To keep my site free of the boardroom stock photos you see everywhere else, I’ve chosen to design my own graphics. This means posing in ridiculous costumes, making Photoshop collages, and spoofing logos from TV, film, video games, and album covers. As I move into more and more design work, I thought it would be fun to share my efforts.
I incorporated Matthew Revert’s cover art into this layout. Photo by Bryan Polite.
I incorporated Matthew Revert’s cover art into this layout. Photo by Bryan Polite.
This was the original cover image back when this story was called “Portrait of an Asshole”
Bagul from Sinister
Lipstick-Face Demon from Insidious
The Babadook
Samara Morgan from The Ring
Evil Ash from Evil Dead 2
Slender Man
Bleeding Heart
“How does this keep happening”
“Makes sense to me”
Eyes Without a Face
“That’s not me”
“Drew smash!”
Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance
Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Chuck Palahniuk’s Make Something Up, Stories You Can’t Unread
Cloud busting
How to brush those intrusive thoughts away
This week I’m talking all about Cop Dramas
“Nobody can see the great Oz, even I haven’t seen him”
“You’re wasting my time”
“Well bust my buttons”
“Well that’s a horse of a different color.”
The villagers find the windmill offensive
The villagers can’t take a joke
The villagers find Frankenstein’s monster offensive
On this weeks blog I go full Miami Vice
Wear your influences by drawing attention to them
Point out your influences so you can show how you’re different
Maybe I just wanted to see what my name looked like in the Drive font.
We’re all connected to Kevin Bacon, but how?
People used to say I looked like Macaulay Culkin
“When I play with action figures I make them kiss”
Sometimes a writer doesn’t have enough love to go around.
These images were inspired by Karin Dreijer Andersson’s makeup in the Fever Ray’s music video for ‘If I Had A Heart.’
A skull wearing Skullcandy headphones
“Merry Sithmas to all”
Now it’s cool. We fixed the franchise, because… time travel
Clever girls
Now this is embarrassing
“I have to resist the compulsion to reference everyone of these”
Some pieces of research material don’t age too well
Someone is plotting something
“Where every movie ends tragically”
“Sappy, sentimental, and liberal with your heartstrings”
The keys to separating a general goal from a specific one
SMART goals might not help you make big life changes, but can they help your characters?
It’s important to set goals, not just for you, but for your characters
What’s the Big Ideation?
Internal monologues can take us beneath your hero’s mask
We need to see more of your character than they’re willing to show the world
Hear no exposition, see no exposition, speak no exposition… or maybe just a little.
Someone has a bad idea
Don’t let the Anti-Muse steal your spark
My best Dr. Strange Pose
The Mind Explosion
The Force Awakens
We got our psychic vampire from a breeder
“Am I the only one who sees that?”
Bottoms up
She doesn’t believe in doors
My shadow keeps doing that
“There’s nothing behind my back…”
“… I swear.”
Eye of the Beholder
Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?
To Serve Man
The character select screen for some beautiful fighting game
The ghost with most
Before deciding to run, Freddy Drewger thinks you should sleep on it
Nosfera-Drew is always hungry
“They all float down here”
Pin Drew wants to play a game
Bride of Franken-Drew
The Headless Dreman rides again
C-Drew-Lu rises
The Wolf Drew smells something funky
Franken Drew doesn’t like what his bolts are picking up
Drewcula has been caught red handed
“It was a graveyard smash”
A concerned demon weighs in on the War on Halloween.
The real reason for the season
“Have you seen this movie?”
Each your heart out, René Magritte
Channeling my inner Magritte
Chrome Face
See my credentials
Say “Hello” to my little friend
Fear always has a confidant handshake
“Who the hell is this?”
“It’s not me you fool. That’s the evil one!”
My evil clones never do any chores. They just taking over the couch and claim all the video game controllers
The demon’s eyes are upon you now.
Look into the eyes of pure evil.
