Venom: Work In Progress

As usual Christmas sapped all of my drive to make anything. 

Time to get back down to it.

Gypsy Medusa Woman Drawing.

As always colour to follow.

For Asgard - Finished

Many layers. Many textures. Many brushes.

It's taken some time for me to accept the validity of Photoshop for anything other than photo editing.

I'm coming round but I think I still prefer Illustrator. 

For Asgard - Work In Progress

Basically I watched Thor and then decided to do a drawing. 

One informed the other. Went pretty heavy on the hatching.

Next step colour, and sorting out the dodgy lettering.

New Print - Lost Soul A2 Poster Print now available online.

Just in time for Christmas, why not get yourself/someone else a sweet print?

http://mercerdrawsthings.bigcartel.com/product/lost-soul-a2-print

Lost Soul A2 print on silk finish paper. It's tight.

£12.50

Hand Drawn Kinetic Type #3: The Great repetition - Progress

Okay. So due to recent developments with this project I'm taking a lot more time, care and effort about the outcome, I'm making, working, scraping, re-making, re-working and occasionally re-scraping what I've done. But I'm fairly happy with what is below.

Got some 3D paper type and stuff.

 

These take about 20-30 minutes to make EACH, depending on which letter it is (except for 'I' which is easy).

I made 24 letters. Only 3 of which were 'I'. You do the math.

All Teeth Shirt Designs: #3 AKA. Back Muscles

 Draw it. 

Scan It.

Edit it.

Colour it.

Simplify it.

Type it. 

This ones not finished. And the colours on the final image have gone weird.

This will include the lyric:

"Turn me inside out and find no trace of you.

Every day for you will end the same."

All Teeth Shirt Designs: #2 AKA. Thirsty Fangs

Not too much to say about this one really.

It's some drippy ink type.

Oh, how I love drippy ink type.

All Teeth Shirt Designs: #1 AKA. Gloom Kids

So after responding to a message from hardcore punk band All Teeth 

http://www.facebook.com/AllTeethCalifornia

They asked me to do some shirt designs for them. 

Here we go then.

Teeth #1

 Teeth #2

Gloom

Teeth #3

Gloom Kids in Red 

Gloom Kids in Green

Hand Drawn Kinetic Type #3: The Great Repetition - Start

Touche Amore Video #3: The Great Repetition went into production today.

Here's a hint at something new I'm doing with this one.

There have been some fairly exciting developments in relation to this project, although I'm gonna keep that under my hat for now in case it doesn't work out. Chow.

Hand Drawn Kinetic Type #2: Touche Amore's 'Pathfinder'

Track 2 of 'Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me'.

See part one in an older post.

Hand Drawn Kinetic Type #2: Touche Amore's Pathfinder - Work In Progress

So after the delight I had after finding out that actually, not only was making hand drawn kinetic type ( with a dodgy camera I ordered on eBay from Honk Kong) really fun, it looked pretty cool and other people actually like it. Ergo: make more. I've decided that I'm going to work my way through the album and see if I can do the whole thing. The first one was scratchy and unplanned. Change that. Think about this more. The second track 'Pathfinder' is about half done now and looking sweet. Not going to post it yet but here's some light typography. 

Mmmm. Light Stencils.

Frankly, these were some happy accidents that occurred when I was moving all the stuff off my table. But they look sweet, so I'm going to immediately upload the 2nd one to my website.

Got Featured. Count It.

Managed to get myself a feature spot on up-and-coming creative blog: "The Young Creatives".

These guys are doing some real good work to promote unknown creatives. Get Supporting.

http://theyoungcreatives.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/ben-mercer/

Hand Drawn Kinetic Type Time Lapse of: Touche Amore- Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me

 I bought a little camcorder about a week or so ago. 

This is the first thing I've got round to doing with it.

Hand drawn kinetic type of one of my favourite bands - Touche Amore

. It was just something fun to play around with. 

To be honest I thought It wouldn't work at all but in the end it turned out alright.

Check out Touche Amore.

http://toucheamore.com/

Typography: What (not) To Do

Short type project.

Read but don't look.

Los Muertos Y Sin Dios V.s. The Lost Soul

Getting down with The Dead And Godless. I love this typeface. I want to use it for everything. Logistically, stylistically and aesthetically that's either impossible or a really bad idea. But it'd be fun to try.

Lost soul.

Simple.

Take an older piece of work.

Vectorise it.

Introduce a black background.

 Add a set of tiny upside down crucifixes.

Put your web address at the bottom.

Send it to the printers.

Coming soon to www.mercerdrawsthings.bigcartel.com

The Dead And Godless

Still busy being Mexican. 

More flash elements for repeated usage.

One Life, One Chance

Occasionally it's nice to draw things completely by hand again.

'Dear Godmachine' Or 'Dead By Dawn'

Finally finished. 

This probably took the longest out of anything I've done this year. 

Loving the little extras here and there & definitely need to get involved more with that typeface.

'Dear Godmachine' - Work In Progress 3

It's getting fairly large now and is taking ages to do anything.

More colours. More additions. More more more.

Dead By Dawn Flash Sheet

Happy Halloween and all that. 

Weird flash-sheet-type-thing. For re-usable elements in vectors.

Big Cartel Now Open - Available Prints

Full site. Shipping to UK only.

http://mercerdrawsthings.bigcartel.com/

Blue Skies & Adventure A2 Print.

£8.00

http://mercerdrawsthings.bigcartel.com/product/blue-skies-adventure-a2-print

Love Is Blind A2 Print.

£15.00

http://mercerdrawsthings.bigcartel.com/product/love-is-blind-a2-print

Zombie Girl A2 Print.

£8.00

http://mercerdrawsthings.bigcartel.com/product/zombie-girl-a2-print 

Support Your Local Artists.

Year 3 - Project 2: The Future Of Illustration - Illustration: The Next Ten Years | Twenty Twenty Two Photos

Some photos of my little book.

8 page book held in a card sleeve, stitched spine.

Year 3 - Project 2: The Future Of Illustration - Illustration: The Next Ten years | Twenty Twenty Two

Report for the future of illustration project.

I felt like doing something type based. I kept it really plain and simple. Hopefully in an elegant way.

Front cover. Font is OPS DIN.

Pages 1&2. Outlining the early steps of the project.

It looks a little odd when it's spread out like this on a flat design because you don't get the fold and the two sides sort of merge together. It looks better in the real book. I'll get some photos up.

Pages 3&4 in which we find the script for the voice-over.

Pages 5&6. Outlining the later stages of the project.

Throughout the book I used different point sizes to emphasise some words and different tracking and spacing to make the layout and type seem a little erratic and free-formed in the same way that the illustration was. I think the coloured bars hold it together well.

The back cover is plain so I'm not posting it.

Here instead is the jacket for the booklet.

'Dear Godmachine' - Work In Progress 2

I've been busy a-vectoring.

I know using flares is a sin. But I like them sometimes.

Still a lot of work to do here. 

Eyes, more colouring layers on the face, teeth, cross details, more colouring on the hair, gradients on the swirls, background, extras. Stay tuned.

Awesome Book Covers

I very rarely, if ever, post anything which doesn't have some element of my work in it.

However, whilst looking for some cool book covers for the newest project I found a multitude of blog posts featuring a plethora of average book covers. So I decided to make my own list.

I did not make any of these. I just reposted them.