The Death Of One Blog, The Birth of Another

I'm pleased as punch to announce that my new site and blog are finally up, thanks to the supreme efforts of Matt Glaser. Check out what the new hip young kids are doing these days: www.joealterio.com.

Also included in this rejiggering is a blog move from the slow corpulent giant that is Blogger to the sleek, svelte sexxxy Wordpress.

My new blog can now be found here:

http://joealterio.com/goodwork/

Update your bookmarks, re-subscribe your feeds, and see you on the flip side, friendos. Leave your comments about the new home on there, too.

Adios, Blogger. It's been real... educational.

Call Me Ahab

Call Me Ahab
Originally uploaded by JoeAlterio

Self-portrait for the 'About' section of my new site. I find self-portraits to be awfully pretentious (I suppose by their nature), but I've never been able to do one of myself and feel good about it. I think this comes close enough, either because I need to hide behind on eyepatch, or because this is basically an exact replica of my dream-self.

I'm not thrilled about the line work, but I think for a slapdash color job, the quick color work is a pretty good approximation of that those heavy, yellowed clouds that make their appearance in most baroque oil paintings of the day.

Concept Art for Robots and Monsters Book

I've been hammering away at a pitch for a Robots and Monsters graphic novel, and I created this for another round. I won't let the cat out of the bag on plot details, but suffice to say, it has a lot of robots and monsters.

Security Envelope Patterns

Above is one of many samples from the Flickr group Security Patterns, which documents the patterns designed to prevent ne'er-do-wells from peeking at the contents of envelopes. It's like orgami patterns, but designed to be willfully obtuse. I love it.

Robots and Monsters RELAUNCH

From our little press release:

"Joe Alterio is proud to announce the reopening of Robots and Monsters: A Charitable Menagerie. Launched in 2007 in order to help raise funds for a marathon to benefit the SF AIDS Foundation, Robots and Monsters is an effort that trades original commissioned art for donations to a good cause. Last time, we had outstanding success due in no small part to postings on blogs like Boing Boing, Drawn!, and Uncrate, which helped us raise over $10,000 in the space of 36 hours. Besides the amazing amount of money raised, almost 200 Robots and Monsters were drawn by Joe, with some help from Special Contributors Adam "Ape Lad" Koford, D. Emory Allen, Michael Gabriel, and Lawrence Yang.

We had so much success, in fact, that – well – we got a bit overwhelmed, and had to close down, so we could fulfill orders.

However, Robots and Monsters is now re-launching, and we're excited to announce our new beneficiary of heady, creature goodness: the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For almost 20 years, the EFF has been on the good side of 1st Amendment fights on the web, and considering that R and M couldn't happen without this amazingly wonderful and scary tool that we all use now, we figure we owe them one.

Fifty dollars gets you a custom-drawn and painted robot or monster, defined by three words or phrases you provide, sent to your door. What's more, your creature will get added to our ever growing menagerie, for everyone to enjoy.

In a few weeks, we'll also have some great merch, like a cool teeshirts and a limited edition poster of 48 robots and monsters from the the first wave, so be sure to check back regularly.

Thanks for all your support, everyone."

Hooray! We already have orders pouring in. Even in the face of The Greatest Depression Evar, people are stilling willing to donate money to a good cause. man. You know, humans may just make it off this planet and into our monkey-piloted space zeppelins, yet.

Paranoia 1

(click to enlarge)

The above is my first study I've down on paper of my first planned solo show, in 2009. These are images and ideas that have been rattling around in my head for about 9 months now, after a particularly intense and heart pounding dreaming I had, that left me in a cold sweat and terrified.

The odd part was how much of this is really straight from my dream, especially the skeleton and ghost boxes: those sprung, fully formed, from my mind one night, and I don't really know where they came from.

I'm trying to work out exactly what this all means. The show and pieces in it are, clearly, going to be devastatingly lonely, which is weird, because I'm not really a lonely guy. Upon further introspection, I notice now much of the imagery is child like, and bringing in some old school computer game imagery into it makes me think this is my brain burping up a very lonely period in my life when I was younger.

I've always found the scariest thing to be the absence of anyone at all: a recurring nightmare I have is finding that no one is around anymore. Not by nuclear apocalypse, or zombies, or murders: just gone. I wander from room to room, house to house, field to field, and everyone has just vanished. That, to me, is the ultimate terror.

Stay tuned with me, as these studies develop.

Japanese Kamikaze pilot survives but then grenades himself

Whoa!