Jesus Book Cover

This is a commission that I did for a book cover. I had a lot of fun with this one.  The author of the book had the idea of using a series of caricatures to depict the way people perceive Jesus Christ.  I modified the idea a bit so that it was one single caricature being drawn of the real Jesus.

I put together the image below which shows the steps starting with the concept sketch and ending with the complete illustration with the added title and credits.

Christmas Cards

So according to Zazzle's ticker, there's still about six days to order stuff and get it, for sure by Christmas. So, it's not to late for ordering any or all three of my Daily Doodle Christmas cards.  That's right, I colorized three Christmas themed Daily Doodles and made them into Christmas cards and postcards.  You can veiw them all right here.

In addition to making Christmas cards I'm also trying to create more of a viarety of items in my store. I'm taking some of the designs I already have and putting them on more products.  That way, there's can be something for everyone.  Just recently I added a couple of key-chains and magnets featuring my Morning Power-Up design.

I hope you'll take a look and considering getting something nice as a Christmas gift for a loved one or even for yourself.

Final Jumbo Shrimp

Previously, I posted some concept sketches that I had done for a freelance gig, designing a Jumbo Shrimp character which you can find HERE and HERE. Now, the final design is complete and in full color.

Political Party T-shirts

I just complete a couple of new T-shirt designs for the election season. One for each party.  Both are available from my Zazzle shop in a variety of styles and colors.

Real Vampires Wear Capes

'Tis the season! The Halloween season that is and I've decided to create a spooky new design for my Zazzle shop.  The design is something I've had fluttering around in my noggin for a while. It's inspired a bit by the old Batman logo.

Originally I had some different ideas for what to have it actually say. I was knocking around "Team Bela" for a while as sort of a joke on the "Team Edward" "Team Jacob" thing from the Twilight movies and a referance to Bela Lugosi, who played Dracula. Then, recently, I came up with, "Real vampires wear capes." which I like a lot better. It works as a declaration of love for the classic Dracula movies and that style of vampire, while also still serving as a subtle jab to the Twilight movies and their many blood "sucking" knock offs.

 It's available as a T-shirt and a Mug, both available in a bunch of different styles.

Win The Trophy Avatars

These are some Avatars that I designed for Win The Trophy about a couple of years ago. Since I've got a Characters section on my website now, I decided to add them to that portfolio.

Shrimp Sketches 2

So waaaaaay back in June I posted some sketches that I did for a freelance project, I was doing, in which I was designing a shrimp mascot for a clothing line.  Anyway, I did quite a number of sketches to get the look of the shrimp down.  This is the last three rounds of sketches.

With these five sketches I was attempting to make the shrimp have more of a cooked shrimp shape, based on the request of the client.

 The cooked shrimp idea was the right direction but it needed to be a little more stylized. It needed to be a little simpler too, so that it would work well on clothing.  The client decided that they liked the one with the Popeye style arms but wanted me to work on improving the face a bit.

So, I came up with these final five designs and both myself and the client agreed that #1 was the best.

Next time I will post the final Illustration of the Jumbo Shrimp.

Eustace Consulting: Anna

I Just recently finished a brand new character for Eustace Consulting based on their newest team member, Anna. You may or may not have seen the previous set of characters Right here. This illustration is, of course, done with the more detailed rendering much like the previous characters. I'm definitely getting more comfortable with that style now. It also helps that I've upgraded my version of Adobe Illustrator which allows for transparencies on gradients and therefor makes blending them together, much easier.

All New Jeff Morin Art

Hey folks! It's been a while since I've written any new posts. Sorry about that.  I've been rather busy moving into a new place and then totally revamping JeffMorinArt.com . That's right, I redid my whole website from the ground up.  I decided to get with the 21st century so I'm now using a nice little content management system called Get Simple which looks really nice and modern.  It's now much easier to get around my site and much easier for me to upload new content.  Also, I've added some new artwork and portfolios.  Each of the portfolios has a nice little image gallery, slide show feature.

I'm pretty excited about it and I'm even thinking about adding some other content to the site, like for instance, a process section or a tour of my studio.  I've got lots of ideas but they'll have to wait for the not-to-distant future.  For now, I'd like to move on to other projects.

