Met up with Jon Vermilyea and Andy Ristaino… We worked with both of them for the Adventure Time x Poketo wallet series. In my opinion is quite possibly one of the raddest collaborations we’ve done to date. They both honored me with some killer limited zines… nothing to do with Adventure Time, just another outlet for them to do what they love to do… storytell, draw, create, make.
Jon’s zines here he did with the famous Risograph.
Andy’s zines, they are filled with rad characters and creatures…
Our friends, Ben Jones (Paper Rad) and the Problem Solverz team (John Pham, Jon Vermilyea, and Martin Cendreda) will be opening an exhibition November 19th at Giant Robot 2, West Los Angeles. You may have seen our studio visit at Cartoon Network HQ with these guys. We got an exclusive tour of their studio, a behind the scenes and glimpse into putting this innovative show on the air. This is one of the most visually arresting cartoons on Cartoon Network right now. The stories and characters are awesome and it’s the team of indie comicbook artists behind this program that is most significant to me. The show is different, the art is current… when you watch it, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
Giant Robot has teamed up with the crew for an exhibition titled, “Art of Problem Solving”. If you’ve seen the show, you understand why it’s worthy of an exhibition. It’s art on national television. And if you know the history of Ben Jones and Paper rad, you see his influence all over this… it’s Ben Jones, 100%.
Below are some images of a super limited zine that our friend, John Vermilyea (lead artist of the Problem Solverz) gave me. These are more like sketches and ideas in this zine, I’m sure you’ll be seeing concept art at the show as well, but, probably tons of finished, vibrant, tripped out pieces. Info on the show below.
Ask and you shall receive. We remember asking Jon Vermilyea for simple napkin doodles for this interview, but it looks like he doesn’t hold back! Read on and check out his very detailed depictions of the ravages of age and mythical beasts.
Meet Jon Vermilyea, another amazing Perverse Universe artist. He studied cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York and served as Production Manager for visual culture hub PictureBox Inc upon graduating. Jon has since gone rogue as a freelance illustrator, lending his talents to apparel, comics, animation and screenprints.
Recent projects include a five-color silkscreen book based on the Mars Attacks imagery from the 1960′s (on which his wallet designs are based), and a very psychedelic music video for Animal Collective’s My Girls.
Jon has done extensive comics work for publishers like Fantagraphics and Vice Magazine, and two of them, Pizzatime and The Princes of Time, are available at Poketo here. They are sure to make stellar additions to your comics collections.
Check out the entire Perverse Universe collection here, and stick around for Jon’s very special illustrated interview!