Frank Stockton Art

In June, Inc. Magazine called me and asked if I could write a comic for their upcoming "500 Fastest Growing Companies" issue.

Aside from the fact that it was a comic, they were giving me the chance to write it myself. This is the first time I've gotten to actually write the text for a comic I've done for an illustration job. The most interesting part of the job was interviewing the subject of the piece, multi-millionaire Andrew Gross. During our conversation, he passed on to me the secret to becoming extremely wealthy. Thanks, Andrew!

Here's the final printed version of the story, in the current issue of Inc., on stands now.


Billboard Update



I'm still waiting for more pictures, but this is all I've been able to drum up so far. That white burst was added to the image after I got done with it, so I didn't have total control over it, but I still think it looks okay. One of these looks to me like it's a subway ad, and the other is a mural.


best,

Frank

Labels: comic, heineken, inc

Several months ago I was offered a job from an Irish ad agency called McCain-Erickson to do a billboard for the Heineken Music Festival in Ireland.



This was one of the most fun jobs I've been offered since becoming an illustrator. The money was great, the time frame was reasonable, and there was a lot of creative freedom in that I got to explore a different aspect of my imagination. I was also told that the illustration may appear on everywhere from billboards, to subway ads, bus sides, and street banners.

Heineken is doing a year-long music festival celebrating different kinds of music, and they asked me to illustrate "electro pop."

The examples the art director gave me for musical inspiration were Lady Gaga and "that Gwen Stefani girl." As I do with most music-based jobs, I listened to a few tracks to get the idea, then found something enjoyable in my iTunes that has a similar feel to me. For this job I chose Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post-Pavilion by Animal Collective.



Because it was an advertising job and there was a limited amount of time for changes, I chose to be very thorough in the sketch phase; I wanted to leave as little surprise for the client as possible, so I sent PDFs of my sketches along with notes detailing what I wanted to do.




Many of the sketches included in this post were part of the initial PDF I sent to the client for feedback.

My final illustration was "too gray," according to the art director. I spent another two days tweaking the colors to be more in line with what they said they wanted. In the end, I like both versions for different reasons; the gray version has a great moody feel to it, like it could have come out of a Don Bluth film, and the other has a lot more of a "punch" that I think is more befitting of a billboard.


Supposedly the sign is up in Ireland, though I haven't had a chance to go see for myself. I'll mail a sketch to the first person who sends me a picture of it in the environment.



Also, send an email to fstockton@gmail.com to inquire about purchasing the final pencils or inks.


Thanks for reading!



Frank
p.s. I'm now on twitter!

Labels: billboards, electro pop, heineken