Literary Kitty learns grammar
Take too much inspiration from the real world and your notebook turns into a black hole
My notebook swallowed the sun, enshrouding the world in eternal darkness
Another life swallowed up by my fiction.
The Death’s Head Constellation
Is there empathy in the cloud?
Fahrenheit 451
At the Mountains of Madness
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Depression never lets me reach a certain altitude without putting me down.
There’s a gremlin on my wing.
“You promised to tell me everything I needed to know about self-publishing, but only delivered a few measly paragraphs.”
“False advertising is not a great way to establish your brand.”
“Give me all your thoughts on the subject, even if you have to break it into parts.”
I’m plagued with ideas
I’m haunted by ideas
I’m surrounded by ideas
Idea man blows his top
Writers, whatcha gonna do when your characters come for you?
Don’t look down
Put my moral flexibility to the test
Let me be your billboard
Fishing for another click
Spoofing BuzzFeed’s logo to make a point
Nintendo controller by Bitter String Art. Check them out at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BitterStringArt
Gothatrex for managing the symptoms of Sad Batman Syndrome
Busted
“Is the demon in this mug shot the one who attacked you?”
Demons clearly use yellowing strips.
Officer Ouija is on the case.
People who know me, should’ve suspected my demon nature for some time.
I’m available to design your cover art if you ask nicely.
Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase “bright eyes.”
Toy soldier gathering dust
My attempt to make myself look like a plastic toy soldier
Facebook’s emotional experiments give user mixed messages
Facebook’s new mind control features are its best ever
Is Facebook toying with your emotions?
If a ride on Superman’s back doesn’t cheer Keanu Reeves up, nothing will.
I have a cutout Batman, then I have a cutout Superman. What’s the first thing I do? Put them in this situation. I guess I’m a romantic.
Now Batman has nothing to be sad about.
It’s hard for Kanye to be sad when Superman’s giving him a lift to the studio.
How does NBC’s Constantine stack up against the original Hellblazer comics?
Channeling John Constantine through Tim Bradsteet’s original cover art.
Does NBC’s new Constantine series have the bite of the original Hellblazer comics?
Does NBC’s Constantine dogmatically follow it’s source material?
Does NBC’s Constantine have a prayer of saving supernatural horror?
Can NBC’s Constantine live up to the original Hellblazer series?
Will NBC’s Constantine give weaker supernatural TV shows the two finger salute?
There’s a right way to eat Twitter
Insert self here
1957’s Rainbow Batman finally gets a real life rendition.
Beware of the Batdog
Catwoman steals herself a Batman
Mr. Freeze gets the Dark Knight into the holiday spirit
Batman, the ride
“Don’t you want to play a little chess first?”
Swing and a miss
Not today, thank you
Dogzilla Rises
Officer Drew is on the scene
The Sympathetic Devil
Drewly Whiplash
“When I can, I prefer to eat the rude”
Was this article an excuse to to create this image?… Maybe
What better way to celebrate Hannibal getting a 3rd season than to turn myself into Will Graham’s Antler Man hallucination.
Drewper Man has no shame
Hail Hydra!
Full disclosure: I saw a design like this on chezapocalypse.com for their Cthulu themed YA Romance novel Awakened and I loved it.
The Cult of Comcast
The Time Warner Templars
Blogging your heart can be a tug of war with your brand.
The Triforce of accomplishment
My interests could stand to be more diverse, but these were the first ones that came to mind.
My brand strikes again
Something about seeing these icons dripping with blood just feels right
Move over Heartbleed bug, meet Headbleed
The Facebook Bait-and-Switch
Introducing the Facebook “Pay” button the only way authors can reach anyone
28 Drews Later
It took a lot of restraint, preventing myself from calling this article “Drew Detective”
Facebook’s new button exclusively for content creators
V for Valentine
Surveillance-themed candy hearts
The yellow tie of judgment is upon you
When I get mad I go full Super Saiyan
Drops mic, walks off stage
“I eat waste. I devoir redundancy, and I am very hungry.”
