Squaremania: Sad Panda

I did this in photoshop using a wacom tablet.  Just as I finished I wondered why I just used the cintiq as a screen instead of drawing on it...

Kids for microstock

I did this for the stock illustration sites (like Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Istockphoto):

as well as this one...originally he was also supposed to just be holding something...but he held this up in front of him...and I thought it'd be cool if it was an x-ray:

Squaremania - Tea and Pandas

If you're going to have some tea....feel free to stir in some panda.  It's probably not sanitary, but it sure tastes terrible.  But disregard the taste, because you're drinkin' high priced panda tea.  Only winners drink panda tea.

Nothing tastes better than endangered animals!  Also, if this actually were to happen, I'd suggest green tea, it just seems like the right direction...

Microstock report for February 2011

Microstock sales were up this month:

Shutterstock, once again, led the way with 39% of the total sales.

And it was a best month ever for Vectorstock - which finally broke the $20 mark for a single month!

Squaremania: Kittens for Adoption

This is a piece I've been working on for the last couple of weeks...I did the drawing about a month ago, and used this three day president's day weekend to finally finish it.

This last month my wife and I adopted two kittens from Forgotten Animals of Los Angeles.  They're a terrific agency that rescues strays and finds loving families for them.  What's nice about FALA is that they take the time to find good people to match to the animals.

Since then I've added kittens to my cast of characters for Squaremania.  I wanted to do an illustration of these kittens and this is what I came up with:

 

The two kittens in the front, the twins, are based on the ones we adopted.  They also had two brothers (the grey kitten and the orange kitten in the back of the box) who were adopted just today.

I do the cleanup in Adobe illustrator.   Then I paste it into photoshop (keeping the vector lines in tact) and when the painting is done I go back to illustrator to 'self color' the lines.

And these are the combined color layers in Adobe Photoshop.  There will end up being one more layer when I add the background into it...so far it's just the characters (and they're floating on a blank whiteness...):

Squaremania: Lil Sweaty Panda

I did a version of this where the panda is just jumping into a game of hopscotch...but then the topic of Illustration friday, this week, was sweater...so I just had to make a revision so I could post it:

I changed the hopscotch squares into a sidewalk and extended it across the length of the hill and added a headband and wristbands to show how dedicated the panda is to exercise.  He doesn't wear clothes, but he wants to keep the sweat contained as much as possible - and judging by the looks of it, he's quite the sweater and the gear is not doing a good enough job.

Squaremania - lil' Panda's big jump

I've been too busy at Nickelodeon with work and at home with the brand new kittens that I haven't been able to draw as much as I would want.   I struggled to free up some free time, but was able to draw this and finish it in the last couple of days. 

I started with this rough drawing in Adobe Photoshop (drawn very rough with a wacom tablet):

Then I cleaned it up in Adobe Illustrator:

And this is the final color (adobe photoshop):

Helping Grandma into traffic

A person gets to a point in their life when they are self sufficient. Then, at some point it all reverses and they need help doing everything.

They even need a little jerk kid to help 'em across the street.  The only bad thing is that they're crossing against the light...little granny put her trust in the wrong kid.

 

I did this illustration for Dreamstime, a microstock illustration/photograph site.  They do an image contest every month based on a theme - this month is 'Help'.

Microstock Report for January 2011

This is the first Microstock report for the new year...and it's doing quite well as apposed to last month:

Shutterstock continues to account for 41% of our entire earnings.  And we actually had several of our illustrations taken out.  I while ago I was doing a series of celebrity illustrations (one of George Clooney, Natalie Portman, Diablo Cody, and Zach Braff)...and since that went nowhere, I put them on the microstock sites.  They should have been only available for editorial licenses...but after almost two years online they were all pulled from the site...citing possible copyright infringement.  And it's not like they illustrations were, but Shutterstock likes to be careful...and it doesn't matter that much because they weren't big sellers anyway.  But that's what accounts for the portfolio going from 702 to 700.

Istockphoto sold a lot less this last month...it's been very spotty as of late...I feel that with baseball season coming back it should start doing much better.  I have a series of baseball caps that sell very well during the spring months.

Dreamstime made a strong showing of it this month...and I'm hoping for even more in the coming months as I'm going to try my hardest to make time for their new contests as they come up.  I have one illustration already approved for this month's contest (the fireman, which I posted last week on this blog) and another one that's still a rough drawing.

The rest of the sites were alright.  Vectorstock sells decently considering it's a smaller site with less customers.  And, as I said before, it's nice to continue to make over $200 each month without having to spend much, if any, time creating new illustrations for these sites...I mean, more money could be had if I spent more time at it, but making money and spending no time sounds pretty good too...

