John Martz

Feed address changing

Happy new year!

The feed for this blog is being deleted. It will be changing to http://feeds.feedburner.com/robotjohnny and while it should redirect automatically, please take a moment to update your feed settings or subscribe to the new address to be on the safe side.

Leave a Comment

Don’t eat the blue apples

A recent magazine illustration featuring the items available at a local shop.

Leave a Comment

Finest Quality

I recently moved from Toronto to Ottawa. During the pack-and-purge process, I rediscovered these boxes of pastels and charcoal sticks. They belonged to my grandmother, who, an artist in her own right, passed them down to me when I was a teenager and she had she had long stopped using them herself. I don’t know how old they are; all that Futura suggests the late 1960s. My grandmother was a child of the Depression, so saving, recycling, and reusing things was in her nature.

And here I am, still hanging on to them. From apartment to apartment, they have traveled with me, and not once have I used them in the 15-odd years that they have been in my possession. But look at them! Look at those boxes, that typography. Could you throw them out?

4 Comments

Sexy People

Recently I have been using photos from the Sexy People blog as models for end-of-the-day doodling. I’ve been uploading them to Flickr, and here’s the latest, Janis:

I decided to record my process creating this. Using the power of technology, you can now watch twenty-five minutes of drawing condensed down to an easy-to-digest five minutes. Magic:

5 Comments

Mono Lino Typesetting via Google Street View

View Larger Map

I pass by this building often here in Toronto, and I always mean to snap a photo. Usually all I have is my iPhone, which doesn’t offer the resolution necessary to capture both the name of the building AND the brilliant irony of that hand-drawn sign in the window (zoom in for a closer look). Thank-you, Google Street View.

Leave a Comment

A recent spot illustration

Here’s a recent spot illustration for a magazine article about whether pharmacies should hang on to and reuse seasonal items after they expire, or throw them out.

Leave a Comment

Drawn! Redesign

I launched a new redesign of Drawn! today.  Fun new features include user portfolios and browsing the site by tags.

The development of the new site was fueled by two seasons of The Wire, and countless episodes of The X-Files.

2 Comments

Star Wars Uncut

Here’s my entry for Star Wars Uncut, in which people recreate the entirety of the movie in 15-second chunks.  I threw it together in one day, so it’s a little rushed, and C-3PO moves like a rag doll, but it was a fun exercise.

1 Comment

Team Society League

I’ve been regularly drawing quick and dirty jam comics with Zach Worton and Aaron Costain. We’ve dubbed our little collective Team Society League and have been gradually posting the fruits of our drunken drawing nights to a Team Society League Blog.

Our first collected minicomic was put together for TCAF, and I’ll have it for sale online here soon.  In the meantime, enjoy what’s been posted. This recent two-panel jam between myself an Aaron is one of my favourites.

1 Comment

Wizzytinkle: The Superest

Behold the mighty Wizzytinkle! He’s my entry as guest artist for Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter’s always-awesome The Superest. Wizzy here defeats the snooty Margo Hirsch, neighbourhood association president.

Way to go, Wiz!

2 Comments

IE6 denial message for Momentile.com

I’ve been happily using Momentile since the new year to document my life in pictures on a daily basis (when I don’t forget to upload a picture, that is). I was particularly pleased, then, to hear from the site’s creator, Derek Balmer who asked if I’d be interested in illustrating a cheeky image to greet users visiting the site with the buggy and outdated Internet Explorer 6.

Derek knew just what he wanted—icons of all the major browsers having a party and not inviting IE6.  He also suggested a treehouse might be a good idea, and I agreed; the height of the treehouse made for a easy-to-read visual cue that IE6 was not where he wanted to be.

I did a quick doodle in my sketchbook, and though it usually takes me a few tries to find an ideal layout, I knew right away this one was going to work.

So here’s the refined sketch that I showed the client:

And then, the final piece, which you can see at a higher resolution over at Flickr:

It was an incredibly fun job to work on, and having experienced the difficulties firsthand of trying to build a website that renders properly in all browsers, I hope no one ever has to see it.

50 Comments

My first (and last) illustration for Nick Mag

I completed this spot illustration recently for Nickelodeon Magazine. I supplied a number of colour variations, and I’m not sure which they chose, but you can take a peek over on Flickr at the different options. SBD stands for Splat Bird Dropping Service, and it is pure serendipity that it shares its acronym with silent but deadly.

This was my first piece for Nick Mag, and sadly it will be my last. The news of the magazine’s demise hit the Internet earlier today.  I was thrilled to be asked to contribute to the magazine; it had a reputation of hiring the best illustrators and cartoonists, and their comics-only issues were just the best sampling of kids comics on the newsstand.

3 Comments

Nixon Waits in Memphis

2 Comments

Flood and Theft

Now I can’t stop… I’m also collecting these over on Flickr for convenience.

1 Comment

Hawaiian Style Thriller

Some more 2-colour album doodles…

Leave a Comment