aMAZEing

StinkyKids book

Hello Wacom readers! Below is the post that caught Wacom's attention and had them include me in their February eNews blast. About the book: it's not published yet but people can send an email to Britt (the creator and author) if you're interested in purchasing the book she'll put you on a list to send out information when she has it. She also said when the time comes she'd send out autographed copies! The StinkyKids website is HERE.

Also, if you missed the Wacom eNews blast and would like to look at it online, click HERE.

Below is the original blog post. I hope you enjoyed what you've seen and will visit the rest of my blog and website!

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I illustrated three books in 2009, "Stinkykids and the Runaway Scissors" being the second one. "Stinkykids" is a new property created by Britt Menzies, and I think she's got a hit on her hands! She's already been featured on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, and from what I hear she's got some pretty big promotional plans for next year as well. As for the book, it looks like it's going to be in bookstores nationwide in January.

The book was written by Britt, drawn by me and colored by John Trent. Of note for me personally was that this is the first book I ever illustrated without pencil touching paper--I drew the entire thing on my Wacom Cintiq tablet! Below are a couple of finished spreads, with my original sketches above the final art.

Catching a fish

Here's an image from a children's book I just finished. I'm not sure when it will be out...June maybe?

Scuba kid

Character designs

Ideas for modern model-looking cavepeople, a test I did to see how well I could draw straight into my Cintiq.

ZBabies logo

Last year I did the character designs for a property called "ZBabies," and recently I designed the logo as well, seen above.

Below are some of the initial concepts for the main logo idea.



Once the main idea was chosen, I did some variations, and the final logo was chosen from these.

Chef Brothers

This is a logo for a private catering company. The owner wanted a logo that represented his two sons, and the graphic designer gave me a quick sketch to work from, seen below.



I then did my version of that, and the final vector version followed this sketch closely.

28 icons

Easy, breezy fun!

Posable vector cowboy

This guy was intended to be like those hanging cardboard skeletons you see at Halloween. He'll be 3-4 feet tall and his joints will have brads or joints so they can be moved around.

Mini-book

This was a fun little mini-children's book. The little blonde boy had a different emotion for each page, and they'd stick out like a tab on the right. I got to do this fun new style where I fully painted the backgrounds, but kept the characters vector so it all looked kind of like a piece of animation.

I had to leave as much room as I could at the bottom of the left and right sides of the spread for the typography to come later, though from the start the graphic designer was planning on "ghosting" some boxes of light color over those areas so the text would be legible. Below is a typical template I worked from.



And then the finished interior spreads are below.

Picnic Ants

This project was a blast! Doing this in vector took a while, but I'm so happy with the result. I also had to do three little spot illustrations to complement the big scene...



...as well as one of a bee.

Horse stable

This is a crazy one---this one is 3 feet wide in real life! Colored by Robert Vann.

Children's book

This is a title page spot illustration from the new book I did that will be in stores in January 2010. I'd put up more illustrations but I think usually you're supposed to wait until something is published before you can do that!

Christmas art

First up are some vector presents with subtle wrapping paper patterns so that type could be placed over top by the graphic designer and still be easily readable. Each individual present was created with the intent of filling a horizontally oriented 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper, and to be hung on the wall.

All of this art above and below is intended to be used in a classroom scenario.

Below is a vector Christmas tree that was specifically made to fit into a grid, which explains why it's so symmetrical and vertical. Also part of my goal was to make each sheet of paper in the grid interesting if I could, which explains some of the crazy branch shapes. Why did the Christmas tree need to fit in a rigid grid? So that each part of the tree could be printed on a sheet of 8.5 x 11" paper and then assembled on a wall into the whole tree. The garlands also needed to be fatter than I normally would make them and clean so that a teacher could write on them.

Andrew

Tonight my brother put up some fun pictures of my nephew with a fauxhawk, and I needed a subject to practice some things on, so here we are.

DrawerGeek: Dragon

I didn't quite get this one done for DrawerGeeks on Friday, but it was good enough to put up. I'll finish it later!

New art only blog

Welcome to my new art-only blog! I put this together because my original blog became about pretty much everything except for being a place to show art. I'll keep the other blog going but this one is for art only!