New Years Resolution

Usually I don't make any New Year's resolutions, unless it's something kind of vague like, make more money with my art. And that's usually something I would be doing no matter what. This year, however,  I've decided to make a real resolution; I'm going to finish all the projects that I've had on the back burner for a while.  I'm going to start one at a time and finish them to completion within the first few months of this year. Then I'm going to start on the projects that I've been meaning to do for a long time and hopefully have those done or going on before 2012 is over. 

The first thing I'm going to do is finish inking and lettering Rudolph The Hideous Abomination.  I started working on and posting this comic like two years ago. Then I got pretty busy with freelance work so I wasn't able to work on it quite as much.  After a while, I got so sick of working my day job that I decided I couldn't do any art projects that weren't going to bring me money.  I was really hoping I could start making a living with my art real soon. So I started focusing on doing stock illustrations and designing T-shirts when I wasn't doing freelance work. So, I just didn't have the time to work on Rudolph anymore. 

2011 was a good year for freelance work but not so good the stock illustrations.  Around July my sales dropped drastically even though I had uploaded a number of new illustrations. So my money making plans didn't really work out. Because of this, I decided I could no longer put so much stock (no pun  intended) into doing stock illustration.  So, I decided to exploit every source I  could. This year I've started selling products on Zazzle.com, designed souvenir T-shirts to sell locally, entered contests and started a new webcomic, The Daily Doodle.  There's a lot of other things I'd like to start in the coming year, some of which I've had on my mind for a while but I just can't do anything new otherwise I'll feel guilty about the things I haven't finished.  So, I've decided not to be too concerned on whether or not these projects will be lucrative and finally put an end to that nagging guilt!

Surpanda

Several months back, I designed this mascot for Surpass Hosting.

 

I kept his color scheme pretty basic, keeping him black and white like a real panda and adding a blue tie to go with the site design.  The dark grey one on the right is the first iteration but I wasn't quite happy with it so I did one that was plain black with some lighter contour lines.  I prefer the black one better but I showed both versions to the client just to give them a choice.  They ultimately chose the dark grey one because they felt it matched better with the website.

These are some initial sketches that I did, just coming up with different designs.  They preferred the cuter more classic look of the ones on top.  So from there I did some more sketches working out the body shape and other details.

After we got the look of the bear down, I did some more sketches giving him various accessories. In the end we kept it pretty simple, just giving him a blue bow tie.

My Zazzle Product Review

Many months ago I decided to start selling products on Zazzle.com in one of many attempts to make some extra side money with my artwork. Prior to choosing Zazzle I did some research and looked for reviews on many different print on demand websites.  Unfortunately, at the time, there wasn't many reviews for the quality of the products themselves. I mainly wanted to print T-shirts, so it was important to me that the quality of the shirts would compare to screen printed shirts. Out of the very few reviews, Zazzle seemed to get the best for their T-shirt printing.

For many months now I've been uploading and designing T-shirts and other products but I've been a little weary of promoting them since I hadn't actually seen a physically printed item.  So, about a month ago I decided to go ahead and purchase a Coolthulhu T-shirt for myself. And I've got to say it came out pretty good.  The shirt itself is a 100% cotton Haynes tagless tee.  It's pretty thick too which is good because I was a little worried that they would be like flimsy undershirts. I always upload vector files to ensure the image is as crisp and clean as possible and it definitely came out really crisp when printed on the shirt. Overall I'm extremely pleased with the result.

 

 Here is a picture of the printed T-shirt. It's a little dark and grainy because I took it with a cellphone but you get the idea.

In addition to the Coolthulhu shirt, I ordered a morning Power Up mug.  I think mug print on demand technology has been around for a while. Don't they do that in the mall? Regardless the mug is a pretty standard porcelain number and the image comes out pretty clean with all the right colors.  The image appears to be stained right on the surface of the mug too. There's nothing bumping up as if it was another material stuck to the surface.

Over all, I am pleased with Zazzle and will continue selling products on their site. If you are interested in giving me some of your money, you can order many of my products right here: http://zazzle.com/jeff_art

Retroviruses

I did this sketch for my friend Alison who is going to school to be a doctor.

