monuMental

Last year Michigan State punched Michigan in the mouth. They literally punched them in the mouth. After being called for 13 penalties (6 of them of the 15 yard variety) Michigan State Defensive Coordinator Pat Narduzzi famously said, "That's what we try to do. Sixty minutes of unnecessary roughness. I'm just happy it didn't get called on every snap."

State has clearly been the more physical team of late and their boundary pushing gameplans have paid off to the tune of four straight wins in the rivalry. This wallpaper was inspired by their bold and reckless tactics. I picture the Michigan State coaching staff handing out stacks of flash cards like those used to teach sight words to kindergarteners. Yes, this is a dig at the level of intelligence required to gain acceptance to the state university. Yes, I attended a state university (not that state university) so I am licensed to dig.

The images below are previews only. You can get the widescreen, iPad and mobile wallpapers at The Art. The Art. The Art!.

This one's for you, MGoBlog readers; specifically those of you who slo-mo crowd shots to look for internet celebrity Michigan fans like Lloyd Brady.

The 2011 Notre Dame game brought us Michigan Stadium's first (football) night game, a crazy last minute, game winning touchdown drive and the awesome Facepalm Guy.

This week's wallpaper is a remix of my 2010 Touchdown Jesus Says "No Good" artwork. It seems appropriate for Touchdown Jesus to assume the facepalm pose in light of three straight Notre Dame losses on late fourth quarter Michigan scores.

The images below are previews only. You can get the widescreen, iPad and mobile wallpapers at The Art. The Art. The Art!.

Update: I've posted new wallpapers with the correct schedule.

I didn't expect a win against Alabama but I'd hoped for something a little less embarrassing. I needed a wallpaper palate cleanser so I disassembled last week's wood-themed wallpaper and used the scraps to build this schedule with retro-ized opponent helmets rendered in my 3D stadium.

I hope this will get you through a couple of weeks. I'm going to disappear for awhile but will return with new artwork for one or two of the rivalry games. I have some fun things planned including that ambitious project I mentioned at the end of last season.

Follow me on Twitter @thearttheart for updates.

The images below are previews only. You can get the widescreen, 4:3, iPad and mobile wallpapers at The Art. The Art. The Art!.

Recently a friend of mine (a software developer) was talking to his 11 year-old son about working on an iPad app together. My friend said to his son, "You know what skills you're going to need to learn if we do this, don't you?" To which his son replied, "Arts & crafts like Mr. Jeremy?" We had a good laugh about it but the truth is that I do find myself chasing arts & crafts projects as a changeup to the day-to-day work in my design & software business. So joke's on you, 11 year-old kid, I take that as a compliment!

I've been working for a few years on a Michigan football-related craft project: a wooden puzzle where the laser-cut pieces are hand painted to represent each B10 team and can be arranged in the order of the current league standings. I designed the helmets to match the two-bar face mask style from my 80's sticker books (and used by Steve Largent forever) because they are rad looking and because they will not be mistaken for a youth hockey helmet or space explorer headgear (unlike some contemporary football helmet styles). I'll probably never finish the puzzle project so I was happy to find a use for my original helmet and field illustrations. I added the stadium and Allen screws to lend structure, depth and detail to the image.

The images below are previews only. You can get the widescreen, iPad and mobile wallpapers at The Art. The Art. The Art!.

How it was made

The artwork was created in Illustrator (vector graphics) and Cinema 4d (3D extrusions, layout) with some help from Photoshop (wood textures, blur effects, color correction).

If you read only one wallpaper explanation this year I hope it's this one because this time I have an offering AND a request.

The Offering

In between family events and having my throwing motion critiqued by Al Borges at Chuck E. Cheese's, I scraped together a little time during our Christmas visit to Ann Arbor to create this Sugar Bowl wallpaper. I've never been to Louisiana but I have been on the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' ride at Disneyland more than once so I know a little something about how a sleepy, firefly-occupied swamp is supposed to look. One of my girls is Princess Tiana-crazed at the moment so I was also inspired by the bayou color palette from Disney's 'The Princess and the Frog'. Conveniently, it turns out that nighttime ambiance in the Louisiana swampland adheres strictly to the athletic department's brand guidelines - even the fireflies know that the split Block M is no longer welcome in these parts.

