About two year ago I participated in the Re-Cover exposition, an innitiative of Dutch dance music & nightlife magazine DJBroadcast. We kept in contact through the years and a while back the guys at DJBroadcast asked me to do the cover of their 52th issue!

They briefed me to come up with a cover in my trademark style and I incorporated a bit of a musical theme to tie in with the DJBroadcast theme. The big robot is controlled by a furry alien wearing an eyepatch (the result of a battlescar! Piloting robots can be hard!) and his friends just landed with their UFO to behold the spectacle at hand. Besides the musical theme I couldn’t resist to fit in some retro game nostalgia as you can see by the NES controls on the robot’s torso. The cover was eventualy printed on a nice sturdy paper with a high gloss UV coating which looked awesome in real life, so I included a few photo’s to give you guys an idea.

Besides just creating the illustration I thought it was about time to do a capture of my work process again! So click on the vimeo player below to get a glimpse of how I set up my work using Photoshop! Black Sun Empire and State of Mind were so kind to let me use their track ‘Pitch Dryfter’ as a fitting score (get it at Beatport and al mayor record stores!) and I’ve included some wallpapers as well for your downloading pleasure! Enjoy!

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Ok! So I haven’t updated this blog for almost a year! But finally got to uploading the Control Magazine cover I did earlier this year to my portfolio! Soon I will post another artwork I did as well but I thought it would be still nice to share this one

Control Magazine is a magazine that covers the Dutch game industry and besides asking me for the cover design, they did an interview with me as well. For their cover article they needed a tie-in with Killzone 3 developer: Guerrilla Games. I figured it wouldn’t be to original to copy the excellent design of the Hellghast, so I sticked to the colour scheme instead. Of course there are wallpapers as well, but I can also recommend you to visit the Apple App store to download your own copy for your iPad!

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It’s been a while! But I have finally got an update on my Behance portfolio and this website. A while back I did the 17th flyer for the Champion Sound Drum&Bass night that’s been held at the LVC venue in Leiden. It also features my last, full color, illustration for the Champion Sound flyers. I’ve been making them for about four years and it was time for me to move on.

The 17th Champion Sound flyer once again features a bold color scheme and vessel made using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Wallpapers will follow this week, so keep an eye out on this post and my twitter. Besides this flyer I will post the cover I did for Dutch game mag Control soon as well! Keep you posted!

Update! – You can get the brand new wallpaper right here! (Shout out once again to Momkai for the hosting!)

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A while ago the guys from Noisia asked me to make a sleeve design for their upcoming Alpha Centauri 12″. Noisia consists of three talented guys from Groningen, the Netherlands, and are established producers of electronic music. Finding their roots in Drum&Bass and moving up through all different kind of styles from Dubstep to Electro House this year saw their release of the Split the Atom LP.

Alpha Centauri is the third single taken from their debut LP and they asked me to come up with a design. I’ve know Thijs, Martijn and Nik for quite some while now and have worked with them before, but to come up with a sleeve design was a real privilege, especially when you take the creative freedom that I had into account. The brief was simple: make it a trademark happy Super Silo style and give it a sci-fi theme that has something to do with the title of the track. The result is a colorful, yet in-your-face approach that suits the track and the remix very well.

Besides the original mix, the release also contains a remix by Dubstep hotshots Excision and Datsik and together with the epic original mix it makes up for quite the release! If you want to own a physical copy just visit the Noisia webshop, they should have it in store somewhere this week. Besides the sleeve I’ve also added some wallpapers to cheer up your desktop. Enjoy and don’t forget to check the original and remix of Noisia’s Alpha Centauri on Spotify!

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It’s been a while since I posted more of a cartoon-styled work. But I managed to salvage this one from the archives. More than a year ago a German publisher asked me to contribute to a new game related book release. The target was to remix one of your personal favorite games and after giving it some thought I knew it had to be Nintendo’s classic Starwing (that’s what Starfox was called over here in Europe).

The revolutionary Super FX graphics, fast paced action and awesome soundtrack left me in awe at the time and I occasionally pick it up from time to time even though I own both a PS3 and Xbox 360: it’s that great. If you don’t have it, go to a second hand website and get it. If you don’t own a SNES, get a SNES first and then get it!

Unfortunately the book eventually didn’t take off but I thought it would be nice to share it with you, the people up here on the internet. I had a blast creating the piece and I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did when making it. I’ve also made some wallpapers to cheer up your gray desktop and I might eventually do some canvas prints. Enjoy!

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I just wrapped up the design for the 16th edition of Champion Sound featuring B-Complex. It’s the third one in the Gamebox art-series and features a brand new spacecraft illustration. This time you’ll have to excuse me since I didn’t make a making-of, but if you are still wondering how my work comes to life check out the one I did last time.

The 16th Champion Sound flyer features a brand new bold color scheme and vessel and took me around 12 hours to make using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I’ve also made some wallpaper designs which I will upload somewhere next week, so keep an eye out on this post and my twitter!

Update! – You can get the brand new wallpaper right here! (Shout out to Momkai for the hosting!)

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I recently finished work on the brand new Champion Sound flyer and since it’s been quite a while since I’ve last done a making-of video, I thought this would be a nice one to capture! Besides that I’ve added a new Behance item as well.

The 15th Champion Sound flyer (time flies!) features another sci-fi scene and is the second one in my new ‘Gamebox art’-series after the one I did for the 14th edition with Dieselboy. It is, as you might have noticed, heavily inspired by the early Atari game cover designs. Below you will find the process of creating the illustration in a making-of video. It’s spread across two sections, one for the ship and the other one for the city backdrop. If you want to check the whole video in HD format you can watch it here.

