the Red Cross Project

tomer :: when the American Red Cross invited me to create an image for it's 125th anniversary celebration my gut reaction was paralyzing fear. the Red Cross has a long and respectable tradition of art, including some old and contemporary masters like Normal Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth and Richard Avedon.
during the research I was struck by a photo of a man embracing a woman (and a similar one of a man embracing a child) thinking there was an interesting relationships in the way the shapes seemed to compliment each other. this became the central idea for where the sketch was heading.

the sketches didn't look right as the man didn't seem like he can carry his own weight, I had to go back to small thumbnails and rethink the composition. from there I developed a second larger sketch and then extended it's height and turned the man in the lower left corner away from us so his face don't become another source distracting our attention.

I went through a few different color combos, starting with blue and gray and moving from there to this, trying to keep the 'disaster' atmosphere present but not overbearing.

video piracy :: sketch and final

asaf :: another spot, this time for the Wall Street Journal. the article talked about Hollywood's fear of video piracy. apparently there is close surveillance during journalists and critics movie screenings, as plainclothes security people prowl the aisles, peeping at the audience through night-vision scopes in order to pick up tell-tale lights from camcorders that may have previously escaped detection.
it was one of those jobs that had to finished over-night. to avoid messing up the deadline I tried to stay away from anything complicated - one sketch, simple composition, simple idea.

Rolling Stone :: final

tomer :: the AD felt the first coloring was a bit bright for the noir atmosphere he was hoping for and so I dimmed the lights and added some sharp shadows.

warning-label overkill :: color

asaf :: the yellow and black are a given, since these are the colors we recognize as "warning". the bluish-green, or maybe greenish-blue is there as a supporting actor. the stripes in the background are meant to suggest children environment.
the use of acid colors on childish elements usually has an interesting side effect. like a bad candy - you realize it's nasty only after swallowing.

Rolling Stone :: sketch

tomer :: what does it feel like running dead tired and stoned through a forest carrying 30 kilos of (really good) pot while crossing the American/Canadian border after closing the drug deal of your life and knowing that when you get home your lakefront house and motorboats and stripper girlfriend will be waiting eagerly and that your buddies would do this trip a hundred times more and you will accumulate more money then you can ever spend? apparently these kids knew and they tell their life imitates Hollywood story, now from behind bars, to Rolling Stone magazine.

warning-label overkill :: ink

asaf :: the AD decided to go with the doll, which was his original idea. after fixing the drawing a bit, I traced the pencil drawing with pen and ink (speedball) and got it ready for coloring.

warning-label overkill :: sketch

asaf :: Sticker Shock is the title of an article in Forbes Magazine. It deals with the growing tendency of manufactures to cover toys with warning labels, mostly to protect themselves from being sued. below are two sketches.

gambling junkie :: final

tomer :: anxiety is the name of the game so I'm using any tool in my arsenal to underline it. the gambler's hand is pushing his face into the gutter of the page (see small layout) while his other hand is far away handling something very crucial and dangerous. the table is in a diagonal and his body in an even sharper diagonal which makes him seem out of balance. the red and green are a big art-school-color-basics no-no so you know it's good for expressing hostility.

gambling junkie :: ink

tomer :: in a surprising turn of events the art director decided to use the second sketch to go to final for the spot and the first sketch to be re-arranges as a lead of about a page and a half for another related gambling article which left me with something that was planned to be small and iconic and now had to work as a large and atmospheric image.

tree house :: final

asaf :: I hate when this happens. after finalizing the color (top version) I couldn't shake the feeling something was missed along the way. had to go back and rework everything towards a more contrasted result (bottom), only to find out I wasn't sure which version should be sent. I ended up sending the first version (top). I guess sometimes a detour is necessary, even it ends up in the trash.

gambling junkie :: sketch

tomer :: this is a small spot for Time magazine. the article is about new medical drugs that have a weird side-effect: they turn the user into a gambling junkie (they also developed a sex addiction but they decided to concentrate on the gambling). this needs to be clear and simple since it's so small. I tried two approaches: the first is just an intense gambling scene (1,4) the second is more conceptual (2,3)

tree house :: sketch

asaf :: this one is a cover for The Deal. the story is about a select group, the private equity club. these are guys with large egos, powerful wallstreet guys who are involved with the buying and selling of companies.
the art director had the idea of a club house, with these characters jammed inside. the major difference between the two sketches is that in one of them we don't see the characters faces, which normally I would prefer, but in this case there is hardly any body language either.
the trick would be to succeed in expressing the characters attitude while showing only their back, stuffed against each-other.

workbook covers :: final art

tomer :: the girl is ice-- she is colored in a cooler palette than the boys. the main kid is a redhead so we know that's where the action matters the most. the floor tiles are a texture from a Dover book that came with a CD. the girl's skirt is ready-made pattern found online. the white guides are where the bleed starts and they needed extra bleed and even more extra for the super thick spine. an idea to have the gold-egg be a 'real' gold embossed was discussed, not sure how it'll end up with the production though. and despite myself I ended up pink again.

