Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Jeffro Kilpatrick is the "Geek of the Week" on Geekadelphia

Hey, I am proud to call myself a Geek this week. I was interviewed by Geekadelphian Dave Goodman. If you'd like to read the interview, CLICK HERE.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Star Wars Fan Art - Mos Eisley Bar Swarm

Chris Patchell asked me to post this original black and white ink drawing:
Not sure what's going to become of this piece. I think I posted here a while back that my favorite parts of the Star Wars movies are the monster scenes. I get kind of bored after the bar scene in the first movie. I also get kind of bored after Jabba the Hutt's court scene in Return of the Jedi. But those scenes are very captivating to me, and I believe they had a profound influence on me as a kid. I would play for hours with my Star Wars toys. My Godmother and Aunt Gerry gave me Greedo, Walrus Man, Luke Skywalker, R5-D4, and the Landspeeder for my 5th birthday. I was blown away, and I don't think I ever remember being so excited about a gift. I also have very vivid memories of getting my allowance and my folks driving us to the Toy Store for Star Wars action figures when I was a kid. At that young age, like many kids of my generation, I lived for my toys. And I think this is what led to my early fascination with monsters.

My fascination with bars and barflies came much later. I have done a lot of bar drawings since my college years. But as I look back, I realize they were all just a rehash of the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from the first Star Wars movie. So I wanted to do a drawing where all these creatures were just hanging out having an awesome time at the bar. Anyway, I did this initial drawing on 14" x 11" bristol board in ink. The colors I did in Photoshop and Illustrator. The font is just my own shaky, hand-drawn version of the Star Wars lettering. Maybe the colors will change. Maybe the text will change. I am not sure. But I finished this draft last night, so I am posting it.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Falcon Beach T-Shirt

I recently partnered up with the Spirit Newspapers to create limited edition North Catholic T-Shirts. Every month or so, we will make a new North Catholic shirt to hnor the school that meant so much to us. If you are a follower of this blog, you probably know that I taught and worked for the school for 7 years, and I went down with the ship. The Spirit was always a really strong supporter of North. My cousin Tommy, one of the co-owners of the paper, is a graduate like myself. We wanted to keep North alive in some small way. During my time at North, I designed most of the shirts, including the annual Thanksgiving Day Game shirt. I figured we can make shirts in short run, no more than 150-200 shirts per design. That way we wouldn't risk losing too much money, and people who bought the shirts would have a limited edition product.

The guys at Awesome Dudes printed this shirt. Joannie's oldest, Brandon, went with me to pick them up. He was nice enough to humor me and model the shirt when we got them back to the Spirit offices.

The shirts are available for sale at the Spirit Newspaper offices (1428 Susquehanna Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19125). They are $15 apiece. We only made 150 shirts this time, so if you are interested, you should call: (215) 423-6246.