blog
- Brrrrr...
- 21 December 2007
OK, I'm being melodramatic - it's not really that cold. Just call it a delayed response to the huge blizzard that swept through Toronto last weekend and featured not only piles of snow and freezing winds but also thunder and lightning. Lightning! Lucky for us, the storm waited to wreak havoc until after our book launch last Friday, so a big thanks from Trio Magnus to the gods of the tempest. Thanks also to all our friends and family who came out and bought a copy of Equally Superior, as well as to everyone who helped with the event, particularly Anne Koyama and Scott Mackenzie.
Anyhow, the show was a big success, and it was so much fun that we're going to be doing it again - this time in Calgary! The opening will be happening at Uppercase Gallery, owned and operated by my friend Janine Vangool (as previously blogged about in the "Shatner Show" entry), on Saturday, January 5th from 2 - 5 pm. Click here for the address and info. Unfortunately, Wilson and Cton won't be able to make it out to Calgary with me, but Janine and I plan to honour them by doing a huge collaborative drawing during the opening. I can't think of a better way to start 2008. Happy holidays!
- Trio Magnus in the Land of the Rising Sun
- 19 November 2007
Konnichiwa from Tokyo, the city with the best vending machines on earth! I've been over here since November 5th and along with my friends Steve Wilson and CTON, have recently wrapped up a huge tradeshow called Design Festa where we launched a collaborative book project (titled "Equally Superior") which the three of us created under the banner our illustrative collective, Trio Magnus (see a few blogs back for more about that) and which was published by our dear friend Anne Koyama. The show, the biggest of its kind in Asia, was fantastic and we had a great time meeting new friends and spending our hard-earned yen on a variety of delightful items being sold our the fellow exhibitors who, for the record, numbered in the thousands. To see a sample of the good stuff between the covers, take a peek at the Trio Magnus website, triomagnus.com, where we'll soon be offering the book for sale. We'll also be having a big "Equally Superior" launch party in Toronto on December 14th, so stay tuned for more details on that. Back to the present, the highlight of today was seeing a tiny temple dedicated to the tanuki, critters more commonly known as racoon dogs which are apparently hedonistic shape-shifters and are often depicted with huge testicles. What a great country!
- Happy Halloween!
- 29 October 2007
It's that special time of year again, so throw on your devil horns (or sexy nurse costume) and have fun partying with the pagans. Happy Halloween!
- Trio Magnus!
- 14 September 2007
Since travelling to the Pictoplasma Conference in Berlin last October, myself and two talented illustrator pals, CTON and Steve Wilson, have gotten together a couple of times a month here in Toronto for a fun event which has become known as "Pen Club". Joined by a rogues gallery of other illustrators, cronies and long-suffering girlfriends, we get together at Future Bakery on Bloor Street to drink beer, eat cake and draw. The heady mix of talent and booze/sugar tends to create an environment of unlimited inspiration and ridiculous, stream-of-consciousness artwork, such as the two pieces currently gracing my home page.
In an attempt to take this sketchbooky gold mine to the next level, the three of us decided to form a core collective from our Pen Club nights called Trio Magnus. Now, with the support of some very special friends and family, we are super excited to be starting production on our first collaborative book which will be launched in Tokyo, Japan at Design Festa in November and then here in Toronto on December 14. Stay tuned for more details about the launch party as well as more sketchy goodness!
- Workin' it...
- 17 July 2007
My friend Gary Davidson is the art director of an excellent magazine called Explore, the focus of which is outdoor life in Canada. It's one of my favourite mags, and not just because Gary frequently hires me to do illustration work (the smoking rabbit piece in my portfolio section is one example). I even have a subscription! So when he called me up about a month ago and asked if my girlfriend Karen and I would help him out by appearing as models on the cover of an upcoming issue, I enthusiastically agreed. He followed this up by saying "There's one small catch. Seeing as the cover story is How to make love in a canoe, you both have to be in your underwear". Hell yeah! A few weeks later, sporting spray-on tans (seriously) and with a good dose of carpé diem under our belts (so to speak) Karen and I accompanied Gary to the shoot at the Scarborough Bluffs. We stripped down to our skivs, got slathered up in body oil and, via the photographic magic of a fellow ACAD grad, KC Armstrong, now appear scantily-clad on the cover of the July/August issue. By the way, did I mention that Karen, aside from being super hot, is also an extremely good sport? I salute her gusto!If that wasn't reason enough to rush out and buy a copy, this issue also features a collaborative feature illustration by myself and two of my best pals, Steve Wilson and Clayton Hanmer. We draw together on a regular basis, a three pitcher of beer-length event that has become known as "Pen Club", and decided to start a collective, ostentatiously titled Trio Magnus (ie. Latin for "The Great Three"). Seeing as Gary often joins us for Pen Club, he asked if we would consider doing a piece together for the upcoming issue. We agreed, of course, and the result (which I'll post in the portfolio section in the near future) is really cool. Props to Gary for his innovative vision, not to mention paying us to drink and draw...
So get out there, pick up a copy of Explore and add an eyeful of skin and beer-fueled illustrative mayhem to your required reading this summer!
