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.

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

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