So, I invite you to come take a look at my newly remodeled website.  And maybe you've got the need for some custom cartoon artwork, don't hesitate to contact me because I'm the man for the job! But you don't have to take my word for it, come take a look!

The Fantastic Three Sketch

I ran out of room to draw Thing  so it's just The Fantastic Three. Also, I'm not sure what Mr. Fantastic is thinking about. Coffee, maybe?

One of my favorite comic books has always been The Fantastic Four.  I love that it's a product of the 1960s and hasn't lost that retro scifi feel, for the most part.  The best part about it is that it's a team of adventurers dealing with all manner of crazy science fictions stories while living within a very real world and dealing with real problems, and that leads to some very humorous moments as well.

There's two versions of The Fantastic Four that I've always wanted to see in other media.  The first, is a big budget marvel movie that takes place in the 1960s.  Out of all the superheroes that were created in that time, The Fantastic Four was made for it and, I think, works best in that era.  Rumor has it that they are working on a re-boot, and with the success of X-men First Class there's always a possibility that it Could get made.

The second thing I'd love to see, is a really cartoony adventure cartoon, much in the style of my sketch.  I would love to see something that played up on the comedic real life moments more and had some good animation to it.  Imagine using the classic squash and stretch animation techniques on Mr. Fantastic.  We've had plenty of realistic, stiffly animated cartoons with these characters. I think this approach  would be refreshing and extremely entertaining.

Shrimp Sketches

Currently, I'm working on a freelance gig designing a Jumbo shrimp character.  They've had me do a lot of sketches so far, to try and get a feel for what will work best for their product line. These are just the first three groups of sketches.  Each group is an evolution from the last. I take the clients suggestions and try several new ideas based on that.

I

Sweater Man Sketch

I've been doing a lot of sketching with a sharpie pen lately.  It's pretty fun.  It's not as bold as the Copics that I use to draw with.  I like the way you can create a sort of sketchy look to the lines.  You have to go over a spot several times to make it as bold and broad as you'd like.  It gives it a really unique look; something I've tried to do before but never really had the proper tools, I think.

Something interesting about working with different types of art supplies is that it can dictate the way a sketch will turn out.  Not just in the stylistic elements but in the actual structure of the drawing.  For instance, if I was using a brush pen to draw this character, his proportions would probably have come out a lot different.  Also, I might not have been compelled to do all those little wrinkly bits on the front of his sweater or the stubble on his face.  You kind of just go with what feels right with the utensil you are using, and every art utensil is different.

Face Sketches

These are a couple of cool looking faces from the pages of my sketchbook.

The girl was drawn with some slightly worn out copic brush pens and multiliners.  I used a red pencil to do my construction lines. I really like the Copic pens. They are probably the best I've used for inking stuff. I use them to draw installments of The Daily Doodle.

This creepy looking fella was drawn with a Sharpie pens.  It's a nice pen.  It works okay for sketching.  I wouldn't recommend it for any finished work. The ink doesn't really flow real well and you can't do quick strokes otherwise the lines will come out too light. Excellent for writing with though!

 

Sketchbook Doodles

Just some interesting doodles from my current sketchbook.

I don't really think much of these things when I'm doodling them but later, when I go back, I often see things that I really like.  In this case, I really dig that fly guy.

Family Guy Nonsense

Nautical Illustrations

So, it's been a while since I've created any stock Illustrations but, recently, I had the opportunity to do some because of a freelance commission.  I was contacted by a company who had found my illustrations on Shutterstock.  They had purchased one of my worm illustrations and were using it on their website.  They wanted two more specific illustrations and couldn't find any stock Illustrations that would work or match the style of my worm cartoons.

Since they were content in using stock in their web design ( as apposed to owning the full exclusive rights to the art) I offered to illustrate these at a lower cost than normal if I could keep all the rights to the illustrations. That way I can offer these for sale on various stock sites.  It works out well for both parties, the client gets a good deal and I can continue to make money off of the illustrations long into the future.

If you'd like to download a copy of the sailor you can do so right here on IstockPhoto.  The pearl is also available on Istock. I'll be adding them both to my Shutterstock portfolio in the near future too.

And if you're interested in commissioning me for some custom artwork you can contact me by email: Jeffmorin.art@gmail.com  I'm gonna be drawing anyway. I might as well be doing it for you!

