IF: Rambunctious Adelia takes flight

Here's a closeup of Adelia:

The last few weeks I've been spending a good part of my Saturday afternoons at the bookstore. For some reason it's been a good way for me to get some drawing done.

This last Saturday (that would be yesterday) I was working on developing the world of Adelia more. When I first attacked this project I wanted it to be very minimal in extra detail and backgrounds. My first Adelia book was done completely in that style. But now it's been about a year and a half that I've been drawing this character - in that time my style has been evolving and Adelia is a good part of that.

The original sketch shows a lot more info than what I eventually put in. I wanted the crayon ship to be more of a rocket...which meant the balloons were out of place. I think, if time permits, I'm going to do a version of this with balloons (which means doing it without the smoke).

I also eventually opted out of using the moon. I felt it would take away from the composition - and it was just loud and clunky, and didn't really fit.

In the rough I did a couple of versions of Adelia - one where she was in profile and the other where she was in a more interesting and dynamic pose (I went with this one in the cleanup). If you notice, there are a lot of faces on everything. in the rough the crayon had a pig face (because of the snout like tip)...I'm still toying around with the idea of having everything be alive and a character all on it's own. Obviously it has Tokidoki feel to it (there are many illustrators using this, and I got into it through researching for a freelance job for Kitson and Nikki Chu handbags - they wanted a series of illustrations in the hello kitty, tokidoki, gwen stefani style). It's a direction I'm exploring as it lends itself quite well to toys. But we'll see...I don't think i'll go so overboard as to put a face on EVERYTHING. But we'll see...

And here's the final illustration:

And I created it for Illustration Friday - Adelia takes a rambunctious ride through the cosmos.

Eaten: Vinyl toy design

I was reading a computer arts magazine at the store on Saturday. The entire magazine was devoted to vinyl toys and their creators. Apparently it's a great way to create buzz for your art and it's cheap and quite possibly profitable.

Now - this isn't something I can jump into right now. But it got me thinking that this was a direction that I would love to go. I have my little character Adelia - who would lend herself quite well to this concept...of course they toy needs to be simplified, to an extent. The more complex the figure, the more the fabricating would cost.

I went back home and started looking up vinyl toys and how to manufacture them when I came upon the Vinyl Toy Network. Apparently it's a convention that's held every year (maybe even twice a year) in Pasadena. And, luckily for me, it was happening the very next day!

I went to the show and had a blast. There are so many talented artists showing off all sorts of crazy toys. From tiny zombies you can paint yourself to cute animals smoking cigarettes - there was even a cute girl toy with a hat made of poo with wings. I was looking for presents for christmas, so I was on a limited budget for myself. But I was able to pick up a Captain Coco special edition from Tokidoki and a Kathie Olivas Scavenger toy. I also bought an art book by Ragnar who had a table selling posters and original art. He's incredible, and if you don't know his art style - you should check it out - http://www.littlecartoons.com/index.html

Anyhow - After the show I was quite stoked. I'm going to go out and purchase some molding clay to sculpt an adelia toy. And, dreaming about the future, I drew and painted (in watercolor) a toy design that I created. It's probably a bit complex considering one has to watch one's budget when starting out in this field, but this is where I'd love to take it, if ever the chance presents itself.


it's still a very simple design, mostly - a big blobby monster type. But what complicates it is that I want the monster to be openable (bisected) and another, smaller, toy is lodged inside. Put together, it'd make quite a cool looking little toy - a see through blob monster who just ate a cute little animal.

The Broom

I was hoping The Angels would be swept out of the playoffs by Boston - I had to settle for them losing in 4. So it'll be a little bit harder to shame the Angels fans, but I can still make fun of them for losing in the first round (much like the A's did all those years). Anyhow - with the sweep in mind I created this character in my new line of drawings...

Panda Menace

Last weekend I did some freelance work for a handbag designer named Nikki Chu. She wanted something that was similar to Hello Kitty or Gwen Stephani's line Hirojuku girls or Tokidoki. So I had a lot of information to grasp, in order to do something in a similar style. What came out of it were some really cute drawings and a few really nice props that I designed in Illustrator.

Anyhow - I ended up really liking they style of Tokidoki - it envokes the cute simplicity of a particular Japanese art. Based on the previous drawings I did and the research - coupled with the cute head shape I've been drawing for a children's board game - I decided to do a series of drawings...again, drawing from all of these other things, but doing it in my own style.

I currently have 4 or so pages full of little characters like this. I'm going to have a lot of work ahead of me to get these things cleaned up and colored. But it was a lot of fun, and I love how the color version turned out. As usual - I cleaned up the character in Illustrator, and did a 'shadow' of bamboo in the background (also in Illustrator). When I colored it in photoshop I erased the lines of the bamboo to give them a softer look.

Anyhow - as always, I'm available for freelance illustration work. If you need to take a look at more samples, check out www.isaacmarzioli.com.