ALTER EGO PASTE UPS

I was commissioned to do a series of paste ups at a cafe called Servery & Spoon. It's a lovely little spot in Caulfield with a lot of kewl and sexy young mums and lots of kiddies, cakes, Phoenix cola and organic sour dour sandwiches. I decided to create a series based on some alter-ego's that are relevant to my friends and I.

The following pics are from the process of the alter-ego paste-up series :-)











...It started with Rathf (The Monkey) who was my first alter-ego who was born at Strathfield station in Sydney after Juleiaah and I had been travelling ourselves into delirium.

Next is Rauw (Also known as Dragon) who is one of my all time best friends, she lives in my beautiful girl Juleiaah and is shy but brave and very good at looking after the treasure :-) Love you Drauwgooon!

Next is Llama, who is a lovely chap who resides in one of our bestest buddies Leon Calero and is a fan of one piece tracksuits and freestyle rapping to the beat of his own unique bum-slapping. Then we have Kitty of Kittiepie Islands; a suave accountant and keen chef who helps our lovely Kathy Sinclair to be her best.

Lastly we have Doo Doo the love robot ~ one of mine; a rad little android who travelled millions of miles from Planet Doo to be with the love of his life Juleidoo!

KISSHEAD EP DESIGN

THE STORY OF KISSHEAD & THE BOAT CALLED ZEBRA

Kisshead travelled in both a spaceship named desire and a boat called Zebra
for millions of light years to land on earthly terrain in late 2009...
Before this time, a young and spritely Kisshead travelled from planet to planet
with the aim of recording traditional music from all over the cosmos.
A common theme and feel was noticed once the recordings were translated and Kisshead began writing songs at once. The music that was produced was a hybrid of the many styles of the intergalactic lands that Kisshead had travelled ~ this new genre was labelled 'Lovestep'. Although over 27 albums were released on the other end of the universe, the first earthly disc is a brand new EP featuring breath taking tracks such as Love Letters, If You and How Convenient...

Cat In The Mutha-Flippin Hat Y'alll

I drew this bad boy for an upcoming gig, Dr Zuess meets RUN DMC...



Here he is in situ... The poster is for a Xmas gig, I started with the Grinch idea and moved on to the full Dr Zuessary...

Fab 5 Freddie

Below is a sketchola I did a while ago of a ye olde school rapper called Fab 5 Freddie aka Freddie Love aka Frederick Braithwathe...ha ha. Maybe rappers have such a history in the creation of alias' because they all have wack names!? For example Busta Rhymes = Trevor Smith, Eminem = Marshall Bruce Mathers, Snoop Dogg = Cordazer Calvin Broadus, Ghostface = Dennis Coles, Royce the 5'9 = Ryan Montgomery, Big L = Lamont Coleman, Chuck D = Carlton Ridenhour, Beanie Sigel = Dwight Grant and Nate Dogg = Nathaniel Dwayne Hale! Ha ha classic!

PEZ DELUX EDITION (RE-POST)

I recently designed the artwork for Pez's debut album 'A Mind Of My Own' which absolutely smashed it! It was amazing to see Perry come in with this album he had been working on not too sure how it was all going to go then next thing you
know he is everywhere! He has sold thousands of copies, got #7 on JJJ hottest 100, #11 in the ARIA charts, sold out Hi-Fi Bar, got on the Bliss and Eso tour and a whole bunch more.
I was recently approached by his crew to remix the design for a delux edition and
this is what I came up with - it's essentially the original design but with Pink/Blue instead of Orange/B&W.

Pez originally came to me with a concept of him sitting in class as a youngster dreaming out the window - cos he has always felt that way in life. I took that idea and ran with it - illustrating his actual thoughts using visuals from his rap lyrics such as references to chess, time, religion and many more.











Below is the old design before the Remix...

Illustration

Thought I'd throw up some sketches.

This first one is a funny piece I did a while ago ~ I don't remember how this idea came to me but it seems to make people laugh. I made a Christmas card out of it last year to freak a few family members out!



I created this collage out of cut outs from an old National Geographic, I just cut out the shapes and created this crazy monster eating birds. It took me no time at all and it's actually my favourite piece that I've ever done.



This is another funny one, just thought of the idea of a squid in a stack hat. Might make a tee-shirt of it...

RECENT CORPORATE WORK (Baker Boys)

This is part of a brochure design and branding I created for a Melbourne based covers band called Baker Boys. I collaborated with my sister Leila Koren who did the photography for the package, we tried to make it look stylish and pro while stile maintaining a lil coolness :-)

Check out Leila's photos at: www.redbubble.com/people/leilanihawaii

OLD WORK #1

The Inflatables

This is some work I did for my old party band The Inflatables, we did a whole bunch of house party jams mashing up old school records with a live band, 2 DJs and 2 MCs. Was fun but we were all so busy with all our other shite that we didn't really pursue it. We did release a full length debut called 'Blueprint Adaption' but we put it out on cassette only. So very few people have heard it... I'm sure more than half the people who actually bought it still haven't heard it cos they don't have a tape player!

The design was a hell of a lot of fun to create. I tried to give the tape a real old school flavour, that old dirty faded look ~ The rest I just made super poppy and bubblegum flavoured.

This is a bit of a nastalgic post dedicated to my old Inflatable crew and all the people who bought the tape and can't play it! ha ha

OLD WORK #2

I thought I'd chuck up some old stuff cos I have never had a chance to post these pieces...

The First is a photo of a bunch of my sketches in ink, pencil, high-lighter and markers. There's some Vibe Trackers, a fat angel and a squid in a stack hat...



