On the Meat Trail

So, here's a little preview of a new board game I'm working on. It's called On the Meat Trail, and it's largely inspired by Jack London's novel White Fang.

2 players control wolves, trying to survive a cold northern winter. They must forage in the forest for ptarmigans, sneak up on deer, take cover in forests or caves, and avoid the wrath of other predators like bears and lynxes. It should be fun.

There is more work to be done, but here's a peek at the game board.

My Rhino

So, here's a picture of my rendition of the fabled Cardboard Rhino. The cardboard it is made out of was not harvested from rhinos, but from the somewhat less elusive Cardboard Box.

You can catch a glimpse of our family art bulletin board. It's sort of the IRL version of this blog...

Uncle Barry's Sidewalk

So, every year at Thanksgiving, we travel to Uncle Barry's(not to be confused with my brother, Little Barry who comes on here every so often) house in Maryland. When we leave, we are certain to leave an echo of our brain-stimulating presence by drawing in chalk all over the walkway. Typically, there is a winter theme. I photographed our work this year for the Rhino.

Dad's

Conor's

Mine (Tom's)

Barry's

Donald's

There you have it.

This is my world premiere Blog entry. Party up. Let us always remember the laffy taffy joke, it always laughs me; When was the meat so high? When the cow jumped over the moon.

Another Cardboard Rhino

I was wandering around on the web when I encountered an expertly crafted cardboard rhino and a t-shirt based on it. You can find the site here and the t-shirt here. They are made by the artist known as Kritch. Look around on the website and you won't be disappointed. The hand-made robots are magnificent works of simple, clever craftsmanship. 

To: Santa

A little something for the X mas season. "Many gifts."

Nectar Collector

I invented a new board game about bees collecting different colored nectar. The object of the game is to collect one drop of each color of nectar first. Hazards along the way include thorny brambles, sticky dew drops, and spiders.

The key mechanic of the game is the wind. At the beginning of each turn, the wind blows each bee one square. On the next turn, the direction changes (moving around the compass rose clockwise). For this reason, you need to not only move your bee towards the nectar you want, but also keep in mind where the wind will blow your bee. For instance, if you see that the wind is going to blow east next, you don't want to move your bee so that there is a spider just east of it.

There are a couple of other rules, but those are the basics. Here's a picture of the board.



I playtested the game tonight. It went OK... it definitey needs some work... but I think there's some good stuff in it.

Boyds #1 and 2

In the summer of 2K6 I took the bus up to Alexandria to visit Tim. We were talking about funny tag names.
"Ok, ok, how about one with a b, an o and a y?"
"Boydz"

So I had some paper there and I drew a little grumpy bird with a cigar and some scraggly feathers. Wouldn't it be funny, I thought, if he had a bunch of little baby birds following him around? Wouldn't it be funny if he was a tough single father bird, learning up his little chicks in the ways of city life? Now you can decide for yourself!:
(To Tom: The 'one panel' format is necessary because of Boydz' graffiti roots.)

Bonus: Can you spot Conor's favorite joke?

Comic: The Origin of Electro Man

A new comic by me (Tom O'Keefe) for you (?).

The Official Halloween Post

Boo!

The Jack o' Lantern is one simple and fun creative act that almost everyone has participated in at some point. Unfortunately, it seems like these days everbody and their sister is using stencils, instead of their natural brain energy. I think stencils are for the birds, personally.



The left, cyclopean pumpkin is mine. On the right is Laura's, inspired by Jack Pumpkinhead from Frank L. Baum's "Oz" books.

Spankin' New Comic

Here, hot off the proverbial presses, is a comic for you. It is extremely deep and thought provoking, so be sure to read it 20 or 30 times in order to be certain you understand it fully.

Unexplained Circumstances Comics, Episode 1

So, here's a little comic I made.

Surprisingly, it is partially based on true events from my life. Case in point, I did receive 10 dollars and did not get hit by lightning shortly afterwards. They say art imitates life, after all.

Fresh, Homemade Boardgame

Well everyone, somehow it feels like the right time for posting on Carboard Rhino. This time, I'll be displaying my latest most favorite venue for personal expression: the board game. The continuing success of strongly themed, elegant, and thoughtful German Style boardgames (or "eurogames") has fueled the argument that games are an art form. For more information in this arena, see this blog.

