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Recently I was hired to illustrate and design some cd packaging and a tour poster for Great Gods of Greed upcoming debut album. They are a Heavy Metal band in the tradition of Metallica, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and feature Mike Clark from Suicidal Tendencies on guitar.
The themes the band plays with revolve mostly around greed and exploitation. Their message is right on point with much of the general unrest most people are feeling today so there were a lot of timely concepts to play with.
It was important for the band to stick to the traditional metal ethos and as a result they wanted to create a recognizable mascot character. Much the same way Derek Riggs did for Iron Maiden with Eddie the Head. The band came up with a character they call Greedy and his main feature is his skull head with features that kind if spell out the band’s name. Two capital “G’s” for the eye sockets, a dollar sign for the nose cavity and teeth spelling out the word “greed”.
I did numerous sketches of the skull an Greedy in various situations as well as played around with the symbolism associated with wealth and corporations. The final result for the cover was a wrap around that features Greedy in his corporate headquarters basking in his wealth while brokers plummet past his window a la stock market crash in 29. It’s a brutal and unsettling image that serves as a commentary on the current state of wealth and the economy…it also helps that the music is pretty darn good too.
I love my friends. They’re all pretty amazing eclectic people that do some pretty cool stuff. Take Casey and Dave here. Casey plays banjo, is a percussionist in a Samba group and drives around an old school diesel minibus that he converted to run on vegetable oil. Dave is an illustrator living in Philly who does some pretty incredible and very unique collage work and also happens to be one of the funniest people I ever met.
I decided to taking my new iMac for a spin and colored these drawings in Photoshop. You can see a watercolor painted version of Casey Playing Banjo here.
For my entire life, anytime I have ever voted, the person I voted for never won. It’s been a long string of disappointments from Mike Dukakis to John Kerry, with each successive loss making me feel less and less connected to the political process. I got so confident in my ability to pick losers that I even considered voting for the opposing candidate to test the validity if my voting mojo. But I couldn’t bring myself to toss my vote away like that. What if I was wrong? I’d never be able to sleep at night knowing I voted for someone I didn’t believe in.
Thankfully that all changed with the 2008 Presidential Election when Barack Obama became, not only the first African-American President, but the first candidate I voted for to make it into office. My interest in the political process restored, it’s nice to feel validated and not like an outsider anymore.
With the long string of “Firsts” associated with Obama’s presidency, it seemed appropriate to channel some of those good vibes and make him the subject of my first blog post. One more “First” for me, this is the first piece I’ve ever done in Illustrator. Here’s to good first steps.