Father and Son

I did a version of this with a mother helping her son learn to walk...but I wanted to redo it with a father and son.  Mostly because I did both illustrations for Dreamstime (a microstock illustration/photography site) and their monthly contest.  This month the topic is help:

The original illustration had a crib, so I moved the father and son into the living room.

I'm also uploading this to the Illustration Friday site because the topic this week is Surrender...and instead of walking, the father could be teaching his kid how to surrender...in case he runs into any baby bullies in the day care...

Firefighter

I did this for the Dreamstime contest this month - the topic is 'help'.

In my head I thought of someone who was helpful and immediately came upon the idea of a closeup of a firefighter racing to a fire.

And because this was for a stock illustration site I did the entire illustration in Adobe Illustrator.

Squaremania: Green Lantern

It's Green Lantern...squared!  Evil Doers turn into fraidy clucking chickens at the sight of  Lil' square Green Lantern.

I did this illustration based on the Hal Jordan Green Lantern (at least his costume from the comics...I don't think Hal Jordan was ever this shape).  I was going to give him a six pack but Ryan Reynolds proved (by sporting them in the Green Lantern movie trailer) that it looked rather silly.

And anyway - Green Lantern was never about the muscles, but rather flying around, being an intergalactic superhero and fighting all things yellow.

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: Important Family Meeting

It might feel like deja vu because I'm posting an illustration that I put up over a month ago...but I've gone back and made some changes.

The first thing I did was combine the version of the panda with his frog ear hat on:

It was sort of cute, but I felt that it distracted from the overall message of the illustration - because all you could see was that ridiculously adorable hat...

Anyway - the original always bothered me.  I thought it was a little too plain - so I ruffled up the bed sheet a little (it's not a straight line anymore, and the sheet now extends below the bed frame.  You can't really see either of these things, but it does help to break up some of the monotony).  The most important thing I did was add the picture frames.  I was originally going to put a mobile up, but I thought it would have been too complex and distracting, so i went with the pictures.  And even though I fully colored them, when finalizing the picture I wanted to push them further into the background so I desaturated the color and added the oval shadow.

And now it's done!

Squaremania - lil' Superman

Here's a Squaremania version of Superman:

This was done in Adobe Illustrator (lines) and Photoshop (color).

Shark faces...

I did a shark illustration for Dreamstime last year.  I've separated out the shark from the rest of the drawing and added a variety of expressions for the different stock illustration sites.

These are vector drawings done in Adobe Illustrator
for Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Istockphoto, Fotolia, and Vectorstock

Squaremania - lil' Batman

A couple of years ago I went to the Vinyl Toy Network (which has since been renamed Designer Con) which was a convention for some really cool art and toys.

I was getting things ready for an art gallery I was doing (summer of 2009 at Nickelodeon Animation in Burbank) and decided that one portion of my gallery would be popular characters in my style, that a series of vinyl toys could be based on.  Out of that I did a lot of characters from Marvel, DC to Freddy Krueger and IG88 (a robot bounty hunter from Star Wars).  They were all a sort of bobble headed kid versions.

For that same gallery I was exploring square animals which eventually turned into Squaremania.  And I had always wanted to do some human characters as well, but just ran out of time for the gallery...and since I had such a good response to the animals, I kept going in that direction.

Over the christmas break I did a couple of rough sketches and decided that it would be fun to do a series of Squaremania versions of my favorite superheroes.

First up is Batman:

I'm going to add a different background to better suit the character...but since I just finished painting him, I thought I'd put him up on the blog.

Batman also fit's this weeks Illustration Friday topic of "resolutions" - as we all know, when his parents were murdered he resolved to dress up and run around in tights to avenge their death.

Squaremania: Kitties for Adoption, the cleaned up version

I played with the size of the panda a little bit so that way he would be bigger than the kitties.  I think I'm going to add some sort of background in there too - so I've printed it out again and I'm going to flesh out what's going on around them...

Microstock report for December 2010

This is our microstock report for December, 2010.

Shutterstock led the way again.  It was the first time in a while where it came down to the last couple of days whether or not we would cross $100 for the month.  But then two ODs were sold on the 29th (ODs are worth $2.70 each)...and all was right.

It's been the same story as the last few months - we haven't had time to upload many, if any, images for the stock sites - and so our numbers are slowly going down.  We uploaded a couple more images this month, but they were really a combination of older vector illustrations.

Veer has our smallest portfolio (only 2 downloads this month, but each was worth $7.00) - but only because 20 images were turned down this summer due to open shapes and I haven't wanted to spend the time uploading them again.  Cory Thoman, who got me into selling stock illustrations, has recently signed up with a couple of newer agencies, so I'm probably going to sign up with them as well...but only if I can find the time.

If you see the rest of my blog, I've been working on my proprietary projects, so making generic illustrations hasn't been a priority...

But maybe in the new year - I've missed watching an illustration take off and sell like booze and hotpants.