While I was in LA, I had the pleasure of visiting Pygmy Hippo Shoppe!

My agency made their website a couple months ago, and I had been dying to see the place in person!
My wifey Marie hooked me up with the Pygmy Hippo folks, and I’m super glad to have gotten the chance to work with them!

When developing the site, Pygmy gave us a few of pieces to build the design off of– a background graphic of the wallpaper they have in the physical store, and a large graphic of the store’s name and logo.

My partner, Tim, thought the whimsicality of the graphics called for anything other than your standard square header, so he created an ornate alternative.

I thought that the navigation bar needed a handmade touch, so I added a ribbon banner.
I’ve seen quite a bit of ribbons in web design trends as of late, but I’ve mostly seen them done with solid color. I decided a realistic looking ribbon was a fun way to put my spin on that.

From there, we used custom typography to round out the look.

When I got to the store, I was elated to see just how freaking adorable it was in real life.
Emi, the woman behind the hippo, is amazing and inspiring.
All of you folks in LA, go visit!
If you’re not local, get a small taste in their online shop.

I recently ordered 4 pairs of shoes from Melissa, and thought I’d give my Vinyl IIs a shot at work today.

Seriously, if anybody knows where I can find these in Red, let me know!! Blue or grey also accepted.

I was all ready to leave, when a package arrived from my dearest Wifey, Miss Marie!!

SWEET JESUS she got me the Zac Posen for Target leather Jacket!!

Dudes, I almost cried.

As you may or may not know, Target may as well not exist for the carless in San Francisco. It was so especially sweet of her to hook a sister up!

I love all the little details this thing has! Especially the safety pin hangtag.

AAH I LOVE YOU WIFEYPANTS!!
Thank you!!

I was given 6 different header graphics to work with, created by Mr. Nathaniel Jankins.
Originally Marie was looking for just a rotating header, but I thought to myself: How could I make this COOLER?

After seeing all the images and realizing that they were so varied in color, it was clear to me that I had to create 6 different color themes to match:

I decided that it would make the most sense to keep the theme consistent for the user’s browsing experience, rather than changing on reload.
I set a session cookie for each theme, so the user only sees one theme per session.

So go check out Agentlover.com and let me know-Which one did you get???

My dear friend John Worsley drew this portrait of me, entitled “I don’t have the heart for this”, out of the blue yesterday.

I haven’t done a self portrait in a long time, or updated this blog with any regularity, or done about a million things that I ought to be doing.
Here’s what I’ve been doing instead:

+ Designing/developing a website for a favorite photographer of mine.

+ Spending time in the studio for my album, which will hopefully see a fall or winter release, god willing.

+ Mixing the album I made in april for the RPM challenge (yes kids, a full length bedroom recording to tide you over until the aforementioned studio album is ready later this year).

+ Anxiously awaiting the release of a dear friend’s album (you’ll know soon enough who it is!) , which I did cover art for, a collaboration with the aforementioned Mr. Worsley.

+ Working on a remix of a song on said friend’s upcoming album.

+ Lettering a comic for a major release. (for someone really awesome!!)

+ Moving into my boyfriend’s house, officially. Also, painting, installing lighting, all the stuff that needs to get done before I move stuff in.

+ Keeping Fuck Yeah Cello updated.

+ Practicing with my band once a week, and livestreaming the practice, & playing out once a week at The Hotel Utah.

+ & Oh yeah, having a full time job.

Needless to say, I’ll be posting some really rad stuff on here when I get a second to breathe, but it’s unlikely that will be for a couple weeks.
But soon, you will all see the fruits of my labor.

<3<3<3

My friend Morley decided to do a massive project for Burning Man 2009, called Timescale.
Her team recently put together a grant proposal packet for the folks at Burning Man Headquarters, and asked me to draw the artist’s rendering you see above.

Here’s some more info on the project:

Timescale is a journey
through 4.57 billion years of planet Earth’s geological and
biological evolution, extended across one mile (5280 feet)
of open playa. Beginning with the formation of the Earth
from a cloud of gas and dust, participants will traverse
through time — advancing two million years with each
footstep, culminating at the present day. Each chapter
in Earth’s growth is highlighted along the way, allowing
participants to appreciate the transformation of our
planet and the exponential complexity of living things.

As participants travel through the one mile corridor of the Timescale
project, each new significant chapter in the Earth’s history will be marked by an 8-inch square concrete column rising from the playa surface. The 6.5-foot tall column holds a clear box which contains a sculptural representation pertaining to that period of time, and a plaque on the side of the column further details the story of what occurred during that chapter.

The final proposal was delivered inside a hollowed out concrete block, which housed a guidebook, and a scale model of the project. The model was in the form of a piece of rope, which was tagged with the location of each concrete column. It was topped with a piece of acrylic which contained the proposal and my rendering.

Check out these photos of the whole thing by Nicole

I’m really excited to have helped with this proposal, and I’m even more excited to contribute some art to the installation this summer!

Page 12 of the 24hour comic I did with Miss Mary Bee!

Writing/Modeling by her,
Illustration/layout by me.

Sorry I’ve been a bit lax on posting these! We’re halfway done!

Design That Kills Photoshoot with Agent Lover from Star St.Germain on Vimeo.