Some recent sketches

Here's a couple of sketches that I did at work. The kid in he hoodie at top and the girl with the ipod are both based on real life young people that I saw at work. The rest is just crazy nonsense.

Story Sketches

 My pal Dylan asked me if I would provide him with some sketches to use as story fuel. So I went through a few of my recent sketchbooks and found four images that I thought would inspire some good short stories. I love this idea. Hopefully we'll be doing it a lot in the future. The stories will eventually be posted on his fiction blog once it's up and running. I'll post a link to it  once it's all done.

Dylan Reviews Everything header

This is another header image I created for my friend Dylan. He's going to be starting a blog site in the near future  (real near, I hope) where he reviews  just about everything that exists. It should be fun.

The final image will actually have a transparent background and the outer space background will be the website background.  That way the header will seamlessly blend with the site design.

I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out. I definitely spent way too much time on it. Mainly looking for the right font to use in the logo. I probably spent the same amount of time looking for the font as I would have just lettering it myself. But I really, really didn't want to do it myself.  I found a good font though. The font is called, Lunch.  I'm not sure who the designer is. They were not credited on the site I downloaded it from.

Update: Dylan's Blog is now up and running. Here's the link.

Beef Cake T-shirt

I'm participating in the Woot shirt contest again this week.  This week's theme is "In the kitchen".  I decided to go simple for my design and do a visual interpretation of the term "beef cake".  I'm pretty pleased with it. Hope you like it. You can vote for it right here: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=58048

Your Fly Is Down Shirt

I had a little extra time this week so I was able to participate in the Shirt.Woot.com derby.  This week's theme is, awkward situations.  So, I came up with this one involving a fly with his fly down. I'm the cleverest, aren't I?
Here's the link: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=57854 . Thanks for your votes!

Hardbodies Bully Sketch

Sure you'll watch the 1984 film Hardbodies for the excessive nudity but you'll keep watching it for this guy.

TV Series Presentation

Recently, I was commissioned to produce these two pages of sequential art to be used in a student's presentation of a TV series. Each panel represents a different episode in the series.

Superhero Penguin

 

A couple weeks ago I posted a rockstar penguin character that I designed for Red Dawn Party.   Several months after designing that character for them they returned requesting a superhero penguin character.  They basically wanted the same penguin but dressed like a retro superhero.

 

The costume didn't change too much from my initial sketches.   I wanted to keep it pretty basic so as not to stray away from that retro superhero look.

 

I did multiple mask sketches.  There were a lot of directions we could go with it. It was eventually decided that the mask would be in the shape of a "W" to go along with the product it would represent, The Wownie, a relaxation brownie.

After  working out the details on the costume I did multiple sketches for possible poses to illustrate him in.  They decided to go with the classic superhero stance with a flowing cape.  In the final illustration I brought the cape down a bit and added some raster dots to tie it into the comic style graphic design on the product packaging.

Small Sketches

These are a couple of small sketches I did in a small sketchbook. My sister gave me these little sketch books and they're rather fun to sketch in.  I really like the way the sketches turn out.  I think when I'm sketching in a larger sketchbook I have a need to fill all the space on the paper.  So usually there would be a lot of little sketches or doodles, like these, that fill up the page but when I'm doing it in a tiny sketch book one little sketch takes up the whole page and it becomes it's own little drawing without all the extra clutter. It's really quite fun.

Dylan's Discourse Header

My pal Dylan has been busy revamping his website. He's branching it off into three separate blogs. He's creating a humorous review blog, a blog for his fiction writing and his main blog will become sort of a portfolio site that he'll update occasionally and will cover a range of topics.

Anyway, I've offered to donate some artwork to help him out. This is the header for his main blog.  I also came up with the name Dylan's Discourse. Please, hold your applause.  I'm not entirely sure how I came up with the Pacman theme. Dylan does write about video games for many of his freelance jobs but I think the concept mostly came from the idea that he consumes all sorts of entertainment media and then writes about it.

