Indiana Jones and the Office Party

by

motorcyclestandee-v3

indywithmap-v5-small2

ramonastandee

(Indiana Jones is copyright © Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.)

I stopped doing “realistic” illustration a few years ago and focus primarily on illustrating in a very cartoony style. I enjoy it more, it’s what I’m best at, and it’s much faster which means I can usually earn more per hour. I still do life drawings and portrait studies in my sketchbooks but rarely for clients.

Every once in a while I make an exception.

Last October I was hired by Fig Street Marketing to work on a project for a large corporate client in the computer industry (not sure if I can share the company’s name so I won’t, but it’s one you would recognize). Apparently every year this client hosts a big corporate event themed after a Hollywood franchise. Last year they did James Bond, this year it was Indiana Jones. The client rented the “Indiana Jones Adventure” ride at Disneyland as their locale and hired Fig Street to develop the theme. They even put together a short video spoofing the Indy movies. Fig Street filmed executives dressed as Indiana Jones characters and then digitally inserted them into actual footage from the films.

To decorate the event they produced a giant mural and life-size cardboard standees depicting some of the executives dressed in Indy garb (great for gag photos). My friend Charlie Griak was hired to illustrate the mural and I was hired to illustrate the standees. The male executives were dressed as Indy or as Indy’s father. For the female executives I was asked to invent characters wearing safari-style costumes circa 1930. For reference I was provided with a couple of head shots of each executive and a few clips of the green screen footage. The rest I culled from DVD stills of the movies.

Because the artwork was going to be blown up eight feet tall working in Photoshop would have made the files about a zillion megabytes each, way too large to be practical. So I did the illustrations as vector art in Illustrator. It was a fun project and I was pleased with how it turned out. Soon the client will be sending me pictures from the event. If I get their permission I’ll post those photos as well.

Charlie’s mural really looked fantastic. If and when he posts it online I’ll be sure to link to it.

UPDATE: Here’s two of the final standees sent to me by the client. The photos were taken by the printer. Unfortunately the motorcycle standee was packed up before they could photograph it.

indy-map1

indy-ramona3

Merry Christmas

by

People celebrate Christmas for all sorts of reasons. For me it’s not just about the presents or the time with family or even the little manger scene on the mantel. It’s also about why Jesus was born: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). Since I’m definitely a sinner, that’s good news.  I tried to hint at that theme in this illustration.

This was intended to be my Christmas card promo. Unfortunately I didn’t quite get it finished in time to mail out to my clients. I was so busy meeting other clients’ deadlines that I missed my own. So I sent it out as a Christmas email instead.

Warmest Christmas wishes to all you blog readers and your families.

hohnstadt-christmas

Evolution Of A Racing Game

by

Yet another project I can finally go public with. Earlier this summer I was hired by BI: The Business Improvement Company to help develop an online racing game with an Olympics theme. The concept went through several stages. Here’s a brief rundown of how we developed the look of the game:

First I wanted to nail down the “look” of the characters. I wanted to give the client a couple of options so I sketched up a few characters in different styles. The crouched runner is meant to represent a more conservative style, and the two running characters were meant to show more cartoonish extremes.

Due to a misunderstanding on my part, I thought the client liked the more cartoonish styles. So I developed six goofy runners with a variety of body shapes.

Once I realized my mistake, I worked up another version with characters that were less extreme. I included a running sketch to show how the characters would look once they took off. The characters would be animated in Flash, so to keep things simple for animation each run cycle would be viewed straight-on from the side instead of from an angle.

I also made sure there was a clear range of ethnicities in the runners.The client liked it but decided there should be an equal mix of men and women. For budgetary reasons we also cut the number of runners from six down to five.

Here’s the final concept sketch, with women runners and color added. It was lots of fun to draw!

I also animated much of the game. Hopefully I can post the animation at a future date.

