Whatcha Eatin' Adelia?

 Whatcha eatin' Adelia?

How rude!

I was developing Adelia a few years ago as a cute penguin - and my version of Hello Kitty if I was to design a cute girl character.  I even got as far as development on a children's book as well as a handful of illustrations - but stalled out when I drew the Squaremania characters (Paddy Panda) as a supplement to Adelia, and then they quickly eclipsed her in my interest.

I went to a children's book illustrator meeting where I had an editor look at my portfolio.  She didn't get Adelia and said that kids would question why she didn't have a mouth (because she wasn't designed with one because she doesn't need one...not to mention the fact that the more I developed her, the less like a penguin she looked).  So I went home and redrew the top image with the bottom one and added a mouth.  So it's possible for her to have one, if she needs it - but I don't think she needs it.

Of course Penguins can beat Sharks!

In case you ever wondered, if these two worthy foes met, who would win in a fight?

They proved last night that it would be a penguin.  Penguins would win 4 out of every 6 times!

At least in Hockey.

Not that anyone watches hockey....

Happy Adelia

This is one of the first new cleaned up versions of Adelia - with her new look (it's really just a revision of where her eyes and nose sit on her face).

IF: Launch - Angry Birds: Adelia the Adelie Penguin edition...

I drew this over the weekend for Illustration Friday's Launch...and I liked it enough to finish it up.  I cleaned it up in Illustrator and colored it in Photoshop.

I've been addicted to Angry Birds since Thanksgiving - I'm currently trying to get 3 stars on all the levels (I have one left!)...and then I'll move on to Angry Birds Rio (my wife is already half way through).

When I thought of Launch I immediately thought of the slingshot launching birds at little green pigs.  I didn't want to just draw the game, but have one of my characters get in on the action.  I created Adelia back in 2006 and I recently brought her back (which just means I started drawing her again)...so little Adelia the Adelie Penguin is getting in on the pig popping action.  I like to think that Adelia would be one of the little blue birds that work best on breaking the ice blocks.

Adelia's back!

I'm happy to announce the relaunching of Adelia! 

Adelia was one of the first character designs I did after college (back when I was only drawing to fulfill the requirements of the homework assignment).  This is what she originally looked like:

This was from 2006 - and at the time I was doing a series of realistic watercolor penguin illustrations.  I titled it Pinguino because I wanted a cuter word for Penguin (this is Italian), and her name came from accidently titling the Adelie penguin with an 'a' instead of an 'e' at the end...it sounded like the perfect name for a little girl penguin.  And the more I drew her, the more cartoony she became - and the toes (which look a little creepy on a penguin) changed to basic webbed feet and her nose became more upturned.

I'm currently going through my old images and seeing which ones I can salvage.  It turns out that most of them are off model from the way I want her to look now - so I'm using a lot of them as templates for pose, but nothing more.

Also, last month I was doing a bit of research for a project I was working on for Nick Jr, and found a small rule about drawing a child's head.  To make a character look younger or sweeter or cuter, just drop their eyes below the middle point of the head.  All of my previous Adelia illustrations had her eyes sitting on the middle line and sometimes above!  So I had to rectify that, and quickly!

Adelia thumbnails...

I work at Nickelodeon - and while we do all (or most) of the regular cartoons in our building, the nick jr stuff is mostly taken care of elsewhere. And the headquarters for Nick Jr (programming like Blues Clues, Dora the Explorer and Olivia) is in New York, so we almost never see the people who work on them.

Why that matters is that all the big executives for Nick Jr are in New York, and if you want to pitch something to them, you have to go to them. What's quite nice is that the Vice President and the production manager came to our little studio in Burbank a couple of weeks ago and sat in a meeting room for an entire day taking our pitches....

It was great meeting them, and I showed them this character that I've been working on for the last couple of years named Adelia (you'll see her all over my blog and/or website - www.isaacmarzioli.com). They loved the character but probably won't use her because of how I designed her. I intentionally drew her without a mouth because she started off as an adelie penguin and that pointy nose was originally a simplified beak...somewhere in the design process, the character became more stylized. The beak became an upturned nose. My thought was always to have her as a character that has a narrator, and while she isn't a mute, she doesn't have to say anything to get her story told.

