This little illustration was an article for IBM’s series magazine. It seemed pretty obvious when you’re using bee hives as an analogy for the work place, then why not put the bees in a honeycomb cubicle? I added some little high tech jet trails to give it a little motion and connection to technology.
Final Magazine Layout.
IBM Systems Magazine;
David Sather: Art Director;
Bill Mayer: Illustrator;
Artwork © Bill Mayer 2009
Barbwire thong available in rust only...
The Cactus Bikini.
You don't need no stinkin' badges...have them surgically shaped that way....boots available in size two only...
Call for Entry
Call for Re-Entry
Cecilia, from piauí magazine again and I have an enquiry. Here's the thing:
On our next issue we'll have a short piece by one of our great composers and dramatists, Chico Buarque de Holanda, where he tells, with delicious humor, about an old and out of print copy of a synonyms dictionary that he inherited from his father (a well respected academic). He loved and used the book so much that it finally started to disintegrate in his hands. He then decides to buy all the editions he could find of the said dictionary, just in case.
Recently he learned that the book is being relaunched and he feels a bit betrayed, as if something very private was being scattered in the wind for all to see. After each important word he lists the it's synonyms - for fun and emphasis.
I don't want to use a book to illustrate the piece, I am looking something very graphic, like an illustration made with type but not with words - our magazine is in Portuguese. Browsing your site I found a work (layout attached bellow) that is almost there. Almost... It then occurred to me that perhaps you have similar works not released on your site. Who knows... perhaps you have just THE illustration for that text. Do you think you have something that could fit (loosely) better than the one I found?
Please let me know.
Thank you very much,
Cecilia
I can do one, we could scan in some parts of old dictionary pages, something that would in a simple way represent dictionary.... I will grab one, but I don't have a Portuguese dictionary.... do the same funny thing with them. when do you need this? b
just occurred to me that you may need words to make the tree. From the text:
terrível: funesta, nefasta, macabra, atroz, abominável, dilacerante, miseranda -
passatempo: desenfado, espairecimento, entretém, solaz, recreio, filistria -
monopólio: açambarcamento, exclusividade, hegemonia, senhorio, império -
traças: brocas, carunchos, gusanos, cupins, térmitas, cáries, lagartas-rosadas, gafanhotos, bichos-carpinteiros
He also tells that he made a note of the best words and used it to impress and seduce. Do you know Correggio's Jupiter and Io? Your drawings of women are SO beautiful, if you like the idea, perhaps a cloud of words could envelop a woman... In this case use only:
passatempo: desenfado, espairecimento, entretém, solaz, recreio, filistria
monopólio: açambarcamento, exclusividade, hegemonia, senhorio, império
I like that Idea...Okay a few more ideas for you to ponder. I was not familiar with Correggio's Jupiter and Io, I love this....
I may have skipped that art history class, but I am very intrigued with that direction. Here are a few more
to wade through. Get back to me as quickly as you can.
thanks .
Bill
unless you make up your mind, I will do several variations and you can pick the one you like the most. here's one...not finished but....© Bill Mayer 2010
think we are liking the white one with the Type Embracing the dark figure....but you choose. Big hugs, Bill...© Bill Mayer 2010
Hard to choose... I like that but I also like the "v" a lot. Since all are so good it will be safe to show all to the magazine's editor and let him pick one - and he will love that so much. I'll let you know! Right now he is busy on a meeting so I think we will only know on Monday... sorry about it. But I'll let you know as soon as possible. Thanks!
and the winner is......
Well ... we even delayed sending the page because we still cant' decide! Picture 1-3 is so much fun, so colorful (all your fonts together) I think it may be the winner. But I'll let you know. Sorry about it. We are not that undecisive usually ... but you gave us too many good choices.
thanks, Cecilia
(sorry it took us such a LONG time to decide) The page looks wonderful with it, fun, the art will attract the readers to the text. So, what shall we do next (payment, byline etc etc)? Raquel usually takes care of those things, I'll tell her to contact you.
Cecilia
Actually Jay kept saying, "MORE GUTS MORE BLOOD... YES MORE BLOOD!" The sound of his voice was like a giant lizard licking the other end of the phone...CLIENT: Bayer Environmental Science
AGENCY: Colle McVoy Inc. ART DIRECTOR: Jay Miller ILLUSTRATOR: Bill Mayer All Material © Bill Mayer 2008-2012
A little inside story about these ads: If Ralph Steadman hadn't been distraught over the recent death of his friend Hunter Thompson, these little Gonzo ads probably would have been in his portfolio instead of mine. CLIENT: Bayer Environmental Science AGENCY: Colle McVoy Inc. ART DIRECTOR: Jay Miller ILLUSTRATOR: Bill Mayer © 2008 Bill Mayer
Thumbnail layouts Jay wanted a lot of movment in a band through the mddle of the spread...