- The Shatner Show
- 21 June 2007
After months of planning, my talented friend Janine Vangool has finally launched her ambitious project, The Shatner Show, a group show consisting of over 70 artists and illustrators (including yours truly) from Canada and the U.S, each of whom has created a portrait of William Shatner. It's showing at her store and gallery space, Uppercase Gallery in Calgary, so if you live in the area, you can check it out until August 31. And if not, don't dismay - you can enjoy the illustrated Shatner goodness in book form, also designed by Janine (I told you she was talented). Click here to take a peek at the book or beam up your own copy. Congratulations Janine!
- Me on CBC!
- 14 May 2007
I had the wonderful opportunity last week to be interviewed on the acclaimed CBC radio show, Sounds Like Canada, by one of my favourite journalists, Mark Kelley. His friendly demeanour eased my nervousness about being on a live, national radio show, and we had a great time talking about diverse topics such as the Zimmer Twins' Emmy win, Canadian superheroes, Rex Murphy and Sasquatch. Plus, it was cool to have a glimpse inside the hallowed halls of the CBC as well as a bird's eye view of the soaring Barbara Frum Atrium with its green, lego-block tower. If you're in downtown Toronto, I'd recommend checking it out! Have a listen to the interview here and thanks to Kate Swoger for making it happen.
- A Zimmer-worthy Emmy adventure
- 02 May 2007
This just in: the Zimmer Twins won the International Interactive Emmy award! I'm still finding it hard to believe. Big congratulations and thanks to everyone at zincRoe - I was honoured to be our representative over in Cannes. Thanks also to Sandrine Pechels de Saint Sardos, our distributor at Bejuba, who was also at the gala and whose calming presence made giving an Emmy acceptance speech slightly less overwhelming for me. The night started on a stressful note, to say the least. I was staying in Nice, about a 20 minute train ride from Cannes, and had planned to meet Sandrine at 7:30 pm at the storied Carlton Hotel where the gala was being held at 8:15. Upon arriving at the Nice train station around 6:30 pm, I discovered, to my horror, that instead of the regular Nice-Cannes train every 20 minutes, there were only two trains going to Cannes that night due to a train strike. Suppressing the urge to panic and completely lose my mind, I bought my ticket from an automated machine using Euro coins (seeing as all the tellers were closed) and waited, decked out in my suit and Converse runners with my super-uncomfortable dress shoes stashed in my shoulder bag. Around 7:25 pm, the train finally arrived, right around the time I was supposed to be meeting Sandrine. We had just started moving when we started slowing down again for the next stop. This proceeded to happen at every commuter stop between Nice and Cannes (seeing as it was one of the only trains that night), lengthening the journey by a precious 10 minutes...
Finally, around 7:55 pm, we made it to Cannes. The train had barely stopped as I burst out of the doors and started sprinting for the Carlton which was a good 10 minute walk away. Dodging expensively dressed people, palm trees and numerous tiny dogs, I ran down the sidewalk in the +20 degree heat, arriving at the Carlton right around 8:00 pm. To my relief, I saw the patio full of tuxedos and evening gowns, indicative that the gala hadn't started yet. So with a stitch in my side, I switched my shoes and stashed my runners in my bag (under the curious gaze of a few of the patio dwellers), composed myself as much as possible and strode into the Carlton, finding a very relieved Sandrine who had heard about the train strike and who insisted I have a glass of champagne to calm down. The ceremony started a few minutes later, and my head was still swimming when a beautiful Spanish starlet announced that there was a tie in the "Interactive Program" category bewteen Re-Genesis, a project from another Canadian company, Xenophile media, and the Zimmer Twins! So we all went up onto the stage, and after the guys from Xenophile had said their piece, I stepped up to the microphone and gave my little speech. And finally, once I sat down with a heavy Emmy statue in hand, I was able to start relaxing and notice the amazingly opulent ballroom for the first time.
The rest of the night was very enjoyable, albeit somewhat surreal for a prairie boy like myself. And upon leaving, we each got a cool loot bag (for lack of a better word) containing Emmy chocolates, a book about photographer Willy Ronis and two small bottles of Moet champagne. After a 72 Euro cab ride back to Nice (remember, no trains), I met up with my friend Steve Wilson who had accompanied me to France, and we each enjoyed a bottle of Moet on the pebbly beach beside the dark Mediterranean. Back at our hotel, not even the discovery of a large cockroach balancing delicately on the end of my toothbrush could ruin what turned out to be a truly unforgettable evening.
If you'd like to see a video clip of my acceptance speech, take a peek here.
- Twin triumphs
- 30 March 2007
It's been an exciting couple of weeks for my animated project, The Zimmer Twins. At the beginning of the month, the project received an "Outstanding" Award in the 2007 HOW Interactive Design Annual, and then just a few weeks ago, it was nominated for an International Interactive Emmy Award, a fairly new branch of the Emmys which recognizes the best in TV programming and interactive content from around the world. Needless to say, I'm thrilled and extremely proud of everyone at zincRoe who made the project happen. And to top everything off, I'm heading over to the Cannes, France for the Awards Gala on April 18th. Someone pinch me!
- Caveman love
- 08 February 2007
Check out this cool story, just in time for Valentine's Day: Ancient lovers