Nabby

I really love creating mascots. Even when it's not required.

I recently had a fantastic opportunity to create a new identity for Camp Nabby, a summer camp in Mohegan Lake, NY. While the good folks at Camp Nabby didn't specifically request a mascot, it just felt like an idea worth pursuing.

The spots on the back are a homage to Bambi.

The final design was a lot of fun and it's nice when clients trust you to pursue an idea. Having someone respect your experience and intuition is the ultimate compliment as an artist. Above you see the final design for the deer and below you can see some of the early concept sketches.

Fishin' pole? What is this, Andy Griffith?

Some early ideas had the deer wearing camping gear, or perhaps even a swimsuit, but ultimately the decision was made to just leave him... well... as nature intended.

"What about his shoes?"

You ask too many questions.

A lot of these concepts were developed with some fonts from Lost Type. I really like their work.

While it's cool to pursue new ideas that clients don't ask for, it's even MORE important to make sure that you have all of your bases covered. I like to present concepts in stages of safety, meaning "this idea is what they expect, this idea takes it a bit further"... ending up with an idea or two that are a surprise. The images above show a few of the more expected identities developed along with the deer mascot. I was really into triangles.

I like providing secondary marks. Gives the brand more flexibility.

The final logo ended up being a combination of the pennant and the camp's name. The mascot and the pennant stamp ended up being secondary marks.

Should have designed a Nabby Slanket.

Of course, no summer camp would be complete without some cool t-shirts. While not requested, I felt it necessary to show ideas on how my identity concepts could be incorporated into apparel. It can be helpful to show work in context!

Developing the art for Camp Nabby was great, and I appreciate the freedom to pursue ideas.

Creating Apperson Prep

A few months back I posted some very early work I did for Apperson Prep, a series of online educational videos that I provided illustrations for. I wanted to share more of the concept work behind the finished product and walk you through some of my process.

The image here shows Max and Morty in their final design.

Sometimes being the sole illustrator responsible for creating an entire world of characters and settings can be quite daunting. It's fun for sure, but there is a lot of second guessing, self doubt and a lot of late nights. For Apperson Prep, my responsibilities were to create the two main characters, Max (the boy) and Morty (the ghost) along with a few scenes that they would appear in.

Some early color tests. The skull shirt was inspired by Sid from Toy Story.

When developing characters, watching movies really helps me. It gives me visual ideas on how characters might walk, talk, interact and deal with every day life. When developing these characters, I watched the Freaks and Geeks series over and over again. That show is so great at capturing the naivety and awkwardness of middle school/high school life, which is the age range the Apperson characters needed to be. The influence of that show appeared in a lot of my thumbnail sketches.

I tried lots of different ideas before the team and I landed on a boy and his ghost.

When designing characters, I often like to think about how the shapes of their bodies fit with each other. Are they similar? Opposite? How do I draw their personalities? How do they play off of each other? Do they like each other? Repulsed? Very basic ideas, but it helps when creating sketches.

I did a lot of weird studies.

Drawing is all about rhythm for me. I start drawing what I know, turn my brain off and try to fill up as many pages as I can. Typically there will be a handful of useful designs that help me move forward.

Lots of influence from Freaks and Geeks

Most of the early designs for Max had him either too old or too young. The drawings in the upper right ended up being pretty close to the final design.

Studies of Morty, a shape-shifting ghost.

Morty the ghost was extremely difficult to design. Even though his final build is really simple, the journey to get there was a very long and winding path. The Apperson team and I really struggled with how old or young to make this ghost. Did he look human? Was he a former student? Was he scary? Did he realize he was dead?

More early studies of Morty

I did a lot of exercises with trying to find the perfect "ghost" shape. I tried to steer clear of Casper, the Pac Man ghosts, Slimer and the Ghostbusters logo. It wasn't easy to not have every single idea be derivative of those existing ghosts... so I did a lot of studies.

Hat studies?

There were lots of details put into Morty. I even did studies of his hat to make sure he had just the right look. The sketch labeled "Hat #02" ended up being the final, approved sketch for Morty. All of the vector files were built off of that original drawing.

Several scenes developed for the Apperson Prep videos.

Diagram of Max's house

Max and Morty hanging out

Working for Apperson was great. It was a very rewarding experience that taught me a lot about communicating through drawing and making sure to pay attention to even the smallest details. The work shown above was a fraction of the work that went into designing the Max and Morty series. It took a lot of effort and I look forward to doing even better next time.

