Amazon Best Covers of 2009 :: beyond Thunderdome

tomer :: check out Amazon's Best Cover of the Year vote-- they narrowed down the thousands of books sold this year to a small number of finalists to be judged by the surfing public. the cover i did for The Gigolo Murder (blogged here) is competing against five other covers in the paperback category. the rest is in your hands. i'd twitt about about it, but I'm vegan.



* voting gives you a chance to win a set of the top vote-getters in each category

The Kiss Murder :: book cover

tomer :: Illustration is like acting. you need to invest a strand of authentic emotion to make it work. otherwise it feels artificial. So you try to embody, in your head, the protagonist. Let's see: you're a slender man of Turkish descent who's a computer wiz, a private detective, a black belt and an Audrey Hepburn look alike. most prominently you are a transvestite. you sit in your night club, ready to punch someone softly or kiss him to death. either-way it's a deadly move. and then an epiphany: it's in the shoulders-- that potent combination of strength and sensuality. a pair of slender, well defined, boney yet muscular shoulders. a glorious pedestal for your pretty face.


art directed by Roseanne Serra.

happy thanksgiving! don't choke on it.

The Concert Ticket :: a book cover

tomer :: the book in brief (from amazon): On any given morning, on the street corners of a Russian city, little kiosks suddenly appear. As soon as their shutters open, a queue forms, men and women lining up in the hope of a little bit of luxury: a pair of silk stockings or a box of chocolates. One morning news spreads that the exiled composer, Selinsky, will be returning to the city for one concert only, and there is one kiosk, somewhere, selling tickets to this most magical event of the year.

the direction was to showcase people queuing for this kiosk with Moscow in the background, and focus on the protagonist, a melancholic teacher who banks everything on this ticket as a last chance for happiness.



final color/type closer to last sketch.
for Penguin UK, art directed by Richard Bravery.

dodie smith

asaf :: first I'd like to say thanks to fellow illustrators kevin cross and joshua kemble for having me over on their podcast big illustration party time - about the ins and outs of freelance illustration and cartooning. we had a nice chat about the daily struggle that is working as an illustrator. highly recommended to all newcomers out there but also to the veterans who are looking to expand their podcast listening while waiting for "the paint to dry".
on that same note, tomer and i talked about working on "waltz with bashir" to maclife magazine.

another cool thing we did together is this 3 panels illustration for a book about Ambrose Heal. our spread featured his one time mistress Dodie Smith, an english novelist and playwright (she wrote The Hundred and One Dalmatians), as well as a 1920 fashion icon.
asaf- sketches. tomer - inks and colors.

The Lost Boy of the Ozarks :: Early Halloween Special

tomer :: this biting horror story by Steve Freidman unfolds as a boy who's been lost in the woods a century ago creeps back into contemporary consciousness in the form of a ghost suspected as the reason behind a recent missing person incident of another boy, last seen in those same woods.
the first stab at illustrating this consisted of a ghost boy dragging a modern boy to the edges of the image and beyond, letting the woods take center stage. eventually focusing solely on the ghost boy, eating something not quite definable while looking straight at the viewer.

while digging for photographic references this eerie still of an out of focus girl standing in a perfectly sharp surrounding came up. seems to be the classic approach of getting that other-worldly ghost feel, in this case completely accidental. and so, for the execution a similar logic was applied only inverted.

for Backpacker magazine, art directed by Matthew Bates.

Old Moab :: in limited edition

A new limited edition print to be released on Tuesday, September 1st.
Old Moab is a 13″ x 19″ Giclee, has an edition of 50 and will be $85.


update: we're out of prints. thanks everybody!

The Price of the Ticket :: for the New Yorker

tomer :: for an article about the history and future of the concert-ticket industry and it's inevitable secondary market. from sketch to final was asked to pump up the happy.

sex crimes on-line :: maxim

asaf :: about the recent craig's list controversy

Mother :: and her sprawling presence

On Wednesday July 1st a new limited edition print would go up on thanuka.com
“Mother” is 13″ x 19″ signed archival Giclee print, has an edition of 50, is $85 and very red.

update: print sold out.

Bots, Blasts and Boys :: about Automated Weapons and the Men who Love Them

--
tomer :: two recent New Yorker pieces with killer robots. above- for an article titled Shoot! about gunsmith Jerry Baber and the remote-controlled armed machines he has created in partnership with two robotics companies. Bellow- an image for the Terminator: Salvation movie review.

Sometimes it Takes a Village :: or rather a Forest :: of Pencils

tomer :: a 2nd cover in a series of novels by Mehmet Murat Somer, staring a Turkish Audrey Hepburn deadringer transvestite detective. in this chapter she is crossing over into the ritzy and morally anorectic upper echelon of Istanbul's social elite to solve a murder of a local gigolo. art directed by Roseanne Serra.



...and done!

wine labels :: trilogy

asaf :: this is the third and last image in a series of labels for some young punks winery featuring the sexy adventures of trixie and tessa love. chin chin!

Morning Routine :: With Avedon In The American West

tomer :: right after the first coffee, when the day is still packed with potential this daily exercise is about messing up. drawn from a brilliant collection of photos by Richard Avedon called In the American West.

gangsters and oscars

asaf :: waltz with bashir didn't win the oscar. there was great expectation and hope, but no golden statue. however, ari folman's film made a long and impressive way from a small studio in north tel-aviv winning many prizes and gaining critical acclaim world wide.

life goes on, and work is piling on the table corner. here is a series of images for the milken institute about economical gangsters. the text examines the different aspects of criminal behavior in the new economy. the art direction went for a film noir aesthetic evoking old gangsters films.


there is a bit of economic gangster in each of us (capone as accountant)

sewer traffic smuggling cellphones

bribe


the evil twins - corruption and violence

also, check out my new website at asafhanuka.com as well as hilit's even newer website at hilitshefer.com !

Rogue to suck the life out of it :: this time on HBO

tomer :: Anna Paquin picked up the golden globe a few weeks back and it brought to mind this spot -- it never ran, the article was killed-- done for the New Yorker late last year for a review of Paquin's new HBO show True Blood, where she plays a vampire sympathizer waitress.