This one is some character designs in a book of ideas for my side project called Windy Chronicles. It's a hip-hop story telling project full of characters and tales from a bizarre world that me and my fellow Windians have created. I'll definitely be posting more as it comes... in the meantime checkout ~ www.myspace.com/windychronicles



This one is a piece I developed as a prototype for a Museum brochure to promote a Japanese Kimono exhibition. Took me flipping forever to figure out all the folds!

Ode To Slick

"La-di-da-di, we like to party
We don't cause trouble, we don't bother nobody
We're, just some men that's on the mic
And when we rock upon the mic we rock the mic RIGHT...
Mirror mirror on the wall
Who is the top choice of them all
there was a rumble tumble, five minutes it lasted
the mirror said, "You are you conceited bastard!"

Paint Me Gold Lyrics/ Galaxy Pieces

I've written quite a few intergalactic love songs recently, the following is one of them currently titled 'Paint Me Gold'... I've put it together with some galaxy pieces I created a few weeks ago.






Verse #1///
Life was so black and white/
Yeah not so colourful/
Until my satellite got ya signal/
I was so underground/
I dug a whole down there/
Then popped my head to get some fresh air/
And when I looked outside/
It wasn't all that bad/
It feeling feel so sad/
In fact it felt quite rad/
Put on my pink and green flannel/
Packed the remote control to change channels/
That's when I done astral traveled/
On the back of my space camel/
Went to Jupiter and mars/
Had some lovers in the stars/
Now I'm more experienced/
So baby jump in the front/
We'll head off into the sun/
I know I've found my true love/
So come on paint me gold/
Girl you colour my soul let's go/

Chorus///
Colour me in paint me gold/
I'll be ya canvas if you'll be so bold/
The black and the white/
Is now colourful/
My satellite got ya signal/

Outro///
You drew a portrait of me/
But made it much less ugly/
Yet you took nothin' from me/
It changed because you love me/
The opposite of Dorian Grey/
Sadness I'll never call you again/
Oh my god your a fucking saint/
You that artist with buckets of paint/
Like Picasso and Dali in one/
Add Van Gogh but you have more fun/
So c'mon paint me gold/
You the artist behind my soul/

Brave New World Poster

We are dropping our 3rd single 'Brave New World' which was inspired by the book by Aldous Huxley. Topically, the track took it's own journey. The design concept is as follows... the first is the poster design for the launch and the second is the back-cover of the promo CD in a digicase DVD package.

THE MELODICS DEBUT RECORD '4D'

So... The time finally came for me to make my master piece!

My first full length record (well I put out one with The Inflatables but that only came out on cassette so it doesn't really count).

This is a concept I came up with a long time ago and I actually made what you see now as the mock-up thinking I was going to either illustrate it, paint it or actual build it and take photos. I left it for a while only to realise that I loved the draft so I kept it and created the following for a digicase CD package...









Also, below is the poster I created for the album launch @ The Hi-Fi bar which was a craaaaaaaaaaazzzzzyyy night...

FOREVER LOVE!! (RE-POST)

So...
Two of my best friends got married over the long weekend. It was officially the best few days of my life and I think a few people who were there may feel the same. The wedding was on a gorgeous farm in Mount Gambier from Friday to Monday. My lovely lady Juleiaah sung them down the isle with 'feeling Good' in the sunshine and we also sung a song we wrote for them during the speeches called 'Forever Love...'
It was a highly emotional moment and we all had a group sobbing session. Below is some images of a mix Cd that included a recording of the song we wrote for them, I packaged it in a digi-pack with illustration and type created out of Juleiaah's lovely handwriting.
Andy and Ptiika - Thank you for your friendship and love and for such a dream like weekedend. Luv yas!

The Kin - THE UPside

This is my most recent job - It's the album artwork for The Kin from NYC/LA...

It's a 6 panel Digicase for their 2nd Album produced by Jack Douglas who has worked with such incredible artists as (John Lennon/Yoko Ono, Miles Davis, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, The Who, Patti Smith, The New York Dolls so on and so on...)

So this is my response to the music and the new direction of the band. The music is full of beautiful harmonies and waves of warm colours and rad production (obviously.) Much love to Isaac, Thorry and Georgie x x x

THIS IS MELBOURNE COMPILATION CD

This is a compilation CD that is about to come out as a free give away...
It features a group of really talented Melbourne bands including:

Illzilla
Melodics
Labjacd
San Lazaro
The Public Opinion Afro Ochestra
Diafrix

We were trying to think of a name/concept for the compilation and I came up with an idea to reference the film 'This Is England' and just call it 'This Is Melbourne.'
So I worked with the colours and type style of the movie and sketched up a Melbourne-looking kid - still with his finger up and with braces, but with black jeans, a flannel, a stetson hat and an el-coolio hair style...

I had a lot of info to work with on the back so I created a sectioned off grid to keep all the dates and info readable and not toooo cluttered. I'm really happy with this one, it makes me laugh :)







Reference For 'This Is Melbourne'

MELODICS 'LIVE FROM NOWHERE EP'

Here is the front and back cover of Melodics' new live in the studio EP.
I thought of calling the EP 'Live From Nowhere' as a way of making it a lil different from just the usual 'live in the studio' thang... Then thought of the idea of illustrating us all in 'nowhere.' The bird's eye perspective was just a nice way of capturing the band in an interesting way; I often think of how different things look from different angles and I guess from above is one that you rarely see a band from. I used the muted colours on the yellow because I feel it suits the sound of the new EP... you can hear it at: www.myspace.com/melodics

DETAILS FROM MELODICS 'LIVE FROM NOWHERE EP'

Here is a detail of myself and Fantastic Mr Fox on the synths...