Thanks for hanging with me through all the sketches. :-)

Nate the Bee-Keeping Judo Master

Sometimes I get to do commissions where the subject matter can be quite a challenge. Take Nate for example! I was asked to do a piece for a gentlemen named Nate who is into almost everything you can imagine. Specifically, Nate is really into bee keeping, Judo and making (and I would assume drinking) wine. Sooooo... how do you combine all of these unrelated elements into one composition?

I drew lots of fangers.

Of course, the first step is to draw. Watch movies, drink coffee, stare outside the window at the empty sky... and then draw more. A lot of times, if the end result to a visual problem is something I just can't wrap my head around, I start with something that my monkey brain can handle. For this job I figured the drawers (?) that bee keepers keep the honeycomb in would be easy to draw and compose. I mean, rectangles right? I know rectangles! So, as I begin to draw something simple, it frees my mind to wander off onto more complex ideas. I like to chip away by drawing and eventually I end up with a visual solution that is somewhat satisfying (let's be honest... I'm never satisfied with my own abilities).

This study was created in Photoshop and NOT in finger paints.

One exercise I've been experimenting with lately is to compose with color. I think the composition above is pretty elementary, but it's a different approach to drawing with pencil and paper. Not sure it worked out so well for this piece, but I'll try this practice again on something else.

How on earth did illustrators draw from reference before the internet? I guess they used "books". Ghastly!

As a graphic designer, when I graphic designorate, I use grids. I have also come to find that grids are essential to composing images too. Not that you have to stay rigid to your grid, but it does help me arrange shapes into sizes and areas that are pleasing to my eyeballs. Again, when composing a really complex idea, it's helpful to work with what you knows. I know rectangles and grids really help me out when I'm stuck.

Let's get buzzed. Get it?

The final piece, dear friends. I think it is a decent job of combing several, unrelated ideas into one consistent illustration. The client was happy. I was happy. The bees were drunk. The end.

Klikt

Klikt recently brought me on to develop a series of illustrations that told the story of how their new rewards/coupon program could help small businesses. The end result would be a short, animated video featured on their website. I wanted to share some of the process put into the development of the video.

An example of the storyboards vs. the final scenes

I am not a storyboard artist by any means, but I had to do enough to get client approval before moving on to the final illustrations. The image shown above shows my process for this particular project. Luckily I worked with some great people who did very little to change my original vision.

Several drawings were done to capture the right look of the shop owner.

The sketches above were done with pencil and Photoshop. This step was needed as it helped the team decide, very quickly, on the look for the main character.

Several poses for the main character. Most scenes only showed from the waste up.

When the job calls for a lot of character drawings/poses and there's not much time, drawing in vector really helps. You can borrow a lot of common elements (note that the shoes, legs, head etc. for our main character are the same) which can speed along doing multiple poses. It's almost like creating illustrated puppets.

I'm always surprised at the various items I'll end up drawing. By the way, I'm your man when it comes to drawing bus signs/trash cans.

I read a letter Ward Kimball once wrote to an aspiring animator where he spoke about needing to be able to draw everything, and draw everything from multiple points of view. I think about that when creating scenes and props for characters. What Ward said is true! You really do have to be able to draw almost anything at any time for any project. Having a set style does help as it narrows your approach to drawing something you've never drawn before. I had no idea I'd be drawing a trash can for this project, but well... now I have.

Lots of various customers were built out of just a few parts.

Call me Dr. Frankenstein. Look carefully and you'll notice that several of these characters are built out of a few common pieces. This helps me keep projects on schedule and profitable. I sure would love to intricately design each customer the script called for, but I also have to eat, so you must decide where to spend your time and how to build assets efficiently.

The Coffee Hut is open for business!

One thing I stress is attention to detail. You'll notice this coffee shop is now called "The Coffee Hut" with a silly little logo. This is not anything the client asked for, but I felt it needed to be part of the story. It was weird to have a coffee shop not being branded in some manner. The logo itself is nothing remarkable, but it fits within the story and adds a bit more detail that wasn't there before.

The final interior scene used in the video was much lighter.

This drawing is the interior of the coffee shop. It was designed to house a lot of characters so you'll notice that as you move to the right, it gets really open and there's not much detail. Also, notice the 73 points of perspective. Put a cup of coffee down in this place and it would crash to the floor. :-)

You can see more scenes from this project over on my site, and don't forget to check out the Klikt video for yourself!

