Jaybird is here!

I got a UPS package at my door from China--the final production plush of our melancholy Jaybird! These are going to be sold with the patent-pending pajamas by EscaPeeJays and should be available in a couple of months. It turned out better than I could have expected! I've done tons and tons of plush design in the past for VeggieTales, and sometimes it would turn out okay and many times not. However, the Jaybird looks outstanding.

Better pictures soon!

Ant/Beetle/Bee book

Just finished my final project of 2010, and the 9th book this year for the A+ Guides books that are sold at Target. This book has an insect theme, and here are some of the final inked pages.

Jaybird plush

This has been a long time in the works, but it looks like the plush we've been creating for EscaPeeJays is almost done. I designed the character last November, and did the turnaround drawings for the plush (below) in January of this year. I'm supposed to be getting final samples in the mail soon, but it looks like they're already advertising Jay on the EscaPeeJays website. It really turned out great--very exciting!

2010 Santa Rocks Christmas card

This is the Christmas card I made this year to send to my existing and potential clients, as well as for DrawerGeeks.com (first DG topic for our group since January!)

Being in Nashville, I see a lot of Hatch Show Print concert posters, and I wanted to do something like that for Christmas this year. Plus, I'm a huge Brian Setzer Orchestra fan, so putting the two together sounded like a plan. Below is my working sketch:





I thought I'd try selling the final design on Zazzle as well--you can buy regular greeting cards for $2.95 each and postcards for 83¢ each (while on sale). This is the first time I've ever done any print-on-demand services or online stores, so I'm curious to see how it goes.

April 2011 calendar

Got a couple of other projects to post from last month, which I'll get up as soon as I get approval to do so (one is a series of 4 animated banner ads, the other is two magazine covers).

Below is the initial sketch for the April calendar.

Birthday gift

My buddy Chris turned 30 the other day, and for his birthday dinner his fiancée Chrystal asked us to make him something that had 30 in it. It could be 30 pencils, a list of 30 books he should read, whatever you wanted. Fortunately I had a break in my projects while waiting on approvals, so I thought I'd make him a nice keepsake.



Facebook is great, because you can do stealth caricatures of somebody without having to ask for reference photos. I snagged these photos off of Chris' page and his brother Jeff's and Chrystal's as well. Chris is in the band Graylit and so they take lots of artsy pictures where they don't look into the camera, so that gave me some great photos to work from.



I initally drew the sketch in the computer (above)--it was just easier that way. But I didn't want to give him a lame printout as a gift, that's no good. So I printed it out, put it on the light table and then hand-inked the final. Finally, I put it in a hard-to-find 4x5" black frame, and it was finished.

Chris with his gift at Bosco's in Hillsboro Village.

StinkyKids in Publisher's Weekly

StinkyKids creator Britt Menzies has been doing a fantastic job of promoting her property. The first StinkyKids book (which I pencilled) is due to arrive in stores on November 1 and Publisher's Weekly did an overview of the StinkyKids property to celebrate the occasion. Check it out here.

Little Legends logo

Here's a new logo I did, based upon the "ZBabies" logo I did last year (shown below) . My client ran into copyright issues with "ZBabies" and had to come up with a new name for his property. I used the same base font as ZBabies and fortunately still had an "i" in "Little Legends" so I still could organically keep the star in the logo, which is great since the property is based on the Zodiac constellations.

Bear in a Bubble Bath-color

Raccoons Romping on a Rug-color

Girl Waiting for School Bus-color

Color & Shape book

First image of the girl at the bus stop is for the color yellow--it's supposed to have 7 yellow things in it.



The mice and grandfather clock is about circles.



The king is for the color purple.



This chipmunk-rabbit-squirrel combo is to show 5 brown things. Kids will draw acorns in the blank space left for them.



This corner store illustration is for the color red, and 4 things are supposed to be red here. There's also space left for kids to draw a car on the street.



The farmer's market is for the color orange, and there's supposed to be 4 orange things in it. Kids will also draw more flowers in that empty bucket.



The train is to show what rectangles are.



This bird's nest is to show what ovals are.



The chicken coop is also to illustrate ovals.



The clown in the circus ring is to show diamonds, ovals and triangles.



This is my last book out of 8 total books to be sold at Target stores. There's 30 illustrations in this book, all of which will be colored by another artist. However, I'll get around to coloring a few of these for my portfolio at some point!

If you're looking for the books, they're called "A+ Workbooks," and they are as follows: Subtraction (Fish theme), Addition (Owl theme), Divison (Circus theme), Multiplication (Space theme), Counting (Bunny theme), Same and Different (Similar shaped icons), Alphabet (Animals theme), and now Color & Shape (no specific topic).

Color Tiger and Zebra

Colored a couple of these today.

More ABC book

Z-Zebra at the zoo



Y-Yak in the yard



T-Tiger talking to a turtle



P-Penguins and a puffin



O-Octopus eating oranges



On to the next book!

ABC book

Been working on an ABC book about animals. I'm not quite done with it, but I'll post a few final inks on here. They're not in color because another artist will be handling that so I can keep moving. First up is the above B-Bear in a bubble bath. Below is E-Elephant at water's edge.



I-Iguanas visiting India (can you find the hidden iguanas?)



J-Jaguars sleeping in the jungle (kids will draw in the jaguars' spots)



K-Kangaroo flying a kite



R-Raccoons romping on a rug



I'll post a few more when the book is done.

"Same And Different" book

This book has 86 icons, or 43 pairs of objects that look similar but are totally different. Here's 24 of them.

Once again another artist will be coloring the book while I move on to another one to pencil & ink.

Genie revised

Took an old piece of DrawerGeeks art and finished out the coloring. I've been wanting to do that for a while.

14 icons

Each icon meant to be 2" square max. when printed.