Luke Dixon

I managed to find Luke Dixon at three different websites and social networks (flickr, tumblr, and on his own site) and on lots of blog posts, but not a single line of background information on the guy. I love his style though.

 

www.lukedixonart.co.uk
www.flickr.com/photos/lukedixonart

Laura Barnard on HP laptops wallpapers

I've been a big fan of Laura Barnard's quirkly drawn cityscapes for quite some time, so it was great to learn she had been commisioned by HP to design a series of desktop wallpapers for their new line of laptops. How awesome would it be to start your brand new laptop for the first time and see something like this? Way to go, Laura!


The best part is that, as well as having these as their new standard wallpapers, HP has also made them available to download for free here. If only I had a facebook account...

www.laurabarnard.co.uk

Pixels

Awesome little short film by Patrick Jean. According to One More Production, the company behind the film, it's had over one million views in less than 24 hours and I'm not surprised!

www.onemoreproduction.com

Seeing the Future: A guide to visual communication

I am almost a month late in posting this, but it's too good not to mention - Howtoons and Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam have teamed up to create a drawing and ideation guide that teachs how to get big ideas down on paper. In 20 pages, it covers how to make up shapes, proportion, perspective and even a bit of art history; everything beatifully illustrated and put together in a fun and interesting way.



The whole guide is free and availabe to view online or download.

www.howtoons.com

Superman Challenge

Last week Warren Ellis tried something a little different on the REMAKE/REMODEL challenge on the Whitechapel forum. The idea was:

" You are an artist/designer. You have to put together the cover for a comic called SUPERMAN. It is issue 1 of this book.  You have been told that Superman is a man who dresses predominantly in a shade of blue, and wears a red S symbol. You know nothing else about the character. The cover must include a logo and the text THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE DARING EXPLOITS OF THE ONE AND ONLY SUPERMAN. It's up to you what kind of company you're at. What kind of comics you make. How you translate that description of Superman. What era you're in. Who you are, even. Go nuts with it."

How awesome is that for a challenge? Here's a small sample of some of the incredible artwork the thread generated.






Covers above by Alberto J. Silva, Bryant paul Johnson, David Bednarski, Tom Muller, Thomas Perkins, Gaston, Chris G. Team Mummy, Anthony Brennan, Mike Rooth, Paul Milligan, Jorell and Dean Trippe.

See the whole thread here.

Now there's a new challenge up and this time it's for 2000AD. The idea is the same - you've been given a brief to design the cover for an anthology you know very little about and it's up to you to interpet the idea. I think there will be some great stuff coming out of this one too.

Glorkian! GO!

James Kochalka has teamed up with the indie game studio Pixeljam to make something he's wanted for a long time - his very own video game! I'm not even into games, but I think this is going to awesome.

They are trying to raise enough money to get the project going, and are offering some pretty amazing rewards for everybody who helps in any way. More details on the game (including an ace little animation with the american elf talking in a voice that doesn't sound anything like the voice i had for james kochalka in my head) and on how to help them reach their $10000 target at kickstart.com.


www.kickstarter.com
www.americanelf.com

Johnnie Cluney

Johnnie Cluney is the main illustrator for the music website Daytrotter. According to this bio, "his design adventures began in his early grade school years with ninja turtle drawings, and bubble letters. since then johnnie has gone on to design countless flyers, record covers, t shirts and more".

I couldn't find any more of his work online, but there's plenty to see at Daytrotter, with almost six years worth of reocrding sessions and a band portrait to go with each one of them.

www.daytrotter.com

Pathetic geek stories

Pathetic geek stories is pretty much what the name says: awkward, often embarassing little stories that Maria Schneider has been compiling and illustrating  for the past fifteen years or so. The current online archieve collects dozens of the best stories told by friends and submitted by readers over the years (and you can even submit your own here).

patheticgeekstories.com

Hourly Comics - part 2

Lots of people have added their comics to the Hourly Comic Day Forums since I posted about it on Tuesday, including some old time favourites like Marc Ellerby, Adam Cadwell, Lucy Knisley and Box Brown.

There are 7 whole pages worth of links and so many good ones it's hard to pick favourites, but here's a few more that I really enjoyed:

Tim Carpenter


Rachel Weiss


Jordyn Bochon


(click on the images for the full comic)

Hourly Comics

Yesterday was the Hourly Comic Day. The idea is simple (and a lot of fun): to get lots of artists everywhere to make a journal comic every hour they were awake and post the results online. Here's a few that stood out for me, but there are tons of other really good ones over at the tencentticker message board.
 
Vicki Nerino


Thorsten Sideboard


Britt Wilson


Ste Hitchen


Joe Hunter


Joseph Bergin III


And here's one from Lucy Knisley.  Even though she hasn't posted one for yesterday yet, she had been doing hourly comics every wednesday for the past month.




 (click on the images for the full comic)

ilovedust

Ilovedust is a "design boutique" based in Southsea. Their work ranges from interactive design and motion graphics to brand identity and art direction, and amongst the load of (very good) design work in their online portfoilo, there are some pretty awesome illustrations too.


www.ilovedust.com
www.clickforart.com/artist/ILoveDust/

What things do

What things do is a new webcomic collective founded by Jordan Crane. It features his own comics as well the work of John Porcellino, Sammy Harkham, Ted may, Steve Weissman and it looks like there's even more to come.

I only discovered it a couple of days ago , but have been slowly reading my way through everything on the site and I have to agree with the forbidden planet blog - it certainly is the most beautiful collection of strips in one place I’ve seen in a long time.


whatthingsdo.com