Breaking the Ton.

A couple months ago, I received a call from Steve "Carpy" Carpenter. If you love motorcycles and know anything about café racing, you know who Carpy is. My problem was, when he called, I didn't—and he knew it.

Steve Carpenter

For the most part, cars are my thing. And though I've been fascinated by motorcycles since I was a kid, I didn't have any chops when it came to bike banter with the big boys. He'd seen my website and was interested in working together on a tee shirt design for his upcoming interview with The Speed Channel. Rotten luck, I was booked solid for several weeks out and couldn't help him.

"Sure," I say. "I'm a bit busy right now, so I'll put you on the list."

I'll wait a minute to let that sink in.

Okay, read on ...

See, here's the deal: Carpy is one of the most talented bike builders around (he recently built a Honda CB750 café bike for Green Day), and I'm talking on the telephone with him with no better idea about his identity than if he were Mr. Joe Everybody himself. If clueless were water, I'd be flailing in the deep-end wearing concrete underbritches.

But even through my blundering, I have to say, you just can't ask for a friendlier fellow than Carpy. He called me "mate" at least two dozen times, and though my stunted development in the topic of café bike building was glaring, we chatted for fifteen minutes or more about bikes, art, and the possibility of negotiating a gig.

He didn't hire me, and I can understand why. But I've reached a fortunate point in my freelance career where from time to time I can take on special work as a personal project. (I call it fortunate because I know of many freelancers who simply can't afford to take time away from commissioned work to pursue individual projects.) So when the opportunity arises, I'm on it. And this was one of those opportunities.

Café racing is a British invention of the 1960s in which the riders started from a café—typically the Ace Club in London—and raced around the block back to the same cafe before a song on the jukebox could end. Whether they break it, crack it, or just plain "do" the ton, it all meant the same thing: café racers hitting the 100 mph mark. If you want to learn more, check out these links: The Tonup Club, The Ace Cafe and The 59 Club.

Because I didn't have any direction from a real client other than our brief conversation, this project is a bit phony; great illustration or design is always because of a great client. But if Carpy wasn't going to hire me, I was going to hire myself. I wanted to learn what might have come from the project if he had told me, "anything goes." What the heck, if I fall flat on my face, no one needs to know but me. But if I'm happy with the results, I'll offer him a signed print of the piece.

Using some photos from his web site for inspiration, and borrowing heavily from Marvel's Ghost Rider comic, here's what I came up with:

Now back to the drawing board.

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Living History: WWII Engineer and B-17 Top turret Gunner D.B. Dickson

This has nothing to do with illustration or web design. But it has everything to do with respect and gratitude.

This unassuming gentlemen said very little during the July 15th vintage WWII airshow at the Lawrence Municipal Airport in Lawrence, KS. He could easily have been mistaken for one of the many bystanders who shuffled around and through perfectly restored and completely flight-worthy WWII era bombers. But through casual conversation, one friendly visitor chatted with him long enough to discover that this man, Mr. D.B. Dickson, flew over three dozen missions in a B-17 Flying Fortress nearly identical to the one we were admiring.

"One time, I had to release the bombs by hand because the catch was stuck. I stood in the bay with the doors open on a walkway that was only ten inches wide, and we were 25,000 ft up. I wasn't tethered, and there wasn't room to wear a parachute. The air temperature was 40 below. We had to unload the bombs because we were headed down, and they're set to go off at 150 ft. whether they were in the plane or not."

D.B. Dickson, Engineer and B-17 Top turret Gunner

Some of us tried to impress him with our limited knowledge of WWII airplanes, but Mr. Dickson (rank unknown) would softly reply with a smile, "Yeah. Tell me about it." And after some prodding, he relayed the above story to me and about a dozen others who stood by with wide eyes and a deep sense of admiration and respect.

Thank you Mr. Dickson for your stories and your service.

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News Flash! Killer Badger's New Flash Site

Why are illustrators and graphic designers so afraid of Flash? Same reason they're afraid of spiders, floppy armed robots, and those vaguely naughty personal hygiene commercials: misunderstanding. If we could only clear up the great prejudices that surround Flash and Flash Player, and if we could just shed light on all the advances the enslaved code-gnomes at Google and Adobe have made in overcoming the early problems with integrating Flash and interwebs, we could all put aside our phobias and hatred. We'd still have those creepy commercials, but at least rich media applications would be more widely accepted.

To wit, I submit the Killer Badger Illustration Studio Flash web site:



Read on...


So you might ask, what exactly are all the prejudices of which I speak? First, I'd tell you that it's okay to end a sentence in a preposition. Then I'd enumerate each one:

Flash Prejudice No. 1: You can't assign a unique URL to individual rendering states (or "pages" if you insist), making it impossible to send others a link that directs them to that page view.

