burst of beaden

2011-04-27T15:41:00.001-07:00

i'm trying something over here:
http://jonklassen.tumblr.com/

2010-07-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'm trying out a new technique using photographs of ink cutouts and messing with them a little in photoshop. so far, it's really really fun. Because its just a photograph, you can move and arrange the pieces under the camera around all you want, and add things from your front yard, like little plants and things. If i get good at this, i'm hoping to animate some things this way...

BBC olympics 2010

2010-01-25T17:30:00.000-08:00

(you can see it a little bigger and much clearer if you go to the studio aka site)

I got to be the co-designer on this spot for the BBC's coverage of the winter olympics. The director on the project was Marc Craste, whose work I have been watching since early college days. Between him and his team at Studio AKA, you can't really ask for more on a job like this. I thank them very much for picking me out and for solving all the problems after I got the fun part.

here is some of the work i turned in. It should be noted that these were mostly done over Marc's early previz work, which was already great-looking. Also all the character designs, including the main guy and the animals, are all Marc's.

and here's a long strip of other ones like that one.

and the official credits for the spot:

Comisioned by BBC / Red Bee Media
Agency: RKCR/Y&R
Director Marc craste
Co-Designer Jon Klassen
Produced by STUDIO AKA

more details and a nice clear version of the spot here: http://studioaka.squarespace.com/latest-news/2010/1/25/bbc-winter-olympics-2010.html

UPDATE:
this spot has done very well out in the big wide world. It won a BAFTA for Best Titles, and a Gold Lion at Cannes.

black lake

2010-01-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

Black Lake from David OReilly on Vimeo.

i went to visit my good pal David O'Reilly in berlintown a little while ago, and while i was there we started to make this. The project was motivated by a show put on by the fine men who run ItsNiceThat called 'if you could collaborate', which took place this past weekend in London. The idea behind the show was to pick someone you hadn't worked with and work on something together. When the show was launched, David and me hadn't done the u2 video yet, so it was born honestly enough.

Anyway, the result is something we're both really happy with. The brunt of the workload turned out to be on David. I was in on the conceptualizing of the thing, sort of the visual rules and value setups and stuff and then designing the elements, and David took it from there.

since it was made to be shown in a gallery, it's meant to be played on a loop (you can do this if you follow the vimeo link).

here's some of the stuff that got generated for it (not really meant as illustrations on their own, just sort of figuring out things):

more here.
http://burstofbeaden.com/blacklake.html

also, i'm a day late in posting about this cause i was away. thanks very much to cartoonbrew and motionographer and everyone else who has passed it on.

up to the house

2009-12-28T16:41:00.000-08:00

thats a detail from a new thing for winter time. i'm not into detail shots much, but this one is too wide to post as a thumbnail. i put it up on the webspace here:

http://www.burstofbeaden.com/uptothehouse.html

this one goes out to a road trip my dad and me took through Rip Van Winkle country around this time last year.

merry christmas and happy new year!

things

2009-12-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

This is an illustration i did for the back page of the McSweeny's newspaper issue. It's kind of a kids page made up of some fine people who I'm humbled to be included with. This page was put together by Mac Barnett, who is great.

i was always kind of interested in 'spot the differences' games, because you go into them with such gusto, but they're so unsatisfying to finish. once you've spotted all the differences, thats it. at least it gave me an excuse to do a symmetrical composition instead of doing it for no reason like i usually do.

Also, I was lucky enough to snag a spot in the latest incarnation of Taschen's 'Illustration Now', curated by Julius Wiedemann. Here is proof of this claim:

I also have a very nice section in a magazine called DPI which i understand is all the rage in Taiwan. Thanks to Miss Effie Lin for being so great at putting it together. here is more visual proof:

to close, a heads up of a very interesting show coming up in London in January called 'If You Could Collaborate'. David O'Reilly and me (but mostly David) made something for it. Here's a link to the details, a link to David's site which you should look at every day, and a cryptic picture from the project. i'll post more show details and the project itself when the time is right.

http://www.ifyoucould.co.uk/collaborate
http://www.davidoreilly.com/

low tide

2009-11-10T13:24:00.000-08:00

this was done for Gallery Nucleus' 5 year anniversary show.
this post comes with an apology for how quiet it's been on the surface, but with the assurance that plenty is going on underneath. should be lots of new stuff to show soon.

drew's illustration blog

2009-09-16T20:04:00.001-07:00

hold on to your socks, guys. drew beckmeyer has an illustration blog.

http://drewbeckmeyerillustration.wordpress.com/

U2 single cover

2009-09-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

This is an add-on to the U2 video i worked on. They'd asked for a single cover to match the video, so David came up with a design and we did some colour work on it and did the text using the font we'd made for the video. We sent it off and then didn't really hear if they liked it, but i guess they did cause it's on there!
there's even a vinyl version, all big and everything!

