Alien Blob on a full stomach

I did these a while back - I wanted to do a series of blob aliens with cute creatures in their stomachs.  I thought it would make a cool vinyl toy.  I still have yet to realize that toy dream, but I still really like the drawings...

Squaremania: Rough drawing

This is a rough drawing I worked up in Adobe Photoshop.

iF: Duet

This is a quick sketch of a little duet:

The panda is singing his little heart out...

Squaremania - Stinky Tea

This is the color version.

If you find a skunk as you're stirring your tea, I'd consider getting a new cup...

squaremania - Stinkin' tea...

So far I've finished the drawing of the skunk in a tea cup:

 and I'm currently working on the color...

Squaremania - Skunk in a tea cup

I've been meaning to do a series of Squaremania animals in tea cups - And this christmas break is just the right time to start!

If time allows, I'd like to do these as watercolors...but we'll see if I can fit it in before it's time to go back to work...

Ever since my wife and I came back from Europe (three years ago) we've been obsessed with tea.  In Paris there were these two nice restaurants that started it off...and once we got back we looked up all the tea houses in southern california.  We've even been known to look up tea houses when we go on a trip (we visited a tea house in Chicago when we were there for a wedding last summer)...

IF: Mail - squaremania stamps

I thought it would be cute if my characters dressed up as stamps for this week's Illustration Friday topic of "Mail"

Christmas Stinks!

See, cause it's a skunk...

It seems a little old fashioned to stand on the corner ringing the bell...I remember seeing guys dressed as santa outside every supermarket or mall jingling and jangling.  But I can't recall seeing anyone in recent years...that also might be because it's a little old fashioned to step outside one's house and away from one's computer to buy Christmas presents.

 original color

I did a rough sketch and then cleaned it up (inked it) in Adobe Illustrator...and then decided to just throw some color on it.  It probably needs some revisions but I thought I'd put it up - the finished version (complete with photoshop color) will follow soon.

squaremania on products!

I figured that since it was back to school time I would work on this first:

I'm working on getting my characters licensed - I'm doing some mock ups to help potential clients and agents see how Squaremania looks on products.  I drew the pencil in Adobe Illustrator (i did a basic pencil outline  and then a series of color gradients...for the metal color at the bottom I created a small shape and flipped it so the gradient would create a pattern that went one direction and then the opposite direction) and then pasted in the characters and cropped them to the right size and look.  I also changed had to select each character individually and change it's opacity to multiply so it, in effect, erases the white boxes around them (that you would get from pasting a photoshop file into illustrator).

Those characters are isolated from this illustration that I mocked up on a backpack:

This one ends up looking a little more cartoony - but I didn't want to spend the time making the backpack looking realistic when you could get the point without spending all that extra time...

my new promotional postcard

So it's been quite a work in progress...but I finally finished this postcard...and I'm going to be sending it out in the new year.  It was quite a monster to work on, but its been a lot of fun.  The front of the postcard is on the left and the back is on the right.

IF: Hatched Skunk

I thought I'd try out a couple of other characters in eggs...since the topic on Illustration Friday is Hatched...

Skydiving

I previously posted the rough drawings for 'unbalanced'. And, here it is, in all it's colored glory.

Prints are available at Etsy - http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=34594454

IF: Unbalanced...in the head.

You'd have to have some sort of brain imbalance to attempt sky diving (or bunjee jumping or deep sea diving)...but yet people do it all the time. In this case it's four little animals. And they're all crazy.

This is my second pass at the illustrator clean-up. I still need to print it out (for a second time) and revise it before I can set about coloring it.


The major difference between this one and the previous cleanup is the addition of the fox character being yanked back up from opening his shute.

EDIT: the finished illustration is in the next post...

postcard finished...?

This is the first 'finished' version of the postcard...I'm thinking of a couple of things I could do to the card, so there might be some changes...but this is it for now...

This is the front and the back of the postcard. The idea was to have the animals bursting through a plain piece of paper and you can see into their world -and the back of the postcard is the backs of them. Ideally it'd be nice to have a mirror there so when you turn the card around you actually see yourself or what they would see from that angle...but instead it's the whiteness of nothing...or something like that...

Postcards...

These are getting closer to being finished - I just have to do the breaking through the paper bit of it...but the characters themselves are cleaned up and colored. I thought it'd be smarter to do the entire character (rather than just the bit that showed through) in case I wanted to move them around any...

SCBWI contest: postcards

There's this SCBWI event in November called Illustrator's Day 2009. They're doing a postcard contest, so I thought I'd see about throwing something out there with my characters.

My idea consisted of having my two square animal characters waving through the torn paper on the front, and then when you turn the postcard over, it's the back of the characters. I'm still working with it, and am currently thinking about redrawing the skunk character...


The due date is coming up pretty quickly (it was originally due on the 2nd of October and has been pushed back to the 7th)...so I think I'm going to finish up this postcard and then, given time, I'll see about reworking the skunk character...

IF: Wrapped, mummy finished!

Well, even though it is obvious to go for a mummy illustration when the subject is wrapped (that or some form of present), it's still always a good way to go. Because any time you can draw one of your characters as a monster is always a good idea.

And, apparently, I like drawing my characters as monsters as I've already done a penguin frankenstein, a penguin igor, a little kid Freddy Krueger, a little kid Jason (from Friday the 13th), and, even though he's not a monster, a little kid Ash from Evil Dead 2 (he kills zombies). Oh, and I drew Adelia as a zombie. I just have to make sure to keep little kid Ash away from Zombie Adelia...or it could get messy...

IF: Craving - excitement...

I've conceived this piece in two parts - this is the first picture where the 'king' is bored with his jester. (and in the second picture, which I have yet to draw) The king, craving excitement, has his jester up the ante by juggling something more fantastical (I'm thinking chainsaws...but we'll see)...

So anyway - this is the first picture, and I'm going to work on the second picture, hopefully finishing it by this weekend...




EDIT:


I had a couple of (people I respect give) some constructive feedback about this piece - so I redid several bits - I changed the ball colors that the skunk is juggling (as well as moving the top ball down a little bit, so it was overlapping some of the rock background and not framed by one of the rocks), I also changed a bit about the carpet - moved it away from the wall, made the circles on the right hand side smaller, and made the pattern blend in more...I like the changes, and I think it's a stronger piece!