I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for your interest in my blog and in Cedric Hohnstadt Illustration. Have a very merry Christmas and a wonderful new year!
Christmas Gift Ideas For The Artist In Your Life
If you’re looking for any last-minute Christmas ideas you might want to browse through my Amazon.com store, Cedric Hohnstadt Recommends. It’s a collection of books, DVDs, and other resources related to art, animation, and freelancing. Each item is something I have personally owned, used, and found to be especially helpful and/or inspirational.
Full disclosure: If you order any of the items from Amazon after clicking through my store I’ll receive a tiny percentage of the sale as a kickback (you won’t pay any extra). So you’ll not only be filling someone’s stocking but you’ll be helping me support my iPhone app addiciton.
Sketchbook Update: Pose Studies
As I wrote in my last post I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of keeping a daily sketchbook in addition to my client work. Some days are better than others but overall I’m making good progress. Even after fourteen years working as a freelance illustrator I still enjoying finding new ways to push myself to grow and improve as an artist.
Case in point: Last year I attended the CTN Animation Expo in Burbank, California. While there I shopped my character design portfolio around a bit. Several animation professionals graciously gave me some very helpful feedback. One thing I kept hearing was that although my character designs were strong overall there was not much expressive acting in my characters. Most of the people and animals I drew just stood around, usually with one hand on the hip and the other in what Kyle Baker refers to in his book How To Draw Stupid (Amazon.com link
The Expo is coming up again and I want to be ready with a new and improved portfolio. So tonight I took some time to experiment with posing. I quickly whipped up a very generic looking character and then tried to make him act, express, and emote. These few rough sketches are the result:
It’s a challenging exercise. The more I started to draw the more I realized how weak and cliched my mental acting library really is. While these poses are a vast improvement over the work I was doing last year I still have a lot of room to grow. It all goes back to a basic but very solid principle of drawing: Don’t just look, see. In order to draw well you really need to study and analyze the world around you. I need to be studying live people as well as other actors and especially animators. It will be an ongoing process but one I’m looking forward to.
My Artistic “Influence Map”
There’s a new meme for artists floating around the internet called an “Influence Map”. It was started by Boston artist Matt Laskowski over on DeviantArt.com. Here’s how it works: you download a template that contains a grid of white squares. Then you paste in samples of artwork from other artists who have inspired and influenced you over the years. The bigger the influence the more squares his or her sample takes up on the grid.
Here’s my Influence Map (click to view larger):
It was really difficult to decide who to include, or more accurately who to leave out. There are *so* many great artists out there whose work I have studied and learned from over the years, and the list continues to grow.
To make things a little easier on myself I left out some mind-blowing artists whom I have only recently been exposed to (Nico Marlet pops immediately to mind). Though their work inspires and challenges me, I haven’t really followed them long enough to say that I’ve really absorbed what I can from studying them.
The artists I did include are (from left to right, starting in the upper left): Glen Keane, Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Norman Rockwell, John Nevarez, Stephen Silver, Milt Kahl (he represents all of Disney’s Nine Old Men), Dennis Jones, John Byrne, Heinrich Kley, E.C. Segar, Carter Goodrich, and Rik Maki.
Like any artist my style is still evolving and (I hope) improving. As I continue to learn and grow I’m sure my list of artistic influences will ebb and flow as well. This is just a snapshot of where I’m at today.
What are you waiting for? Zip on over to Matt Laskowski’s DeviantArt page and make your own Influence Map. [EDIT: Feel free to post a link to your Influence Map in the comments section below, as well as over on Matt’s Deviant Art page.]
Download My New PDF Portfolios
At my website you can download free PDF mini-portfolios of my work. The PDFs I had posted were getting a little old—I hadn’t updated them in almost a year and a half—so yesterday I uploaded new PDFs including some of my latest work. Click on over to download my…
- Character Design Portfolio
- Illustration Portfolio
- Toy Design Portfolio
- Resume
They are all in 8-1/2 x 11 format so that you can print them out to keep on file. If you like what you see and could use some freelance illustration or concept art, please get in touch.
Also, about 6-8 times per year I also send out a very brief email showcasing my latest work. If you’d like to be included just sign up.
Bigeye Tuna Guys
Recently I was hired to design a mascot/logo for a new tuna supply company for the restaurant industry. Bigeye Tuna Guys is a new venture that will be launching soon. I was asked to design a mascot/icon based on a “bigeye”, which is a breed of tuna.
Being a cartoonist, my first round of sketches explored various ways to caricature a tuna fish:
The client liked them but wanted to try something more graphic and iconic. So, after studying a book of logos from LogoLounge for inspiration, I came up with the following ideas:
Eventually we went back to the cartoon version and developed it further. Here’s the final design:
If you work in the restaurant biz, keep an eye out for Bigeye Tuna Guys. Their site will be launching soon.