I was invited by the Silver Screen Society to design a piece based on Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. The Silver Screen Society is essentially a gallery of work inspired by films (a new film each month). There’s some incredible talent over there, so it was great to be involved with September’s film.

If you haven’t seen Requiem for a Dream, you absolutely should. It’s by no means a happy film, it’s actually rather stressful, but it’s amazingly well done. The film revolves around four characters and their addictions to drugs, but tackles the genre unlike any other film before it. The editing, score, acting, and story are amazingly brilliant.

My design plays off of the quick cuts in the film, as well as the fact that its timeline is separated into seasons (Summer, Fall, and Winter). I searched my photography hard drive for a bunch of discarded shots, and spliced them together to show the three seasons of the story. The center shows a character in a fetal position, which is actually the closing shot of the film. The colors and composition are intended to be dreamlike, while showing the stress/nightmare of the center character.

The movie predominantly takes place near Coney Island, so I used some old shots I took in Dallas and in Chicago to make it feel urban. It feels good to finally have a use for a bunch of photos that may have never seen the light of day otherwise.

I really dig how this piece turned out, but let me know what you think in the comments! Or hit me up on Twitter @FringeFocus.

Also, check out the Fringe Focus Poster Store for more designs.

My brilliant design buddy, Kevin Scarbrough (of Robot, Monster, and Ghost Co.), asked me to do a photo shoot with him. Fortunately the photos were not of Kevin, but rather two lovely ladies working with him on his Paper Doll Pinups project. Long story short, Paper Doll Pinups is a burlesque and pinups stationery company. Notebooks, calligraphy and illustrations are all a part of the project, but this photo series will eventually serve as marketing to tie everything together. (Also check out Halloween Pinups, Kevin’s new book project.)

So expect to see more from Kevin and Paper Doll in the future, but for now, here’s a peek at some of my favorite shots. I’m no pinup photographer (at least I wasn’t until now), but we all had a ton of fun putting this together.  I did all of the photography, lighting, and post-processing, but this series was very much a group effort. I’d like to thank Kevin for his planning / organization / awesomeness, and the girls for handling their own makeup / hair / costumes on top of the intense amount of shots we packed into one day at a hotel.

Fun fact: My favorite part of this shoot was me eating an entire bag of cheese cubes while we worked.

Let me know what you think of this shoot in the comments! Stay updated by following @FringeFocus on Twitter, and especially @PaperDollPinups.

I’ve been producing a lot of work this year, and I came to the realization that I needed a more rapid turnaround on updating my portfolio. Cargo Collective is used by a great number of incredible artists, so I decided to bite the bullet and try it out. I was thoroughly impressed by their functionality, and have just finished replacing my entire portfolio with a new one built upon Cargo.

The new design is my customized version of their SpaceCollective theme. The organization may not be original, but it’s dead simple to update, and even simpler to browse. No doubt you’ve seen it before (James White’s Signal Noise Gallery).

From now on, my personal and professional portfolio will reside at: http://cargocollective.com/fringefocus. Exciting! Because Cargo is sexy is hell.

As designers (and developers) we always have the option of building our own system.
Custom code, or a WordPress theme, we sometimes create a more complicated solution. But if your professional life depends on speed and reliability it’s totally justifiable to move towards a third-party system. This new portfolio means the difference between “Eh, I’ll post it next week” and “Hey, I’ll post it now.”

For those of you with difficult websites or dated portfolios: Try out Cargo Collective, Squarespace, or any other third-party if you feel like you need a change. You could even go further and live entirely off of Flickr, Dribbble, Forrst, etc. to show your work. We no longer have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to showing off our work, there are plenty of new outlets that get the job done. If you still dig doing your own thing, stick to it, it’s all good!

Fringe Focus will remain as my blog & portal for everything, but my permanent gallery has moved to Cargo, that is all.

I hope you dig the new work, let me know what you think in the comments!

Posters Everywhere!

