Just click "Play" on the video above and don't think too hard. This appropriately drowsy ad for the KID ROBOT's Quasimoto action figure's backed by the music of Madlib, whose alter-ego is the helium-voiced Alf/Ant-eater/itdoesn'treallymatter Id that is Quasimoto, sometimes Lord Quas. And now it's this figure that comes in Yellow and Blue, with awesome art by STONES THROW records' art director Jeff Jank:
Jank's artwork is the perfect analogue to STONES THROW's personal and personable hip-hop. Like a Madlib beat which'll sample some dope Melvin Van Peebles record or some weird-ass Bollywood crooner, Jank's pulls from any and anywhere, with a focused, distinctly professional sense of design that's throwback but then, a mindfully handmade, looks-like-doodling drawing style. His drawings looked scratched-out on paper like he never lifted his pencil from the paper while drawing and although his lines wobble, there's a really crazy sense of consistency to the wobble that trips you up.
Notice the hand-drawn sense you get from the "Q" sign on the cover to Quasimoto's The Unseen or the contrast between computerized shading and gradients on that same cover or on Further Adventures and how somehow, it like works right along with the dotted grit of the building's bricks AND the photographs of people placed, collage-like in some of the windows. It has the same insane but perfect sense of contrast and complement as something like Jack Kirby's collages.
This cover for J. Dilla's masterpiece Donuts is crazy on the perspective, but also feels like some kind of weird, captured-from-life image realist image too. Brandon Graham's work is perhaps the best example of what I'm talking about, where somehow it's bubbly, inherent cartoony-ness is so well-rendered that it feels as real as some hyper-realistic painting of the same thing. Something about those angled, nervous lines that mark the different window panes on the shop that accomplishes more than a straight-edge...
There's also just a charm to Jank's work, as seen in the gold-toofed donut gobbler or that Dragonball Turtle Master-esque dude (wonderfully named by Jank, "Lord Wigflip")...
-Promo for B-Ball Zombie War Compilation featuring Lord Wig Flip!
-"Bullyshit"
-"Don't Blink" (Incredible fan-made Lord Quas animation)
How do you come across all this, I could cross my path with stuff like this even if i wanted too. and yet let me say Quasimoto is terrible, i don't know how it can last this long.
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