more details and a link to bigger picture over on David's site:
http://www.davidoreilly.com/2009/09/u2-single-cover

half minute horrors

2009-08-26T10:23:00.001-07:00

This picture is for an anthology of short works called 'Half Minute Horrors'. It was put together by Susan Rich, and its got quite the list of people in it. I don't have that list, but I do know that Margaret Atwood, R.L.Stine, Lemony Snickett and Neil Gaiman are all in it. The royalties from the book go to First Book, a not-for-profit organization that brings books to children in need.

http://www.amazon.com/Half-Minute-Horrors-Susan-Rich/dp/0061833797

4pm tour

2009-07-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

This is an illustration i did for the aforementioned book project. It is an illustration to accompany a terrific short story by Jez Burrows. Jez also wrote a short story to go along with my Waterfall picture, and it is really really cool. You guys should get this book. Here is a flickr set of the other pieces in the release show that unfortunately i could not attend because of the atlantic ocean.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/analoguebooks/sets/72157621383104876/

U2 video

2009-07-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

U2 - I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight from David OReilly on Vimeo.

(you can fullscreen that)

I was the art director/production design type guy for Mr. David O'Reilly on his new video for U2's latest single, “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”.
its up in HD on David's vimeo page as well:
http://vimeo.com/5699275

If this seems a little different from my usual stuff, a look around David's site should explain the shift. If you haven't been there already, shame on you. Go educate yourself:

http://www.davidoreilly.com/

we are the friction

2009-07-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

this stack of paper will be turned into a book that i am in. i have two illustrations, one old and one new, in a project being released next week called 'we are the friction' put out by Sing Statistics in the UK. it's being billed as a 'an international illustration and short fiction cage match between 24 writers and illustrators (in handy book form).' there's some great people in the book, and i'm at once humbled and proud to be in there with them.

http://www.singstatistics.co.uk/

i'll post more about it when it comes out!

greetings

2009-07-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

There are many birthdays around now, but my brother Will's birthday is on sunday, and this post is in honor of that. I recently did some greeting cards, 10 altogether, and now you can buy them. These were done with Carrie and Hal at Red Cap Cards. I got a bunch of them in the mail, and the printing is really really nice.

the whole set is here.

White is for Witching

2009-05-05T10:30:00.001-07:00

I did some illustration work on a book trailer! Did you know books had trailers? Turns out they do. This trailer is about a new book by Helen Oyeyemi being published by Picador books in the UK.
The job was commissioned by the excellent design shop HudsonBec, working with one of my very favorite designers, Alex Bec. Animation and compositing done by the multi-talented Julia Pott.

the trailer and book info is here:
http://www.whiteisforwitching.com/

baseballingo

2009-04-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

This one needs some context, I think. William Safire writes a column in the New York Times magazine every week about language and how it is used in the world. Also every week, they find somebody to do an illustration using the title of his article. They asked me to do this week's, and I did it! "Baseballingo" refers to the use of baseball terms in things not related to baseball. It is timely because the baseball season is getting underway. I dedicate it to anybody who has been caught in San Francisco with a Dodgers hat on.

Thanks very much to Hilary Greenbaum for picking me out.

Also, I always want to be the kind of blog owner who just posts when he has things to post and makes no excuses for the amount of time in between, but I really should apologize. There has been a lot of work being done, but none of it can be shown for a while, so you'll have to take my word on it.

ALSO, I am a guest poster on itsnicethat.com this week. I have been doing some work with the guys who run it, and I never expected people I admire so much to be as nice as they are to me. They are very very nice.

www.itsnicethat.com

2009-02-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

My pal Kevin Dart is putting together a book for his project about a spy girl named Yuki and he let me do a thing for it. Spy stories always make me think of old pulp books that have those chapter illustrations with a caption from the last page underneath, so thats what i went for. There was supposed to be another panel with whats inside the cave, but it came out TERRIBLE and i hate it, so this is the only one there is. Thanks Kevin!

More-aline

2009-02-11T18:48:00.000-08:00

I put a bunch more stuff from the film up on my site. It turns out a lot of my archived files are on spools of burned cds, and those things are a pain to go through. i got a pretty big pile on there, though - i think most of the other files are stuff that was just for the shop or roughs of things that never got made (not to suggest all these sketches were made either). The film had a pretty good opening weekend! Yeah!

http://burstofbeaden.com/coraline.html

Coraline

2009-02-04T15:29:00.001-08:00

Coraline comes out on friday! I worked on doing illustrations and designs for sets and props for a little under two years up at Laika in Portland.