A lot of my time this year has been devoted to my poster series. I’ve had a lot of fun doing illustrations in a ton of styles, and it even led to a Kickstarter project. 94 people gave $4,472 to help bring my ideas from my computer to reality. I bought a ton of poster tubes, got seven of my poster designs printed, and even did some photography prints as well. Organizing and shipping posters across the entire planet for nearly 100 people was incredibly time consuming, demanding, and rewarding.

Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to thank everybody involved, and show a few pictures of where these prints ended up!

Check Out These Walls:

Adam from Ontario, Canada

Brian from Texas

Kevin from North Carolina

Mattias from Sweden

Mike from Michigan

ME from Chicago, IL

Thanks E’erbody

One of the most fun things about sending your art around the world, is seeing how far it travels. So here’s a thank-you for everyone who helped out with my Kickstarter project. You’re all my buddies now, even if I’ve never set foot on your continent (YET).

Thanks to:

• Australia – Amintore
• Australia – Matt
• Austria – Oliver
• Canada – Adam
• Canada – Alexander
• Canada – Anna
• Canada – Amir
• Canada – Daniel
• Canada – Jenni
• Canada – Matt
• Canada – Nathan
• Canada – Olivier
• Canada – Olivier!
• Denmark – Matias
• England – Ian
• Germany – Alex
• Germany – Hendrik
• Ireland – Stephen
• Netherlands – Jonno
• Netherlands – Richard
• Sweden – Mattias

• Alabama – Josh
• Arizona – Safwat
• California – Adad
• California – Jeremy
• California – Matt
• California – Michelangelo
• California – Monica
• California – Rick
• California – Stas
• California – Stuart
• California – Winson
• California – Yune
• Colorado – Matthew
• DC – Abraham
• Florida – Bob
• Florida – Daniel
• Florida – Ronald
• Georgia – Christopher
• Georgia – Daniel
• Georgia – Paul
• Georgia – Robert
• Georgia – Todd
• Illinois – Anthony
• Illinois – Brandon
• Illinois – Eugene
• Illinois – Jeffrey
• Illinois – Kelli
• Illinois – Matt
• Illinois – Nick
• Illinois – Nick!
• Maryland – Nicolas
• Massachusetts – Ali
• Massachusetts – Peter
• Massachusetts – Rodrigo
• Michigan – Brandon
• Michigan – Mike
• Michigan – Jamey
• Michigan – Joan
• Minnesota – Cory
• Minnesota – Russell
• New Jersey – Adam
• New York – Allison
• New York – Angie
• New York – Janeen
• New York – Jonathan
• New York – Kevin
• New York – Mike
• New York – Tieg
• New York – Will
• North Carolina – Kevin
• North Carolina – Lenny
• North Carolina – Walter
• Ohio – John
• Oregon – Clyde
• Pennsylvania – David
• Pennsylvania – Robert
• Rhode Island – Adam
• Tennessee – Russell
• Texas – Brian
• Texas – Daniel
• Texas – Lee
• Washington – Laremy
• Washington – Matt
• Virginia – Rick

Grab Your Own Poster

The fun doesn’t stop here! All posters are available for sale in the Fringe Focus Poster Print Store!

Earlier this year, I ran an exciting and successful Kickstarter project. It was tons of fun, and it resulted in printing a ton of my designs and shipping them all over the world. Thanks to everyone who pitched in!

Now, I have extra prints of various designs, and I’ve made them all for sale in case you’re interested / missed the Kickstarter / want more posters.

ALL prints are limited edition, so once these designs sell out, they won’t be available ever again. This is because it’s more fun for me to design new artworks, and nobody wants a print that’s one of a million copies. Most of the designs consist of 30 prints, Although some are 70, 80, or 100. ‘Eight Balls’ is almost entirely sold out, but there’s a decent stack of the other prints.

Now that the store is up, I can spend more time on new designs. I have a ton of ideas, and I’ll tackle them whenever I start to get some free hours. Could be a while, but the good news is I have enough ideas to last a lifetime / kill me. :/

Here’s a link to the Fringe Focus Poster Store.

Thoughts? Comments? Hit me up in the comments! Or follow me on Twitter: @FringeFocus