Christmas Gift

This one of a few Christmas gifts I did this year.  It was a last minute idea for my mom.  This is probably a sentiment shared by many, especially here in the cold, dark, bleak winters of the Midwest where the sun is down by 5 o'clock and it is 20 below zero outside...kinda hard to be motivated.

Pretty satisfied with the overall result.  The only things I would change are the size of the hands, and the perspective of that bench seat, as I was basically eyeballing it (lazy).  The other thing I noticed was, the silhouette of the bottle was disappearing into the background/bench.  I was able to adjust it a bit in the digital version, but the print ended up darker than expected, so...probably gonna need to go back and fix that at some point...should be simple enough to do.

Anyway...just thought I would share, as these are the projects I enjoy doing the most, and could actually see doing something like this as a collaboration with a company of sorts (basically packaging design or illustration).

So, another gift and another piece in the old portfolio!  Happy New Year, considering all that has happened, this next year (and possibly four) should be very interesting to say the least...excited to see what happens...and a bit scared, too.

Buckle up!

Working on My Masters

Greetings.  Here is an illustration I completed a little while ago of my friend/co-worker, Jeremy, an avid toy collector.  I had the idea about 5 or so months ago, but not the time to execute it properly...until recently.  For those who are not aware, this is a character, "He-Man," from the '80's cartoon television show, He Man and the Masters of the Universe.  I used to watch this when I was 4 years old.  It was a religion for me then.  And thus, I had a junk load of He-Man toys.

So, creating this illustration was a nostalgic trip.  Included are some of the linear designs I had come up with during the process.  The head chosen for this particular illustration works fine, but I'll probably revisit this face later for proper caricature purposes.

The battle axe was left out because it crowded up the balance of the design and obscured too much of the package illustration.  The package logo was an interesting challenge.  In the end, it was traced freehand for the lettering, and, where the telescoping lines of the text vanish toward the vanishing point, a ruler was used.  Adobe Illustrator is probably the ideal program for this task, but the version I have is a bit old, and I thought, "What the hell, let's go old-school."

Speaking of old-school, I did a bit of research on the logo and ended up finding a very dedicated fan base online where the actual creator of the original '80's package designs was signed in and answering questions/explaining how he did the original packaging illustrations with airbrush/ink/etc.  Like all things digital, I try and think of how to go about doing it traditionally as well.  It made me really appreciate Photoshop while I was coloring, not because it would be impossible, it just sounded like a pain in the ass, and I truly respect that!

Anyway, you can see the result of the finished, mimicked version of the packaging design.  I tried to do my best to stay true/copy the original version in a timely manner.  The rock effect was drawn completely in Photoshop.  After all was said and done, I put in some text and other effects in the correct layer order, and voila!

As a toy collector, I knew that Jeremy would want two versions: "Mint Condition" and "Out of the Box."  The last image is the one to play with.  Enjoy Jeremy!