Fuck yes!

Click!

Animation Test

Backgrounds

These are some backgrounds I'm doing for a flash game involving the mining industry.

More work sketches

Professions

Work's pretty crazy at the moment. Here's a sketch I did of a bunch of "professions". See if you can guess all 15 of 'em! Click the image for a larger version.

Work Roughs

Nothing too exciting here, just some sketches from a job I'm working. I would have liked for these to be a little wackier, but the client is very specific about the style.

Work stuff

Looks like that daily sketch thing died an early death. I'll see if I can revive it later today.

In the meantime, here are some concept roughs for a job I'm working at the moment:

Less Grotesque

I was asked by my client to make the characters I was drawing "really cute", so here's what I came up with:

They didn't much like it. In fact, they asked for the characters to be "less grotesque". And here they are:

I still like the look of my original characters better, the newer ones look a little too generic to me, but I'm working for a very fickle Japanese market, and they apparently like their cuteness.

Daily Sketch

Did the line-work for these in Illustrator - which is surprisingly nice to draw in - and the colour was done in Photoshop.

Daily Sketch

I've decided to start doing daily sketches aside from the work I'm doing to keep things fresh. I was off to a great start today when my computer decided to have a small heart-attack. Unfortunately I wasn't able to save the file, but I took a quick screen-grab while everything went to hell:

Hopefully tomorrow's effort will be more solid.

Workin'

Seems like I've been updating this thing less and less often, which is a real shame. I've gotta get back into the habit of drawing just for me. Everything I've been doing lately has been work related, which is good, in a way, as it means I'm actually getting work. But my work morale is suffering a bit from the lack of personal projects. I might implement some kind of daily sketch thing starting Monday. Or I might not. We'll see.

Here's a sketch for an educational text I'm working on:

And here's the completed Lucy's Crown poster:

The band has been in the studio recording their first EP and they want to use my poster art for the cover, which is pretty sweet.

Finished work on the Sammy J job. I went to the first performance the other night. It was a secret show for family, friends and industry peoples. It was completely kick-ass. Seriously, if you're in Melbourne during the Comedy Festival, or Adelaide during the Adelaide Fringe Festival, you must check out the show: Sammy J in the Forest of Dreams.

Peace out, homeslices.

My celeb look-alike!

Uncanny!

First try with Adobe Illustrator

Guzzle it, kid!

Sammy J in the Forest of Dreams poster and more work...

Hey readers. Here's the poster I finished today for Sammy J's comedy festival show (click it to enlarge).

Had a great deal of fun working on this and the shadow puppet stuff (which is still in progress). It was probably the most satisfying and gratifying job of my fledgling career. And I wasn't even very well-paid for it!

The next couple of months are looking to be fairly busy. Apart from finishing up the work for the Sammy J show, I'm starting work on some illustrations for a design firm up north. They're putting together an interactive website for a mining company (as far as I can tell - it's still early days and I don't have the full project details yet). The illustrations are going to be animated, which is pretty exciting.

The other job I got is through a local design firm putting together a picture book for Yarra Valley Water, who provide water and sewage systems to a large chunk of Melbourne. The book is to educate kids on the basics of the water cycle. It's going to be printed in large format (1 metre!) for classroom reading. I'm planning on learning Adobe Illustrator for this job, something that I've been putting off doing for months, but it's finally becoming a necessity, so I guess I'd better knuckle down!

So yeah, looks like 2008 is fast picking up speed!

Illustrating Fables and Rhymes - Part 2

Here's the second and final part of the Fables and Rhymes essay posted by DB Dowd. Some more great examples in this part.

Illustrating Fables and Rhymes

DB Dowd posted some great insights into illustrating a fable or rhyme, with particular attention paid to "what we leave in and what we leave out" (economical composition) to achieve a focus on the narrative. He uses some great examples as well. Highly recommended reading if you're interested in this kinda thing.

You can almost taste the graphite.

Did these using some sweet Photoshop brushes I found via Cedric Hohnstadt's blog.

Return of the BLOG!

Hey what's chillin' homeslizzles? Long time no blog, eh?

It's 2008 now, and I'm fast coming to the realisation that a new year does not a new man make. But this is a good realisation, I suppose. I'm getting back into the swing of things after an extended psychological holiday.

I've been working on a number of small projects, with some bigger ones on the horizon. Here's a bunch of backdrops I did for the shadow-puppet portion of a larger live comedy/musical/puppetry/awesomeness experience titled "Sammy J in the Forest of Dreams".

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be party to a live read-through (full performance) in a lounge room in Brunswick. Friends, this show is funny. If you're in Melbourne during the International Comedy Festival, you must check it out.

Um, what else? Here's something I did for my girlf:

And here are some leftovers:

Later gators!

"Lucy's Crown" poster update

2008 has been good to me so far.