You can check out the header in use right here: http://blog.dylanduarte.com/ 

Chinchilla With Human Hands

I created this monstrosity quite a while ago.  It was sort of a joint venture between my sister and I.  She has a couple of chinchillas as pets and we were marveling at their cuteness one day, talking about their tiny little human like hands.  Then for some reason we got the idea to use Photoshop to give one actual human hands.  Turns out it's not as cute. Just a bit unnerving.

Rock Start Penguin

 

Back in January I was hired by the Red Dawn Party company to create this rock star penguin character for the branding of their products. This character was inspired by my cool penguin illustration.  The client found it on istockphoto and decided to contact me to see if I could create a similar, yet possibly cooler character for them.

 

These are some of the initial sketches I did.  At this point I was brainstorming ideas. I was just sketching out different elements for the client to choose from.

Eventually they decided on certain elements that they liked which led to these initial design sketches. After seeing these they decided on modifying him a little further.  They decided to lose the guitar and give him some more clothing and stylistic elements that were in line with ed hardy tattoos and rebel spirit or true religion clothing.

Coffee Dude

Today's sketch is the Coffee Dude. This is a tiny sketch that I did in a tiny sketch book with a regular sized pencil.

On another note, I think I might stop posting a Sketch Of The Week and start doing a Sketch All Of The Time.  I feel like this weekly structure is starting to restrict me a bit. Sometimes I'd rather post a finished piece on the weekend and some sketches during the week, or maybe no sketches one week and lots of finished work. Hopefully that will result in me posting more cool art.

Graveyard Hippy

I was having a bit of fun with my cool grey markers again, with this sketch.  I was actually going to make this a little comic page and it was going to be revealed that the hippy was shaggy from Scooby Doo and that he was standing in front of Scooby's grave.  Unfortunately, the midnight hour was fast approaching and I had work early in the morning so I never got that far.

Admiral Ackbar

Ever vigilant, Admiral Ackbar is always on the lookout for possible traps.

I got these new Prismacolor brand, cool grey markers to shade my ink sketches with. They're pretty neat. A couple of the lighter ones don't show up when scanned though. Ackbar actually had some spots on his head that I made with one of the light ones.

I'd definatley recommend these markers for sketching with. My only complaint is that the pack includes three black markers, which isn't all that big of a deal but the entire pack could have been cheaper otherwise. Plus, I don't think I'll be needing the black ones as much since I'm using some Copic pens for the line work.

Dog Shirts

Did a couple of entries for the woot derby this week. I guess I had to make up for not doing one last week. Dog Days is the theme. I did a couple of pop culture references with mine.

I call this one, Dog and Dogger. Vote for it here.

This is called, The Infinite Loop. Vote for it here.

Fishing shirt

Usually on Saturdays I post a Sketch but I don't really have any recent sketches worth posting and I don't feel like going through any older sketchbooks today. So, you get this:



This is another T-shirt I designed recently to be printed by my friend Nick and sold locally. It's not specific to the area so we might end up selling some online too. This is just a sample shirt and ink color but Nick has printed it on a variety of different colored shirts.

The Wiz and friend

"Nothing can stop me because I'm the Wiz!" Remember that from Seinfeld?

Anyway, I wanted to try shading some ink drawings with markers. I always liked the way it looked. It's basically flat cell shading but because it's marker on paper it doesn't lay down completely flat and there's a little texture to it.

I wanted to buy a pack of cool grey Copic markers but holy geez they're expensive! They're great markers but I don't want to pay that much for a sketching tool. So, I settled for a light blue Prismacolor marker which I had lying around. Eventually I might buy the Cool Grey Prismacolor pack which is half the price of the Copics. It might be neat to shade the drawings and then colorize them with Photoshop or something.

Power Up T-shirt

Once again, I have entered the Shirt.Woot derby. This week the theme is, Everyday 8-bit. They want everyday life depicted in an 8-bit video game style.

