The moment when people of the world got to know who MC Hammer ment by “‘Em” in his album’s title “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em”.

^ Wow! There it is! My “So Divided”-illustration printed in Antwerp. I’m so proud!
Shape/Shift-exhibition is now up and pretty in Antwerp, Designcenter de Winkelhaak. Go check it out if you are stopping by in Belgium any time soon. The exhibition is part of the Fiend Projects Art Festival. The festival schedule looks like this:

- Opening Day: Saturday 7th January (2pm – 6pm)

- Stencil Workshop: Thurs 12th (2pm – 6pm)

- Live Painting (Amatic/Hikups more artists TBC):
Fri 13th (10am – 6pm)

- Sketch Art Festival: Sat 14th (2pm – 6pm)

- Inkygoodness presents ‘Shape/Shift’ Print Exhibition: Sat 14th (opening day 2pm – 6pm) (featuring Toy Factory (BE), Hattie Stewart (UK), Muxxi (GU), Kris Jones (UK), El Tobe (UK), Johnnie Weilliang Hoek (NL), Luke Brookes (UK), Piktorama (VE), Brucey Art (UK), Charlotte Audrey Owen-Meehan (UK), Laura Berger (USA), Ossi Pirkonen (FI), E.W. Thomason (USA), Gordon Reid/Middleboop (UK), Jan Werkt (BE), Manuel Regalado (GU), Michelle Turton (UK), Lisa Hassell (UK) & many more!)

- Block Printing Workshop: Thursday 19th (2pm – 6pm)

- Lastplak Live Painting: Fri 20th (10am – 6pm)

- Mesh Print Club, Print Workshop: Sat 21st (2pm – 6pm)

- Artist Talks and Short Film Selection (Bram de Ceurt/Jorrit Spoelstra): Thurs 26th (3pm – 6pm)

- Street Market: Fri 27th (10am – 5pm)

- David Shillinglaw Live Painting: Fri 27th (2pm – 6pm)(after party at Bar Nadar 8pm – 2am)

- Closing Day: Saturday 28th January (2pm – 6pm)

Awesome January news! I was approached by Lisa and the folks of Inkygoodness. They are a good bunch of creative people, organizers of quality art events.

Inkygoodness is putting up a show, Fiend Projects, to the Designcenter de Winkelhaak in Antwerp and they asked me to be one of the featured artists. I was honored to participate. There’s 25 artists (including me) taking part of the exhibition.

The theme is Shape/Shift.

“A being who has the ability to change its shape into that of another person, creature, or other entity or finds its shape involuntarily changed by someone else.”

I decided to do a character, a being, that is in the process of being morphed. There’s an entity of maybe a bit more evil character growing out of the main character. The main character is sitting while the darker bubbly guy is trying to make itself some arms and legs and start living on its own.

Earlier Inkygoodness has been collaborating with Pictoplasma, McBess, Muxxi and other great artists.

Oh, and one more thing, as my main man Columbo would say. This was made with Adobe Illustrator (and with Photoshop). I havent really used Illustrator before, but now I’m determined to make it my friend, by force.

^ Muutakin

JCDeacaux had a campaign here in Finland, where they ask people what they want to see on the streets. I was one of the four professional illustrators that took part of the campaign. I wanted to see “Tolerance, peace and brotherhood.”

I chose Mini Moog synthesizer and Gibson SG, the legendary rock guitar, to be the characters, since the poster was first up in the Flow Festival, in Helsinki. The festival is known to bring a lot of indie rockers and electronic music fans under the same lovely music-roof during a weekend. So that’s why the brotherhood.

^ Teuvo – Maanteiden Kuningas

This illustration was a t-shirt design made for an up and coming Finnish ad agency. They had an idea of making t-shirts out of legendary Finnish rock songs. I chose Teuvo – Maanteiden Kuningas, Teuvo – King of the Road.

Teuvo – Maanteiden Kuningas is a song by Leevi and the Leavings, a famous 80-90′s Finnish rock band. It tells a story of a young man who wrecks several cars within the course of the song and Finally wakes up from the final crash, crying and spitting blood.

The car is in the picture and also the writer of the song, heavily bearded Finnish guy, the leader of Leevi and the Leavings, now passed, Göstä Sundqvist.

^Animatricks Animation Festival 2011

Graphics for Finnish animation festival. Done in collaboration with Sami Viljanto. We designed and made the characters, took the pictures, did all of the marketing material, posters, postcards, catalog and such. Working with Hama-pearls was fun.

^Animatricks Window Painting

In the middle of Helsinki during the Animatricks animation festival there was an animation doll exhibition. I did the painting to the window.

^Peace / Multicoloured Dreams

In the summer I painted a 2 x 2 m wall painting right behind the Helsinki Music Center. The theme was Peace and the painting was part of a Multicoloured Dreams -project. (http://mcdreams.wordpress.com/)

I had an idea of painting a painting about peace in a city in an indigenous, urban totem style.

^ MUSHROOMING

A quick logo for a coalition of work spaces in Helsinki.