The illustration took me about 10 to 12 hours of spare time I think and after capturing it using a free program called Autoscreenshot, I edited the whole thing together using Adobe After Effects. The guys of Black Sun Empire gave me the permission to use the track ‘Maniac’ by Mindscape which is available on their label Obsessions through Beatport and other stores. More images can be found at my Behance page and feel free to download the fresh desktops as well! The video might not be that suitable for those who are sensitive to epileptic symptoms but I hope you guys enjoy it nevertheless. Feel free to post a comment and have fun watching the video!

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At the end of last month two brand new publications came out! One in the UK-based Advanced Photoshop featuring a nice overview of my work and an interview. The other one is an item featuring stuff that inspires me in Dutch graphic design magazine D-Zone

On top of that the guys at Advanced Photoshop decided to use my artwork as a teaser for the upcoming issue in issue 69! I’ve taken some picture which you can view below but I didn’t post the original interviews of the magazines because they are still on sale. Check out your local magazine shop for a copy of Advanced Photoshop. D-Zone however, is spread across creative companies throughout the Netherlands. Well that’s enough talk for now. Let’s take a look at the pictures and feel free to place a comment!

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Advanced Photoshop UK – Issue 69 – Teaser

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Advanced Photoshop UK – Issue 70 – Insight

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Dzone – Issue 131 – The inspiration of Super Silo

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A while ago Master-blogger Nalden asked me to do a wallpaper. On his blog Nalden uses wallpapers to promote sponsors and people he supports. The one I did is for the US based company Parkmobile and they basicly let me do my own thing.

I incorporated the parking theme and Parkmobile’s corporate colour: green. Besides the large scale wallpaper we decided to print the artwork to canvas. Feel free to download the wallpaper for your own computer and ofcourse don’t forget to visit Nalden.net!

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Yes! You are looking at another retrospective item. This time I thought it would be nice to expose the publications I had over the last year! There were 3 magazines in total including four different articles and I tried my best to translate the Dutch ones.

Below you will find pictures of the original articles in Advanced Photoshop (Dutch), DJ Broadcast (Dutch) and Computer Arts Projects (English) together with English translations for the Dutch ones. Ofcourse all of this is because of promotional use, the rights of the articles stay with the original owners.

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Advanced Photoshop NL – In Beeld – Issue 20, 2009

We already know Martijn van Dam from Momkai, but besides his daytime job he also works hard under his alias Super Silo. He draws his inspiration from videogames, movies, cartoons and science-fiction. “For the Spektrum XL and Chameleon designs I got inspiration from happy videogames like Mario and Viva Pinata and animation movies. The Champion Sounds designs have more of a sci-fi treatment. On that area I’m a big fan of the videogame Mass Effect. That game has the art direction which is on level with Star Trek or Star Wars.”

“I always start out with a quick sketch on paper. Those are far from perfect but they give me a solid base to start my work from. After scanning the sketches I start building the work in Photoshop”, he explains. “I make a lot of use of vector shapes, clipping masks and I’m a huge fan of the blend modes. Besides that I like the use of distinct colours in my work.”

“I wouldn’t desribe my work as art. I like art a lot and I enjoy visiting museums in my spare time, but I see art more as an indirect source of inspiration. My own work has more to do with graphic design than art.”

As a tip he likes to add the following: “Practice is very important and a good design is based on experience and effort. Try to provide yourself a target for your work and keep it original.”

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Computer Arts Projects – Monster Mash-up – Issue 126, August 2009

By day, Dutch graphic designer Martijn van Dam works at Momkai, a digital creative agency based in Amsterdam. By night, he is Super Silo – a talented creator of striking illustrations and unique characters.

The Chameleon flyers were created for a club night in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Octopus is a sweet toothed creature, pictured snacking on a ship transporting confectionery. “I think the bold colourway and 3D polished feel of the images are the most attention-grabbing parts,” says van Dam. “Getting a 3D look from a 2D design wasn’t easy though,” he adds.

Machtig is a drum-and-bass night held in groningen. It’s Chase & Status launch party coincided with World Animal Day, he says, explaining the collection of furry militants adorning the tank on his flyer for the event. He believes that a backstory is always important. “Your character has to make some kind of sense. Even a basic idea can give a creation enough depth to make it stand out – I always try to give a subject a certain role.”

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DJBroadcast – Underground Noise – Issue 37, July 2009 – Original article by Michael Oudman

Everbody who was wondering how the flyers for Spektrum XL, Chameleon and Champion Sound where made better pays attention for a moment. Like everybody who wants to know how the illustration on this page was done.

The man behind all this is the 28 year old Martijn van Dam, who is responsible for this design that was used for Champion Sound, besides his fulltime job as a graphic designer. He made this illustration in about eight to twelve hours under his Super Silo alias. The illustrations was built up from scratch in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. To give you an impression about the impression of te illustration on this page you can check out his Vimeo page for a speed-up registration.

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DJBroadcast – Re-Cover Expo – Issue 37, July 2009 – Original article by Eric van den Bogaard

During DJB’s ‘Design Month’ July, we are organising several expositions and events. The key event is the Re-Cover Expo at Sid Lee. The top of dutch graphic design, consisting of 16 artists picked by DJBroadcast, will create a new cover for their favorite album of all time. This exposition is being held from the 29th of June till the 5th of July and is an ode to the vinyl culture. On these page’s you will find the designs and some additional info.

Why this album?
Because it was the first drum&bass record I ever bought on vynil. Besides that fact I still enjoy listening to the tracks on the album and as Super Silo i’m known for creating some drum&bass related designs now and then.

Specific details for your design?
The album ‘Inside the Machine’ had a very futuristic and in-your-face sound for the time. I translated this in a contrast rich design with outspoken colours. The sci-fi setting resembles the futuristic and fast aspect of the music. The retro game console resembles a literal translation of ‘The Machine’.