During the fest, Chicago-based filmmaker, Jay Delaney, pulled some folks aside and asked ‘em questions about their lives and their work. 9 interviews in all and today #7 went live—my goofy mug! You can read Jay’s full post about my interview with him here (there’s a clip of the interview there too if it seems a little painful to stare at my crooked tooth for too long), or just watch the full monty below.

via Studio Sweet Studio:

Our friend Nate Utesch, co-founder of Ferocious and graphic designer extraordinaire, walks us through his very thorough process for his most recent project “Orbital Fleets.”

At the retirement of NASA’s US Space Shuttle program, OrbitalFleets is a 30th anniversary poster series. Throughout the course of the year, a large, 2-color, silkscreened poster and a small, full-color, art print will be developed for each of the five orbital vehicles of the United States Space Transportation System.

Creating the CREW SERIES.

Phase one: References images! First thing I did was create an archive of images, labeling body parts, hoses, reflections…anything that stood out and I knew I’d wanna mimic in the drawings.

My weapon of choice lately is layers of paper on a lightbox with a bottle of India ink at the ready. Even though I’m just using black ink, I’ll pull one page on top of another and sketch out what will eventually be ink separations in photoshop. Loosely vomiting ink on the paper is the name of the game. Failing miserably at the line between a complete mess and some semblance of an astronaut.

The three layers of ink that make up “Crew Series No.2″ and the “Challenger” astronaut.

Finished “top layer” for the “Columbia” astronaut.

The ones that made it out alive.

There’s no real magic to be had. My only secret weapon in the whole process is the method of creating a transparent ink layer in photoshop. Maybe it’s no secret but since I started doing it, it’s changed my life. Scan at a higher resolution than I need, greyscale it, level out my whites, convert to bitmap at 1200dpi, convert right back to greyscale—retaining the 1200dpi image and all those fun 90º bitmap edges—magic wand the white right outta there, resample back down to my end resolution and bam… pure ink. No paper. Ready for any color. No layer effects.
Then it’s time to put ‘er back together. The time intensive part is the addition of textures, distress and rough edges.

Some of the texture in the “Crew Series No.2″ image.

ORBITALFLEETS.

These posters are the star of the show in the whole project. The “Crew Series” images make a nice little companion to this larger poster series. I thought I’d leave this post with some highlights from the OrbitalFleets project thus far.

In all, I think there are 133 missions that our shuttle program has launched. I’m creating simplified icons as an alternative to the current mission insignias for each launch. My mind goes numb and it feels like heaven. Or maybe my mind goes numb and I get migraines.

An example of the 28 mission insignias from the Columbia shuttle.

My dumbed down versions.

I thought I’d also share my favorite icon so far. It’s for Challenger’s STS-41-G mission. Launched October 5, 1984 and was the first mission to carry two women and carried the first Canadian into space.

Some of the data shared on the “Challenger” poster.

A couple views of the “Challenger” poster all set for print. Notice the “background ink” layer from the “Crew Series No.2″ edition became a half tone pattern for the poster. That’s all. Just notice it. Did you notice it? Ok cool, moving on…

Here’s some photography of the finished pieces. Silkscreened “OrbitalFleets” editions were printed by my good friend Shaun Malinowski of Good Stuff Design Co. and the small “Crew Series” editions are from the wonderful lads at Society6. More views of all the prints can be seen at the official OrbitalFleets webby.

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Thanks Nate! We love how in-depth this project is and applaud Nate for doing such a thorough and fascinating personal project! Be sure to check it out at Orbitalfleets.com

I thought I’d walk through some of the behind the scenes in my piece for the series.

Some of the ink.

Some ink that didn’t make the cut.

The build.

Dare I even show this next screen-grab. This is my life’s work. Too many layers to name. A collection of smears, tears, tears (wow, I don’t think I’ve ever had to use those two words back-to-back) and blood accumulated from college till now. Years in the university print shop, the studio on Main St. (God rest her soul) and wherever else heaven has graced me. Black ink on a transparent background. No “multiplying” to be had. Simply the woman and all her parts. She and I. Me and her.

And here’s where I ended up. Click here for a mega view.

The text on the piece comes from an article published in France around the time the Wright Bros were making waves. It attempts to sum up the great deal of European skepticism about their progress.

The Wrights have flown or they have not flown. They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either fliers or liars. It is difficult to fly. It’s easy to say, ‘We have flown.’

But to be honest, I sent the piece to Evan, slept on it, and decided it just wasn’t working. The night before the piece went live I sent Evan an email explaining that I just needed to try something else. I reworked my halftones and scanned in the type at a higher resolution.

And after a night of reworking I realized I probably should’ve stopped while I was ahead. So Evan never got another email and that first final version is where I left it.

Keeping checking momentusproject.com for all glory to be had. Thanks again to Evan for letting me be involved in such a unique thing.

Last year a festival debuted in Cleveland, Ohio. Weapons of Mass Creation. They’ve brought together a community of 20 speakers, 20 bands and 20 designers to set up camp and do their thing over the course of two days. Bands and designers from all over the country and talks on graphic design, art, entrepreneurship, leadership and more.