Toy Concepts For Disney’s “Camp Rock”

by

It’s been a while since I posted any actual artwork on this blog. I’ve been cranking out artwork like crazy all spring and summer, but because of NDA’s and other client arrangements I haven’t been able to show much of the work publicly…yet. Here’s one project that I can finally let out of the box.

One of my clients is a local company that produces themed birthday cakes for licensed properties. Each cake includes a toy as part of the decoration, and I sometimes get the privilege of working up concept sketches for the toys.

Disney’s megahits High School Musical 1 & 2 were recently followed up by a new TV movie, Camp Rock. My client was hired by Disney to develop a Camp Rock-themed cake. The target audience for Camp Rock was a little older than for most cake toys, targeting teens and preteens instead of kids. Ultimately the Camp Rock cake concept never made it into stores, but the client has given me permission to post some of my work. Here’s a few of the concepts I helped develop:

Free Finger Puppet Business Cards

by

A couple of weeks ago I announced my new finger-puppet business cards. I designed them to serve several functions:

  • To demonstrate my abilities as a character desginer;
  • To stand out and be a good conversation starter at networking events;
  • To display not just my contact info but list past clients and quotes/endorsements from satisfied art directors.

So far the cards have been a big hit. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback. It’s fun to watch grown professionals turn silly for a moment as they put their fingers through the little holes and move the character’s “legs”. Several people have asked to have one of each. So I’ve decided to offer them for free through my blog.

If you’d like to own a set, just send your name and address to me at blog@cedricstudio.com and I’ll drop all three in the mail to you. No charge. My treat as a small thank-you for reading this blog. (Be sure to write “business cards” in the subject line of your email).

Another way to get the cards is to sign up for my mailing list. It’s a quick and easy way to keep up on my latest projects. Every month or two I send out a short promotional email showcasing my latest work, and I also mail out a postcard about once a year (I should do it more often but, well, I don’t). When you fill out the form just write “business cards” in the comments line and I’ll mail ’em to ya.

The cards are totally free with no strings attached. But if at some point you happen to need a freelance character designer/illustrator, I hope the cards will serve as a reminder that I’m out there and available.

New Business Cards

by

Recently I came across a terrific article about business cards from the ProFreelancing blog. According to the author most business cards are largely a waste of money. People will quickly lose interest in you and your work if all they have to remember you by is your contact info. It’s even worse at a networking event where everyone is collecting business cards by the fist full. If your card doesn’t pull “extra duty”, it won’t stand out and will likely wind up in the trash.

Fortunately the article gave me some great tips for making my business cards more effective. In a couple of weeks I’ll be traveling to a “freelance fair” for a major toy/game manufacturer, and decided it was high time I made up some new cards using the author’s advice. (i.e. use both sides of the card, give a clear description of what I do, list some of my past clients, through in a couple of quotes from satisfied clients, etc.)

But I wanted to go one step further and do something creative and unexpected. Recently I met a creative director who’s business card is actually a tiny sketchbook with her contact info on the front cover. I really liked that idea, and wanted to come up with my own fun little gimmick to help make me and my business cards more memorable.

Since I specialize in character design, I thought it would be fun if each card was its own character. I also want to get more work in toys, games, and other children’s markets, so I wanted to the cards to appeal to our “inner child”. I doodled up some quick little characters from the waist up, then decided to punch finger holes in each card for legs.

At the very least it should make a nice conversation piece, and will hopefully make a more lasting impression at a networking event.

The front of the card is the character displaying a short message and my website. The back of each card (not shown) contains a quote from a satisfied client, my contact info, and a list of some of my more prominent past clients.

I know some consider it amateurish for an illustrator to put actual artwork on his/her business card. Many successful artists I’ve met in the past keep their business cards surprisingly simple and plain. However, in this case I’m hoping that (a) the novelty of the idea and (b) the “big name” clients I’ve got listed on the back of the card will make it clear that I am a professional despite the fact that I’ve put artwork on the cards.