A Sweet Swatch

Tah Dah! Mission accomplished. I'm afraid we're going to see a revisit of the bedazzler incident of 1995. Once I learned how to Bedazzle I didn't own a single thing that wasn't studded and shiny. I could see the same thing happening with this growing need to create patterns. . .

Little Angels. . .

I like these but I don't really think they're interesting enough this way. . . . Can we say wrapping paper swatch? Huh? Huh? Oh yeah. WRAPPING PAPER SWATCH!

GrizzGruff is Born

I'm working on a new project using the same style of design work as when I was designing for Pinky Dinky Doo. This is a photo collage design for a fun client who definitely has a vision. I thought I'd show a bit of my process since this is so different from my typical stuff. Everyone, meet GrizzGruff. GrizzGruff is a misunderstood beast. He's happy in his own little garden but tends to get pulled into rough and wild situations that are a bit out of hand or hoof. . . . So what's a gigantic beast with horns, a ring in his nose and hoofs to do? Typically these moments of panic are when GrizzGruff does some of his best landscaping.

To reach a finished product like the one above I sat down with my client at a pretty low key diner in Brooklyn Heights and pulled out my sketchbook. GrizzGruff is just one of my new darlings . . . so we discussed the project in it's entirety. I started fooling around with a few broad ideas for Grizzgruff. The client was set on horns and hoofs, but wanted him to be intimidating but comical as well. . . I suggested the nose ring. . . the sketching was fast and fun. I knew full well what the outcome of the product was going to be so that allowed me a lot of freedom to do very loose and fast, funny sketches. We fell in love with the one below.

However, while I was set on giving GrizzGruff a Teenage Mutant Ninja T-Shirt, the client wanted him to be built. Whatever. . . guys who wear TMNT shirts can be buff. . .

So after we agreed on a general idea and I was promised creative freedom as long as GrizzGruff wasn't wearing a shirt and looked pretty much like the sketch above, I came home and began to gather my photographs. I knew I needed long haired dogs to create the textures I was going to need. Typically I use stock photos for this process but I had a few friends who wanted their fluffy pals to be part of the action. They took the three puppy photos below for me. The cow isn't an acquaintance.
From here I just started to cut in Photoshop, pulling textures and colors from different places, brightening up or dulling different patches as I went along slowly building our lovely, misunderstood buddy from the ground up. You can see that the Shar Pei's nose is GrizzGruff's too and that his muscles are all Pomeranian. I really like this gig. From here these designs will be passed off to layout artists and from there they'll get handed out to animators. I love designing for animation. It's great to have something designed by me alone, distributed out to 60 animators and put together in an animated cartoon! Then I really get to see everything come to life and I can forget that it took tons of people to pull it together. It's the best!

Designing Sweat Shirts is a Funny Thing. . . .

My art director on this project makes me laugh all the time! I have come to realize that all of that laughing has to be done once I leave the office, but still! He will slide his wheelie chair over at top speed, banging into me at my computer and making me slide in my wheelie chair over to the left of my keyboard! Once he arrives front and center at my monitor he'll exclaim, 'Good. Good. Like it. Like it. Change it. Love it. HATE it. Good. Like it. Move on! Move on! Stat!!!' All while pointing at every little detail on the monitor. I've never worked in a more stressful environment. It reminds me of every time I've ever been in the ER. It's bizarre! I come home with my shoulders up around my ears, stressed out of my gourd. The work is a lot of fun though. The designs below are just some of the work I've done this week.

One Hot Swatch!

little devils. . .

Fabric Crush

I've rekindled my interest in fabric styling as of late. I'm working with fabrics for a big aparel company right now, and I just always wish the work they had me doing were more fun. I've been toying around with repeats and this is my first real stab at my own fabric design without any air of stupid corporate America.

You Just Gotta Love Those Prismacolors

A Kinder Cleaner Pig

After a few complaints about the sketchy quality of my sketchy pig on my She Sure is Sketchy blog, I decided to ditch a bit of the sketchiness. . .

Pig and Friend

Colerase & Crappy Ballpoint on Back of Bank Statement

I've found my new medium of choice.

Map it Out

Anna and John lived right next to each other when they were children in American. The client wanted to show that they had each come from far away, Anna from Italy and John from China. No one had dealt with the "monkey issue." I finally convinced them that in a children's book you couldn't just introduce a monkey and then get rid of him without explanation. . . I decided to have him saying goodbye from China. Then it only seemed natural to add Anna's mom and sister waving goodbye from Italy. Before you knew it the map was covered with little details. My favorite is the puffin with a mouthful of fish.

Color Makes Life Less Sad

I had to leave a ton of room for the words on these pages. This part of the book was pretty wordy. The rest of the book has taken me forever to lay down color but these two pages went quickly. Maybe leaving so much space for words isn't so bad afterall. ha.

So Sad. . .

This page is for the sad things that happen in life. On the left the boy's father had to leave them in an orphanage so that they could stay in America while he relocated to Europe. On the right Anna's mother sent her and her brothers to America with their father while she stayed in Italy with Anna's sister. Anna ended up playing Cinderella to her four brothers.