“Your earning reports prophesied the fall of your profits, yet you continued to employ the same methods”
Dear Internet
Laptop rage has nothing on Necronomicon rage
Now that’s a stock photo I can get behind
A study in spilt ink
My first try at a grungey logo for ye old website
What started as a Photoshop tutorial on how to create a heart balloon, turned into this, because things just kind of turn to cobwebs when I leave my mark on them.
Made to look like I dipped my hands in blood, made a heart shape, and smeared it against the wall
As numbers go, 13 always gets such a bad wrap. I chose to vilify 11 instead
In my effort to spoof Sherlock Holmes I somehow created an album cover
Reproduction of the original Highlander logo with my “Franchise Fixes” title
There can be only me
No, I do not own a katana. That’s pure Photoshop
It’s the little bit of lens flare that really sells this image
Of course I’m getting sucked into Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep
This picture reminds me of Brian Yuzna’s From Beyond
You can’t do a cover of Henry Rollin’s I Know You, and Trent Reznor’s A Warm Place without combing the fonts from Black Flag and Nine Inch Nail’s logos.
Nine Inch Nails Downward Spiral font mixed with Black Flag’s font for a cover song
The title photo is a spoof of the poster for Friday the Thirteenth Part 2
This is my take on the logo for the silent film Metropolis
Was this article an excuse to bring this outfit out of the closet? Maybe
I was thinking of calling this “Red Drew Redemption” but thought better of it.
My Red Dead Redemption logo spoof
A fridge full of condiments, but no food.
No time for love Dr. Jones
The snake image comes compliments of http://www.madetobeunique.com
“Look out behind you, it’s George Lucas!”
All and all this iPhone is just another brick in the wall
“Drew, you can’t put a saddle on a T-rex”
“Drew, you just hit Bin Laden with a flying skateboard!”
“Drew, you just ran over Hitler with a Delorean!”
The higher power of Howard
The gospel of Howard the Duck
I follow the teachings of Howard the Duck
When my friend refused to take me to a record store to get a photo of me holding this album, I decided to do this instead
This story syncs up with the Wizard of Oz.
Channeling Tim Bradstreet’s comic book cover art style.
I was holding a little pumpkin in the original shot
After getting a lot requests for prints of my art I decided to open a store on REDBUBBLE where you can find prints and a whole lot more.
Cool! I’m such a noob when it comes to Photoshop– always so impressed by the amazing things I see others do with it. Nice work on that front, and I love your spoofing! ‘Drewture’…ho ho ho.
Thanks so much for checking them out. With so many of these designs, I tried to reverse engineer my favorite movie posters. There’s a lot that went into that Back to Future logo.
My favorite thing about these photos is I bet they were so much fun to make! Your editing skills are so creative and your expressions are fantastic. Great idea to make your own visuals to compliment your blog posts, and you do it well. I’m impressed with your dedication. What I know of photoshop, it can be time-consuming.
These were a ton of fun to make. At first, I was afraid to post pictures of myself on the blog at all. The first few had me trying to look badass and cool, they came off as ridiculous. My persona evolved into a scholarly doofus. I’m going for the Stephen Colbert of the literary world look.
Haha! I think it’s great 🙂 Your personality shines through in your work and makes you very likable.
very creative
These are awesome.
Thank you! Glad you like them.
I must admit, I’ve never been here. *looks around* Nice place, BeetleDrewce. Is it new? I’ve always loved your graphics. (They’re like high-quality grelfies. Get it? Graphics and selfies? I crack myself up.) Anyway, glad to see these all in one place for some eye candy. Not that you’re eye candy. I mean, not that you’re NOT eye cand… *leaves*
Right. And I see from previous comments this is not a new space. *turns to leave* Yeah…sorry about that. *walks into the slider door*
No, it isn’t new, but I keep adding so many no things to it. Sometimes I have cool designs that don’t fit any articles and this is the only place I have to put them.
BeetleDrewce was from last Halloween. This year I already have an Insidious, Sinister, and Slender Man spoof ready to go.