A Very CollegeHumor Halloween

A few weeks ago I was approached by the kind fellows over at CollegeHumor regarding a new Halloweeny web article that they needed some illustrations for. The pitch? Spoofs on a classic book series called Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz. If you're a long time reader of my blog you might remember a while back I wrote this Inspiration Spotlight article on Scary Stories. And with this project I was allowed to try my hand at spoofing some of the classic Stephen Gammell illustrations that I love so much!

Source material

The article was written up by CollegeHumor writer Michael Trapp, and art direction was provided by Caldwell Tanner. You can see the article and the illustrations in their final published form on the CollegeHumor website!

Fun extra, exclusive to my blog, below are the images as I sent them off to CollegeHumor...

It was a huge blast getting to emulate an artist I've admired for so long, and it's always a joy getting to work with the CollegeHumor team. They offer a nice break from the usual grind of fantasy illustration work. It's not often I get to flex my humor muscles so I like to enjoy it when I can. Not to mention the CollegeHumor guys are extremely pleasant to work with. Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

CollegeHumor Cards: Videoitized

CollegeHumor released a video yesterday advertising the deck of playing cards I illustrated for them a few months ago. It's pretty cool seeing a bunch of people excitedly promote a product I worked on. If you are so much inclined to desire a deck of your own, or even gift one to a friend, you can purchase them here!

     

    CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos

College Humor Playing Cards

This is College Humor's logo

The project I worked on with College Humor has finally been released and so I finally get to talk about it! I was approached about doing some artwork for a College Humor themed deck of cards. The original idea was a little bit different than the final product, but I think we came to a successful conclusion.

Card back (designed by College Humor)

Over Skype, I discussed the original ideas with a group CH of writers. They came to me with the idea of giving the deck an internet theme since CH's main platform is the internet. I gave my own feedback on the ideas provided by the CH team but they had a pretty clear idea of what they wanted to do so it was mostly just tweaking and refining their original ideas.

Check out my new threads. Get it? Because they're SUITS??

Each suit would have it's own newly designed pips for each suit: Spades, mouse pointer; Hearts, power icon; Diamonds, wifi icon; Clubs, USB icon.

The royalty

Then each suit was assigned it's own theme for each of the face cards. Spades featuring various PC icons: the King with his mouse pointer swords; the Queen with her hourglass that everyone dislikes so much, including her; and the jack with his pointer finger for clicking links. Hearts featuring different computer accessories for faces: monitor King, keyboard Queen, and mouse Jack. Diamonds pay homage to various internet memes...can you guess them all?? And finally, Clubs referenced various adorable animal videos that saturate the interwebz, including a King of Corgi, a Queen of Cat, and a Jack of Sloth.

Jake and Amir

Jake & Amir and their show

Jake and Amir and their cards

Last up are the Jokers, which feature two of CH's most popular stars, Jake and Amir, from the sketch show titled Jake & Amir. The Fedora on Jake is an inside joke for all the Jake and Amir fans.

This was a really exciting project to get to work on and you can probably tell based on my portfolios that this is pretty different than the work I usually do. It was a real pleasure getting to work with the College Humor team and I really hope I get the chance to do more work with them in the future; such a blast and it felt extremely rewarding.

So by now I'm pretty sure you want your own deck, right? Of course you do! You can purchase your own deck of College Humor playing cards on the website Busted Tees by clicking HERE

My adventure with CollegeHumor.com

 Over a month ago I applied for an in-house assistant illustrator position in New York City that opened up at CollegeHumor.com. I'm very familiar with their work and I was really excited to get a chance at a position like that. I spent hours carefully writing up a cover letter and selecting pieces for my portfolio and then I submitted. Weeks went by and I had pretty much forgotten about the job entirely when I received an email from someone at the company congratulating me on being selected to do an art test as the next step in the application. I was caught way off guard but I was extremely excited about it! However it was going to be a little tricky because I was already in the middle of some freelance work, on top of being away from home for a week, and when I got back home the art test was due the next day.

I had a lot of work ahead of me but I really wanted the position so I dove in head first and started generating ideas for the 3 pieces they wanted to see. I decided I would get all of my ideas fleshed out in their entirety and then complete all of the finals when I got home where I could really focus in my studio. I pulled an all-nighter and finished the pieces within a couple hours of the due date and I was feeling pretty satisfied. I waited for almost 3 weeks after that to hear any response.

Yesterday was the day I heard back from them. I was disappointed to see I didn't get the job and they explained that while they valued my work and complimented me on it, they decided to go with someone else. I was confused and disappointed at first because the message sounded like they really liked what I showed them. I was pretty bummed on not getting the position and I replied with a thank you message, and I got the idea to offer my skills as a freelancer. I got a very pleasing reply back excited telling me I would be added to their list of freelancers.

This was a pretty crazy experience and it drove me crazy to have to wait so long to hear something back from them. While disappointed in not getting the position I was really happy to hear I'll be on their list of freelancers. I'm marking this one down as a win. May not have been the win I was looking for, but still a win. As a freelancer I've been let down a lot, and it's going to keep happening throughout my entire career. But if you keep pushing through the failures and always keep your eyes peeled for opportunities you'll eventually be rewarded with success.

Below are the 3 pieces I did for the CollegeHumor art test and the description for each one...you can find the initial portfolio at this link but I'll probably be taking it down at some point in the future. Enjoy!

 1. Draw two characters at a bar enjoying a drink together. They can be any two characters, familiar or original, in any bar you want.

 2. Re-envision one of your favorite websites as a breakfast cereal (i.e. CollegeHumor Crunch) Use a mixture of Photoshop and drawing to render your project. Don’t forget to include a mascot!

3. Create a fun, infographic map of your room / apartment / house. Use labels and a key! (P.S. this is not even slightly accurate to my actual room)