Petey Boy dot com

A short behind-the-scenes for a film called “Birthday Girl”. I was only on set for a morning… so I only shot this background footage for a few hours.

Birthday Girl:
Director – Troy Perkins
Producer – Francis Perkins
DP – Mike Hartzel

The team behind Northtown Productions: northtownproductions.com

Music by Kaki King
http://vimeo.com/5368711

This past weekend, I produced a movie during the 48 hour film project in Milwaukee. This is what our team threw together. Go to Vimeo to see it in HD.

Starring:
Laura Klein as Rose Lanvin
Petey Boy as Roger Lanvin
Ryan Trattles as Jake

The concept for the story was brainstormed by the whole team.
Writer: Ryan Trattles
Director: Mark Röethke
Director of Photography: Michael G Buck
Assistant Director: Greg Ritter
Assistant Camera: Jess Ader
Whole Sound Deparment: Max Grill
2nd Camera, Location Manager, all-around best boy: Ryan Erdmann
Production Assistant: Kelsey Abernethy

So, I got a “real”  job at the end of March… and because of this, I was allowed to reward myself with a new HD video camera; the HV30. This camera is awesome. Anyway, I’ve used it to document my life as of late. Here are three videos I made in the past month. Click on the title to take you to the HD version of the video.

This first video is of the time spent with my family in California. A fire on the Beach.

This video is from a short film I got to act in.

This last video is from a play that I stage managed for the past month.

Autumn Hoover

This was one the paintings my wife got me for Christmas 09. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it. Part of re-painting for me is using the environment that is already established in the picture. I mean, that IS re-painting…. not just part. For me I want the new paint to interact with the old paint. I could add anything to any picture and that’d be well and good, but it is when the new meets the old that something magical tingles one’s innards.

Anyway, I was having trouble finding the magic, so I put the painting below my projector screen from January to March. That way, I was sure to look at it everyday.

Finally, I found it. I noticed that the trees were tilted kind of funny. They were pulled to one side as if an invisible force were acting upon it. After I saw that, it took little time to make the invisible visible. Originally, I thought of having a human hand to hold the hand-vacuum; giving it a celestial feel like giants or gods are cleaning. Ultimately, I decided to stay stay with the monster/robot/alien theme all my paintings have had.

Click on the image for a closer look.

If you like any of the art or designs you see on the site and would like more information, an original for yourself, or to commision a piece, please contact me and I’ll help make your dreams come true.

Ada Lovelace

Today is Ada Lovelace Day; a celebration of women and technology. I have to say the first person I thought of when I heard about this day is LadyAda. Maybe it is because of the namesake, but probably because LadyAda is featured a bunch on my favorite blog, Make:

Lady Ada is a tinkerer, inventor, and all around creator. I discovered hear reading a post about a miniPOV kit that looked super cool (I even asked my mom to get me one for christmas that year [she said she could find them anywhere]). The idea is that you program a message into the Persistance of Vision toy and then when you wave it, it displays the message via LEDs. I went to her website and found a bunch of awesome gadgets and kits. Of particular interest to me back then were, the gamegrrl; a gameboy sized NES emulator and the Mini MintyMP3; an mp3 player that fit into a mint tin.

Since then, LadyAda has started a website to sell her and other kits (today they are giving 10% off in order celebrate). I don’t know for sure, but I think she may work for (at least contributes to) Make: magazine and blog. She is definitely an inspiration to me. I wish I could put the right parts together to make sweet gizmos.

Enjoy the day and checkout other Ada Lovelace Day blog posts and articles.

Bob modeling Splitting Bears

So, I was on a making shirt kick and I wanted to do a big animal stencil. My power animal is obviously a large brown bear, so I found a picture that made a good silhouette and turned into a large stencil. So large in fact that it took up two pages of standard letter sized card stock. While I was deciding exactly where to position the stencil, I thought, “what if I split up the stencil and put them on different parts of the shirt?” I ran it by Abby (she’s my creative adviser) and she thought it would be cool, so I gave it a go.

I am immensely pleased with the way this shirt turned out. It was an instant favorite. It also was a favorite among everyone that saw it. One day an acquaintance of mine commented on how much he enjoyed the shirt. I asked him right there if he’d like to own it. He was apprehensive about taking such a great shirt from my collection. I insisted. I would give all my shirt away for other people to enjoy, but not a lot of people are close to the right size. After some persuading he accepted and now a bunch people I don’t even know get to enjoy seeing the shirt… and Bob gets the joy of wearing it.

If you like any of the art or designs you see on the site and would like an original for yourself, please contact me and I’ll help make your dreams come true.

I was visiting some friends and they were talking about how they desperately needed a coat hanger. They always had people coming over and had no where to put coats. Usually they were just tossed across the back of the couch. I decided that I would find some old materials and make a coat hanger for them.

Shortly after, these same friends came to me and asked if they could commision a coat rack from me. They offered to pay me, but I felt like I could take money for something I was about to do for free. I let them know I was planning on making one for them anyway and offered my services as a gift.

The new hanger mounted and in use.

Only a little bit of time after that, The very same friends came to me with some hookah hoses. They explained that their hookah busted and were wondering if I could reuse the hoses for anything. Well, up until this point, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make a coat hanger for them. I thought about tearing apart old hard drives and using their arms and platters. But, when they offered me the hoses, I knew in an instant that I was going to make the coat hanger out of them. I mean, it is a great flexible piece of material to use, it is sentimental to the owners, and it was going to be trash if I didn’t do something with it. Win-Win-Win you might say.

So, I found some wood from my basement and figured out how everything would go together. The hose was too flimsy to hold up anything, so I thought if I folded it into a loop it might have more strength. I tried it and felt like it still wasn’t enough. Then I desided to use hanger wire and put it through the length of the hose. That idea worked brilliantly and the hookah hanger was assembled.

There are nine places to hang stuff with room for expansion. If any more was needed I would put wire s hooks on the bottom for maybe hats or mittens.

Treeheart

One of the only shirts that I’ve done that has a completely original design or isn’t modeled after something else.

I’m not sure if there was reason for making this shirt or not. But I made it and I’m glad that I did. I’m extremely happy with the way it turned out.

The design is drawn freehand using sharpie markers.

If you like any of the art or designs you see on the site and would like an original for yourself, please contact me and I’ll help make your dreams come true.

Scorpion Clan. Bonzai!

From 10/2007 to 08/2008, I play Legend of Five Rings CCG. The game is super awesome and I’d still be playing, but the person I played with the most moved. Anyway, one of the best facets of the game is the community and story that is tied in with everything else. Every deck was from a specific clan. Mine was the Scorpion Clan. So, I made this stencil of that emblem.  Pretty sweet, huh? Even though I don’t play anymore, I still dig the hoodie.

I painted this one kind of funny. That is the order in which I put the layers down. At first glance, it looks like I just put the stencil down and painted black over it. But, I actually made the black circle and then a layer of red. Followed by the stencil. I was trying to get a different color red. I’m not sure that it worked.

If you like any of the art or designs you see on the site and would like an original for yourself, please contact me and I’ll help make your dreams come true.