My latest foray into the world of game design is Meals for the Gods. It is a simple game of bidding. Here is a piture of it:

Basically, each player is serving a god. Each turn, your god desires a food from the "Menu of the Gods," determined by rolling a die. You then bid on that food. If two players both roll the same, a bidding war begins! Satisfy your god's desires 10 times and you win! Displease them 3 times in a row and you are eaten! There are other rules, too, so if you want those feel free to ask. Best of all, a few dinosaurs and jungle animals from the dollar store for gods, some six-sided dice and a 50-60 tokens of some kind (I have used plastic jewels) and you are ready to play... MEALS FOR THE GODS!

The Tribe of the Tomahawk Toot-Toot

Tribe
of the
Tomahawk Toot-Toot
(from a scroll found in a bottle on Cape Fear, North Carolina)

Along the shores of the barrier islands of North Carolina, in the scrub and swamps of the backwaters of Cape Fear, there dwelled a small band of aboriginals known as

The Tribe of the Tomahawk Toot-Toot

The tribe was named after a set of magical power sticks, passed down through the generations, invoked in battles, used to bestow blessings, and honored in ceremonies.

Only Seven Are Known to Have Survived

The seven remaining sticks are treasured relics and bear the ceremonial names the Toot-Toots have given them.

The Four Sons

• The North
• The South
• The East
• The West

The North and South are tied with Red.
The East and West are blond.
A marking near the toot action airsplitter
indicates the direction of the magic stick.

The Ancestors

• The Mother
• The Father

These magic sticks retain the wider Axe Blade of the Toot-Toot Tomahawk. Tied in golden thread, they represent the male & female faces of energy flows -- the ying & yang, salt'n'peppa, you know.

You can tell the Father apart because his finger holes point away from the Axe Blade.

There is one more Tomahawk Toot-Toot, prized above all others and long missing:

• The Sorcerer's Stick

It is said the Blade is tied with fire. It makes a sound so beautiful the Pelicans fly mandalas when they hear it.

In the old days, the remaining members of The Tribe of the Tomahawk Toot-Toot would gather on the shores of Tomahawk Island and celebrate their ancestors by reenacting the feared nightly parade of the Toot-Toots, hoot-tootin' it and hot-footin' it down the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and resonatin' down Cape Fear with their doo-woppin' scattinany hijinx, taking the stars out of the sky, kicking them all over the beach, telling stories, walking backwards, and conjurin' up mermaids and other mayhem from them

Majik Tomahawk Toot-Toots

Lying in Bed by Samir Bakhshi

Lying in Bed by Samir Bakhshi

My eyes are shut
My ears are open
My nose is blocked
My mouth has spoken

* During finals week this spring my roomate Samir was sick. Early in the morning he rattled this off from under the covers.

B for Beekeeper Poster

I'm working on the revised Cardboard Rhino logo, but I'm not yet finished due to my continued work on the press materials for my senior thesis film here at the North Carolina School of the Arts.

The film is a documentary about a local beekeeper, and I thought that to tide everyone over until I get the new rhino done I would show you the poster design I just finished up.



The smoker, the veil, the field, the smoke, the clouds, and the individual bees are all from seperate photos that I patched together. I like minimalist movie posters, especially the poster for Downhill Racer and for Rosemary's Baby, so that's what I decided to go for, and I thought that style would make it more clear that the movie is more than just a nature documentary.

Faith Healing for Cars

Holy Hands On Mechanic
"By Your Faith, you bring your car to us"
"By Our Works, your car will be repaired"

(click to enlarge)

Found taped to the door of "The Love of Jesus" Thrift Store.

Rhino Wear

I was given the task of converting this little sketch of the magnificent Cardboard Rhino into a t-shirt design. Here's the original source material.

Using that as the basis I did some sketches of my own. I felt I needed to give it a little more movement, and simplify it. Here are four of my sketches (I did about 8 or 10). The one with the arrow is the one I eventually picked.

From the sketches I did a few large drawings based on both the design I ended up picking, and a few of the others. I used a black Sharpie for most, but did a couple in brush and ink. Here is the original photo of the drawing I decided to use.

I liked this drawing best, but I also wanted to use the foot impact element from one of the brush and ink drawings I did. Here's a photo of that element.

I took both the above element and my favorite drawing into Photoshop and tooled around with them. I made the lines darker and thicker and put the two together. Here's the basic design, all cleaned up.