A Band of Louies

I love drawing music. Specifically bands. There's a lot of opportunity to capture visual rhythm and I think the subject matter has mass appeal. My friend Louie commissioned a piece featuring several of Disney's Louies and the idea really lent itself well to putting all of these characters into a band.

My preliminary studies really focused on the shapes of things. I wasn't too concerned with being "on model". I really wanted to create pieces that fit together like a puzzle.

My first step was to choose which Louies to feature, as I found out there are lots of Louies within the Disney universe to choose from, and to place each Louie with an appropriate instrument. I chose 4 Louies; the duck, the chef, the orangutan and the alligator.

I love drawing musical instruments, so creating this piece was a chance for me to nerd out. By the way, I was like second chair trumpet in high school so... be impressed.

I wanted to make sure the instruments in the band had as much character as the characters themselves, so I designed them first. I wanted to wrap the Louies around them, almost as if each instrument sprouted a Louie. Yeah yeah. I just really wanted to draw some instruments.

This was a new technique I pursued. Just focus on shapes and composition in illustrator.

Doing small commissions on a regular basis allows me to try out new things without the risk of eating up billable hours on a larger project. For this drawing I did composition studies using shapes in Illustrator, rather than drawing in my sketchbook. It's certainly a different way to approach a visual problem and it seemed to work for this drawing.

I will typically work right next to source material. How did illustrators do it before the web? Baffling!

This is a screen grab of how typically work in Illustrator. I choose colors before starting on an illustration and frequently place research images/sketches directly onto the screen, drawing right next to them. Nothing remarkable, but I am always interested in other techniques, and thought I would share one of mine.

The final piece. Which one is your favorite? I like Louie.

You can see this piece larger over on my site. Thanks!

Burger Pals

Typically I like to start any new project with traditional drawing and doodling. I like to think through designs and ideas with pencil and paper. However, there are a few projects where I sit at the computer, know exactly what I want to create and hammer it out in a few hours without drawing anything.

My friend Louie Mantia recently started a blog about reviewing burgers called the Burger Digest and needed some fast food characters to brand his site with. Knowing I had a talent for eating fast food and drawing french fries, he brought me on to develop a series of characters for the blog.



I knew exactly what I wanted these characters to look like and immediately jumped into Illustrator. First step was to draw the food items without worrying about line thickness or detail.



Next step was the clean the food pieces up and make sure the shapes were funky and nonsensical... just the way I like them.



Then put faces on them. Personally, I like the Steve Jobs/Harry Potter soda cup.



I like color, and wanted the group to be a colorful bunch. I assigned each character his/her own color, trying to base decisions off of the actual food color (whenever possible).



The final group ended up resembling old Colorforms from the '80s. I loved those things!

Thanks again Louie! Be sure to check out Burger Digest!

The Art of Barry Bones

UPDATE: Barry Bones book now on sale! Just $10. Order yours now!

I always love creating stuff for GUTS. If you aren't familiar, GUTS is the pumpkin carving contest put on by the firm I live at, Hawse Design. This year, I had the opportunity to expand the Barry Bones character created for last years event. The result of that work ended up being produced into a 24 page activity book. More on that later.



The previous design for Barry Bones & Co. (left) was flat and too cold. I needed to update the characters with more depth and warmth (right).


Last year, I spent about a week or so on the development of Barry Bones, and I feel the art reflects that. It's over-simplified and the colors are very flat. This year, I wanted to redo that artwork into a more vibrant and "alive" set of characters. I wanted Barry Bones to have a lot more personality this year and appeal to a wider ranged audience.



An example of some of the pencil drawings done for character concepts.

I also wanted to surround Barry with a larger cast of characters. What does his neighborhood feel like? Who is his best friend? What attitudes and personalities does he come in contact with. All of these ideas would help design new characters.



Barry got a whole new crew of friends for 2011.

Since this work would need to take place in and around real client work, I still needed to keep the character designs simple. I like to think of them as vector puppets. This would help me keep this project on schedule. Overall, from sketch to final production art, this book took me about 3 months.



Of course he gets a logo.



The storyboard on the left shows my rough ideas for the layout. While they are super crappy, I'm surprised that the final art (on the right) was pretty close to my original idea.

The storyboard process took about a month. The story seems like such a simple one, and I was surprised at how long it takes to craft a simple story. I wanted the story to be entertaining and create a world around Barry Bones, but also act as a promotion for the GUTS event we host every year.



