do so. This was that opportunity, so I set about fleshing the image out as I had very limited time. In an effort to overwhelm myself, I was also finalizing another piece for a completely different gallery that you can read about here. I think I can pinpoint this project as the beginning of a very busy season with no breaks until sometime in the Summer (of 2022).

Typically, the puns are stand-alone in floating space in order to simplify their appearance, as they are essentially the focus, not the background which in most cases just serves as distraction or base for the main event. Occasionally I might add the implications of a ground space, but it is rarely an area I will illustrate as I did with this piece. It was a challenge that’s for sure, as I feared, adding more imagery really made the piece harder to read, so I tried to simplify my color palette. I began by channeling some of my influences, namely Jhonen Vasquez, and the designers of ‘Invader Zim’, over at Nickelodeon Animation Studios. Much love. The odd background with its overly purple saturation can be attributed to the aforementioned inspiration, and made contrasting the foreground characters a real challenge. Since I envisioned this illustration taking place at night, I knew I would have to include some sense of lighting, blue, purples, what not, and maybe a moon or stars to emphasize that. At this point I really just threw caution to the wind and went with whatever I was producing which seemed to ‘fit’.

For the central images, I wanted our pun on display to be a ‘sucker’ or lollipop, and determined I could use the wrapper as a makeshift cape. The joke here (if you need an explanation), is that this type of candy sometimes is referred to as a ‘sucker’. A vampire can sometimes be identified as a ‘blood-sucker’, hence the joke and all part of the original sketch. The shift in design however occurred when I was creating his trick-or-treat victims. I’m not sure how well it reads, but the concept is the ‘sucker’, is terrifying a candy ring (upper right), and a wax bottle (talk about retro, do they even make these anymore?). I needed to utilize a confection that had a liquid center as to mimic someone being scared to this extent (not sure how to say it politely so I just won’t). The wax bottle candy was the only candy I could recall in recent memory that would work. I did have a ‘Rollo’ at one point, in which the caramel was ‘leaking’ out, but it did not read the same.

From start to finish it took me three years to fully complete the illustration, but actual time put into the project was broken down as follows: I spent two (2) hours & fifty-two (52) minutes in Procreate on my iPad sketching the illustration (6B pencil), followed by an additional amount of undocumented time vectoring the image in Adobe Illustrator (on iPad). Afterward the image was taken back into Procreate where I began to digitally paint the illustration for an additional eighteen (18) hours and fifty-five (55) minutes. Upon importing into Adobe Photoshop I discovered some unintended transitional dithering*, along the edges of my layers most likely due to using the eraser tool. Identifying the culprits and cleaning them up in Procreate would prove to be simple enough, yet perplexingly drawn-out. Why it took so long to fix is beyond me but it was rather frustrating (shakes fist in anger).

With the image clean I was finally able to proof it, along with the other project I was working on in tandem. Thankfully I only had minor contrasting issues and I was able to resolve them within the second pass. I was however out of time to get the image to the gallery physically, so I was going to rely on the gallery’s do print on demand service. Following their guidelines would prove to be a new one for me, but I’m always happy to learn a new process for image submission.

The 8” x 10” piece was debuted at Hero Complex Gallery’s ‘Shadows in the Dark II’, a spooky season themed group show, which opened October 30^th, 2021. At this time, the image is exclusively available via the gallery, so please check their website for all remaining works related to the show including mine.

*I would not actually discovery what this was called, nor how to resolve it until MUCH, MUCH later. In fact I should have written an article on it, and posted it, because I couldn’t find a solution myself which added a lot of unnecessary time onto my piece. For more on the solution check out this post (coming soon)!