Dan Fairhurst Loki II

Dan Fairhurst has been an awesome client and teammate over the last few years. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to throw a round or two with him. With the success of last year’s initial Loki stamp; we’ve returned to the drawing board to expand and improve upon it.

There were two ideas up for decisions and one of those will be something carrying over to Loki III. Both Dan and I really loved the fierce nature of the initial stamp. I wanted to simply open that up and show a bit more of his features. Doing a 3/4 head stamp shows just enough progression and left the center open for stamping purposes. Some of the biggest hurdles were the fact I don’t do too many characters so 2 major things needed to happen to make it feel like this is a continuation:
1. I need to keep the likeness of the first stamp.
2. I had to refer and get feedback from a few artists to realize a few things were out of perspective.

Loki’s right horn was definitely one of them. I had to shift that over and ax his front chrome helmet shading. Coming down to the final stretch; it was a figuring out where the secondary foil would highlight. I felt like pulling attention toward the accentuated chin and nose gave him a very similar Green Goblin vibe that I wasn’t going for. Pulling out some of those highlights and tastefully doing just the eye’s kept it balanced.

I can’t thank Dan enough for wanting to continue his Loki series in 2020. I don’t sit down and practice life drawing all too much so it’s a new challenge every time. You can reach out to Dan Fairhurst here to support his disc golf tour schedule:

https://www.facebook.com/dfairhurst1

Jordan Castro "Castronaut" 2020

Jordan Castro is a new face to the MVP team this year. I was very fortunate to get a private message from him asking if I could help him out and get a stamp ready. Not knowing Jordan personally; I kept asking questions. What is he about? What are his passions? I went to down on a few ideas that would work within the disc template. Let’s just say I didn’t get off to the greatest start for his first Tour Series disc. Jordan is extremely humble, humorous and has an incredible work ethic. I wanted to take some of those traits and relate them to the artwork.

Shortly after the first/second round of ideas, we went back to the drawing board and Jordan hits me up one day and says “Castronaut! Can you work with an astronaut theme?” From then on we were locked in and the project really got rolling. We were lucky that one of the first one or two thumbnails nailed the direction. This straight on astronaut suit seemed to fit the easiest circular composition. I didn’t fully love that his helmet would be stuck to the bottom area of the stamp but you’re limited in some areas because of template restrictions. This layout really opened up the top to celebrate the “Castronaut” title and minimum Team MVP seal standards toward the top of the stamp.

Nailing the likeness of Jordan was extremely tough. The thumbnail gave more of a caricature feeling and I wanted the audience to instantly recognize. It took shades/ no shades/ and a few photo mashup’s to get the eye's and overall expression where I had envisioned it to be. The last phase was polishing up the Castronaut wording and framing by using the Illustrator 3D text tool and adding star bits and filigree to the top portion of the stamp.

All in all, this took a bit more development than I had anticipated. Jordan was awesome the entire way through this process and helped with reference photos and gathering resources where he could on top of his busy schedule. I hope this stamp starts a successful series for him and his years with Team MVP and MVP Disc Sports.

You can contact Jordan Castro on his tour fundraiser discs here!
https://www.facebook.com/jordan.castro.90

Amanda Melwiki - 2020 Team MVP Tour Series

I’ve been working with Amanda Melwiki over the past few years on her Team MVP Tour Series discs. Her pup Charlie would now be the center of focus and Amanda and I welcomed the change-up. The theme for a few years prior has been “Robokitty” and initial thoughts were how to make the larger than life hound, half robot. Amanda was great to send me videos and photos of Charlie. What really sealed the deal to keep it full pet was a video of Charlie playing in & around a sprinkler.

Dealing with a hound type of pup, I wanted to accentuate the ears and jowls. That in combination with that “zoom” effect that dogs get where they run around expelling a ton of energy. They look at you daring you to take the toy from them with a wide-eyed look.

Once the design was in vector, a few hurdles arose that I didn’t see would be a problem in the rough. One instance was where I planned for the center sprue point of the disc to land. This template requires that center area to be clear of any art. The right side just under the nose was going to be that landing area. Doing so in the template left the design to be smaller than desired. To combat that, I had to clear out the left side detail just a bit and compromise on the dynamic overlap of the outer stamp & move the Team MVP seal toward the bottom.

Overall, I think Charlie got the real estate she deserved. Allocating a foil behind Charlie gave the disc color a chance to shine through the pup and evened out the 3 different foil types. In closing, I’m very grateful that Amanda reached out again this year to ask for my help. Her trust and instincts in these designs are really what makes this project fun every year. What did you think? Did I succeed in the playful nature of Charlie? Please comment, like, and share!

Robokitty 2.0

I received a request from an Team MVP member to change up a 2018 stamp design. Amanda Melwiki had a great 2018 year and her Robokitty design was a hit. She came to me with the idea of changing up the foils and adding a few elements to last years design. I had bigger plans for Robokitty and I’m glad she trusted me to do something new but a continuation of the concept.

I knew I wanted to show a fiercer side of the kitty. I wanted to marry the concepts of cute/friendly with the deep down drive and determination of getting better. That fueled the fire going into the concept stage. I had the idea more stored in the back of my head so this design didn’t really consist of a lot of reference gathering. Bringing in that exaggerated anime pop and allowing the opportunity to expand on the Robokitty character were the goals first and foremost. From there it was a few experiments with stars and how I was going to incorporate them into the design.

A huge thanks goes out to Amanda. Were you able to snag one? If not, she has a few available but will be selling out fast. Follow her here:

https://www.facebook.com/AmandaMelwiki

Mike 'Sully' Sullivan "45"

When Mike Sullivan of Team MVP approached me to do his Team MVP stamp, he was kind of giving me the reigns to come up with something. We chatted a bit over private message and our conversation led to music. Mike is a huge 70's punk/ New Wave fan. He also shares a common interest in vinyl. I've been wanting to do a record stamp for a while now and this was the opportunity to pitch it. Some of his favorite bands from that era were Crass, Joy Division and The Clash. My advice to upcoming designers: Talk to you clients! Make a connection. You just never know what might come out of it. I’m sure most people outside looking in had no idea Sully used to be an avid vinyl collector. I’m glad both and he and I were excited about pursuing this challenge.

Mike loved the idea and I quickly got to work. The hardest thing about doing this was that this needs to work on every disc color. Records are finely detailed and it would take lines under typical stamping requirements to pull off the sheen/ intricacies of the grooves. I had to plan smart and figure out a way that this could be possible, while also keeping it graphic and instantly recognizable. One common theme we both agreed on from the very beginning is this was before advances in colored label and surfaces. Most punk records were black and white or very simple graphically. I don’t know much about these bands so it was straight to google search to get some overall themes established. We knew that a full 12” record wasn’t doable with the center sprue being off limits. The next option was a 7” and if fit perfectly for what we were wanting to pull off.

The important thing about this stamp was breaking up the huge fields of black within the design. I used a simple halftone pattern technique to break apart the solid black and help ease up the overall tonnage for the stamping machine. One reference I found really fit well for placing all the information while mimicking the exact punk style Mike was aiming for. I had a blast working in a different style than past stamps. The initial plan was to use a clear holofoil for the record surface. MVP was out of that foil so they wisely went silver metallic and it worked out perfectly. It reflects the disc color and almost achieves the same effect we were going after.

Overall, I appreciate Mike Sully giving me full reign to run with it. I feel these bursts of excitement toward a project creates an overall better product in the end. Thanks everyone for tuning and and learning a bit about how I was able to pull it off! Share this blog if you feel so inclined.