William Marchant

New Typepad and Wordpress Blog Designs!

Here are a couple blogs that I recently designed.  The first one is about "garage-saling," called "Garage Sale Gal" (that title might change though).  This one was setup on Wordpress using a fantastic template by Ignacio Ricco.  I just did the little illustration of a woman with her kids, carrying a bunch of garage sale "treasures" for the background and banner.

Check out this full blog at http://GarageSaleGal.Wordpress.com/

The second blog is 100% custom designed.  I built this one from scratch on Typepad, a platform that I have become much more comfortable with, in contrast to Wordpress, which I only have a free account and have never really utilized for all its worth.  "Sarah Drags Tim..." is a blog that talks about Midwest living and the great stuff there is to do if you just look for it.  

Check out this full blog at http://SarahDragsTim.com

Seoul Taco STL Website Launch!

Today, Looks Great launched the first of several websites!  

www.SeoulTacoSTL.com is now the online home of the first Korean BBQ Taco Truck in St. Louis!  I did everything you see on the site except for the logo...they had that done somewhere else.  

Seoul Taco is planning to open it's shutters later this month and I am honored to help create an identity for them in the area.  In addition to the website, Looks Great is handling ST's print items such as menus and business cards...check out Facebook for updates on those.

So go check out SeoulTacoSTL.com and let me know what you think of Twitter or Facebook!

Shift Guard Logo Selected on Design Crowd!

Here is a logo design that I did for a client on DesignCrowd.com that does time card management (I believe):

I'm not sure what color option they are going with...they may actually make the colors completely different than anything I have.  But I am very happy with the design, something very simple that gets across the idea of the company...and am even happier that it was selected!

Check me out on Design Crowd!

TigerHawks - MU & KU Fans Coming Together for the Cure!

I did these shirts for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in St. Louis this past Saturday.  Our team/group was made up of half Mizzou fans and half Kansas fans.  So we thought that combining the two rival mascots would be pretty neat...and something that really has never been done; at least that I've seen.  My brother said it best when I showed him the shirts, "It's bittersweet."  We thought about doing "JayTigers" but that didn't have a nice ring to it...plus Mizzou needs to go first, right!  Sidenote: When designing the logo, it was a pleasure cutting off the jayhawk's head!

So the shirts were a big hit at the race/walk!  A lot of people were even stopping us to take pictures, haha.

But, on the more important side, the race was an AMAZING experience.  I've never been a part of something that large and for such a great cause.  There was a part of the walk where the people in front of you were on an incline and you could see the massive river of people cutting through downtown St. Louis (picture below)...you couldn't help but get teary-eyed.  

There is not a single person that I know who hasn't been some way connected to breast cancer...whether it was a mom who passed away, a grandma who survived, or even just a friend who had a scare.  I was thinking while we were walking the 5K, it's been like 30 years since the Susan Komen for the Cure began, and I really hope that this race doesn't go on year after year and get to a 50th Anniversary race.  It would be nice if a cure was found and there was a big "finale" race or something.  Or if it became "We Found a Cure!" race...that would be awesome!

That's what I hope for at least.

"Get Behind Me Conan" - Museum of Conan Art (MoCA)

This is one of my newest illos done for the the Fan Art section of TeamCoCo.com.  

Basically, I wanted to do something that would make Conan and Andy (Richter) laugh.  I thought of doing it like the White Stripes' "Get Behind me Satan" album cover since Conan is such a fan of Jack.  Giving Andy tits was, for me at least, the icing on the cake.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out...and I'm VERY happy that it got on the site.  Now, hopefully I'll see it on TV in the near future when they come back from commercial break.

Go check out the other great stuff in the MoCA!!!  There's some really great stuff!

LOOKS GREAT! is the New William Marchant Illustration & Design

It became apparent to me that this site, WilliamMarchant.com, may seem a bit jumbled.  There's a lot that I do so there is a lot going on on my website.

In an effort to make things simple, straight forward, and clean, I am launching a re-branding of myself under the model www.LooksGreat.biz!  Looks Great (LLC pending) will serve as my main portfolio/resume website and WilliamMarchant.com will be converted to my blog.  While I do like this site, I really beleive that in the long run, Looks Great will be easier for new visitors to understand and navigate.

