Oppositelock Studio Blog

Apollo is born

2009-08-04T21:54:00.002+10:00

So Oppositelock Studio is DEAD!
sorta...hahaha.

I recently applied for a grant to start the studio properly, and got it WHOO!
During this process I decided to change the name of the studio to Apollo Collective.
There are many reasons for this, none of which I can be bothered explaining just yet.

BUT! I've been working my ass off lately and will be starting up the new site very soon.
On it will be a link to my folio (using Behance for until i get time to do the site properly),
as well as a brand new blog, a bit of Twitter action for those of you with no lives haha
as well as a few other exciting things like an online store which I'll be selling Screen Printed
posters as well as some Tees and some other cool stuff.

I'll post the link as soon as the sites up!

PEACE!

Biggie Stealing Smalls O'Neal

2009-06-18T02:03:00.003+10:00

Hey all,
So! This is going to be my last post for a while as I've got some pretty exciting things in the pipe works at the moment! One of which is a bit of a change of direction for OLS, but what will it be? Oh the suspense!! I'll put you out of your misery soon enough haha.

ANYWAYS! Here's a tour poster I did today for Melbourne's Stealing O'Neal, this one was great fun to do! I love any opportunity I can get to play around with some sweet Hip Hop stylin pieces. Also not that I needed the excuse, but while i was working on this badboy I was cranking Common's fucking amazing album Water Like Chocolate. Common with ?uestlove producing, don't think it can possibly get better than that! (Unless it's The Roots haha).

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Peace!!

Nand-ho(e)s

2009-05-28T23:16:00.003+10:00

Ok! So i had to spend most of this evening rearraging and updating my folio for a presentation i have tomorrow and as i was browsing through my work i came across this piece i did earlier in the year while i was doing my placement with the wonderful people at Visual Unity. One of our main clients there was Nandos so we were forever coming up with new ways to draw chickens for the instore graphics. My main job with Nandos was to come up with concepts for window graphics for thier "Hatching Soon"/Opening Soon windows. This one was a blast to work on! Took forever to do, and i think i spent just as long making sure i got the type treatment absolutely perfect as i did on the illustration haha. Anyways, enjoy! CLICK TO ENLARGE!!

False Cathedral...and yes that is an Elliot reference!

2009-05-26T00:15:00.002+10:00

Here's a Tee I knocked out this evening for Adelaide's Move To Strike, definitely check them out if you're into sweet rockin tunes! I decided to call this one "False Cathedral" mainly cause 1. There's a SHITLOAD of churches in radelaide and 2. The album False Cathedrals by Elliot is just plain amazing haha. So a cheeky little reference in there. I'll be posting some more MTS artwork sometime in the next few months as I'm collaborating on thier EP Artwork with Adelaide photographer Nat Thompson as well as knocking out another tee and a few other bits and pieces for the boys over the coming weeks.

Fangs! Giants! & Rogue Exclaimation Points!!

2009-05-11T17:48:00.003+10:00

Here's a couple of Myspace Layouts i whipped together yesterday. Yes, on a sunday...was great fun indeed haha. Fortunately the guys from Giants! and Fangs were kind enough to let me come up with my own concepts for the layouts so they were fun to work on. Especially the Fangs layout. Despite the fact that i was experimenting with the Fangs layout for a fairy long time, i was pretty stoked with the end result. Click on the images to enlarge them!

Logos, Circles and Type

2009-05-07T19:06:00.003+10:00

Hey everyone! Been a little while between updates so i figured it was time to share a little bit of design love. I've been flat out lately which is definately one thing i'm not going to complain about. Had some pretty fun projects coming through which i'll post up soon as well as setting wheels in motion for some big changes which i'll be announcing sometime in the next couple of months. Until then here's a few recent logos and type treatments from the last few months. One of which was for Visual Unity in Brighton who are the lovely people kind enough to take me on as part of my Advanced Diploma for 08/09. Head on over and have a look if you get time! Oh yeah! Click on the image to enlarge it so you can get a better look. Peace!

Partystein!

2009-04-09T16:50:00.004+10:00

Right-o Right-0!! Ok so here's the finished product!!
I literally spent the last 5 hours playing around with different comps behind ol Frankie here, but everytime i threw new elements into the equation all it did was make it look far far too cluttered! So ended up keeping it nice and simple! Apart from the type treatment haha.

I'll be working on another version/extended version of this again soon for my own amusement and possibly will throw it onto threadless to see how it fares. So keep your eyes peeled! Have a great long weekend people!

PEACE

Party In Progress...

