most of the time, i sketch it out...

here is a sketch i JUST started to work on for my sister-in-law's band "Pimp Fly"... was just about to ramp up the effort... then the band changed names!

check out Kill Room's FB fan page here:

Kill Room

and check out this fly little fly that never got to fly... maybe i'll revisit it sometime. till then, bottoms up little fella!

we've seen this little monkey here. he keeps getting bigger every day. hit a speed bump drawing his arm, and a few other projects popped up. but will get back into this design soon enough.

for the heck of it, here's the Slag Monkees Cycling Club fan page. soon as that logo is finished up, i'll get to designing jerseys/shirts. stay tuned!

this is/was the start of a retro 40s Invaders logo i messed around with for a bit. built off of that, and created something kinda cool. but we'll have to wait on the finished product... future DIY! wanted a "comic book title" feel to the Invaders wordmark. and played off a War of the Worlds feel on the little spaceship-hockey stick legs:

i have a new desk buddy named Laserbeak. Laserbeak, if you remember, is based off of a condor... so i wanted to sketch out a more condor-like metal/machine wing. just messing around really

was gonna AutoCAD it up and make it look pretty mean, but never made it to that step yet. more busy/bored work to do down the line:

by now you can probably tell i usually keep 1 sheet of paper next to my desk to sketch on. i'll doodle all over it. would take a pic, but there's work numbers and what-nots on it that maybe i shouldn't share :-)

last but not least, was sketching an old timey, early cartoony dog the other day while thinking up a logo for something else.

hope you all enjoyed! posting my second guest DIY entry next week, so stay tuned for that!

hope you all have a safe, fun weekend!

Back to the Drawing Board...

finding it difficult to sketch the monkey's arms, body, hands & neck, i had to print him out and get back to the "nitty gritty" that i love so much about drawing. a Sharpie an a #2!

couple more steps, and this logo will be finished. honestly... about half way through i'd say. stay tuned!

Slag Monkeys CC (shield, city, train, banner-empty, monkey-unfinished)

send you off into the holiday weekend with the latest Slag Monkeys Cycling Club logo

what we have is the bike chain lined shield, pittsburgh skyline, train engine, empty banner, & unfinished monkey. i'm REALLY lovin' how this is all coming together. i love the simple yet busy feel to it. and i'm already thinking of having 20 patches made up when complete!

check it out:

hope you all have a GREAT, safe holiday weekend!!! and for those of you overseas, throw a couple burgers on the grill for your buddies across the pond...

letting the chips fall where they may...

and by "chips" i obviously mean all the pieces of the Slag Monkeys puzzle i've been drawing!

shield + bike chain + pittsburgh's beautiful skyline + a roarin' steam engine + a banner = a halfway finished logo:

hope you all have a great, safe weekend!!!

Building a City...

and painting the town red...

took an image of Pittsburgh, traced it, & squeezed it together a bit, and came up with this. an element i'm going to hide in the background of my shield:

Building a Train Engine...

Slag Monkeys Shield detail. there will be a train involved within the logo. one of the rumors of the slag dump in Swisshelm Park is that there is a train engine burined deep within the mountain. either a rumor, urban legend, or something my dad told me for kicks... either way, a fun "legend" and an imiage i definitely wanted to tackle!

as always, work in progress:

Building a Shield...

where will the "Slag Monkey" reside once finished? he's part of the overall logo, so he'll chill in this bike chain shield i've been working on:



Building a Character...

working on a logo for the Slag Monkeys CC, i decided to change my blog approach. in past projects, i took this blog through a step-by-step without giving too much away until the end. giving it an air of secrecy. but this time, i want to almost update in real time. already posted my initial sketches (and was pretty well satisfied as to where they were going):

now it's AutoCAD's turn. usually i'll do one of 2 things when transferring from sketch to digital. 1) i'll snap a pic of the sketch (as i did above), then e-mail it to myself (using a Motorola Droid). then i will copy the image, paste it into ACAD, then roughly trace over it (making the pasted image "unselectable" and "moving it to back" so the traced lines show thru)... OR... 2) i'll keep it at my side and glance at it for reference as i draw and shape polylines.

option "2" is currently what i'm doing:

perfectly happy with the jump off of this character. as you can see above the reference lines i use for the shoulders/shoulder angle, the length of the arms, and the general placement of the hands. everything from the chin down will eventually be repositioned and erased. in my best Capt. Barbosa imitation: "more like guidelines..."

any questions, just comment me!

hope you all have a great safe weekend! and a very happy mothers day to the women we love :-)

till next week...

Slag Monkeys CC

sketching right along. not very good at drawing animals, eyes, facial expressions, or that sort of thing. i DO however have a "shield" drawn up in AutoCAD that is looking pretty good. should post that next week. until then, check out my early sketches, see what you think:

and for my next logo...

need a logo for our cycling club! will start sketching pretty soon.

"slag monkeys" refers to the slag dumps in east pittsburgh... it's where we used to hang out in high school to get away from adults...

right off, i'm thinking green & white with yellow trim. should be a fun little project.