I had so much fun hanging with Marie and Kristin & I hope we all get a chance to spend more time together really soon.
Here’s a small sampling of the photos we shot:

Marie came to visit me for New Years!
You’ll get to read all about our adventures very soon, but for right now, suffice to say we RAGED for her entire visit. This girl rules so hard. <3<3<3!

Top photo by Designthatkills.

P.S.

We’re almost at the halfway point!

Page 11 of the 24hour comic I did with Miss Mary Bee!
Writing/Modeling by her, Illustration/layout by me.

Pages 8 & 9 of the 24hour comic I did with Miss Mary Bee!
Writing/photo by her, layout/design by me.

Thanks to Lesley Denford for doing a little write up on this project!
You can read it here.

[Click for bigger!]

Page 4 of the 24hour comic I did with Miss Mary Bee!
Writing by her, illustration/layout by me (after a photo, of her, by Alan Davis).

Got all that? ha.

This series was thought up in New York when I was at Economy Candy with Marie & Lola.
It was there that I purchased the 1 pound sugar daddy that you see before you.
Clearly this giant candy was made to cover my nekkid.

Marie was nice enough to transport said candy from New York, to LA, to the Madonna for me.
Thanks Marie!!

I had originally planned on getting a ton of regular sized Sugar Daddies for the rest of the photo, but I learned it’s incredibly difficult to find Sugar Daddies in bulk. At the last second I grabbed two giant bags of candy at Smart & Final that weighed in at 7 pounds.

Thanks to Evan Hayden for assisting me in shooting these self-portraits. We shot all Annie Liebowitz style with me telling him how to frame it & he was more than patient with me as I rolled around on the carpet. Also thanks to my whole crew for making me laugh and helping clean the giant mess of candy off the floor.

More pictures from this amazing weekend soon!

Page 3 of my 24 hour comic with writer, Mary Bee.

We holed up at the Comics Outpost for a full day of drawing, along with fellow 24hour participants Doctor Popular & Mike Hales.

What is 24 hour comic day?

put simply: 24 pages in 24 hours.
Here’s my second page (the first is the title page, and I’ll be posting that last):

It was a departure for me. I’ve been pushing the amount of textures and collage stuff in my work for a little while,
partly influenced by the non-digital work I’ve been doing (which deserves a post one of these days)
& I did a few sketchbook/collage things digitally recently that people responded well to.…
So for the challenge, I decided to really embrace that collage aesthetic and let go of illustration a little if the page or time limits called for it.

I’ll be posting this comic a page or 2 at a time over the next couple weeks.

I am both satisfied and shocked that I made it through all 24 hours, and left with 24 pages in hand.

Extra thanks to my writer, Mary Bee! I couldn’t have done it without you!

I really can’t describe the place any better than Umberto Eco, who says:

“the poor words with which natural human speech is provided, cannot suffice to describe the Madonna Inn…Let’s say that Albert Speer, while leafing through a book on Gaudi, swallowed an overgenerous dose of LSD and began to build a nuptial catacomb for Liza Minnelli.”

It will take me forever to finish editing and uploading all my photos and video, but here’s a taste of my weekend in the form of a couple candids I shot, and one of me by the amazing and wonderful Flip Cassidy.

[by Flip Cassidy.]

You fill out this handy form & Lola will draw you a map, or you can draw her one, or both!

Where the form asked what the map should be of, I wrote:

A dream I had when I was seven about flying to the moon…where all the people drove firetrucks & only ate ice cream. Label it: Dream Cartography.

this is what she drew:

[Click for Bigger!]

This map made my day.
Perhaps she’ll draw you one & she’ll make your day too!

Several weeks ago, I received an e-mail from my friend Pat containing this photo.
It spawned a private joke about how hippos sort of look like they come out of cans. (well don’t they?)

Last week, when I was totally freaking out over finishing my comic for Image…I recieved a package in the mail!

Is this a can of hippo??

Serving size one nuzzle!!!
I eventually worked up the courage to actually open the thing, and to my surprise, this is what I saw:

“Why Hello There!” The Hippo Exclaimed.
It then added, “You can do it!”.

I seriously would not have made it through the week without that extra bit of encouragement, and I can only imagine how long it must have taken to design and put together the whole thing. Thank you Pat!!!

My friend Mothra made a movie called Douglas. She wrote a script, raised 30 grand, and made a feature film.

The film was in edit when the main hard drive storing the footage died.
After sending the drive out to the best data recovery system on the planet, it was determined that the movie is lost for good.

All that remains are some random scraps of fooage, and this trailer:

Douglas Trailer from Harry Pray IV on Vimeo.

As someone who has lost footage before for trival projects, I can only imagine losing something like a feature film. In the world we live in today, digital media makes our lives easier all the time…but it’s so temporary. When your work is stored in zeros and ones, it could easily dissappear forever.

So here’s the PSA portion of the post:

Back up your shit! Put it on multiple drives! I can’t stress it enough, hard drives are so cheap these days!
This happens to all of us. Technology fails sometimes. It’s easy to tell yourself you’ll back it up later…I do it all the time. Seriously, make it a point to do it weekly, and you’ll be glad you did.

Mothra is looking to re-shoot her movie, and I’m sure she’ll take any dontions or kind words over at their myspace page.

She’s a totally awesome writer/director & I’m sure she’ll bounce back from this to reshoot the movie even better than the first time.

Extras:
Douglas Flickr account
Music video for Seventeen Lashes by Reverend Glasseye, directed by Mothra.