I will put more of my work on it up on the website after it comes out, but please go see the film. Here is the trailer:

2009-01-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

in preperation for that Coraline panel thing, i've been going through old Laika folders. I found this from a day when my mind was wandering a little. I'm thinking of making it into a greeting card. For when you are feeling envious of somebody...

more about that Coraline stuff when it gets closer to the film opening up next week.

Iceberg

2009-01-05T15:18:00.001-08:00

When i was home for christmas, my brother Will and me made an iceberg. It's sort of based on the iceberg in the royal bank commercial (see earlier post), but making it into a three dimensional thing turned out to be really fun. It has a front door and a back door. The cutting was not my job. Will is an architect by trade, you see, and he's a pro with that sort of thing. Mostly it was me saying 'lower. no, higher. even higher.' and him saying 'it can't go higher.' Other brother Justin turned out to have a knack for making sculpey penguins. There is a huge strip of pictures below. Our zest for photo documentation is due in part to two of us getting new cameras and the slightly blurred photos are due to us getting to know the auto-focus on our lenses.

Nextdoor

2008-12-31T15:54:00.000-08:00

merry christmas everybody!

Storming the Capital

2008-10-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

The guys at the Ebeling group, who i worked with on the RBC commercial, are curating a gallery show on typography and letters and were nice enough to ask me to contribute. It was made to be printed pretty big, so some of the details are kind of small on a computer screen. Typography can be kind of an intimidating field, and my first couple ideas were a lot more "grown up", but this made me smile and the title makes people roll their eyes, so mission accomplished as far as i'm concerned.

I'll put up the show details once i get em. It's in New York next week, i know that much.

The Road

2008-09-24T13:07:00.001-07:00

I don't really know why i wanted to make an illustration for the book. It's a very realistic story, and doesn't need to be stylized at all. I think the lack of shadows in the descriptions probably had something to do with it. I kind of do that anyway, so i figured it might go ok. Mostly i just wanted to spend more time thinking about the book after i'd finished reading it.

it's nice that i'm in a show

2008-09-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

the blog itsnicethat.com is having an exhibition of work thats been featured on the site. My illustration called 'Beach House' will be in it, and it will be in excellent company. To name a few, fellow 'blowyourhornhunter' pal Luke Best, as well as Rob Ryan, and the guys who did the cover of the Grizzly Bear album 'Yellow House', which is a really nice cover, i think.

24 September — 24 October 2008
The Viewpoint Gallery, Plymouth College of Art, Tavistock Place, Plymouth, Devon
London show to follow

www.itsnicethat.com

RBC blue water ad

2008-09-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

This is a really fun thing. I got to be the illustrator on an advert for the Royal Bank's blue water project. It's been on tv for a little while already (i havent seen it cause its just on in Canada, but word on the street is the CBC put it on during the olympics a coupla times. holy crap.) but i think the version that got broadcast had the colors changed a bit. They just put out a 'director's cut' with the original colors, and motionographer.com was really nice and put it up here:

http://motionographer.com/2008/09/04/convert-jon-klassen-rbc-blue-water-project/

my favorite part of it is when they go underwater and see the penguins swimming around down there. also if you slow down the part where the fish sort of fill the frame, you'll notice a crab hanging out and waving to them.

Rich Scurry was the creative director on it. Him and the other people over at Convert did an insane compositing job on this - a lot of it was done with 3D programs to give it a little extra breathing room, and the particle effects go a long way towards softening up the harder shapes. It's a bit of a gamble putting flat, graphic stuff into motion, cause it can look really really awful if the compositing and timing is bad, but when its good, its so fun to watch.

here are some of the illustrations that got sent in (click to make em bigger)

and here are the official credits for the spot:

Convert/The Ebeling Group (Production Co.)

Rich Scurry | Creative Director
Mick Ebeling | Executive Producer
Amy Fahl | Producer

Animation
Karolina Sobecka, Joshua Harvey and Rich Scurry

Design
Jon Klassen and Rich Scurry

Illustration
Jon Klassen

Hardy Boys

2008-09-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

This was done as sort of a commission for a friend's birthday. I think he got it in a frame and everything. He is a fan of the hardy boys books, and we have that in common.

Happy Birthday Mac!

more great great grand show things

2008-08-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

Man, what a fun show. Thanks to everyone who came out. Here are some pictures of the pieces i did. I'll get some pictures without fingerprints and with some glass in all the frames soon.

"Antarctic" William

"Antarctic" William Arrives in Antarctica

Snow Home

"Miner" Justin

Justin's Cave

Cave Home

"Lumber" Jack

Cut Down Tree

Forest Home

Trees and Moon

you can see Scott, Graham and Israel's stuff from the show here:
http://gallerynucleus.com/gallery/pieces/152

and there's a show catalog that you can order from Nucleus. The cover looks like this:

the great great grand show

2008-08-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

i'm going to be in a group show at the Nucleus Gallery with 3 other awesome guys. Scott Campbell, Graham Annable, and Israel Sanchez and me are gonna have some stuff on the walls come saturday night (Aug 16th), and Graham's gonna have a brand spanking new animation showing too. i think they even said there's gonna be a piano player. I have 10 pieces of varying size and ambition in the show. I did them out of cut out watercolor samples, mostly. There's three made with fabric and sewn thread that i got some motherly help on as well. I'll post them when the show goes up. For now, the one above is one of three guys i did. His name is "Antarctic" Willam.