Ask The Motherboard

Do you know what today is? It's Mothers Day but it's also the launch of a brand new website called Ask The Motherboard.  It's a tech blog for the whole family, but more importantly it features this illustration crafted by myself.  It's a caricature of Danielle Vello, the websites creator and author, and her infant daughter.  Danielle wanted to go with a sort of 1950s feel for the design.  She suggested making her cartoon avatar look like a classic 50s housewife while still maintaining some traits that were uniquely her own, such as the sunglasses on top of her head. And of course, we included a modern day computer.

The website's design is still a bit of a work in progress but today is it's official launch. So, go check it out and maybe ask her a question or two to help get the ball rolling.

Eustace Consulting

This past month I was hired by Eustace Consulting to produce a series of cartoon illustrations of each of their team members.

Chris

They wanted me to do some more detailed rendering on each character. Usually, my coloring work is flatter than this. It was a bit different for me but I was confident that I could produce the results that that they were looking for.

Jenifer

 I had done illustrations with more detailed rendering and gradients before but it was usually in Photoshop using various blending options and brushes.  You can do the same sort of things in Adobe Illustrator but it's a bit more challenging because each color or gradient is a separate vector shape.  It's a lot different than Photoshop in that respect.

Anthony

Most of the challenge comes from trying to make the gradients blend together in a seamless fashion.  In Photoshop you can can use gradients that fade from a foreground color to transparent. There's ways to do that in Illustrator and I have used them before but I like to avoid it as much as possible just in case the client or their graphic designer is using software that can't render the transparent layers properly.

I think I might look into using transparencies and blending options some more. It would make the process simpler and we're getting to the point with technology and software that it might not be an issue  anymore.

Ari

By the time I got to Illustrating Ari I really had the process figured out and a lot less time was spent experimenting with the gradients to see what worked.

You can see all the characters together in the header image of the Eustace Consulting Fan Page.

Dylan's Website header

Some time ago, I designed a couple of website headers for my friend Dylan.  One was for his review blog Dylan Reviews Everything and the other was going to be for another non review related blog Dylan's Discourse.  Eventually, Dylan decided that Dylan's Discourse wasn't really necessary because whatever he had to say about anything could just be considered a review and therefor fit within the theme of Dylan Reviews Everything.  So after some discussion with me, it was decided that his main website would serve as a portfolio of his work for potential clients for his freelance business.

I didn't really have any plans of doing another website header for him but I still like to brainstorm different design ideas.  When this idea came to me, I decided to put it together because it barely took anytime at all. It's mainly just a Photoshop filter, a picture of crinkled paper and some text.

The idea was inspired by the opening to the old Nickelodeon show You Can't Do That On Television as well as the old Bubble Tape ads from my child hood. I always really liked that photocopied paper cut out look and thought it would be fitting for a writer's website.

See it on Dylan's website.

Real People Cartoons

Real people inspire me a lot. Working at a grocery store means seeing a lot of interesting characters, regularly. So, I like to draw them.  It's good practice too. I often get freelance jobs that require me to caricature somebody or draw a cartoon version of them.  Doing sketches like this keeps me limber. It teaches me to be observant of people's defining features and how to properly exaggerate them.

 

I see this guy a lot. He's sort of a very sad man with a seemingly happy attitude. I'm sure his mind is going too. He rides around on the electric cart and wears his dead wife's clothes.  He also has this little dog that he  has spoiled so much that the dog is horribly obese.  The dog is almost literally a round ball of fur.

I draw my friends a lot. So much so that it's down right creepy.  I see my friends a lot though and I get a good sense of their features and mannerisms. So it's fun to try and interpret them from memory. This is a very exaggerated sketch of my pal Nick. I'm sure if he sees this he will not be happy but I think it's funny and I wanted to share it.  Sorry Nick.  I've drawn Nick a lot, anyway.  I've done some cartoon-Nick-characters for him before for his cooking websites that were a little less offensive. Here's a more stylized one that I did for his cake business a couple years ago.

Fairy Sketch

I was sitting at work one day and noticed a drawing somebody did of a fairy. I was reminded of a sketch that I did for a coworker, a long time ago..  The sketch at the time was a more realistic, comic book style drawing. It was much different than how I draw things now. I realized that I hadn't drawn a fairy since then.  So, I decided to do this sketch for the fun of it. I like to do that from time to time to see how my art has changed.

