Good Friday Cartoon

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Today is Good Friday, the day Christians celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus. A crucifixion seems like an odd thing to celebrate, but it is in fact good news. How’s that, you ask? A couple of years ago I partnered with the ministry of Living Waters to illustrate a short cartoon gospel tract that explains what I mean. For those of you who haven’t had a chance to read it, I invite you to do so. It’s only 8 small pages and to read it online is completely free.

If you are so inclined you can also order printed copies to share with others. I don’t make any royalties, in fact any ministry that wants to download and publish the tract can do so for free. To date over 2.8 million copies of the tract have been printed in English and it has been translated into nine different languages with more on the way. It’s far above and beyond anything I could have imagined. My hope is that it helps many people to get a clear understanding of what Easter and Christianity are really all about.

Have a very happy Easter!

Toy Design: Surfs Up Mickey Mouse!

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For over a year now I’ve been designing toys for a company called DecoPac. They create many of the fancy birthday cakes you see in the grocery store bakeries, the ones with little plastic licensed characters on them. They offer a wide variety of quality cake designs for all occasions, and often develop fun themes using licensed characters to tie in with movie and TV franchises. On occasion they will hire me to develop toy concepts for some of the cakes. They are a terrific client and its a ton of fun.

The toys are manufactured overseas, and because of the many factors involved (including the length of time it takes to ship them across the ocean) the concepts may have to be developed a year or more ahead of time. Today I finally received samples of the very first toys I developed for them back in April of ’08, figurines of Mickey and Minnie Mouse for a surfing-themed cake. The shipment also included toys from two other cake designs which I’ll be posting in the near future.

For the surfer Mickey I developed a few different rough thumbnail ideas and then the final turnarounds. From there my sketches were sent to a sculptor and then finally to the overseas manufacturer.

Here’s the final turnaround designs as well as a promo photo of the final cake design from the DecoPac catalog. At the time the client wasn’t sure which colors to use on Minnie’s bow and swimsuit so they asked me to give them a few options:

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(Toy designs copyright © 2009 Disney/DecoPac. All rights reserved.)

The Purple Cow

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Recently I was hired by Benchmark Education to illustrate a short children’s book called The Purple Cow. Not to be confused with the best seller by Seth Godin, this story is an epic saga about a cow that gives grape juice instead of milk.

The client gave me a great deal of editorial freedom so I decided to stretch myself and try something different. I created all the art as vectors in Illustrator (usually I use Photoshop) and tried for a very flat, cut-out look that emphasized shape over line. Also, instead of flat color in some areas I used some scanned textures I had on file. For example, I think the grass is actually a corduroy fabric that I color-shifted to green.

Because of the deadline I sketched the layouts very quickly, which oddly enough gave me wackier and more appealing shapes than I think I would have achieved had I slowed down and overthought it.

Above is a two-page spread, a one page illo, and a spot. The white areas were left blank for text, but I’ve inserted a copyright notice in an effort to protect the images online. Also, for some reason when I saved the art for the web the colors got very washed out (at least on my monitor). In the original files the colors are much richer and easier to read.

Overall I really like this flat vector look. The only problem with vector art is that you spend so much time pushing and pulling vector points that after a while you aren’t really drawing or painting, you’re just shoving things around. So I haven’t decided yet if I’ll be doing a lot more of this or not. It’s fast and effective but I would miss the fluid feel of drawing and painting.

A Treat From Sam Nielson

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Recently artist Sam Nielson ran a contest of sorts on his blog. He wanted to practice some digital coloring/painting but didn’t feel like drawing anything, so he asked for submissions. Two winners would then be chosen to have their sketches colored by him. Cool!

On a lark I submitted some concept sketches (above) from a “buffalo wings” project I had done a while ago for a client. As sometimes happens the project never evolved beyond the concept stage and so I never got around to finishing the illustrations. I did, however, retain all rights to the sketches.

I was honored to that Sam chose one of my flying bison to paint (see the other winner here). He did a beautiful job! Zip on over to his blog to view the final painting.

Concept Art: Buffalo Wings

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buffalowingsLast year I was hired by a local agency to develop a packaging icon for a new snack food with a buffalo wings flavor. The project ultimately went in another direction so this is as far as my involvement went. I don’t know if I have permission to mention the product name so I won’t, but the agency has finally given their permission for me to post these concept sketches.