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Enter: THE PHOENIX!

As I mentioned in the last post, I have a few projects I've been working on both for myself and for a couple contests (not unlike the previous Florence + the Machine album cover contest, but hopefully with better results).

This is my entry for the first of the two contests I am submitting stuff for within the next few weeks. The contest is through a website called We Love Fine, and the guidelines were to create a t-shirt design using villains from Marvel Comics (there was a specified list of 100 you had to choose from). The winner gets prize money and their design is used as official Marvel merchandise.

The character I choose is Dark Phoenix, ripped straight from the pages of my favorite comic series -- X-Men. Long story short, the Phoenix is an intergalactic being that possesses the body of Jean Grey, a telekinetic telepath, turning her into an insanely unstable planet-destroying entity of near-unrivaled power.

One of my main goals was to make her look a little gaunt, creepy, and dangerous to emphasize the character's ruthless/villainous nature and play down the spine-breakingly 'sexy' poses a lot of artists like to depict her in. The Phoenix formed by Jean's fire-y hair is an attempt to show the a more direct union of the two rather than Jean being enveloped in a giant flaming bird like in the comics.

The contest voting was supposed to go live on July 6th, but then it got pushed back to the 10th, then today, and now it's been pushed back again to the 19th. I was going to post this to coincide with the start of voting...but it's moved around so much, I figured I would just post it now and let you guys know when it goes up for real. You can visit this link to view my entry on the site.

As for the next contest I'm working on, I'm just gonna tease you with this:

Endings, Beginnings, and Old Memories

On top of the freelance work I've been doing, I have been working on other side projects for the various events that have occurred over the last few months. Here are a few of 'em:

This is a gift for the daughter of an old family friend who died back in May. Since the family is fairly religious, my mom thought a cross was an appropriate commemorative gift. Of the ones she found she liked this one best, but hated the paint job (I don't have a 'before' picture, but it looked pretty poopy -- literally). My job was to repaint it to make it look like a relic and give it more 'character' to better reflect the personality of our late friend.

The daughter of the family that used to like next door graduated from high school this year, so my family's gift to her was a 'College Survival Kit'. Along with a plethora of practical items (i.e. tools and other things that come in really handy, but no one wants to give as a gift because they aren't too exciting), we included this Piggy Bank, hand-painted by yours truly, as a place to keep her laundry quarters. The pig is muddy because he needs to be washed...just like you wash dirty laundry. Eh? EH? OK, fine. All of my jokes aren't winners.

Later in July, my aunt is taking great-uncle on an honor flight to DC for surviving veterans. The program suggests that family members send in cards and letters, so my mom wanted my help in making him a card that is special and unique to him. She picked the picture (it's of him and my grandmother) and the quote, and I incorporated each into design of the card. I wanted it to look like an aged journal, and used some textures from this site to help create that effect (it's an amazing resource for textures, I highly recommend checking it out). Here's a look at the inside:

I'm gonna try and post sketches and stuff more regularly ANNND I have a few cool projects coming up soon I wanna share with you guys, so keep your eyes peeled for some new stuff. My end-of-summer goal is to have my website revamp done, so hopefully I'll have something to show on that in the near future too.