Via WMCFest.com:

WMC Fest is a fest for those who live to create! A weekend community event taking place in the Gordon Square Arts District on Cleveland’s west side. It was founded by Jeff Finley of the Cleveland-based creative agency Go Media. Only in its second year, it’s already generating lots of buzz within the creative community.

We are thrilled to announce that among some truly inspiring names including Mig Reyes (Threadless), Mikey Burton, Aaron Draplin (Draplin Design Co.), Alex Cornell (ISO50) and a whole slew of others, Ferocious Quarterly’s Nate Utesch will be representing among the 20 designers selected for the festival. He’ll be stocked with a handful of limited prints, FQ issues in the plenty, and maybe even a couple surprises.

The best part: we’re giving away 2 sets of tickets to the fest! If you live in or around the Ohio area, know somebody who does, or maybe you just wanna take a road trip, email us at hello@rocious.com and they’re yours! Easy as that.

Learn more about Weapons of Mass Creation Fest at WMCFest.com and be sure and check out all the speakers, bands and designers involved. It’s going to be a tremendous weekend and we’re excited to have Nate in the mix!

Wait, what!?

Unbelievable. We met up later that night and I got to see some of the damages. Sure enough, he’s only a little bruised. Apparently a car turning right on red didn’t slow or yield to my brother coming through the green light. Knocked him off the bike just before running over it—bending the wheel and fork and ripping the derailleur to shreds. The weirdest part of the story was that the “running over” of the bike happened just after the accident itself. According to my bro, the driver of the car seemed to have plenty of time to stop. But instead just kinda creeped up over the bike until it was destroyed. Not maliciously, just almost in a haze. While Bryan (my bro) yelled obscenities at him on the sidelines.

The driver immediately got out of his car, insanely apologetic and offering to take Bryan to a bike shop right away to buy him a new one. I’m assuming he’s counting on Bryan being ok, physically, and thinking he can kinda pay him off now by alleviating the bike loss with a brand new one. Really odd.

Bryan took him up on it.

The first thing Bryan noticed when he got in the car was that everything but the driver’s seat had been removed. The car was stripped down to the metal and plastic. The door shuts. Bryan sees that the passenger door handle is missing.

Surely Bryan is about to die. As he is telling me this story, my heart is racing—knowing he made it out alive—but filling in the gaps in my mind with all sorts of horrendous Ted Bundy nightmares. They arrived at a place I’ve never heard of in Fort Wayne called “The Ol’ Ball and Chain Shop.” Specializing in used sporting goods, airsoft guns, blowguns and accessories, and “tactical gear.” What in the world!?

Now I’m thinking Pulp Fiction—Bruce Willis’ encounter with Zed and the gimp in the basement layer of the pawnshop. Bryan said as soon as they walked in, everybody knew the driver already. He had a $100 bike on hold there and just happened to be on his way to pick it up. But instead shelled out upwards of 500 bones to get Bryan a gently used Trek road bike. Oh yeah, I guess the Ol’ Ball and Chain Shop has refurbished bikes too.

And that was that. They parted ways and Bryan rode his new bike home. Easy as that. But I have a pit in the bottom of my stomach thinking…who the hell was this guy? The whole thing seems like a weird kidnapping operation. Second location is meant for “bike shopping” and final examination of the prey. Bryan failed the test. Or…this dude felt really bad and didn’t’ want to get sued. And just happened to be driving the sketchiest car on the planet.

My buddy, Ving, and I may be visiting Ol’ Ball and Chain this weekend. See if they have any batteries.

April’s film is The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed. It’s a 1949 British film noir set in a post-World War II Vienna Austria. When I watched this flick something stood out to me immediately. The score. Viennese folk music played by a single musician on a single instrument. No orchestration. No orchestra. Just one man, Anton Karas, and his zither. Anton would become best known for The Third Man score, and its title track peaked in 1950 at #1 in the international music charts.

So, that was my focus. Anton. And secondly, a quick, geometric drawing of the environment that Reed creates in the film. Which apparently was pretty captivating to the majority of SSS’s April roster because it looks like more than half the team has incorporated some sort of interpretation—ie, the little buildings, streets and ferris wheel from the pinnacle Orson Welles scene.

I’m really happy with how it turned out in the end. And the work from the rest of the April team is just phenomenal. Take a second to visit Silver Screen Society or see all the contributions at a glance here … and make sure to vist ‘em each Wednesday as the rest of the April roster goes live.

Dedicated to gathering work from a globally based community of active artists, Indiana-based collective Ferocious Quarterly are all about … well … everybody! Their democratic ethos — “If it can fit on our pages, it’s welcome” — and method of approaching highly relevant subject matter with an eye toward whimsy combine to create a thoughtfully packaged, and distinctly good looking, magazine. Their next issue, “Made Handsome,” which will compile illustrations and short fictions based on real-life newspaper headlines, will be available as a limited edition, hardcover book through Kickstarter. Excellent!

Side note, Raphael’s face is way creepy. Wait, they all are. Yeah this is gross.