Here's a link to the show info. If you're in or around town, c'mon down and say hello. there's a chance we'll all be wearing suits cause Scott likes wearing suits.

http://gallerynucleus.com/gallery/exhibition/152

oh right

2008-07-01T17:25:00.000-07:00

That Waterfall print from a couple posts back is available to buy now.
it's a pretty nice size too!

and here's where you add it to cart:
http://gallerynucleus.com/detail/6015

forest home

2008-06-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

design for a cross stitch...or something.

waterfall

2008-05-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

2008-04-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

thanks to www.itsnicethat.com for the unexpected spike in traffic on the site today. it's usually a pretty small party on burstofbeaden.com, but this morning there's people all over the house, sitting in the stairwell and making out in the closets. It's pretty great.

http://www.itsnicethat.com/

power in numbers

2008-04-11T10:10:00.001-07:00

the nucleus gallery in alhambra has this thing every year where a whole bunch of people do little 5x7 pieces and sell them at a show and part of the proceeds go to the 'make a wish' foundation'. I did a paper cut out. I wanted to use tissue paper, but i couldn't find any i liked, so i used markers on velum and cut that out instead. It turns out to be a pretty good process, cause you can get sort of soft variation in the colours, and velum is really sturdy, so i could cut out all those little notches without messing up the paper. it's called 'two bears and a sunrise'.

http://www.gallerynucleus.com/gallery/exhibition/141

Dayton, Ohio 1903

2008-04-04T18:37:00.000-07:00

This picture is based on the song 'Dayton, Ohio 1903' that
Harry Nilsson sings on his record of Randy Newman covers.

beach house

2008-02-22T18:40:00.000-08:00

update: print of this for sale!
http://gallerynucleus.com/detail/5331

better than nothing

2008-01-29T15:56:00.000-08:00

in lieu of something new, something i'd forgotten about.
this was done with the rest of these - http://www.burstofbeaden.com/furniture.html

new work someday!

blow my horn hunter

2008-01-04T12:50:00.000-08:00

happy new year!
i got a really good new years present. the people over at the Blow Your Horn Hunter blog asked me to join the club. so i did. i haven't posted anything yet, cause i've been busy with moving my house and things, but you guys should really go over there and check it out. these guys are the real deal. i'm very honored to be part of such a talented blog.

hopefully once i get settled, i'll post a whole lot.

blow your horn hunter

in the meantime, here is a nativity set i bought when i was visiting my brother in Africa a few weeks ago.

An Eye for Quality

2007-12-17T14:11:00.000-08:00

'An Eye for Annai' is featured in the second volume of the super slick 'Pictoplasma - Characters in Motion' book. We even made the cover!

Thanks Pictoplasma!

http://www.pictoplasma.com/

T Shirts for Sale for real this time

2007-12-17T13:48:00.000-08:00

Yep! The colors are a little different from the earlier post, but darned if i don't like em even better for existing in reality.

Buy some to put inside christmas present wrapping for christmas presents at christmas time!

http://gallerynucleus.com/artist/jon_klassen

2007-11-05T18:20:00.000-08:00

This is for a project that I'm not going to be able to make deadline on, so i figured i'd at least post the first two pages.

oh well.

2007-09-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

i should probably wait till these are actually for sale, but i felt like posting, and this is easier than making a whole new thing. sometime this month i think these are gonna be ready to buy. i will update when more info is available. but throw out your old shirt now and just no-shirt it in the meantime. it's still sort of warm out. (that's not me in the picture. it's some american apparel dude).

EDIT: i am now told sometime in november the shirts will be available. if you haven't taken the trash out yet, go in there and fish your old shirt out again for a while.

YES.

2007-09-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's two years old. But France don't know that. 'An Eye for Annai', along with a few other films, went on a whole tour of France recently. I'm not sure about where in the country, 'xactly (i do know this picture was taken in Avignon). It was put on through an organization called 'Fotokino' (www.fotokino.org) and a program they have called 'le petit cinema'. France is so classy.

ice castle and evil castle

2007-08-21T13:33:00.001-07:00

i don't think they get to see too much of each other.

UPDATE: you can now have all 6x21 inches of this for your very own. click here and see for yourself.

2007-07-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

New project up on the website!

2007-07-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

2007-07-17T09:11:00.001-07:00