New Kickstarter: “Pose Drawing SparkBook” + Free Download

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Illustration by Cedric Hohnstadt

I’m excited to announce the launch of my first Kickstarter, the Pose Drawing SparkBook! It’s a super-charged sketchbook, custom designed to help artists put more life and personality into their drawings. It will include 100 drawing exercises, 32 pages of instructional content, and hundreds of additional drawing ideas in the back of the book.

I’m really excited about the potential for this book to be a great resource for storytelling artists of all kinds – whether they work in animation, character design, storyboards, cartoons or comics.

To help spread the word I’m giving away a free list of 100 sketchbook ideas taken from the back of the book. Get yours here:

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In order for the SparkBook to become a reality I need to raise enough funds. In exchange for a small contribution to the project you can get several rewards, including the book itself (with free ebook version) or other resources I’ve created. You can read all about it and watch a promo video over on my Kickstarter page.

Would you consider helping spread the word? Just use the share buttons below, or copy and paste the following into your favorite social media:

Free download: 100 Sketchbook Ideas For Posing Your Characters: http://bit.ly/15kOpi2

Thanks a bunch!

Sketchbook Update: Getting Dressed In A Hurry

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Sketch-"Getting Dressed In A Hurry"

Very soon I’ll be launching a Kickstarter project, a new tool to help artists add more life and personality to their poses. In preparation I’ve started doing pose sketches to communicate various themes and situations. I’ve already posted a page of sketches playing off the theme of “tired”. Here’s one of a man getting dressed in a hurry.

Once the Kickstarter launches I’ll also be giving away a freebie for artists to help promote the project. If you’d like to be one of the first people to be notified when it launches, just send me an email at cedric@cedricstudio.com.

Sketchbook Exercise: Posing A Tired Man in a Chair

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Tired Pose Sketches by Cedric Hohnstadt

I’m working on a Kickstarter project that I’m planning to launch soon. I don’t want to say too much about it yet, but it will be a tool designed to help other artists strengthen their poses and put more life into their drawings.

One of the exercises related to the project is to take a mood or an expression and explore as many different poses as you can to communicate the idea. In this case I chose a tired man in a chair. How many different ways could I communicate exhaustion using the same sitting pose? These rough doodles are the result.

If you’d like to be one of the first people to hear about the Kickstarter project when it finally happens (hopefully soon), just shoot me an email with your email address and I’ll be sure you get on the list.

Window Clings for Goldfish Swim Schools

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One of my regular clients is Goldfish Swim Schools. A little over a year ago they hired me to design a mascot for their company, named Bubbles the Goldfish. Recently they asked me to do a couple of jumbo window clings of Bubbles to hang in their facilities. They wanted something fun that kids could stand next to and have their picture taken. This is how they turned out.

Cartoon Vehicles for Spaner Marketing

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Recently I was approached by a new client, Spaner Marketing, with an advertising concept for a company called SageQuest. SageQuest uses GPS technology to help delivery drivers, technicians, and other employees who spend time behind the wheel by tracking their locations, vehicle efficiency, etc. The ad tagline was “Talk To Your Trucks”. They asked me to illustrate some cartoon vehicles to go with the ads.

The challenge was to try to avoid something that looked like a knock-off of Pixar’s “Cars” franchise. I thought about using the eyes as headlights but that’s very cliche and it crunches the face down too low on the vehicle. Also, most headlights aren’t round these days so it might look odd on modern vehicles. So here’s a few doodles I submitted playing around with possible ideas:

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Eventually the client decided they wanted to float pupils over the hood and use the windshield wipers for eyebrows. To help differentiate from Pixar I also left teeth out of the mouths (except for when it was needed for a big grin), and kept the windshields nice and dark. Here’s the final ads with copy:

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Character Design Shuffle App

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A popular exercise for cartoonists and character designers is to randomly pick from a list of characteristics (occupations, personality types, animal types, emotions, etc.) and then sketch a cartoon character based on them. Some artists, such as Chris Ayers, actually keep a Ziploc bag full of little slips of paper with such traits written on them. They pull out a few and then sketch a character that matches whatever combo they get. After reading one of Chris Ayers’ books I created my own ziploc bag, which I blogged about here.

Stephen Silver recently released a terrific iOS app called “Character Design Shuffle” (iTunes link), which takes this concept into the digital age. Simply select from a group of categories, hit the “Shuffle” button, and then draw the results that pop up. It’s a terrific tool and in hindsight its amazing someone didn’t come up with this idea sooner.

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I’ve had the app on my phone for a few weeks but have been so slammed with work that I didn’t get a chance to try it out until this morning. The app gave me this description: “Female, Weasel, Doctor, Scurrying, Devastated”. The above warm-up sketch is the result.