How is everyone?

I know it has been a while since I've trolled the blogs around here, I finished up school and moved back to Chicago to start an internship in the last few months, which has kept me pretty busy. This Monday I start as a full time salaried Graphic Designer for Pepper Global, a marketing firm in downtown Chicago. I am looking forward to hanging out with everyone at the September meetup.

Now that you are all caught up with me, how have you all been? What is new around threadland? Did Alvin and Dee get married yet?

Spirits.

Emptees Love!


Emptees Love!

Emptees Love!


Emptees Love!

I've always wanted to mess with the idea of Picasso's Blue-period and the blues. So I was thinking, what if I jazzed up his famous blue-guitarist?

This is just a rough sketch over the top of it right now. But I figure I can give him a pin-stripe suite, tie, Italian shoes, a Gibson half-body, sun glasses, and sweet hat.



First Step today, roughing out the anatomy. I am sticking pretty close to picasso's but altering it where necessary to fit the new items. Started a guitar (a 1959 Gibson 335), got the first step of a pork-pie hat going. Also, rough colors, but they are bound to change.


Started vectoring, added some block color. Been messing around with shading systems.



Lots more shading. Going to move onto the line work soon.



Got a bunch of work done on the guitar. At this point only have the hands, detail work (stitching, buttons, shoes). I want to go back and redo the neck/beard so they feel a bit better and more like the original. Also get a background going.






On a real shirt color, more details, fixed anatomical issues.

Finally got my pictures uploaded to flickr.

**Hey guys, I am going to submit some of these pictures to a study abroad photo competition. I could use help picking a few.

If you guys want to let me know what your favorites are from above or from my flickr page (there are more there), I would really appreciate it.**
Flickr Study Abroad set

Here is a short sampling:

Hey all, I am going to start working on a project for my bookmaking class, and I wanted the theme to be work from different illustrators.

So, here is my big question, if anyone minds if I can use some of their work in my little piece I would really appreciate it.

I do hereby promise to only use it in the context stated above, and that this project will only be 1 edition, and exist as an educational piece only (yadda yadda).

I could use files that can print out cleanly at at-least 8.5x11.

If you want to help me out, feel free to either post the images in this blog, post links to them, or if you feel more comfortable, email me at folkkevi (at) gmail (dot) com.

*note*
Doesn't have to be threadless-designs. If you'd like to contribute something else, that is cool!

Phenome from Kevin Folk on Vimeo.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Hey guys, I have been missing you, but have been way too busy to do anything but work and sleep this last few weeks.

Right now I am putting in about ~70 hours a week on school and art projects over the 24 hours of class I have a week, and have been doing a freelance design project on top of that. (The remainder of my time not spent sleeping has been spent attempting to fix my computer, whose RAM is on the fritz ... long story).

So yeah, crazy, but I am working on some cool stuff. Right now I am in the middle of hand-animating a short 1-minute film for my Time and Motion Design class, which I should have together in the next few weeks. It takes a fuckload longer to animate than I thought, I am about 30 hours into the project and I just finished my 500'th frame (~33 seconds of animation).

Hope everyone is doing well, and I look forward to catching back up on Threadlife once real life stops beating me over the head with a truncheon.

Hey guys, the last time I used flash was in 2003, back when it was still owned by the now defunct Macromedia (Mx).

So, I figured I would play around in my new cs4 flash, and see what I could make.

So far I have two short looped videos, they look ok. Their .gif counterparts however, got reduced to crappy quality, and I am still trying to fix that.

Theo Jansen is an absolutely amazing kinetic sculptor, who makes some of the most rediculous constructions ever.

Here is an example of one.



He also gave an amazing TED-talk, seriously you need to watch this:


His designs may one day replace the wheel, since it is substantially more efficent. In that first video, a several ton construction is being easily pushed by one man.

So, this weekend, while I was driving back to Chicago from Michigan for my Grandmother's wake and funeral. It was raining very hard, and traffic was moving very quick.

Coming from the opposite direction a SUV flipped over and rolled through the culvert dividing the highway, and ended up upside-down in our direction's left median resting against an embankment. I pulled up right as the first person crawled from a window.

I was the second person to make it to the car, so after helping pull a few people from the car, I asked if anyone was left inside. A woman replied that her daughter was, so I crawled in through a window. The car was filled with glass and a good amount of blood, but the little girl was safely strapped into her car seat (now dangling upside down).

Me and another guy managed to unhook her, and get her out of the car, and turn the vehicle off, and crawl back out. There was only 1 serious injury out of the 5 people in the car. A man had his head cut up pretty bad, so I grabbed an emergency kit from my car, and luckily a guy with first aid training was there to keep him stable and out of shock until the ambulance arrived.

I spent the rest of the time directing traffic until the cops showed up and took over. Then I went and washed the blood off my arms at a truck stop down the road.

It was pretty crazy.

*note* the craziest thing was that the little girl didn't have a scratch on her. She wasn't even crying when we pulled her free, just hanging out upside down staring down at us.

Hey guys, in order to spread free love, and ease of use, I am gunna use this as a central area for love's links, both my own and anyone elses.

As you guys have designs up on Emptees post your links in the blog and I will put them up here in the body of the blog.

*I will clear the list every few weeks to make voting easier*
**Please post a direct link to your specific emptees design**

Designs which are nearer the bottom are more recent.

Krimson's Metal Head

Marija's Trickster

Ratkiss' Olive and her amazing Olives
Ratkiss' Follow your Heart

b7's The House of the Suprising Sun

Mark722's Plucked
Mark722's Mr. Octopus

Sausage Moe's How it Really Happened.

Krimson's Bodhisattva