The first ad still makes me laugh.Little bits of organs ,hearts and heads flying in globs of bloody carnage...Jay had seen the "Dead Mimes" series I did that was on my old website, those simple two color Black and red sort of the kick off point for these ads.
These ads looked absolutly kick ass in the Farm Journal, double truck...the limited color worked really well. Love it when art directors get right in your face with the message in big bold splattery Blood, gobs and gobs of it...
I 'm not really sure if there is a rational explanation behind this silly little drawing, I used to paste these stamps in my sketchbooks and draw over the top of them. I loved the contrast of the beautiful craftsmanship and stoic nature of the stamp and the playful, graffiti like gesture of absurdity. It makes me smile.
You know that call from you came at a time when I was going through a lot of hand holding with art directors and way too many revised sketches. And it was a perfect thing to bring me back off the edge of the building. Thank you.
Some of the dozens of thumbnails I did trying to work out the perfect line weight and composition. Trying many diferent combinationns of heads of state to find that perfect selection.Okay no thumbnails but much thanks to Maria Cecilia Marra , the art director who used it in the fabulous Brazilian magazine Revista Piaui....
Sheep Henge....
Lee on top of the hill behind Cashel House over looking the Aran Islands...
Tic Tac Toe
When I travel I love to draw in my sketch books. it's a great way to collect memories not always captured in Photos. Unfortunatly for me, I rarely draw what I am looking at.....
BATTLE BOTS
We stayed on a working thoroughbred farm in the southwest in the Burren...one these little colts April, May, and June had just sold to a buyer in Arabia for a million bucks....
Recently worked with NYC-ME on a new pitch for a COPD account, we did some directional thumbnails for character development and part of the direction was to create this little lung character. These are the thumbnails I sent, and the direction they went in was a light line and simple color, to keep the subject matter less serious.
Here are the little thumbnails of the directions I pulled out and did a little color study of the two, I felt had the most potential. This was a huge amount of work done over one weekend included hundreds of thumbnails maybe thirty pieces of finished illustrations for print and story boards. After all of the smoke cleared I took the little direction they didn't go in and made it into a little comic called Poony Poony. A frank discussion with your lungs and why we embrace the things that kill us. I sent it to Susanne Frenk the art director she thought it was hilarious.
Captain Ahab: "From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale."
Naturally © Bill Mayer 2010
Here are the thumbnails for last years "A Christmas Carol" at the Hartford Stage, notice the little "Rotten Earth" has showed up as Tiny Tim's head. Starting on the New Poster for 2010's "A Christmas Carol." This will be the thirteenth year! I always pull from old thumbnails just to get a sense of where I left off...
the 2009 "A Cristmas Carol" Poster for Hartford Stage Best of Show winner, Society of Illustrators LA
© Bill Mayer 2009
Is this a cute little cow or what? He's sad because nobody is drinking milk now that they have Chocolate formula for kids....naturally © Bill Mayer 2010
Okay here's a little job we finished a couple of weeks ago.These little guys are for a print campaign for Enfagrow, a chocolate formlula for toddlers.This article will show a typical character development and some edited steps to get to the final process. The client ran into legal hold half way through but luckily they liked the direction and ended up finishing these after some small delay. Saatchi and Saatchi / Joseph Pompeo: Art Director
He's drinking Chocolate formula for kids. They were used used in a variety of sizes so they needed to read fairly small, so we kept them on the simple side.
Some of the thumbnails I think the ones they chose were, # 11 for the kid and # 40 for the cow. A few modifications and we're off and running....
FINAL WORKING SKETCH FOR COW
FINAL SKETCHES ON KID
The client was trying to decide between black and white cow and a brown cow so I did a few little color studies....I thought the eyes showed up better in the brown cow, Joe and the client agreed.the horns ended up on the cutting room floor...
Originally this little comic started in badly translated French, I thought it was funny but the gang around the studio felt it was funny enough in English. So the mangled English-French-Spanish was a compromise. I loved the Idea of creating a comic. Grew up on them, collect those great underground comics from the 1960's.
One morning I was looking for some thing to drag down to Java Monkey with me and I ran across a couple of the old Zaps and stuck them under my arm and hoofed it down to the coffee shop without really looking at them first. Once I got my coffee and sat back and started reading them, I realized I couldn't just lay them out on the table and hiding in the corner I felt a lot like some perv.
I finally grabbed a go cup and headed back to the privacy of a park bench were us social misfits are much more comfortable. Those comics were great they addressed racisms and incest head on and in the face.
My comic had none of these social attributes; it was just plain and simple, smutty fun. Shameless tales of animal lust and fishnet hose... Originally I did these for fun but I decided to use them as sort a running strip through 3x3 directory. Unfortunately I got a call from Charles who said as much as he liked them they had to be single images, and technically they were multi images on each page. So I opted to run some of my stamp drawings instead.
Rules for sketchbook...
no erasing,
no editing,
no tearing out pages,
no more sex drawings....oh well I always lose on this one.
© Bill Mayer 2010
