Gonzo SmartFruit

Long break

2008-10-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Dan and Karl have invaded Southern California and have commandeered a new studio space, and they're drawing everyday on various comic book projects.

This blog may be active sometime before the end of the year. No promises, but fingers crossed. At the very least, Karl will finish that third assignment.

New banner!

Logos

2008-01-03T04:14:00.000-08:00

Dan- "Gun Devil" This was done for the new comic project that I'm working on. The writer and I needed a logo for our pitch package, so while I didn't lie about my respect and intrigue in regards to typography. I did choose this assignment to kill two birds with one stone. The inspiration came from equal parts shogun assasin and watching Ralph Steadman work his magic on the Fear and Loathing criterion DVD. If you want to see if I succeeded in matching the tone of the book you can check out the first five pages on my website. oh and happy new year!

Karl - "Diggup Catchum" I originally was against making a logo for this idea, considering that it is a comic project I have had on the backburner for about 2 1/2 years now. But I've made some progress recently and this came out of it. I'm pretty happy with it, at least for this assignment. When I actually create the official logo I will have to make it more from scratch, as the dirty looking sans-seraph font was downloaded from dafont (www.dafont.com). The skull I actually made a couple days ago with whiteout tape on the back of my moleskin journal where I've been jotting down storypoints for 'Catchum.' I made a vector image of it in Illustrator at the last second to fill in that gap I had at the end of "Diggup." BTW, I just posted this piece on the 22nd of January, so it's very, very late.

Assignment #4

2007-12-22T07:45:00.001-08:00

The new assignment is going to be something a little different. I have recently revived my interest and respect in typography so for this weeks assignment we will be making comic book logos. the goal is to make something that contributes to the feel of the book while still maintaining legibility and not sacrificing originality. so for example, if your doing a 1930's Italian gangster book you can't just use bodoni because it worked for goodfellas, you have to make it your own somehow.

-Dan

finished

2007-12-22T07:40:00.000-08:00

ok i lied earlier, there isn't a whole lot to say about the piece so i'm not going to try, it was done on bristol with pencil and speedball ink and then a whole bunch of photoshop finished it off. enjoy!

-Dan

We suck

2007-12-18T02:38:00.000-08:00

hey guys, we took a week off to play a little catch up and this was supposed to be up yesterday. sadly i still failed because not only is it a day late it's a color short (bad puns are usually karl's thing but fuck it). so yeah holiday, family issues and a very fun comic project put me behind but the colors will be up soon and that's when i'll post meandering nonsense about why i drew what i drew. till then i hope you enjoy this. -Dan
P.S. Karl here. And I am WAAAYYYYYY behind. More later. Hopefully soon. I have some anatomy issues to fix, then I'll throw down some varying line widths and some colors. The holidays definitely didn't help in my never-ending quest to catch up with what I'm supposed to be doing.

Assignment #3

2007-12-08T16:30:00.001-08:00

Take any animal and saddle it up with a human rider, the more eclectic the better.
The animal does not have to be its actual size in comparison to the human. So giant birds, fish, etc, are just fine.

Idioms

2007-12-02T02:12:00.000-08:00

Dan-
"The Land Of Milk And Honey"
I'm actually pretty pleased with this one, i had alot of fun mixing some materials and painting again. I know photoshop is probably faster but i just can't get in the groove with it when i do illustrations. although i did use the computer to add some effects and make some things POP

Karl-
"To Jump Down Someone's Throat"
This wasn't exactly what I had in mind for this project, but it is my first all digital painting. Done in Photoshop in 7 HOURS. UGH. But I had fun painting that mouth. I found a really cool reference photo to work from of a guy with a throat cam mounted on his uvula. So that was cool. Reminded me of a section in the "Aeon Flux: Herodotus File" book with a series of "still images" from Aeon's throat cam as she blows this guy up after sticking his toe in her mouth.

Assignment #2

2007-12-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia- An IDIOM is an expression (i.e., term or phrase) whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use.

Pick an IDIOM and do an illustration based off it.

Sounds like a good creative gray area for some artistic interpretation.
Every Sunday is when we post our art, so check back tomorrow!

In case anyone wants to link us, here is a banner.

-Karl

Mismatched Music

2007-11-26T02:40:00.000-08:00

ASSIGNMENT #1
Draw an iconic character archetype from a genre/mythology playing an instrument absurd to the genre. The idea was conceived after Karl attended his sister's orchestra show on Halloween where all the musicians wore costumes for the occasion (there were a plethora of Phantoms at the Opera).

Dan- I had alot of fun drawing Medusa playing the harp. i had significantly less fun coloring it on photoshop. that's my own fault, but it's cool cause I can really raise my bar with the next illustration.

Karl- Well, I drew a samurai playing a Gibson Les Paul. I spent way too much time overcoloring this piece (after I swore I wouldn't), only to throw a photo filter over everything to get some color unity going. I wound up with a color scheme similar to Dan's. I saw his finished piece before I started the colors on mine, so that might be the reason.