Mini Epics 9–12

I know it was way back at the end of April when I posted Mini Epics 5–8, so you may want to go back and refresh your memory. Or, you can just jump in right here. I'm not gonna tell you how to read comics. I'll let the newspapers do that.

Safari! Still More Album Artwork

Thanks for hanging in there while my Mac hangs in there. We'll continue to fight the good fight, and so on. To all of you who checked out Mini Epics, many thanks. There will be more. Well, even though my computer isn't in the best of health, the work must go on and finally China 5's 6th album is complete! It's called Safari and here is the recently-completed cover art:

Sometime during July the physical CD will be put together and then I can post a photo of what it looks like. Below is the rough sketch for the cover illustration which I drew in America on Christmas Eve last year.

And I'd like to return a shout out to my friend Sharna in England – thanks Shaz! It's the first time I've been mentioned on Twitter...that I know of.

Meltdown

After a month short of five years of loyal service, my Mac has suddenly (although it would be nice if you got prior warning for this sort of thing) decided to have a meltdown and develop hard disk damage. At the moment I'm facing losing the entire hard disk's contents, if it comes to me having to erase and reformat it. So while I'm spending my days backing up files, do me a favour and get that page count up to 8000! Go on, do it just to please me. And this goes without saying, but expect delayed postings on this blog for a while – don't worry, I'll be back. The blog-o-sphere can't contain the Birdman, etc.

(By the way, anyone know when the new iMacs are coming out? I heard June or July 2012, and it's June or July 2012 now, so...)

Despite my filebackuppage however, I will definitely lose my carefully time-dated photos in iPhoto (but stuff using that from now on) and, worse still, my iTunes play counts. So for posterity here's a screencap of my final iTunes Top 30 Most Played. I REGRET NOTHING!

Eurovision Infographic II

As we know, infographics is that small part of the Venn diagram where 'graphic designer' overlaps 'stats nerd'. Seeing as how I did a results map for the Eurovision Song Contest last year, I updated the same map for this year, the 57th Eurovision (as much as I hate using Illustrator) and here it is:

What's new? Two countries from last year (Poland and Armenia) didn't compete, and only two countries out of 42 managed to improve their previous best result: San Marino, 14th in the semifinal (previously 19th in the 2008 semifinal), and Albania, 5th (7th in 2004). Other than that, there's a bit of language shift. Seems like a few more countries opted to perform songs in their native language this year, which is good.

Well, that's your dose of infographics for this year (on this blog at least). Here's to not using Illustrator for another 12 months!

New Album Artwork

It's been a while since the last post, and there have been plenty of projects on the burner. But here is some almost-finished album artwork for two upcoming China 5 releases. The first is a CD called Galaxies, which features 15 songs taken from the band's early years, with their music re-sourced from digital recordings (as opposed to cassette) and the vocals re-recorded, with two old songs completely re-recorded. Sound cool? Well, it is. And it will.

Above is the artwork for it; the red 'X' refers to the Roman number 10, since it's for the band's 10th anniversary. I try to avoid the use of stock photography when possible, but I must admit that on this occasion I wasn't able to go into space to take a galaxy photo myself. What can I say, I had other things to do.

If hearing 15 old China 5 songs in brand-new crystal clear sound isn't enough for you, then there's also a new EP with some 'weird stuff' on it. It still needs a title, which explains why there is no title yet on the above artwork. Perhaps we'll stick the title on the skull's forehead. Perhaps the skull might be removed altogether. Who knows? Hard to say in this universe.

Since this blog is only about artwork, you might want to check out this corresponding post on the China 5 Blog if you wanna know more about the actual songs.

You still here?