International Motion Arts Award!

My thesis project at SVA, Hotel Pandemonium, was an interactive ebook for the iPad. An app that worked like those books from the 80s where you could make some choices that lead to different rooms and endings and then go back and see what would have happened if you followed other paths.

The last semester at SVA was hectic working part-time, learning how to program the damn thing and making all the story and drawings, but it was all worthy and really fun to work with my thesis advisor Marcos Chin, our e-book class teacher Matthew Richmond and the thesis coordinator David Sandlin.

I just found out that it has been awarded in the first edition of International Motion Arts run by American Illustration-American photography and will be showcased at the forthcoming AI-AP Party! So far it´s a student-licensed beta, not available in the app store but if it gets exposure enough I would love to develop it much further!



HotelPandemonium from Rafa Alvarez on Vimeo.

New Cover for Linea Curve Art Magazine

After the craziness of finishing a children´s book in a record time (see post below), I came back to the usual editorial illustration stuff. I was honored to be interviewed by South African-based trend magazine NICE  as well as the outstanding visual arts magazine Linea Curve. The icing on the cake came when they asked me too to create a cover for their new issue (thanks to editors Vanesa Leon and Luis Daza!)

I always wanted to make a cover upside down and see if people could resist the temptation of flipping the magazine. Other than that, royal families can be a nasty surprise for a vampire...

Challenging commissions

So what could be stranger to a "pulp" illustrator than drawing children´s books? And by that I mean true children´s books, the ones that are going to be read by kids and not by their twisted parents (let´s face it, Mr. Burton and Mr. McKean). Well, the publisher didn´t mind about the prior level of illustrated creepiness as long as I kept it cute and colorful this time, so I gave it a try...and I enjoyed it a lot! Now that it´s finished, here is a sneak peak into the story of a certain lady that moved with 7 short roomates...kinda cute, right?