I thought color was a good idea, so I did a colored version, too.

I also did versions that would work on black t-shirts. Here they are:


Overall, I'm happy with the results. Dad will be seeing them for the first time on here, too, so if he gives me some suggestions I'll tweak it and post that, too.

Mother's Day

A mother's art takes many forms.

My Sicilian mother saves her creativity for the kitchen. Even after raising 9 children to somewhat-successful adulthood, she takes pleasure in making anything from simple Italian treats to full-scale feasts. (In this photo she is making Sfingi, sometimes referred to as Sicilian Donuts.)

Happy Mother's Day to you Mom. What's for dinner?

River Encounter

He stood upon the bank, and thank.
This isn't as it ought, he thought.
That's quite a mighty drink, I think.
In which i could get sunk, he thunk.
I see it every day, I'd say.
I watch it every week, I'd speak.
But still inside my head, he said.
Its presence scarcely pokes, he spoke.
– by Conor O'Keefe

Comic from Space

Here's a comic I did a while back that I got around to photographing. I used the opportunity to swith the order of last two panels, which I think makes a big difference. Click on it for a larger image.

Another Cardboard Rhino

Every time we think the population of Cardboard Rhinos is diminishing, we encounter new evidence of Rhino sightings. This one came yesterday, after telling my class at the VCU Adcenter about the Cardboard Rhino blog, one of them told me that have been carrying around a Cardboard Rhino given to them by a friend. I didn’t believe it, but she produced evidence, which I quickly photographed to share here.

So I invite you, the few readers who may have happened onto this new blog, if you have had a sighting of a Cardboard Rhino, in any form, please submit a photo.

Found Music

I was recently trying to watch the trailer for the upcoming movie, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," and the player really screwed up. It was Windows Media Player, so no big surprise. Anyway, it did some really weird stuff, and ended up just playing the audio from the trailer, and it played only garbled and chopped up into little increments.

I immediately realized that I had stumbled across some amazing music that sounded like what aliens must listen to, so I used the always-handy Ambrosia Software program Wiretap to record the sound.

EDIT: Okay, because of difficulties listening to the music I've matched it with a simple animation an uploaded it to YouTube.

A Small Addition From Tom O'Keefe (click to enlarge)

Everyone's searching for the next "Big Idea", but maybe we should be looking for the next great little idea. And the next, and the next…

Trinity High School Jazz Festival

On Sunday, we went to the Jazz Festival at Trinity High School. It was clear and sunny and the music was surprisingly good. By surprisingly good, I mean that it wasn’t really polished or overly professional and that made it more enjoyable to me. I think it’s easy to forget that music doesn’t come out of machines sounding perfect. It comes out of people struggling to hit notes and breathing hard after a trumpet solo and squeaking the guitar strings and they whisk their fingers to the next chord position. I think I’d rather sit ten feet away from a pretty good high school jazz musician than listen to Miles Davis on my iPod.

Toys "R" Us at the Adcenter

My Adcenter class has been working on developing brand concepts for Toys "R" Us. The effort has made everyone feel like this is one brand that deserves another chance at greatness. To see some of the places we've been in the development of the brand, you can check out the class bolg at: http://web.mac.com/kelly.okeefe

Mr. Peanut

I've donated my collection of advertising characters to the VCU Adcenter. Even so, I find I still want to add to the collection, This Mr. Peanut costume is the latest acquisition.

A Comic From Conor O'Keefe (click to enlarge)

Spring Has Come, by Barry O'Keefe

Spring has come

Oh the squirrels are nibblin!
Oh the children's gigglin!
Oh the trees are jigglin,
Wrigglin, ticklin,
An showin their barely growin
Flarse and greenery

Booming and blooming,
Gushing and mushing,Whooshing, Swooshing
Plooshing,
No excusing
Not to walk outside
Buzzing Fuzzing
Cheeping Chirping
Pistols, pollen fusing
Go Perusing
Down by the railroad tracks
Smelling, belling
Quelling swelling
No Not telling
Winter's losing
Barefoot cruising

Oh spice horizon!
The grass stopped hidin,
neath the frosty 'jamas
clouds stopped providin.
Oh I think its well
some liquid fell
instead of ice.

Snake, by Tom O'Keefe (click to enlarge)