The original concept for the mummy was that he was an exercise buff. I thought that was funny since his arms would keep falling off. Didn't have time for that in this story though.

I also named several of the characters after the people I work with at Hawse. Barry is named for my environmental design director, Barry Becker. Rob the mummy is named after my boss Rob Hawse, with Brandy the witch being named for my AE Brandy Newton. Of course my friend and creative director, Matt Stevens, would appear as a bat… a nod to his obsession with the caped crusader. I enjoy working with these people in real life, and felt Barry should get to be with them too.



I had to work in a coffee shop. I even did a version of the Starbucks logo for the story.

I always enjoy having my characters appear in places that I like to visit. Every single character I've ever created loves coffee. I just think it's funny.



As Barry gets closer to finding a pumpkin, the colors begin to turn orange.

I wanted color to help tell the Barry Bones story as well as the scenes and characters. "Color Scripts" are tools I see folks like Pixar and Dreamworks utilize in their storytelling, and wanted to emulate that practice here with Barry. As Barry gets closer to his pumpkin, the colors in the background begin to turn orange. Also, it's rare to see such candy-coated colors used with a Halloween story, so I thought it would be a neat idea to see it in action.



I love drawing grocery stores. Even though it appears as a detail on one page, I wanted to make it feel just right.

I love grocery stores. I love shopping at grocery stores. I don't know why. I just do. So, the Barry Bones story would need to have a grocery store. Fresh Slurch anyone?



Did I mention I enjoy drawing grocery stores?

Not only would this book be a story book, but it would have big activities in it as well. Once of the more detailed adventures was a "seek and find". I decided it would be cool to have a seek and find where you had to help Barry find groceries in the cluttered aisles of the monster grocery store. In the image above, you can see the sketched version and how it compared to the final version shown just below it.



The final art for Bodean and Barry's house was very close to my final sketches.

As a kid, I always enjoyed seeing where characters lived (part of the concept behind Disneyland was that Walt wanted to show where the characters lived) and Barry would be no exception. I wanted to pair him with Bodean the Redneck Werewolf because I liked how opposite they are. Bodean is a circle, while Barry is a rectangle. Barry talks a lot and Bodean never says a word.



Of course I would find a way to draw some sort of truck.

I enjoy drawing vehicles and since this year the goal is to deliver 200 Barry Bones books and t-shirts to children at Levine Children's Hospital (you can read more about this over on the official GUTS site), it made sense to me that Barry should drive a GUTS delivery truck. Beep beep!



And let's not forget the Bonesmobile. Barry Bones demands sweet rides!

Of course, when he's not working, Barry needed a ride that suited his fine taste in style and his obsession with all things fancy. While I haven't quite decided if the Bonesmobile is haunted, it does get good gas mileage.



Every element has to be created. Even lawnmowers. Here are some props designed for the story.

Whenever you create a story, you have to design the world around your characters. Mailboxes, lawn mowers, trashcans… none of these things exist until you create them. The example above shows some of the elements created for the Barry Bones book.



Barry Bones even got specifically designed food packages. No detail is too small.

For the grocery store scene, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to create silly food packages. Matt helped a lot with the names, but I take credit for the REALLY funny ones. Whichever those are.



You can send a Barry Bones shirt and book to a kid at Levine Children's Hospital!

"So how can I get my hands on a Barry Bones book?" Well, currently all printed copies are being donated to Levine Children's Hospital. It's for kids that are too sick to come to GUTS. This book is specifically for them. That's not to say we won't make them available for sale in the future, but currently it's not in the works.



Don't forget to come to GUTS and bid on the pumpkins.

If you live in the Charlotte area and are looking for a Halloween event that's fun for the entire family, then please come to GUTS. You'll have the opportunity to see some really fantastic designs and even bid on your favorite ones. You can really impress all of those trick-or-treaters with an amazing pumpkin. Find out more about GUTS on the official site.



This poor guy never made it into the story. There is always 2012.

In closing, I wanted to personally thank my family at HAWSE for allowing me to create this book the way I wanted to do it. I also wanted to thank Metrographics for graciously donating their time and resources to print it FOR FREE. They rule.

Please consider pledging $25 to GUTS, so that a kid receives this Barry Bones book along with a Barry Bones t-shirt. This is a project I believe in, and have spent nights and weekends to make it good and to make it feel special. I appreciate all of your support.

Happy Halloween!