The sketch is very John K inspired (The creator of Ren and Stimpy).  John K has been a big influence on my work , since about three years ago when I discovered his blog. It really changed my life and taught me more about drawing and cartooning then any schooling I'd ever had. Thanks John!

Rudolph Color Pages

Here are some never before seen full color pages from part three of my comic Rudolph The Hideous Abomination.  If you've seen it before, you know that the first two parts are in full color but part three and four are only black and white line art. I decided not to do the color for those last parts just because it was going to take way too long to get done.  Coloring is by far the most time consuming step and my schedule, at the time, wouldn't allow for me to get any of it done in a timely fashion.  

 At one point I decided that before I was going to start drawing chapter four I was going to go back and color chapter three. It was just bothering me too much to have only half the comic in color. Then I started getting lots of freelance work, which is always my priority, and I was only able to get these five pages colored before I decided that my time was better spent finishing the last chapter and getting it online.

A Sign From A Wise Man

The other day, my pal Dylan sent me a link to a video featuring Ice T.  Ice was talking about the term "Fuck It!" and how saying it can empower you and force you to push yourself to take risks. While viewing the video I noticed an ad, in the corner, for Istockphoto. Featured on the ad was one of my illustrations!  This blew my mind right out of my eyeballs.

Now, I know that the advertisement is probably reading my browser history and is just showing me images I've viewed before, (one of which is my own), but that's beside the point!  The ad coupled with the words of  the great wise man, Ice T, has got to be a sign.  It's a sign that I should just say, "Fuck it!" and start doing more stock illustrations already. This is the righteous path as prophesied by Ice T.  And that's precisely what I plan on doing!

Casino Girl

This young lady is an employee of the local Indian casino. I was attempting to sketch her from memory but failed.  I didn't quite capture her likeness nor did I get her nonchalant, relaxed expression quite right. Whenever I'm at the casino I see her strolling along and find her to be rather interesting.  She is rather attractive and appears to take a lot of care in maintaing that attractiveness. Her hair and make up is always done to the extreme. She looks more like somebody on a TV show rather than a change person at the casino.

Some other things I failed to remember were the bagginess of her work shirt and the change pouch that she wears like a fanny pack. Perhaps I will try again later. Or maybe I'll just go into the casino and ask her to stand still while I sketch her. That doesn't seem too weird or anything.

Solo: Shipping and Transport

I designed this Star Wars themed T-shirt months ago.  There was once plans for selling this design but those plans have since fallen through. And, unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to sell it in my Zazzle shop or anything like that.  It sort of walks a very thin line between parody and copyright infringement; a line I'm not too comfortable walking. But at least it makes a good portfolio piece and there's nothing stopping me from having it printed for my self if I want. Sucks for you guys!

Tricky Dick

Now that I have Netflix I watch a lot of documentaries.  It seems like, in most of them, they will mention something horrible that Richard Nixon did. In one documentary they showed a clip of him on stage with his wife, after winning the election and he was moving his head back and forth waving at the crowd while fluttering his long eyelashes. It was totally weird, like some kind of super villain trying to pretend to be kind and innocent. Needless to say, I was mesmerized by the fluttering of his long eyelashes. I always thought he looked and acted like a real life cartoon but in that moment he reminded me of a celebrity caricature in one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons.

Webmaster T logo

This is another Logo I did for the folks at ProInternet Television.  It's for their sister site WebmasterT.com . The color scheme for the final version was changed to red and grey for the website. I think I'm more partial to the pale green and orange though.

These are the concept sketches. The original suggestion was to put the main character, Webmaster T in a Loony Tunes style circle and have him throwing the yo-yo foward so that it is coming at the camera. I tried out several different versions of this but also threw in some of  my own ideas, and they ended up picking one of mine. This is one of those designs that could have gone in a number of different directions. I'm sure I had like eight more ideas in me, but these were the best.

ProInternet TV Logo

 This is a logo that I designed for the website/company ProInternet Television. It's now live on their website and it's also featured quite a bit in this video. This was a fun one to design. Below are some initial concept sketches. The client wanted something featuring a sort of retro TV design. They ended up liking the first one the best but they had also mentioned liking the combination of the TV and Computer in number 5. So I came up with the idea of adding a keyboard to the design and they were pleased.