Preschool Puzzles for Patch Products

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A few months ago I was hired by Patch Products to illustrate two educational puzzles for preschoolers. One was a farm theme, the other a zoo theme. Each puzzle needed to incorporate several shapes into the artwork (indicated with thick black outlines).

The original concept was to have the border of the puzzle take a shape that would match the theme. For instance, the art director thought it would be good to have the farm puzzle be shaped like a barn. I really liked the idea but we couldn’t come up with a good shape that would work for the zoo puzzle. So instead we wound up just using the same abstract border shape for both.

The puzzles are being shipped from the printer and should be available for purchase online soon. With the client’s permission, here’s the artwork I submitted:

[EDIT: I apologize that the images are a little pixelated. I uploaded high-quality images like always. They even look clean and crisp in my WordPress preview window so I’m puzzled as to why they look so ragged on my blog page. If anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment. Thanks!]

Website Updates + New “Comp Art” Portfolio

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Last night I made several updates to my website, www.cedricstudio.com.  My website is over five years old now (which equals about fifty internet years) and badly needs a face lift to optimize it for the web 2.0 world. Until I can tackle that mammoth project I’m continuing to turn the crank on this trusty-rusty version.

The latest changes include:

  • Added a new section called “Comp Art” to showcase advertising marker comps I’ve done recently for end clients such as Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and Chef Boyardee.
  • Added 1 new sample to my “Illustration” page (bottom row center).
  • Added 1 new sample to my “Toy Design” page (bottom row, left corner).
  • Added 3 new samples to my “Courtroom Sketching” page (top row) from a court hearing I recently drew for ABC News out of New York.
  • The Facebook link on my Contact page now connects to my business Fan Page instead of my personal Facebook page. From now on I’ll be posting all of my freelancing update on the Fan Page and using the personal page mainly for the non-work related areas of my life. You are welcome to follow me on both, or if you’d rather unfriend me on my personal page and just follow the fan page that’s fine too.

Stay tuned for more updates, including newly updated PDF portfolios to download, updates to my mobile site, and more.

Thoughts On Licensing For Artists

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I’ve made my living as a freelance illustrator for thirteen years and counting. I’ve tried just about everything a commercial artist can do—children’s books, storyboards, magazine illustration, toy design, marker comps, comic books, character design, animation, even courtroom sketching. One of the few areas where I haven’t yet dipped my toe in the water is in the murky but potentially lucrative field of art licensing.

Last week I spent four days in Las Vegas at the International Licensing Expo attending classes, walking the show floor, and shaking hands in an effort to better understand that particular industry. I wanted to find out what real opportunities, if any, existed for me there.

Unfortunately the short answer (for me at least) is “not many”.Read More

Fooooore!

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One of the projects currently on my plate is a series of illustrations on the theme of retirement. The other day I did this sketch and I really liked how it turned out.

Incidentally, this guy golfs better than I do.

Comp Art for Best Buy

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A few months ago I was hired by Denali Marketing out of Minneapolis to develop some rough comp art to help them pitch a Best Buy ad campaign.

Recently a brand new baseball stadium was built for the Minnesota Twins. Best Buy is a Minnesota-based company so the idea was to come up with a local print campaign to highlight Best Buy’s excitement over the new stadium. The folks at Denali pitched me a few ideas and I worked up some rough sketches to help sell the various concepts.

Here’s a sampling of the sketches I submitted:


Trifecta BBQ Sauce

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A few months ago I was hired by the Trifecta BBQ sauce company to create an illustration for their new brand of BBQ sauce. It was a fun project which I blogged about showing the steps from intial concept to final artwork.

I’m an illustrator, not a graphic designer, so I did not do the full label design. I just created the artwork and then the Trifecta people hired someone else to design a label around it.

Here’s the final artwork I submitted:

Trifecta-Final6v2a

The preliminary bottling has now begun, and earlier this week I received six bottles showcasing the new label design, hot off the assembly line. I’m told this is not the final design—they are going to make some minor changes—but I thought I’d post a quick photo anyway:

I can’t wait to slap some steaks on the grill and give this sauce a try! This is the perfect time of year for it too. Here in Minnesota the snow has only been gone for about a month, the leaves are sprouting on the trees, and there are no bugs….yet.

There’s also a Trifecta website in the works at trifectasauces.com. As of this writing its not live yet but it should be going live soon. If you enjoy a good BBQ it would be worth giving Trifecta a try.