AlecLongstreth.com redesign!

Well, after many weeks of toil, I am finally ready to reveal my totally redesigned illustration portfolio website! For those of you actually viewing this blog at its URL, you can just hit some of the new navigation links at the top of the page, and for those of you reading this from an RSS reader, just follow this link!

When I first sat down to redesign the site, I was having trouble trying to figure out what image I wanted to use for homepage. I wanted it to really reflect me and the kind of illustrations I want to be doing. Luckily, I remembered an old piece of advice that Aaron always used to tell the CCS summer workshop students: "you have to draw what you LOVE!" And well, I love drawing wizards and dragons and tree forts. So I cast myself as the wizard and then tried to fill my imaginary tree fort with as many personally meaningful objects as I could, so the space would reflect me. I really like how the image came out, and I don't think there is anyone else on earth (besides me) who could fully understand what every object in the drawing means to me.
Anyway, if you have a minute, take a lap around the new site and please let me know if you find any bugs! ALSO: a huge thanks (as usual) to Nate Beaty for some last minute help tightening up my coding!

Microcosm Publishing 2010 Catalog - Spot Illustrations

As promised, here are the spot illustrations that I did for the upcoming 2010 Microcosm Publishing Catalog. Again, these feature characters from the Isle of Elsi book I'm working on. If you're curious, you can check out their first story over at Dark Horse Presents. The first spot shows Draziw the Wizard making some zines with his wand. If only it was that easy!

Next we have Nogard the Dragon and R.J. Jr. delivering some zines!

And lastly, for good measure, some of the 'ites (as I call them - actually Stalagmites and Stalactites) mailing off a letter. It looks like some zinesters had their way with that mail box!

This one isn't actually going to make it into the catalog, but I thought I'd post it just the same. It depicts one of the wolves giving a ROCK show for all the 'ites. ;)

I'm almost done wrapping up a big illustration project, which I will post on here as soon as it's done. There's more on the way!

Microcosm Publishing 2010 Catalog - Cover!

I recently finished up some illustrations for the 2010 Microcosm Publishing Catalog. I thought I'd share the cover image this week and some spot illustrations next week!
For those of you that don't know, Microcosm Publishing is a super awesome zine distributor and publisher. They've been carrying my Phase 7 Comics for years and they have published books by some of my best comics friends. When they asked me if I wanted to draw the cover, they said that I could draw pretty much whatever I wanted, and that it was going to be printed with two colors (score!) I decided to use some of my Isle of Elsi characters from my Dark Horse Presents story that was released back in May.
There have been some great Microcosm Catalog covers in the past, so the first thing I did was look at those to see how some of the other illustrators handled the two color look. I especially liked the ones by my friends Liz Baillie and Sarah Oleksyk but instead of dropping the second color into a black line drawing, I wanted to try and utilize the second color throughout the illustration, so that I could get a variety of lighting and texture effects. Here's what I came up with! (click for a larger view)

Now all I have to do is wait for a printed copy, to see how it all turned out. I'll let you all know once it's out there so you can order your copy (I think they are usually like a penny if you place an order with Microcosm) and like I said, I'll post some spot illustrations from the inside of the catalog next week!