The images below are previews only. You can get the widescreen, 4:3, iPad and mobile wallpapers at The Art. The Art. The Art!.

The Request

I have received kind comments, emails and tweets from many of you over the last two seasons. I create Michigan football-inspired artwork to satisfy a personal creative need and as a way to participate in the fan community so your enjoyment of my work is very gratifying. Some of you have asked if you can donate money to say thanks or pay royalties for hanging prints of my artwork on your walls. Beyond getting me into trouble (again) with the University's legal representation, money exchanging hands doesn't feel right given the spirit of my work.

So, if you're looking for a tangible way to tell me "thanks" I have a non-monetary idea that could be really fun. For the last decade I've coached local youth flag football, and for the last 5 years my family and I have coached and supported the teams at Sunshine Acres Children's Home in Mesa, Arizona. Sunshine Acres takes in children whose parents cannot or will not care for them. I think this year's flag football team will be covered on the budget front so I have an idea that I think will have a way bigger impact on our kids than your dollars anyway.

Here's how you can help:

1. Become a virtual fan by liking the Acres Football Facebook page. The page is pretty sparse at the moment but will be updated as the season goes on. Our first game is Saturday, January 14.

2. Check the Facebook page during the season for game recaps and to post an encouraging comment or two for our players. I'd love to have a few fun comments from out-of-town fans to share with the kids each week.

 
During most seasons we only have a fraction of the fans that our opponents bring to the field, so we invite our friends and families to act as partisan seat fillers. Fans have a noticeable positive impact on our kids' energy and excitement and it would be pretty cool to be able to tell our players that they have fans all over the country following them on Facebook. Last season was the first where we had enough people for a postgame arm tunnel and, after several seasons of going "feated" (the exact opposite of undefeated) both of our teams made their respective Super Bowls with our 6-8 year old team winning the big trophy for the first time. You can see that championship squad in the image above (yes, I am just as crazy about my Acres football team as I am about Michigan).

The teams we play against are made up of kids who (for the most part) are playing with the specific goal of developing into better football players. While we usually have a few players with strong athletic ability, many of them are raw first-time players without much experience and all of them have burdens much heavier than any child should carry. The chips, as they say, are stacked in an orientation not to our favor, but our players fight on and learn great things about themselves in the process.

Go Acres! Go Blue!

[ed: bump.]

I started working on this season's Ohio State wallpaper several months ago. The concept was more fun than anything I've worked on (other than the Denard Robinson Action Figures) and soon it grew into my most ambitious project to-date. Nothing even comes close with regard to the skills required to pull it off and the number of hours I'd require to finish it.

In case it's not obvious to you already, this is not that wallpaper. Two things changed my mind about releasing it now: first, I realized that my concept had nothing to do with Ohio State and would work better as a pro-Michigan season theme; second, the memorabilia-for-tattoos scandal provided the first true opportunity to poke fun at Ohio State in nearly a decade.

As I write this explanation I'm reminded of the classic line by rock greats Tenacious D: "This is not The Greatest Song in the World, no. This is just a tribute." Next August I'll publish "The Greatest Wallpaper in the World" for the 2012 season to massive disappointment now that I've stupidly overhyped the thing to the five people who actually read these explanations. For now, I hope you'll enjoy this artwork inspired by Ohio State's fall (and Fall).

The images below are a previews only. You can get the widescreen, 4:3, iPad and mobile wallpapers at The Art. The Art. The Art!.

How it was made

The Riddell Revo Speed helmets were illustrated in Illustrator (they really nailed the naming of that product) and then superimposed on the forearm photograph in Photoshop. I used a dash of Gaussian blur, a mix of blending modes and a smidge of smudge tool action to make the color boundaries look more tattoo-ish. If you look closely you can see a little red around the edges of the tattoo that gives the skin the "I was at one time in the past punctured over and over by needles" look. I toyed with a much more elaborate tattoo that used a blackletter font (and went so far as to design an ambigram for the word "game") but in the end I decided on simplicity; I used a type treatment consistent with this season's Notre Dame and Michigan State wallpapers.