A link to my blog will be added to the new site soon, but I am still figuring out the best way to link the two sites...so I am just keeping them separate for the time being.

So go check out my new site and let me know what you think by voting for your favorite on Facebook!

MARCH 2011 St. Louis Illustrators Meeting A New Mobile Art Form

I specifically remember seeing the New Yorker cover to the left by David Hockney last Fall and saying to my girlfriend, "What the hell is that doing on the cover of the New Yorker!"  I then read that it was done on an iPhone and sent directly to the A.D. from the phone...to which I responded, "Who gives a crap?  It looks like shit."

Well, last night's meeting of the St. Louis Artists' Guild Illustrators Section gave me a whole new perspective on the medium.  Michael Anderson, architectural illustrator and Plein Air landscape painter, gave a presentation on his iPad about such "mobile drawings."  Anderson presented two programs/applications that he uses: Brushes and Sketchbook Pro.  (His iPhone, iPad, and Tablet creations are seen below)

I came to respect this medium, first, because of its Impressionist qualities.  Yes, the illustration for the New Yorker cover isn't the coolest illustration I've ever seen, nor is it a style that is particularly striking to me.  But it gets across an idea.  It is a picture of a spoon in a bowl on a table with a chair pulled in.  That's that...you have a picture of something that was created by a person drawing on a digital device.  While this may not seem too ground breaking, consider the alternative: A picture of a spoon in a bowl on a table that was drawn loosely with a pencil.  That's not too special either...it's been done.  But I beg a mainstream viewer to point to the last time they saw/heard of someone drawing the cover of a major publication on a freakin' smartphone.  To me, the method makes the picture become something special.

I'M NOW ON ELANCE (So go hire me!)

I finally went back and fully setup my account on Elance.com.  I had been putting it off for some time since I signed up because it looked a bit intimidating.  But after reading a few reviews and comments about the service, I decided to go for it.

Hopefully a few of my first proposals will get accepted and I can come back and tell you how they go!  But for right now, it looks like there's a lot more work out there than I thought!  And Elance does a great job of
    presenting all those opportunities!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY ELANCE PROFILE

Catcher in the Rye Revisited

I was getting a lot of hits on this blog for a post from last year about my high school painting based on J.D. Salinger's famous novel The Catcher in the Rye.  (READ THAT POST HERE)  So, I decided to revisit the "loss of innocence" theme and update the work.  

Above is the result, which I'm pretty happy with!  Check out the full size version on Flickr...you get a lot more of the finer details in the larger version.

I kept a lot exactly the same (well, mirrored), because I felt that my painting in high school did a great job of illustrating the themes and motifs in Catcher.  But there are also a lot of differences.  Besides just the style, I took out the "cloaks" I had the kids wearing in the original painting.  The other major thing is that I have no one actually falling off the cliff in the new illustration.  I felt that it was more fitting to Holden Caulfield's mental picture of "if a body catch a body coming through the rye;" that he keep every one from falling rather than just watching them plummet.

Another key thing I did was add my interpretation of Holden Caulfield.  No one knows exactly what the character looked like except for the late Mr. Salinger.  But I wanted to offer my view of Caulfield, red hunting hat and all.

I might do another post later on explaining all the symbollism, but for now please let me know what you think below...this thing means a lot to me and I would love to hear your take!

The Best Mistake I Made Learning to Screen Print

Up until last week, I had been using 3M Injet Transparency Film on my Brother MFC-5890cn to print transparencies for my screen printing process. I had been quadrupling them up to get darker black areas.

In an effort to cut some costs, I found a much cheaper injet transparency film made by Apollo.  My costs for transparencies were substantially cut!  $50 for a 50 pack of the 3M stuff went to $14 for a 50 pack of the Apollo stuff!

So the new transparencies arrived and I ripped open the package...only to look at the specifications and find that they were not compatible with my Brother printer.  Tiss tiss for not looking into that before I ordered, right?  But, I tried printing a few anyway...only so my Brother could completely eat each page.

I sat there for a few minutes letting set in the fact that I was stuck with 200 transparencies that I couldn't use.  And a thought came to me!  They were compatible with HP printers and I had an old HP printer collecting dust next to my desk!