Toy company Strottman International was working on a line of characters inspired by Christmas elves. Early in the process they hired me to work up some rough designs inspiration. It was really fun to just noodle around and explore. I submitted over twenty sketches. The project evolved and gears were shifted, as often happens in the early phases of something creative....
Freelancing can lead to amazing opportunities.
Last week it just so happened that each of our kids were away from home at the same time for different reasons, leaving my wife and I with the rare opportunity to have the house all to ourselves for a few days. Then I got a call from a national media network to ask if I could travel to Alabama to do courtroom sketches for a sentencing. (I occasionally do courtroom sketch work.) It just so happened to coincide perfectly with our free time with no kids. So we made an impromptu decision to drive together down south on a whirlwind trip and see how many places we could visit in four days.
We were skipping like a rock across a lake from Minnesota all the way to Alabama. We briefly hit about ten different tourist sites. At some we stayed for an hour or two, at others we just snapped some quick photos and moved on. Among other things we saw a Civil War battlefield, a scale replica of the Parthenon, downtown Nashville, Graceland, the St. Louis Arch, and Col. Potter’s house. I also tried grits for the first time and heard my first ever live blues band.
I had never visited the South. The people were just as friendly and laid back as I had always imagined and the food was amazing. I definitely want to go back someday.
Our first stop was Hannibal, Missouri. On TV show M*A*SH, Col. Potter is from Hannibal. According to the city’s website, if he were a real person this is the house he would have lived in. (Bonus tidbit for M*A*S*H superfans: In the car we were shuffling some relaxing music. Just as we pulled into town the car started playing Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet, which is the same piece of music Charles tries to teach the band of doomed POW musicians in the final episode, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen”. It gave me chills, the good kind.)
Hannibal is also the boyhood home of Mark Twain. There is Twain stuff everywhere including shops, museums, banners, replicas of buildings from his stories, and statues like this one of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
Create Play Connect is a Minneapolis marketing agency that specializes in event marketing. They were putting together an interactive display to promote Core Power at marathons and running events. They hired me to work up some rough concept sketches to pitch their ideas for the display. Download a PDF portfolio of my FPO Comp Art here: Download PDF Portfolio ...
At the library I picked up a collection of old Frankenstein comic books from Marvel. In the back of the book is a two-part story teaming up Spider-Man and Frankenstein against the Wolf Man and a mad scientist. Yes, Marvel actually did that! And it was more fun to read than I expected. My understanding is that although the Frankenstein...
For three years I did a webcomic called Sketchbook Silliness. I stopped partly because I lost interest in goofy jokes and became more interested in serious Christian ideas. I'd slip in a serious "spiritual" comic now and then, and some of them were my most widely shared. Here's one of my most popular: I've decided to start a new webcomic, Narrow...
More messing around in Procreate (with a bit of touch up in Photoshop). If you like this design, it's available print-on-demand on several items in my Redbubble store. Order on Redbubble ...
