Fringe Focus started as my blog, portfolio, and as a replacement for my ridiculous last name: Loukotka. While I had settled on a color palette, it was difficult to define where my art was going, and how my work should be branded. After exploring poster design, illustration, photography, sculpture, and everything else under the sun… I’ve made a proper mark to tie it all together.

The mark is essentially a really deconstructed set of F’s, comprised of serifs that have been chopped into oblivion. This of course stands for the alliterated ‘Frine Focus’. The arrow shapes themselves also suggest scattered movement or directions. Since Fringe Focus isn’t any one idea or art form, this works pretty well. Plus it looks slick as hell.

The type is House Industries’ Luxury Gold. I wanted wide type that felt classy and timeless, and Luxury Gold fits the bill perfectly. Expect to see it more often on branded bits I come out with later this year.

I’m planning a LOT of cool projects for 2012, so this mark/type change represents how I want to shape things moving forward. Excited to show you what I’m working on, so stay tuned this summer.

Feel free to hit me up on Twitter / @FringeFocus anytime!

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.

MVP

If you’re  familiar with basketball, you’ve probably heard the name Derrick Rose recently. Chicago Bulls’ point guard Derrick Rose was recently named the NBA’s 2011 MVP. He’s like Michael Jordan good.

I met up with a great guy here in Chicago a few weeks ago, who wanted to capture the energy and excitement of Derrick Rose in a t-shirt. These are unofficial shirts, so they’re not available everywhere, nor do they contain any official NBA names/logos. They’re for fans here in Chicago.

Not only does Derrick play for the Bulls, he was born and raised  in Chicago. Now that he’s taken his team to the playoffs, you can see why more than a few people here love him. The shirts say ‘Homegrown’ to recognize his local upbringing (and his floral last name…)

Process Shots

When I started illustrating this t-shirt design, I thought it would be fun to take some process shots. I’ve included everything from sketches, incomplete designs, to the finished shirt.

These sketches were done on my Wacom tablet, to quickly figure out ways to organize the imagery. We knew the shirts would say ‘Homegrown’, and that there would be a bull’s head in the shadow of the rose. The rose busting out of the concrete is actually my reference to a poem by 2pac. (I’m not cool, I just happen to know one poem by him)

Derrick Rose was raised on the south side of Chicago. So not only did the shirt need to show an urban environment, I had to make sure the skyline was accurate, and not showing Chicago from some bizarre angle out in the lake. These pictures are early on in the process, where I usually change colors and arrangements quickly. Ultimately I decided a grey shirt worked much better than a red one.

These shots show how each part of the illustration was pushed and pulled. The skyline needed some contrast, so I gave it a red sunset to draw focus to the rose. Later I dialed down the sunset a bit so it wasn’t too bright.

Here you can the next-to-last phase of the design. The colors are finished and I decided against using a separate color for the rose stem. The arrangement is fine, but the design was still a bit too clean. The rose itself also didn’t scream the fact that is was a rose. ‘Homegrown’ found its proper place in perspective on the ground. The previous sketches had given too much attention to the text. The final design solves this by visually pulling you in towards the rose.

Here is the completed design, with tweaks to most of the lines and the rose. The finished illustration uses only 3 colors, each of which would get their own discharge print on an American Apparel t-shirt.

The printing company even captured some great footage of the shirt being printed! Check it out.

The final shirt looks incredible, and is really soft. Great fit, great colors, and it was fun to work on! All work was done through my design company: Collision Labs

Here’s the Adams Barber Shop crew in Chicago wearing the shirts. Pretty exciting to see an idea/illustration take off like this.

One last thing: Derrick Rose himself actually wears my shirt! Although I don’t have any photos of him wearing it yet. Pretty crazy cool though.

I’m not selling these shirts personally, but you can buy them directly from my cool client right here: ThinkingFanDesign.com

Thoughts on the shirt? Drop me a comment, or hit me up on Twitter: @FringeFocus

Tentacles are fun to draw, so I drew eight of them. And the only logical conclusion when drawing eight of something is to draw eight more of something else. Thus you have what we have here, a sneaky octopus stealing pool balls from a table in a bar.

Octopuses (that’s grammatically correct, shockingly) are well known for their affinity with human table-based games. This poster captures the incredibly dexterity of the thief. Fortunately, if you caught him, he could put all the balls back in the rack simultaneously. The wet stains left on the felt are another story.

I started this design not knowing much about billiards or our tentacled friends, and I finished it about the same way. I did learn that the suction cups on their tentacles are generally just referred to as “suction cups”, which was a bit of a letdown.

This poster is being printed at 11×17″ and will be delivered to all of my Kickstarter backers (who bought another poster) for FREE. That project has ended, so there isn’t a way to order this poster for yourself just yet. If there are extras available, or if I print a larger version in the future, a limited edition series would be made available here on the site in the future.

Drop me your thoughts about this octopus in the comments, or find me on Twitter: @FringeFocus

“I don’t think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.”

“What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn’t he?”

Okay, that quote doesn’t really have anything to do with the Shire. But hobbits said it, and I find it awesome. We should all have second breakfasts more often.

This poster is the third and final design in my Lord of the Rings series. I started with Mordor, and have worked my way backwards to start of the tale. Each poster showcases a different setting that is integral to the story. The hobbits have the Shire, the humans have Helm’s Deep, and the orcs have Mordor. There are plenty of other important environments and cities, but I tried to pick areas that somewhat reflected each book/film.

While these aren’t explicitly posters for the films or the books, they are meant to be chronological. The Fellowship of the Ring begins in the Shire with Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo and the other hobbits. The second poster shows Helm’s Deep, the site of an important battle in The Two Towers. Finally, the series concludes where the Ring’s journey ultimately ends: Mordor.

More than anything, these posters reflect how the movies feel to me. Fellowship of the Ring is green, warm, and inviting. Two Towers is tough, brutal, and dark (also quite blue). Return of the King is black, firey, and chaotic.

Prints of the Mordor poster are still up for grabs on my Kickstarter Poster Project! I’m getting a number of my other designs printed, so getting all three of this series onto paper will have to wait a while. Let me know if you’re interested in these though, if enough LotR fans want posters we’ll make some prints happen. For Frodo! (I’m a nerd…)

Let me know what you think the comments!

Or check me out on Twitter: @FringeFocus