A couple music freelance works have been coming to fruition lately so I thought I'd update with a few previews. I worked up a poster for Soulcrate's First Ave Show and it's lead to posters for a few of their other summer shows. Here are two different color versions.

And MPLS based More Than Lights is coming out with a new album this summer and here's a sneak peak at the artwork that is going to accompany it.

I had the honor of working with Soulcrate to help with their 10th Anniversary show this last December. I created a Ten Year crest logo and helped with their stage decor at the beautiful Orpheum Theatre. Based on the The Kick Rocks Collection art, I took its cartoon violence to the next logical level: gratutious gore and violence. I created an animation to be displayed behind the group as they played. It was my first major forray into After Effects and it was wild.

Here are some of the sketches and pitch material I used for the idea.

And here's a gif of my first, first After Effects test.

I recut the following animation to fit with own of their songs. This wasn't exactly how the final edit played, but you'll get the general sense of the piece.

The animation played on a screen behind the guys as they played. It was also surrounded by some conflict clouds taken from the KR Collection work.

The whole experience was brilliant and I am consistently blown away by what this group is doing for the Sioux Falls area. Do you know what the Midwest is? Young and restless.*

* er... wrong artist, but still pertinant

-kiel m.

This was my second Crit piece of the year. I took another go at my poster pad but went big this time. If my first crit piece was an abuse of high quality printing, this time I abused Kinkos. The piece consisted of 100 30" x 40" B&W posters, drilled into the wall and perforated. The pad consisted of 8 different designs in various increments. Here are some pictures and details:

Although there were no instructions one way or the other, in the middle of crit the group decided it was alright to tear some down.

For reviews, I created this video illustration going through each of the designs. To be played on repeat:

And more to come...

-kiel m.

For my second year reviews, I expanded my first Crit piece into a four more panels, all measuring 33" x 55.325" and playing off the same style and obnoxious vector overload. This time I applied it to points of art history.

Here's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp:

And my take on Albrecht Altdorfer's Battle of Issus:

Early Blackletter in 3D:

And finally, myself drawing a portrait of myself, like Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas:

I hope this post didn't crash your browser...More updates coming!

kiel m.

Here is my first crit piece of my second year at Cranbrook. It was going to be a farewell letter to using Illustrator, but it ended up turning into something else. I printed it out 36" x 55.325" on a nice, shiny, pearl finish paper.

Here are some detail shots:

And finally, an artist statement to answer everything:

Yet more updates of brand new older work coming up.

kiel m.

Wo-ah. I almost forgot about ol' kielm.com. But, no apologies! We'll start where I left off. In August, I took part in a show at Studio Couture in Detroit. Along with fellow Crannies Satoru Nihei and Wes Taylor, we created Detroit Typos: Rebranding the Branded City. The description is as follows:

A typographic celebration honoring the city of Detroit through design, performance and manufacturing. Artists/designers Satoru Nihei, Kiel Mutschelknaus and Wesley Taylor along with the youth of Detroit Summer will transform the gallery into a pop-up shop. Opening features live screen printing and music.

On opening night, the studio turned into a pop-up store where visitors could create their own apparel by mixing and matching the screen-printed designs each of us contributed.

Here is some concepting work for my contribution. Detroit as something prestine:

Detroit as something in static flux:

And here is what I settled on. Abstraced typography of "Detroit" in the form of engine blocks.

And the final touch was from Satoru Nihei, who gave it the "Greetings from" addition, creating a pretty great postcard.

Here is a look at the opening night, complete with live screen printing.

More updates in the days to come.

-kiel m.

Brian Bieber of the subliminal hit Ghosts and Horses recently asked me to create an illustration for his equally subliminal TV concept, The New Adventures of Buffalo Bear. Bieber wrote up a great analysis of the Bear in his article, Anatomy of Buffalo Bill. It is mos def worth a read.

Ghosts & Horses just dropped its fourth full length podcast and you can check that out at his site. Calving Season!