workbook cover :: Inks

tomer :: the more i work on this the stronger i feel it should happen in a place similar to Havana, Cuba. deteriorating structures with pealing paint, somewhere that aged ungracefully and doesn't really care to hide it-- sort of negative glamour.

sports gear :: final

asaf :: usually I try to avoid busy backgrounds, but here I made an exception. The idea was to capture some the vintage ad esthetic, partly by suggesting a texture. another interesting point was trying to mach a face and color palette to each object.

workbook covers :: sketch

tomer :: workbook is a huge annual illustration directory that covers a wide variety of styles. they contacted me with a pretty set concept for next year's covers - a situation where someone (say an artist) is pitching someone else (say a client) an idea. these are very familiar positions to people who work in the biz, on either side. I was given free range to interpret this concept with one request: have the 'idea' be a golden-egg (somewhat like the gold light coming from the suitcase in Pulp Fiction or the black stone thing in 2001 Space Odyssey). I wanted to take this away from the conference room and into the battle zone. I wanted the artist to be this boy giving his 'golden egg' to a teenage girl he can never have (the client), all this in a futuristic urban wasteland. there are other boys (artists) around that function as 'before' an 'after' scenarios, one running away crying because he was rejected, and the other (behind the main boy) still cocky and full of hope. there are 2 view points, the front cover is the girl's view point, the back for the boy's view point.

sports gear :: sketch

asaf :: Toro Magazine was looking for a full page illustration broken into 4 sections about Sports Gear not yet invented. The idea is to illustrate the objects (The Lowrider Canoe, Office hockey Gloves, Mountain Climber's pasta Maker, Lance Armstrong Shoe horn) along with a person next to it.
Here is the sketch -

behind the curtain :: final

tomer :: my memory of The wizard of Oz movie is a garish oversaturated train wreck of colors. my first instinct for this image however was to create something that felt aged and weathered and washed. but it clashed with the underlining premise of describing current events happening right now. once the aged look was tossed I went back to the memory I had of the film: super saturated, overly vital, in your face bad taste posing as a fairy tale.

lack of love :: final

asaf :: sketch number 3 was chosen. I think the dj in the background and "party" atmosphere did the difference for the art director. hope all those feminists out there will manage to see the irony.

behind the curtain :: sketch

tomer :: all the yellow brick roads lead to Dick Cheney, or so it seems from the unfolding CIA leak scandal. when conceiving this cover for the Progressive the art director suggested playing off a scene in The Wizard of Oz where we discover who is the wizard, the one pulling the strings behind the curtain. only here the wizard is Cheney. this would reflect the magazine's (and what is wildly believed) reasoning on the course of events leading to the war. the challenge here was to tap into the viewer's memory of that scene in the movie and to make Cheney recognizable. another challenge was to have this image wholesome-- as if they all exist in one world-- despite the obvious cultural paste-up job. after a quick research (i.e google) i found this pic of that curtain scene in the movie, and Cheney's face.

first sketch :: art director (justly) wasn't convinced about the environment being recognizable as The Wizard of Oz.

I tried another sketch where you see Dorothy and a flying monkey.

lack of love :: sketches

asaf :: The Source asked me to illustrate a story titled "Lack of love in hip-hop", centering around how women are objectified within the hip-hop community. their idea was to have a guy surrounded by plastic blow-up dolls. these dolls could represent some of the women you might find in hip-hop videos. the male character might even be in the process of blowing up one of the dolls. so this was the starting point, and I tried different variations on this theme. when criticizing machoism and sexism the tricky part is not to end up with an image that is glorifying instead of doing the opposite.

in-laws :: final

tomer :: on my third year at SVA I was lucky enough to study under Tim Bower who had some great pointers, among them :: think of gray as color :: gray is being largely overlooked when in truth it works so well in almost any palette. also, dealing with a rather cluttered composition I wanted to have the viewer attention falls straight on the son-in-law and so made sure he's the only pure white in the image. you'll probably notice the gorgeous art on the walls- these are real paintings done by my pal esao who is an amazing painter and a generous human being to let me use them here. the bald headed guy in the front is the 'host' of this image, it's over his shoulder that we take a peek at the scene, either him or the monkey brains.

DJ Dask :: final

asaf :: this is almost done. I still haven't found a good solution for the graffiti on the bottom right corner. besides, the designer would place the logo in the middle, so I am not sure how much of the surface would be hidden.

in-laws :: line work

tomer :: the inking stage for me consists of brainlessly following the (cleaned up and enlarges) sketch with the occasional texture as seen here with the parent's hair and boy's leather shoes. I use a triple zero brush and speedball ink on smooth bristol paper.