A Quiet Storm In Gotham

 Done for BATMAN DAY 18th September. R.I.P. Prodigy.

Mesmerized! (jev)©

Working out the process, trying to keep them as "zany" but cohesive as possible.

 

KANG (TVA)

Inspiration comes at you from anywhere and everywhere, and when it does, your mind takes full control until you exhaust your creativity. Today was one of those days, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

While on Twitter, I saw a post from someone I follow, the author and director @MatthewACherry reposted a tweet from the official Marvel Studios account about all of Loki episodes being on Diseny+ where he asked #PhotoshopTwitter to make this poster a church fan.

Twitter user and UX/UI Designer @uyendaylin took this image and made a PNG of it to make such endeavors easier and helpful for the community. (seen below)

Now comes the fun part, everything was done in Illustrator on both the PC and multiple apps on my phone, some I like more than others but I'm putting the ones I liked the most up.

Bulletproof Wallets (jev)©

So this was an album cover I did for Ghostface Killah's third album Bulletproof Wallets maybe six or seven years ago. If you know Ghost, you know his personality and rap style is one of style, charm and luxury. So going into this, it had to be fly, just look at the official album cover, I knew I couldn't half step on this one and make any BS.

Now what you see as the final version here was nothing close to the other versions I did. I initially wanted to keep the chrome elements from his first two album covers and his name on this one and do a steel wallet, I definitely wanted to use a wallet but for whatever reason, I was doing too much with it, I had bullet scuff marks and was going down the heavy photoshop route and had to start over. I use photoshop only when I have to for work and some projects, but that's not my go-to art style choice. For the final look that I needed, it was the correct decision this time, I came up with this luxury GFK "Louis Vuitton" print, based on wallets they already sold but using Wu and Ghost elements in place of theirs, it worked out perfectly and if you're a fan of GFK you'll recognise them. I did all this by hand then scan and redrew it in Illustrator.

My GFK "Louis Vuitton" print also morphed into another project that I'll reveal at some point. When I do tho, the bootleg nature of the internet is gonna take it and run wild with it, you can count on that. I decided to post this up today because I read this article from the still crew on Twitter, I commented on it and mentioned I had an unpublished version of it and they reached out. You click on the link to read their article here: 

The 3 Songs That Would’ve Given Ghostface Killah 3 Classics in a Row, and see my version of the album cover below.

MF DOOM... (jev)©

I had this this great idea, I still do, about doing cassette tape notebooks, I tend to work on a lot of things at the same time (writing and designing three children alphabet books, other projects and work for my job) so a lot goes unfinished or finished and just forgotten. This will be my DOOM dedication post, and at the end i'll post some of my favorite joints by the Villian, enjoy and Rest In Power to Daniel Dumile, 10/31/20 (Halloween) DOOMSDAY! coined by Dart Adams.

Monday, ‎July ‎25, ‎2011, 9:41 PM. That was the date and time I started the project, the first one i did was the OBFCL (The Purple Tape) by Raekwon. I've not post about it here before, kinda forgot really, but I did make a full product and will share very soon, it's been years so it's overdue.

That brings us to this post, the passing of Daniel Dumile bka MF DOOM was a shock to us all, still processing it all to be honest. Been a fan from the first time I heard him around 2001, the whole Dr. DOOM thing was dope to me, I thought it was Kool Keith at first, but he was rapping in a style that was unique to everyone else, and if you've been lucky enough to be listening to Rap music since the 80's you'll understand what an accomplishment that is. To this day i'm not sure if Marvel ever sent lawyer letters asking him to cease and desist from using the DOOM name and likeness,  but maybe it helped them in the marketing department in an industry they had no business in. Now i'm not going to get into his history in the rap industry, there are enough articles that did a better job than I could ever do, I will by the best of my ability stick to mainly how DOOM/ STARKS came about and the inspiration for my project.

His first brush with the Clan as far I remember is with 2005 DANGER DOOM joint The Mask with Ghostface Killah and Danger Mouse, then came the RZA produced Biochemical Equation, DOOM along with the Abbot on the 2005 Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture album Dreddy Krueger put together an album that had fan favorite Underground artiste trading bars with Wu-Tang Clansmen. He enlisted Bronze Nazareth to create the soundscape and it was just about perfect, I along with others were clamoring for more joints with GFK, the only Clansman who took on another Marvel character in Tony Stark aka Iron Man, who ironically enough started out hiding his face in music videos only to drop the mask soon after, he even said so himself on the aforementioned DANGER DOOM track.

His second go round with the Clan came with the 2006 Masta Killa produced E.N.Y. House, as DOOM fans we would be familiar with the beat from his 2004 MM..Food? album at the end of the One Beer joint, but it also sampled the 80's Spider-Man cartoon (UN Meeting) in which Dr. DOOM who had a dope ass luxurious DOOM Aircraft with tractorbeam piloted by a DOOMBOT snatching up the US President on Air Force One mid flight. Then came tracks on GFK's Fishscale album. Also, in 2006 the first "DOOM/ STARKS" joint came out called Charlie Brown, but that never made it to the Fishscale album, sample clearances made sure it didn't. The official first joint I believe was Angles on a Nature Sounds album called Natural Selection. All of this kinda happened around the same time in 2006, so between then and around 2010 there were like one or two DOOM and GFK joints like Chinatown Wars from a GTA game.

So 2011 came and we finally get some new DOOM/ STARKS with a joint called Victory Laps, finally we're getting the album long talked about and promised by both men. A limited edition cassette and LP were made, the hype was at an all time high, and then... Nothing! A big fat naught, played us all like clowns, no album, nothing. More years pass and we got another joint called Lively Hood, and that was in 2015, at this point and because he is no longer here to share his vision we shouldn't get one, he was too meticulous about how he presented his art to give us what they think he wanted us to see and hear.

These were the two posters I started working on, Wednesday, ‎August ‎22, ‎2012, ‏‎6:07:48 AM and the cassette notebook to accompany them. The posters would've been printed using UV ink so certain elements would glow under blacklight. And much like their project, mines may go uncompleted as well, even with the best intentions it's been so long now that i'm on to other things that are taking up far more of my time. I will present them here for prosperity and not let them live in the unpublished art archive like so many other projects i have.

I did artwork and posted this in 2006 kellogg's space ho's, based off one of my favorite tracks from his and Danger Mouse Adult Swim album DANGER DOOM (The Mouse And The Mask). He also had a track two years before this called Ho Cakes. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------