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I’ve been invited to join the DrawMo! 2008 group blog. A drawing a day for the month of November. Let’s kick it.

A full graphical re-design for this blog is under way, in order to make it a bit cleaner, easier on the eyes, and make it fall in line with my traditionally minimalist gray look for the site (I like the design to get out of the way of the entries as much as possible). The template I’m using right now served to get my feet wet, in terms of how WordPress templates work, but it’s not really visually in line with what I’d like it to be.

So, hopefully within the week I’ll unveil the new, custom-designed look of The New Sleekness, featuring the return of widgets and social media content. In the meantime, here’s a small preview:

This is the final iteration of my Little Brother piece. I’ve re-worked the Camera-Head, and added some more detail to its blazer. In the end, as soon as I realized that I was designing a poster (for myself) as opposed to a mass market book cover (for the particular needs of the mass market), I decided to leave the idea of a textural background aside. For similar reasons, I’ve also replaced the Neil Gaiman blurb with the book’s tag-line, and integrated the arphid graphic from the spine of the cover design.

I’m diggin’ it.

Tomorrow, I’ll go get myself some ink and figure out the separations. I’ll get the seps printed on Friday morning, and hopefully will be in the print shop at Pratt by mid-afternoon. I’m itching to get back in there—it’s been way too long. . . . 

Here’s a progression of that Little Brother sketch I put up a few days ago. This is what happens when I have a weekend to myself. I’ve had lots of fun putting this together, particularly including little easter eggs (hints: run the binary through a translator; check out the ‘maker’s brand’ on the arphid on the spine, etc.). It’s not done—there’s still much work to be done on Mr. ‘Camera Head’, and I feel like it needs some textural elements, possibly in the background. Myabe a city-scape? Some DHS-type seals or other government type printed matter? Who knows, I’m still turning it over in my head.

Most likely this will not be used for the actual cover, but in any case the feedback so far has been good, so I’ll definitely be making silkscreen prints of it at some point.

New print in the works, here’s a concept sketch, playing around with the layout. It’s inspired by the first chapter of Sly Mongoose, Tobias S. Buckell’s new novel, which can be found here. The book opens with Pepper, the main character, dropping like a stone into the atmosphere of Chilo, with only a handmade heatshield and an armored spacesuit to protect him.