When I came up with this design, based on the Super Mario one up mushroom, I was pretty excited because I thought I had a winning idea. Apparently, so did a lot of other people. There's multiple designs on there that utilize some variation of a coffee power up. There's one in particular that is really similar to mine, that has made it into the top 9. They don't really attempt to parody Mario with theirs, it's more of a reference . Plus I was kind of trying to parody those Mario 1-up t-shirts specifically by making it green and stuff.

What do you think? If you like it, go give it a vote: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=55574

Ballpoint Pen Sketch

These sketches were done with a ballpoint pen. There's something about a ballpoint pen that feels real nice when sketching. It's like the in between of pencil and ink. You can create light and dark lines like a pencil but the lines are bold, and smooth like ink.

featured in this sketch is Rudolph from my comic Rudolph The Hideous Abomination. I've been inking the final chapter of that lately and the character has been on my mind. Even though I've finished penciling the comic I was still trying to improve upon the structure of his design a bit. That's something I always do even if I'm no longer using a character. I do it all the time with the Disappointmentville characters. I think it's like a test for myself to see if my drawing ability has improved.

Hockey Mom

Earlier this year I was approached by the folks at Hockeymom.com to design a mascot character for their brand new website.

This is the initial design. It was requested that I use Sarah Palin as the main influence.

Eventually my original design was scrapped and I was tasked with doing some new sample sketches. This time they wanted two characters, a blond and a brunet. I guess everyone involved in the making of the site had different ideas of what a Hockey Mom should look like. So the sketches were going to be used to help them decide on one.

The original design for the brunet character included a little daughter with sparkly boots and a doll.

Later, they decided to change the daughter to a boy decked out in hockey gear. They also had me tweak the facial features on both the blonde and brunet to make them a little less cartoony. Personally, I like the cartoony features better. I think it makes it more appealing and recognizable. This is especially important when creating a character to be associated with a brand. But I'm sure they had their reasons for taking in a more subtle direction.

Unfortunately, due to budget reasons this is as far as the project went and my designs weren't used on the final website.

Chemistry T-shirt

Last week I participated in the Shirt.Woot derby with my friend Nick. Even though we barley got any votes I really enjoyed the challenge. So, This week I decided to have a go at it on my own. I think If time permits I will probably be participating in it every week. This week's subject is "chemistry."

If you like what you see then please go click the "I'd want one button" right here:
http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=55358

Viking Lady

So, this here is a Sketch Of The week but I'm gonna stop putting "Sketch Of The Week" or "SOTW" in the blog title. I feel like it's a needless amount of letters and words. I'll still include the "Sketch Of The Week" tag in posts though. It's my blog, I do what I want!


I'm sure you'll love this sketch if you're a nerdy male between the ages of 18-34. Or possibly a nerdy lady who likes strong female characters who don't wear a lot of clothing. Either way you're probably a nerd.

Wedding T-shirts

These are some wedding T-shirts that I recently designed.

The main font in this was downloaded from a free font website and I modified it a bit. I exaggerated the curly tails and made them look more like peacock feathers so that it fit with the theme better. I believe the name of the original font was, A Yummy Apology.

Woot fairy tale shirt

Are you in the mood to vote today? Then head on over to woot and vote for this shirt. My pal Nick had an idea for a T-shirt to enter into the Shirt.Woot derby and enlisted my artistic talents to produce this shirt. It's a good ol' collaboration amongst friends.

So, if you feel so compelled please head on over to our entry and vote. You're votes will be much appreciated.

SOTW: Park Guy

Last week I attended a local festival in the park. This guy was walking around the festival and was the only one celebrating a french holiday that was happening that weekend. He was quite the character and a good accordion player. He said that he was going to wear his french hat but was afraid that it would rain and instead wore a cowboy hat with a mask fixed to the front. The hat had some autographs signed on the brim, although I'm not sure who's they were.

He actually stopped and talked to my sister and I for a while and sung us a song about some birds that were eating a dead fish carcass. He had made it up when he was hanging out in the park one day and witnessed that very event.

SOTW: Sigh

Boy, This guy sure is sad or tired or both! This is one of my favorite sketches in my current sketchbook. And that's all I've got to say about that.