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Margaritaville comic stripTimes-Union AME for Visuals Denise M. Reagan and I had been looking for opportunities to create a piece inspired by The Oatmeal, a Web comic featuring simplistic figures speaking in Web-speak. We found our opportunity in the form of a Jimmy Buffett concert. We conceived a story based on the lyrics to "Margaritaville," which I then storyboarded and drew as a comic strip. The piece was light and fun, and translated well into a Flash version of the strip. |
Billy Joel and Elton JohnElton John and Billy Joel kicked off their tour in Jacksonville. These men’s faces and lyrics are instantly recognizable, so I was asked to create their faces out of their lyrics. A representative of Elton John's Web site saw the cover and asked for permission to use it on Elton’s official Web site. EltonJohn.com posted the cover, as well as a link to a Jacksonville.com video explaining how the cover was made. |
Fall Arts PreviewAME for Visuals Denise Reagan had the idea to design our fall arts preview in the form of an old See 'n Say toy. I was not given any limits and was told I could take the idea and see where it went. I looked at a few versions of the toys and noticed they all had animals in rather boring positions. I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to show the animals acting out the arts we're talking about?" After drawing the characters in Illustrator, I printed out a copy to scan back into the computer. I did this to give it the fuzzy look that would match the look of the See 'n Say we shot in the studio. I can't decide which animal is my favorite, though the wolf doing "Hamlet" ranks up with the frog dressed like "The Blues Brothers." |
Michael Buble coverWhen Michael Buble came to Jacksonville in July 2010, I was told we wanted to make the cover "retro" and "crooner-y." I didn't really know what that would look like, so AME for Visuals Denise M. Reagan and I pored through Google image searches until we found a poster for the Sammy Davis Jr. movie "A Man Called Adam." Using that as my guide, I incorporated earlier crooners in the bottom as an anchor. It's a simple cover, but one that captures the era of which Buble is reminiscent. |
First Place TogetherFreelancer Ashley Gurbal wrote a piece about moving in with her fiancee and the challenges that come from cohabitation. More than just a primer on whose stuff to keep when a couple moves in, the story focused on the overall experience of sharing your life with someone in the same space. Thus, I wanted the illustration to move beyond moving boxes and other visual metaphors. I decided to create a fictional couple and show their disagreements through a series of vignettes. Each room in the house plays host to a different challenge the couple must overcome. AME for Visuals Denise M. Reagan suggested I show the couple fighting over a wagon wheel table a la "When Harry Met Sally." Always a fan of pop culture references, I took the bait. At least one other person caught the reference without me having to explain it. |
Class Acts CoverEach June, The Times-Union publishes a special section about the high school graduations in the region. AME for Visuals Denise M. Reagan said she had for a while had the idea to do something that spoke to the various forms of social media to which these graduates could be using on their smart phones during the ceremony. Inspired by a brilliant New Yorker cover from 2009, featuring parents on their smart phones while their children trick-or-treated, I set about creating a cover that evoked smart phones and social media without directly resembling any one platform or application. The second challenge was to figure out how to Tweet like a high school kid. Luckily, I know some teachers and have some friends with younger siblings, so I got the feedback I needed. And then I felt like a square for trying to write in complete sentences. |
Cheeseburger in Paradise coverThe "Margaritaville" comic strip above ran as a doubletruck in Jack, the Friday entertainment section of The Times-Union. For the cover of that issue, we wanted something that would promote the strip without stealing the joke and repeating the concept. We decided to refer to Jimmy Buffett's "Cheeseburger In Paradise" and diagram said food item using the lyrics. |
Jack Olympic coverWhen the Times-Union's Weekend section was redesigned and renamed Jack in late 2008, the section was given a mascot: Jack. I was told that for the 2010 Olympics preview that we'd want to show him participating in various Olympic sports. I then worked on incorporating the Olympic rings into the illustration. This final version trumped several drafts, but I think we got it right. |
Tony KornheiserWhen Jacksonville was picked to play host to the 2005 Super Bowl, Tony Kornheiser wrote in his Washington Post column, "How did Jacksonville get the Super Bowl? What, Tuscaloosa was booked?" A few years later, Kornheiser came to Jacksonville as part of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" coverage. On the eve of that Jaguars-Steelers game, Times-Union columnist Gene Frenette got to interview Kornheiser. Self-depricating and apologetic, Kornheiser said he regretted the column. This illustration was inspired by the mouths on ventriloquist dummies and the ripped edges of fliers and album covers from hardcore punk bands of the late 1970s. |
Houses in foreclosureI've long appreciated that Roy Lichtenstein's pop art conveyed uncomfortable issues underneath bright colors and pretty people. For this alternative story form about buying a house in foreclosure, I wanted something that combined the American idealism of owning your own home with the stress of foreclosures. Lichtenstein's style fits the concept, so I emulated him and a few other comic artists to achieve a surreal dystopia. |
John WatersThe Jacksonville Film Festival has some expected fare: local films, independent movies, artsy cinema, foreign films with airy synthesizers, etc. But in 2007, cult icon John Waters appeared at the film festival to show "Polyester" in "odorama." He also narrated some a viewing of the movie as if it were a director's commentary on a DVD. I thought that the anniversary packaging for Waters' "Pink Flamingos" did such a good job at showing Waters' colorful camp that I replicated that look for this cover. I couldn't out-kitsch the master, so I emulated him. |
You can't kill Kenny!By the time I came to the Times-Union in 2006, country star Kenny Chesney had already been to Jacksonville eight times in eight years. The features staff was having a tough time coming up fresh angles. After a while, the angle has become that there is no new angle because he comes here all the time. Someone likened him to the Kenny character on "South Park" who dies in every episode but comes back. We tweaked the "You killed Kenny!" catch phrase and had an instant cover, showing Kenny Chesney as a "South Park" character. |
Medical KingdomBy summer 2007, Jacksonville was becoming a destination in the health care industry because of medical technologies that made the region a leader in the Southeast. We had covered those specific technologies before with a graphic, so this time I wanted to focus on the overall excitement from this designation. Inspired by Keith Haring and my own doodles, I created an amusement park of stick figures riding the technologies that sets Jacksonville apart from other cities in the region. I drew it by hand, then scanned it in to add color and roughen some of the edges. |
Pat BenatarPat Benatar and Richard Marx played a free Fourth of July show at Jacksonville's Metropolitan Park. My AME pitched to me the idea of portraying Benatar in the way Shepard Fairey portrayed Barack Obama in the "HOPE" poster. I had seen the poster spoofed and referenced several times, but I thought that if I emulated it, it was appropriate to use it for an icon playing on Fourth of July. I drew Benatar's face in several layers and then stacked them to get the appropriate look. |
