Mojave Phone Booth 196?-2000

Digital portrait of a woman named Courtney I used to know, done in August 2005 with a smallish camera phone photo as reference.  Her hair was really those colors.

I didn't have a drawing tablet back then; all points and vectors were placed manually with a mouse.  That method, combined with the fact that I wasn't entirely comfortable doing vector-based art at that point, resulted in this being very slow work.

Also, OMG LENS FLARE!!!@#$%^&*

Trying out something a little different.  Here's my reading of the short humor essay "The Gusher" by Charles Battell Loomis, from the 1907 anthology The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX edited by Marshall Pinckney Wilder.

A fun little fandom meme I filled in bit by bit on breaks over the course of a busy day.  I generally try to fill things like this in by doodling as rapidly as possible with minimal erasing or undoing.

I was pointed toward this meme by my friend and fellow Doctor Who fan aikainkauna.  The original blank meme is by neekaneeks on Deviantart.

These logos for fictional trendy Web 2.0 sites were made for the latest episode of The Media Show.  The show called for a bunch of silly but real-sounding website names which were generated in the manner in which we write many of the show's greatest jokes; blurting increasingly random things back and forth at each other on filming day until we've all hopelessly dissolved into fits of convulsive giggling.  I then whipped up suitably shiny icons to match.

"Toop" is pronounced "taupe" because of course it is.

Digital portrait of my best friend Grey Frequency, in the style of Shepard Fairey's OBEY.  See what I did there?

I originally made this for the desktop library on the New York City 2600 website I run with Grey, surprising her with it.  It quickly became my favorite thing to cause computers in public places to display.  I heartily endorse your doing the same with it, especially if Grey is nearby.

Hello!  I've been painstakingly replicating the TARDIS Key as used by the Eighth and Seventh Doctors in the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie.  Now you can buy a 3D print of it or, if you have access to the proper gear, download my file for free and print your own.

The key prop used in the film was an official TARDIS key replica available at the time from 800-Trekker, a now-long-defunct scifi memorabilia catalog, under license from the BBC in the early 1990s. The 800-Trekker key was a unique design largely based on TARDIS keys used on-screen by the Third and Fourth Doctors in the 1970s, but with many noticeable differences from those TV props. Rather than design a new TARDIS key for the 1996 film, the film's prop department just bought a supply of those keys from 800-Trekker and made them the canonical key design used by the Seventh and Eighth Doctors in their movie.

The newly-canonical 800-Trekker keys became very popular with fans, but had already been out of production and in limited supply by the film's release. They were also made of a very soft pewter which scratched and bent easily, so very few good copies of the Trekker key remain in circulation today. I happen to own one of the Trekker keys, ordered myself from the catalog around 20 years ago. Armed with calipers, 3D software, and a desire to replace my prop (which has begun to show noticeable wear, despite my best efforts to preserve it) with something more durable, I modelled this key based on it.

So, you can now order 3D prints of this key in a variety of metals and plastics right here on my Shapeways shop.  (Shapeways, for those unfamiliar, 3D-prints users' designs in a variety of materials on industrial-grade printers.)  What's more, if you have your own access to 3D-printing gear (or you'd just like the 3D source file to play with) I'm sharing that file freely here on Thingiverse so you can hack and print it yourself.

Add a wire loop and chain to wear your key in style, or just hide it in a cubbyhole above your TARDIS door.

Thanks for looking!  Please feel free to ask any questions you may have.

I decided to try my hand at Troll Physics.  Let's all do this and party in space!

For those unfamiliar with Troll Science/Troll Physics: SFW / NSFW

My "Save the Clock Tower" flyer prop replica from Back to the Future.

A couple versions of the actual canonical flyer prop, as used in the film's production, have been in general circulation for a long time; you can grab them and other free printable BTTF props here.  I had one on my wall for ages, but was never really satisfied with it.  It's filled with placeholder text, unreadable on-screen but nonsensical in real life, and certain other details don't ring true; there isn't a date on the newspaper's front page, for one thing.  So, I created a new flyer from scratch, correcting errors and replacing the filler text with original newsprint written by myself.

This was made without re-using anything directly from BTTF; even the photo is something I heavily 'shopped from this free one.  I wrote the article text with lots of nods to BTTF continuity as well as some other obscure references and in-jokes, friends' names, etc.  (There's a secret signature of mine hidden somewhere which isn't the "Rob Vincent, Dot Net" or "R.T.F. News Wire" bits, which nobody to my knowledge has found yet.  If you see it, contact me or leave it here in a comment and claim some geek points!)  If you wish to customize or replace the article text, the font is Times New Roman 18pt bold.

Printed up at 300 DPI on the right shade of pale blue paper, these result in a prop replica which I feel is a lot neater in real life than the genuine prop.  Alternately you could print it on white paper, photocopy it, copy the copy, and so on to soften the edges and approximate that 1980s multi-generational xerox look before finally getting it copied onto the blue paper.

There's still a bit of work to do on this before I'll consider it finished.  For one thing, I had to improvise the masthead text with a calligraphy font that isn't all that good a match if you look closely; if I can't find a closer font I'll have to remake the text from scratch someday.

These were a big hit when I dressed as the "Save the Clock Tower" lady for a Halloween parade.

2021 edit: Wow, this blew up. Nowadays around half of the Clock Tower Flyers for sale online by shady prop dealers are my version, which you can still get totally free here. If you paid anyone for a copy of this flyer, you were ripped off.

This did, however, lead to something nicer; my version was found by actual Back to the Future licensee Doctor Collector, who were impressed enough by my work on it that they negotiated my services to rewrite the news text from scratch once again for their authorized version of the prop which is part of their “Back to the Future Time Travel Memories” box of replica items from the BTTF universe. If you have that kit, which is full of so many very cool things any BTTF diehard would enjoy, you have an all-new and official version of this flyer which was written by me.

It wouldn’t have been cool on either of our ends for Doctor Collector to just reuse my free fan-art in their version and sell it, but through their very kind efforts at reaching out to me I found myself actually writing authorized BTTF-universe material. That’s an achievement I won’t soon forget.

fuckyeahtrollface:

Trollface stencil.  U jelly, hand-painters?

I stencilized Trollface.  It was my first shot at making a stencil out of someone else's image and it came out ugly as hell, but the original Trollface is also ugly as hell and that has done nothing to diminish my eternal love for him.

More info on Trollface for the uninitiated:

Encyclopedia Dramatica (NSFW)

KnowYourMeme (SFW?)

Trollface fans new and old should be following these tumblrs (all NSFW):

fuckyeahtrollface

trollphysics

fuckyeahtrollphysics

In the interest of art-blogging something as quickly as possible which isn't my big ol' face, here's an illustration commissioned by Brad Carter for the Phone Losers of America book.  It's the first of three illustrations of mine appearing in the book, for which I also wrote the foreword.  You should probably go purchase a copy right now, before you've had time to think it over properly.

Archival inks on acid-free paper, 8x6".  Scan is low-res.