This is the original picture of Adelia


Concept art for the original Adelia Design

One thing you have to be able to do when you pitch a character or a show or whatever is be willing to adapt. While it's your job as a designer or illustrator (or, more broadly, a creator) to come up with the original concept - it's their job to hone it and refine it into something that can be watchable and hopefully successful. I'm trying to redesign Adelia with a mouth to get the VP's attention that maybe this character is still a viable option for them, but at the same time I'm hoping to show that I am willing to revise and that I can work with critique.

I expect nothing to come of this, of course, but it can't hurt to try. If things don't end up working out then I can always go back to my original design of Adelia.

I'm still trying a couple of different ways to incorporate a mouth with the character. Do I make the mouth a full part of her head shape? Or should it be more stylized and appear on the one side of her face (which I like more because it's smaller and cuter and stays out of the way of the rest of the head design). Anyhow - I'm still working at it...

IF: Clandestine - Adelia sneaks about...

The first thing one will do when looking at the Illustration Friday this week is wondering just waht is clandestine. There's a good chance you've heard of the word, you might even be leaning towards a particular direction as far as figuring it out. If you're a nerd, it kind of sounds like some sort of group that must do something (D&D style) - a clan destined for...? And you'd have to roll the dice (24 sided usually).

Maybe it's seafood related - but then that would be clamdestine...in any case something smells fishy.

And it ain't this post - I just looked it up. I could have looked at the other entries this week (which I'll do in a minute, but now that christmas is over, I have time to post something)...

clan·des·tine (kln-dstn)

ADJECTIVE:
Kept or done in secret, often in order to conceal an illicit or improper purpose. See Synonyms at secret.

So this is a piece I did. It's Adelia sneaking away from her balloon friend. It was sort of my transition piece away from my first Adelia book (still unpublished). It was about Adelia and her red balloon - but neither Adelia nor I wanted to bog her down in trying to find a way to fit the balloon into every Adelia drawing....so she's leaving the balloon behind.

Adelia: The fishing hole (finished)

I finally finished this one! I've been painting it (what seems like) FOREVER! It was a lot of fun though...I usually don't get so complicated with my designs for Adelia - she's usually up against a white backdrop (as she's always running about in the snow)...so it was nice to break out of that. Hopefully this is the first of many new paintings for a new story featuring Adelia.

New Store!

http://www.printfection.com/IsaacMarzioli - that's where you can find all the exiting new stuff that's come out of the Boring Penguin. There you'll find a bunch of my art...in t-shirt form!!!

Penguin with Balloon

I want to do this in a series of paintings...this is the first of (hopefully) many. I'm trying to follow through with (what I think are) interesting compositions....we'll see how far I'm able to do that. I really like how this one turned out though...and wish I had this painting when I did my christmas cards this year....

Penguin with Balloon

Adelia the Adelie

I was thumbnailing a bit and came up with this character. I liked it enough to try and do a series of paintings with this as it's subject matter. The text on the drawing will eventually be done in illustrator or even photoshop...I just wanted to see how it would look...and the way I work, it looks messy...I didn't want to just say penguin...the word (Pinguino) is penguin in Italian.
Adelia the Adelie Penguin (the name Adelia came by accident as I was saving my first illustrator cleanup version of the file...and it seemed that Adelia would make a good name for a penguin...). I painted this very quickly...just trying to get a feel for it - I'm not sure of the color of the penguin yet...I don't want it to be too dark...and not terribly light either...

Adelia the Adelie Penguin

Pencil and Watercolor

My Penguin Virgin

So - this is my final painting for the Virgin Show (www.myspace.com/thevirginshow). It was cleaned up in pencil and then watercolored using Dr Martin Watercolor dyes (which is all I ever use for my watercolors...). The colors came out quite a bit more vibrant than I expected...I tried to do a lot of detail for the penguin character to make up for the lack of color in the snow. I did the minimum of color in the snow to try to make it look as much like a blanket of freshly fallen snow as possible. I put it up in the gallery for $250. I also changed the title which follows under the picture.

Walking through freshly fallen snow (or - How I cured my raging atheletes foot)

Pencil and Watercolor