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!

IF: Launching a penguin

I heard so much about this game called Angry Birds last year.  Conan was talking about it on the Tonight Show (during the 15 minutes he ran that show), Adam Carolla's boy wanted to actually be an angry bird for halloween.  Some time around Thanksgiving of 2010 I decided to download it onto my phone and I've been addicted ever since.

Now what does any of that have to do with Illustration Friday's theme this week of 'Launch?'  Well,  I immediately thought of a bird being launched out of a slingshot.

But I wanted to draw my character Adelia.

Adelia is a penguin character I drew several years ago when I was trying to break into children's books...I ended up giving up on the idea in favor of other projects...but I dusted her off this week and decided to update her a bit and give her another go - but this time as a licensed character.  It's tough to get something like that off the ground, but I think she has a lot of potential.

Adelia Cleanup (illustrator lines)

Stylized version of those same two characters...

I did a version that was very cutesy (in the previous post) and this version was trying for that same thing with a simple design and Japanese Kawaii aesthetic.  This drawing I did in Adobe Illustrator and uploaded to the microstock illustration sites.

To potentially make them more attractive to microstock buyers, I added the thought balloons so they could add their own caption or use them for whatever message they wanted.   They were accepted on Shutterstock a couple of days ago and have already sold 4 times, and are still queuing up on the other sites...so we'll see!

New project...

I'm working on a new project that's due tomorrow - these are the two main characters:

Microstock report for May 2011

So this was another month where we didn't pay any attention to our microstock sites - but still made a few dollars:

Shutterstock accounted for 50% of the total stock sales revenue.  That one seems to be pretty steady while all of the other sites are slowing down...still selling, but slowing down.

I'd like to spend some time creating new illustrations, so hopefully I'll be able to get to that this week (while I have some vacation time)....but I have some other projects to work on (we always seem to have something), so we'll see if anything gets posted.

Girl on Bike revision

This is the rough revision of the girl on a bike drawing:

There were a few things I thought I could add to better round out the drawing.  I also wanted to use this as a test for the brand new red pencil refills I just got (I usually use blue, so it's nice to have the variety.

Also - I wanted to add some wonkiness to the tires (as they were just round circles in the original drawing)...and in Illustrator I can just copy and paste the front tire to the back, so I didn't bother drawing them both in.

Microstock Report for April 2011

I can't believe it's already may!  This marks the second month into our 3rd year of selling microstock.  I should check to see how much we've made collectively up until this point...but in any case - here's the information about April:

Everything took a downward tumble this last month - which is weird because April has usually been one of our better months...One part might be the fact that we haven't been adding new files/illustrations to our microstock portfolios...so we'll see if we can't change that in the coming months...

Shutterstock stayed on top...

123RF made a push into the top 4...which marks the first time it's been that high on the chart.  The listing of 'all other stock' includes freshstock, veer, and whatever stockxpert turned into.

Still, as I always say - it's nice that we haven't done any, or that much, work and we're still pulling in about 300 dollars a month!

This is the one file I added this month:

if: Bicycle

I did this for a project that still has yet to be published (but should be soon...).

iF: Duet

This is a quick sketch of a little duet:

The panda is singing his little heart out...

Microstock Report for March 2011

This is our microstock report for March of 2011.

Shutterstock had the biggest upturn this past month.  For the last few months it seemed to be hanging around the $120 mark...and then suddenly the ODs (about $3 downloads) and even one EL (a $28 sale) rolled in.  So we ended up with $172 exactly for the month.  This site is also the only one where I have a referral also making money...referrals are nice because they get their money...and because you referred them, you get three cents for every one of their downloads.

Istockphoto continued it's run as the second biggest money maker - there were a few months where this site also topped the hundred dollar mark...but it's settled into the 70-80 dollar range...and that's where it's stayed.  On this site baseball caps and the chocolate covered strawberry are illustrations that sell well each month.

Dreamstime took a big drop off from the month previous.  But $30 is about the range that I expect from this site.  What's weird is that we had almost 13 more downloads this month, but each one sold for less...

And then there's Vectorstock.  It has the second most downloads per month next to Shutterstock (although we usually average around 300 downloads on Shutterstock - Vectorstock usually comes in second with around 50 downloads...but in March we had 80 downloads!).

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'.