Not true! Asual.com offers a free application download for Flash developers called SWFAddress. In Asual's words:

SWFAddress is a small but powerful library that provides deep linking for Flash and Ajax. It's a developer tool, allowing creation of unique virtual URLs that can point to a website section or an application state. SWFAddress enables a number of important capabilities which are missing in today's rich web technologies including: bookmarking in a browser or social website; Sending links via email or instant messenger; Finding specific content with the major search engines; Utilizing browser history and reload buttons.

The Killer Badger web site uses SWFAdress in its navigation. I'll admit that I haven't gotten it to work perfectly yet. But I've seen several sites out there that use it successfully (Nissan's web site, for example), so the issue in my case is probably PEBCAC.

Flash Prejudice No. 2: You can't dynamically re-size a flash page to accommodate the user's browser window.

Wrong again! A javascript application called swffit fixes that problem quite easily. I needed just such a fix because the the Killer Badger web site was designed for full-screen viewing. I knew this going into the design, and I knew that viewers looking at the site on the smaller screens you'd find on laptops might not be able to absorb the full resplendent glory of my dashboard navigation metaphor. But swffit sniffs out the browser window dimensions and re-sizes the entire swf file to fit. Brilliant.

Flash Prejudice No. 3: Google's spiders can't crawl - and consequently can't index - the contents of a .swf file.

What? Who told you that? Seriously, who? Why, I oughtta... It might have been true in the past, but not so much anymore. Here is an article that describes just how well Google can extract text and link information from a .swf file and index it right along with all the other html files out there. The technology still has a way to go, but with the growing popularity of Flash, Google is going to continue developing it. Give those code-gnomes a cookie.

Flash Prejudice No. 4: Flash Player is not available for mobile devices. It also poses security risks on other devices.

I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I say! Actually, this one may have some truth to it. But at the time of this writing, Flash Player 10.1 is due to be released within a few months (Spring '10), and it is reportedly able to render swf files to many kinds of mobile devices and tablets. Adobe's admitted security holes are also going to be stitched up, too. This article sums up the promised breakthroughs in this area. Time will tell, the pudding will be proven, and every dog will have his day. In time, the dog may even eat the pudding.

EDIT: A prerelease version of Flash Player 10.1 is available as of April 5, 2010.

Flash Prejudice No. 5: Flash applications are, well, flashy; designers too often rely on attention-hogging animations of dancing hipsters with multicolored dots swirling around their heads as screeching emo bands assault your ears with implorations to sign up for your free thirty-day trial of vaguely naughty personal hygiene products.

Oh, and I suppose all html web sites out there are tasteful and dignified? Pshhh... Truth is, the designer and the client are the ones who should be held responsible - or rewarded - for the outcome of any design. Flash isn't inherently distasteful. In the hands of truly talented designers, astoundingly effective, creative, and downright sublime results are possible. Check out level2D's Flash site. Simply breathtaking.

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Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

Ubuntu is a free, open-source operating system for personal computers. It kicks the pants off of Windows, if operating systems have pants, that is. If Windows did have pants, it doesn't anymore. Now it just stands around in its virtual underwear looking like a drunk and confused Peter Griffin from Family Guy with his paunch hanging over his joy toy. I just made that up.

Unauthorized and possibly unwanted commentary aside, the folks who publish Ubuntu User Magazine absentmindedly invited me to illustrate the Discovery Guide portion of the latest version of their software, dubbed Karmic Koala. Here are the spots I drew for them:

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Illustration and Pit Bull Breed Advocacy

I get a lot of requests from my readers for pit bull illustrations. Some are pretty creative ideas, and I'll always consider rendering these animals in a manner that reflects their dignity, strength, dedication, and yes, even playfulness. But sorry folks, I will not depict a pit bull - or any dog, for that matter - engaging in violent behavior. Even implied violent behavior is off limits.

And in that spirit, I am proud that Game Dog Guardian has been a long-time client of mine. My business partner, Justin "Jud" Kite, and I designed the logo and all the apparel for this newly formed pit bull advocacy organization, headed by Anthony Barnett. Here's a slideshow of the current designs we are preparing for sale on the upcoming Game Dog Guardian site. For several of the tees, the original dog head was designed by Scott Murray.

It's been a few years in the making, but it appears from this recent article in my local paper that Anthony and Game Dog Guardian are getting the props they deserve.

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KC Geargrinder for 2010

Yeah, it's on allright.

The 2nd annual KC Geargrinder hot rod show is taking over Knuckleheads Saloon in Kansas City April 23-24.



This poster was designed in collaboration with my business partner, Jud Kite, from Killer Kite Productions. It's our tribute to the SoCal Speed Shop style.
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