^ Profile / Story of Frank, The Little Boy Who Wanted To See Over The Fence

A magazine illustration for a Aalto University magazine called Profile. I was to illustrate story of Frank, a young enthusiastic dude who wants to reach higher, over a fence. It’s basically a story about companies taking flight and the story of Finnish sensation Angry Birds.

^ Happy Daily Things

Couple of small illus for a client that didn’t use the illustrations after all.

^ Amnesty T-Shirt

Amnesty wanted Pingstate, the Finnish designers web community, to curate and organize a shirt design contest. I did a shirt design for Amnesty. It will hopefully be for sale this spring in their web shop.

^ Amnesty Postcards

After designing the shirt, Amnesty asked me to take part in drawing some postcards for oppressed people around the world. I ended up drawing for couple of hours and doing over 50 cards. The picture is from later occasion, similar, Amnesty-organized event.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Tao Of The Dead

Rock album of the year. Just as you think they can’t get any more massive, any further, more vast, more adventurous, they come out with an album like this. An ocean of stories, denotations and culture to dive into.

St. Vincent – Strange Mercy

Annie Clark, the next the bobdylan, sufjan, macca, only smarter, handsomer, better sounding and slightly more awesome. The songs get better and better, though I still love Marry Me. Her songs are like trip, more luscious versions of anything Joni Mitchell has ever composed, as trippy as Magical Mystery Tour or as strange and intriguing as Pet Sounds. Album of the year.

Junior Boys – It’s All True

Good, tiny, electronic album from Canada. The Tavastia gig was also one of the best ones this year.

Little Dragon – Ritual Union

This album came out a year ago, just before the year changed, but Spotify seems to give it the year 2011, so it made the list. The record is awesome. Maybe not as great as Machine Dreams, but still great beyond a lot of albums this year.

Bon Iver – Bon Iver

Best “soft rock” album of the year. Beautiful melodies, moods and songs. You really don’t need much more.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Wolfroy Goes To Town

It’s Will Oldham. That’s about it. I really hope next year’s new Bonnie & Matt Sweeney -album is going to be as good as Superwolf-masterpiece.

Jamie Woon – Mirrorwriting

James Blake – James Blake

These albums, like brothers, are eery, moody, interesting compilation of songs. Blake found a sound on his first long play, clearly. Woon made a great, great album, but the live performances have yet to reach its level. Blake on the other hand wiped the floor other performers at Flow 2011 -festival.

Com Truise – Galactic Melt

Neon Indian – Era Extran̂a

Toro Y Moi – Freaking Out

Siriusmo – Mosaik

Justice – Audio, Video, Disco

Interesting year for electronic albums. Electric and electric, I don’t know, but hey, they have good songs in them. Interesting melodies.

Mazes

The 90′s alternative revival. Yuck lost and Mazes won.

Jane’s Addiction – The Great Escape Artist

Foo Fighters – Wasting Light

Two very solid rock albums. Foo Fighters’ gig in Finland was one of the year’s highlights.

Hexvessel – Dawnbearer

Very peculiar and strange mood in this one. Death folk? Swamp rock? Occult acoustic? Give it a listen, I bet it’ll challenge you in a way you didn’t think was possible

Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What

Simon’s at it somewhat in the spirit of his masterpiece Graceland. Works well, it’s easy to feel the recording session’s easygoing experimental atmosphere.

M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

Good songs. What else do you need? Anthony Gonzalez has decided to start composing and not only doing anthems for the alternative emo’s.

The Shit of 2011:

Lulu

Gerry Rafferty died

Columbo died

the Big Man, Clarence Clemeons, died

Gil Scott Heron died

Pete Postlewaithe died

A while ago I was contacted by the folks of Wantlet. They kindly asked me to design a character for them and their product. We came to the conclusion, that best representation for their product would be a perky squirrel. Here’s the result. Squirrel in a couple of different poses.

Had to make an inventory of the characters I’ve design for the children’s music albums. Quite a lot of bobbleheads, I’d say. Impressive amount characters, some of which I’m actually still proud of and pleased with. And this is not even the whole bunch. Tho there’s a majority of the elements / characters on the picture.

Also kind of fun to see these guys on the same page. At same time.

My work is now featured in:

http://publishing.pictoplasma.com/gadgets/pictarot

And in:

The 2nd Book of Awesome – Deluxe Edition by butt3rscotch | Make Your Own Book

Yay!

1st: A Major Portfolio Update

It’s running on the Cargo Collective platform. Love it!

Check it out here:
http://cargocollective.com/ossi

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2nd: Ovi Maps Challenge

This is an oooold project. It started about a year ago. The end product looks a lot like “me”. This is what I do. I’m happy that in the end we got to keep the colorful scheme in the game and it even has some of my characters there, and they’re quite discernible.

The process of making the visuals, the whole game, was long, as it almost always is with games. I enjoyed it, tho. This was my first bigger project after a few year long career in the advertising business.

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3rd: Hyvä Terveys

Another illustration for Hyvä Terveys -magazine. This wasn’t used, because the written text changed quite a bit in the end.

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