Originally I painted Neon Witch as a t-shirt illustration for myself, but it also end up on Society6 and RedBubble. After I order a few samples for myself from both places I started noticing the quality issues with the print. It took less than a year until the print had almost crumbled off altogether. So now I only sell this through Morbid North to keep the quality top-notch. After 2 years all my 3 samples are still like new.
Neon Witch gets its inspiration from Carpenter Brut - Turbo Killer music video. Honestly, I think that's the coolest music video I've ever seen. Doesn't help that I' was a huge fan of Carpenter Brut even before that.
Tools used are pretty much just Clip Studio Paint EX. No custom brushes or anything like that. Just the basic stuff. The original sketch was done traditionally with a pen and paper.
Sortaja didn't give me much direction with this and originally when we threw some ideas, I was going in completely different directions. The original idea was to do some H.R Giger inspired landscape, but I could get it to work how I was originally planned so I suggested an idea inspired by the human batteries from the Matrix. This was also something that I had ideas on how to animate it for the background visuals as well.
With Matrix as the basic source for the inspirations, I took it to a more cyberpunkish style than horror as my original sketch was. Everything began by drawing a baby that I first found pretty hard to do because I'm used to drawing only adults. There's something on a child's anatomy that is really hard to get a grip on, so I mostly followed stock art as a reference for the basic character. After I finally got the baby done, I started adding elements to it. First I kinda went way too far and the baby started looking like a robot rather than a human, so I rewatched some Matrix and realized that human batteries didn't really have anything other than the cables back of their heads. That made me scrap most of the cybernetics and all the cool things I had spent hours drawing in.
After I had scrapped most of the content I had already drawn I decided to try and add some colors and circuit board texture to the background. I tried to find a good stock pattern for it, but couldn't find any so I grabbed my phone and took a picture from my old motherboard that was just laying around. I think it worked really great at first but then decided that it wasn't clean enough. So I continued searching and finally found good enough stock vectors that I could use.
Unfortunately, this album never got printed so it's just a digital cover now, but at least I got to use the elements for Bandcamp headers and such as well and not just the album cover.
Overall I love making anything cyberpunk or horror-themed and I would love to make more of this type of projects. Most of my illustration commissions are portraits that are in most cases private projects so I can't really share them publically.
T-shirt illustration commission for Darkglass Electronics.
This was a small budget commission and the goal was only to create an illustration for a t-shirt and not in any other format. The plan was to create a morbid-looking ribcage skeleton inspired by a color template from one of the H.R Giger works and the client also wanted it to glow in dark. To add the glow, the illustration had to be made in layers, so the area that would have the glow had a lighter background to make the glow pop out better.
For the basic idea, I only made one fast sketch during the meeting and had only two days to make the complete design from it. Surprisingly I got it done only in one night and I made two versions on which the client couldn't choose their favorite so they made both versions blood strings and glow strings version.
Overall this was a fun little project and it was cool to work on aesthetics I'm really into as well. These are a couple of my favorite shirts to use as well.
Order your HERE while there is still a couple of them left (also available in a long sleeve)
I've been a crazy Star Wars geek for almost m whole life, but unlike most, I became a fan through comics, not by movies. The first movie that got me hyped up was Phantom Menace in 1999.
I still remember seeing the tv commercial the first time and the scene of Darth Maul igniting his double-bladed lightsaber was so cool and new back then. Then I also started seeing the posters everywhere and I even bought some very expensive magazines just to get some of those posters for myself. Star Wars posters also inspired me to do art and that was when I got to know who Drew Struzan is. If you do not know who he is, I'm still sure you have seen his work as he illustrated a lot of hit movie posters from Cutthroat Island to Blade Runner back in the day.
Childhood inspiration
I even made my first cosplay back then. I asked my grandmother to make me the clothes and my mother bought me this cheap lightsaber knock-off and then my friend's mom did my face paint for me.
It wasn't much, but it was more than enough for me to play as Darth Maul back then.
Shortly after the movie was released, Darkhorse Comics started a Darth Maul comic series and I even won a little art contest with my old fan art.
Really had no idea I would end up becoming a 501st Legion member a decade later, but sadly I haven't made another Darth Maul costume since. I probably would if I didn't have a beard. Maybe one day...
This is one of my personal works and an incredibly personal one. He was my grandfather, but he was more like a father to me. When I heard of his passing I wanted to find all photos I had of him, but neither I or none of the other relatives actually had any good photos of him. One of the only ones I could find was just a random snap I had taken with my old DSLR, so I decided to paint him using that as a reference.
This is easily my hardest project because even though his passing was expected I was completely broken for weeks. We also end up using this at his funeral due to the lack of any good photos.
He was a highly respected man and he was well known for his handball career. Still miss him, but I'm sure he found his peace at the end.
INFEKTIO has been spreading through the Helsinki club scene since early 2011. The purpose of this fast-spreading dark virus is to provide clubbers an effective, danceable mix of industrial, EBM, rhythmic noise, futurepop, and other dark electronic genres. INFEKTIO DNA has been genetically altered to accept new information, as in a place for newer bands to play live. INFEKTIO ”laboratory” is fully equipped with efficient sound- and lighting systems for a pleasant club experience.
Dark dystopian illustrations
I've been a loyal visitor to Club Infektio since the beginning and I've been friends with the whole crew longer than I can remember. That hasn't made working together any easier than with anyone else. Instead, as I know the whole crew is also filled with very creative and inspiring people they can be even more demanding than most of my clients.
Even though making illustrations for a club event with a very precise style might be sometimes hard, I've really enjoyed working with these dark cyberpunk-styled illustrations a lot. It's really close to my personal art style so it really lets me do my own thing without too many compromises.
