That's Not funny

I've been spending a lot of time reading kids books to my 2 year old and i've been doodling characters from them to practice in Painter IX. This guy is from "that's not funny!" by Adrian Nelson. I love the design of the book . It evokes the graphic styles of old 50's commercials while teaching the concept of "Schadenfreude" - which is a malicious delight in the bad luck of others.

If you get a chance, also listen to the soundtrack to Avenue Q. There's a great song about Schaedenfreude sung by none other than Gary Coleman .... er rather, an actress playing gary coleman. I'm guilty of Schadenfreude. I bet you are too.

Conspicuous Hippos

my kid has developed her own language, and she calls hippos "yum" ... She does this because I took a plastic hippo and pretended to eat her feet with it once when she was a little over 18 months old. She has a bunch of words that developed from our random silliness. Including "ha-ho" for drink and "bwobble" for fish. I'm not sure if I'm getting the spelling right, but you can ask her when she learns to spell. At any rate, i was looking over Roger Duvoisin's "Veronica" and it inspired me to sketch out a quick hippo. Mine's not as wonderfully graphic as his:

Working Paperless

here's another disney distribution poster. My little victory here is that I did the piece totally digitally from sketch to finish. I did the rough and clean-up in Painter IX. Then all the compositing in Photoshop, with a little Illustrator thrown in here and there. Doing stuff like this is an excellent excerise in learning what the creative suite can do. It is nice not having all the rough drawings cluttering up the studio in my home. As much as I want to keep doing things traditionally, its hard to deny the ease of working digitally. When it comes to commercial work like this, and I'm not REALLY married to the piece, I very much prefer to work paperless. I'm sure when Disney gets back into doing hand-drawn animation, they'll figure out a way to work paperless, but still allow the hand of the artist in there with programs like Painter and Photoshop.

Distribution Posters

I've spent the last several weeks designing posters for Walt Disney Distribution. They - for the most part - involve Huey Dewey and Louie, who serve as the division's mascots. I'm surprised at the several different iterations of those characters that exist. Sometime in the late 90's they tried to make them into hip teenagers. The designs were pretty ugly.
I'm partial to the Ducktales versions, since that cartoon came out when I was just the right age. I'm glad the client preferred those too.

Bahama Cabs

Just got back from the Bahamas. Its interesting to note that hardly anyone travels there in the midst of hurricane season the week of 9-11. I practically had the place to myself. Regrettably not many restaurants were open and there was prescious little to do for my toddler that she couldn't do back home. The place is still ravaged from the effects of the hurricanes a couple years ago. I was talking to a cab driver there and she was lamenting about how she constantly has to jam people into her cab, so I drew this pic for her.

Metamorpho

This guy is ridiculous. I'm warming up to some work right now and took a little diversion to participate in the drawing board's sketchjams. All I really know is he forms his hands into hammers and he uses half of aquaman's shirt. You have to wonder why the guys who can change their shape into anything always seem to have a questionable fashion sense. I mean really.