2009-04-08T22:08:00.008+10:00

PROGRESS UPDATE NUMBER THREE

Ok! So i had a little bit of a late start today but i FINALLY knocked off the few small jobs i had to do and got to focus on this again! Spent a lot of time early in the afternoon experimenting with a number of shading techniques which i then decided to scrap because they were making the design far too cluttered. So now all thats left to do is work on the rest of the composition which i should hopefully have finished before the end of the day and the large amount of drinking that comes with a long weekend haha. I'll post 1 more Process Piece which will be the finish composition before i post the final illustration. So stay tuned!
PEACE!

PROGRESS UPDATE NUMBER TWO

Ok so here we are at the end of the "days" work! (i say this because it's 2am)
Been working on this badboy all evening and i'm quite happy with how it's coming along.
Still definately needs a few kinks worked out of it though. But that can wait till the morn.
Tomorrow is all the fun stuff, firstly refining and detailing the hair. Then obviously getting the neck done haha. Mainly though i'll probably spend the most time working some elements in behind the main illustration to compliment it so that it works well on the tee. And then finally adding in the type treatment and finalising the color palette. Busy day!
Peace out till tomorrow people!

So tonite i started working on a new merch design, coming a long nicely so far so i thought i'd share a bit of work in progress. I'll probably spend at least another day on this so i'll post one or two more as i go just to give you all an idea of the development process in my illustrations. Obviously i'm pretty obsessive when it comes to detail so i tend to keep going back over things until i'm completely satisfied with them. Click on the image to see the full deal. PEACE!

Myspace Madness

2009-03-22T22:21:00.002+11:00

Hey ya'll! Sorry for the lack of updates recently, the last few weeks have been pretty crazy so I haven't really had much time to update the blog. So in the meantime I thought I'd post some links to some recent Myspace Layouts I've done for your viewing pleasure.

Just finished off the Goodnight Combat Fighter one tonight to help announce our new line up and return to playing shows after 7 months. Freaking exciting! Can't wait to get back onstage, I'm fairly certain I've got the shakes from a lack of gigging haha. Anyways, Enjoy!

PEACE

Goodnight Combat Fighter
City Escape
The Human Electric
The Scissor File

Freakin Aliens Ruined My Barbeque...

2009-02-26T23:24:00.003+11:00

Just finished this up for Taperjean Records tonite.
It's only a digital release, but Andy from TJR was kind enough to let me do whatever I felt like.
Which of course means...Pat get's to play! haha

Great fun working on this one. I've Been looking for an excuse to do some more "lowbrow" shit for ages now.
And of course, any excuse for me to go absolutely crazy with typography is always a good day!

Avalanches

2009-02-21T17:48:00.005+11:00

The front cover for City Escape's EP "Avalanches.

Good fun to work on this cause the boys basically gave me complete creative licence over the artwork's direction.

The final product is printed on matte stock and has hidden artwork in the form of a nice gloss spot varnish. I'll post the artwork in its entirity on the OppLck site once it's up and running.

Oldies But Goodies

2009-02-21T17:13:00.003+11:00

A couple favorites of mine from the end of last year.

I'm gonna look in to getting some prints made soon so keep an eye out!

Chewy Centred Vector Goodness

2009-02-21T16:19:00.007+11:00

Here's a Tour Poster I did for City Escape about a month ago.
Haven't really been able to go this crazy with a poster for a while so it was really fun to work on.
Haven't been able to get a hold of a print yet but I'm definately gonna keep looking for it!

More Recent Tees

2009-02-20T18:52:00.000+11:00

Here's a few more Merch designs I've done recently.

Obviously there's a few City Escape ones! I just finished off a pretty friggin big artwork package for them so that's 3 of the 4 Merch designs that were part of it. Really looking forward to seeing these warlocks printed up!
Especially the "Stranded" and "Dollar Bill" tees. The Dollar Bill tee's 2 color print with gold ink which is gonna come up awesome once it's printed.

As for the EP Artwork, keep your eyes peeled cause the first taste of it will be on their Mysapce which I'm working on soon. Just finishing off ANOTHER Tee for them this weekend too.

I've gotta say, I do love the Tee I did for "Giants!". Sad thing is though I have no idea if it went to print or not!

And So It Begins...

2009-02-20T12:03:00.000+11:00

Right! So here it is! My inaugural post!

May as well get right into it hey!

I've set up this blog so I can post regular updates of work I've been doing while I get the website finished up. Should hopefully be up sometime in the next couple of months providing I don't run into some sort of calamity.

Also cause basically I like to talk a superfluous amount of shit!

So i'll be using this space to post about pretty much anything I come across I deem worth of wasting both my time on and yours...lucky us! haha.

So here's a work-in-progress(ish) Tee I'm doing for The Scissor File. I just did their Myspace page a few weeks ago too and this is sort of carrying on from that. Can't quite make up my mind whether or not I'm completely digging it or not. At this very second, I am digging it though! Click on the images to enlarge them too.

I'll be posting some more stuff pretty soon as well so keep your eyes peeled.

PEACE