Storyboarding the Wannabeez

I was recently emailed by - lets call him - 'wannabe film director'. He was infact a children's book writer for whom i'd put together a dummy book proposal. That was a very, very long time ago and all i could remember was the title 'Billy the Beast'. Well, out of the big blue surf he wants a Storyboard doing from his own screenplay for a new twelve minute short movie. There's no money in it, he said, well... just about a pony (or should that be a monkey) with promises and extra helping of praise, not to mention the early cheque. I accepted to read through his screenplay, i then googled-images-search: 'storyboard' to re-aquaint myself with this artform, umm... doable i thought.
Two weeks later and to cut a long blog-post short, i'd produced a 15 page pdf document (under 3MB) of scene-by-scene sketches with extra dose of creative interpretation for plot-emphasis. It's a light-hearted comedy drama about 2 mates in a band and how their first pub gig gets them into bother. Wannabe film director asked for pictures which explain things to his crew and actors, just as a visual guide to his screenplay, and becouse it was a job - a job like the comics i used to do for laughs, i said yes. At least i couldn't think of a reason why not. Here's some pages (not all 15 pages) ...

His response was, "more than i was hoping for". Wannabe film director went on a bit but y'know, it's um... nice and y'wonder sometimes what nature of ethereal cake mix is holding this cherry up? or is it all in the baking? Anyway i hope he gets the funding.

Engraved Barak Obama

Finished in the style of 'Copperplate Engraving' like you see on the earlier dollar bills depicting the presedents - Lincoln, Jefferson. This portrait was, for me, a steep learning curve to create digitally.

I used mainly Photoshop's own'Liquidize' filter to draw the fine parallel lines that contour over the shapes of Obama's face and was a bit fiddly at first but found this to be the best method when it comes to that authentic look and feel of the genuine article. Not a bad effort.

There are dedicated Plug-ins that, i think, do a 'stick-up job' approximating the engraved look and fall short where lines need to follow the contour-shapes of an object, as i found to my cost these Plug-ins only give a pattern affect of thin\thick lines in the contrasting light\dark areas of an image. Its more akin to 'Photo-Gravure' and well, ... a bit flat for what i had inmind.

A - whambam - boom! is now available as a limited-edition print. Poster size: A2.

Poster-Prints new exhibition venue !!

I'm exhibiting signed Limited Edition Poster-Prints. Respectably framed in black and behind glass - includes an off-white mount-card suround too, and they're on permanent show at two venues here in sunny Brighton: Hotel Pelirocco and also now at new venue as of September'09, The Park View pub

You can purchase them - straight off the wall framed for £70 if you happen to be there. Or perhaps take the opportunity to have an unframed Poster-Print posted rolled in a cardboard tube for £35 (inc'P+P.) Contact me: jim['at']doodlingjim.com



Smoking Jesus and Happy Slapping are not yet finished so are unavailable, must get rownd to that soon. You may like to see larger image of my Poster-Prints in better detail by popping out to my flickr set

Brewery's 2nd label design !

The Humpty Dumpty Brewery was very pleased with my previous design for the BAD EGG label - specifically refered to as a 'Pumpclip' in the pub trade (see previous post.) Its new beer is going down faster than they can brew it, which is nice. So again Stephen called on my illustration services, this time to re-brand their regular flagship brew 'Humpty Ale'. His brief was for a label with a cricketing theme and to coincide the beer's re-launch with the Ashes tour. In keeping with the brewery's name, Stephen informed me of a well known cricketing slogun (attributed to a sports commentator whose name eludes me at present) "Give it some Humpty!" Like the previous Bad Egg, he also wanted this label's design to protrude out from the background shape. I responded with very loose sketches just to be sure i was 'on message' with his theme where Humpty is in his batting togs and giving it loads of Humpty ... Stephen's reaction also included that of his co-directors too so generally the concept was now going in the right direction. Next step was to rummage through my collection of fonts and loosely layout some suitable lettering in Illustrator. I also drew some cricketing humpties in pencil, some of these i inked over with a black felt-tip pen and picked the best to scan into photoshop at a pixel resolution of 600dpi for the purpose of converting into an expandable vector graphic - useful as i could place and proportion the design as a whole. I reckoned i had covered all the main points, so i sent two versions as i needed feedback at this stage before proceeding towards anything looking finished ...

He responded with general approval and now wanted an un-cut or square version of the label too. I developed the design further and now applied a cut-shape as a 'vector-mask' (made it in Illustrator and imported into Photoshop), but hidden for this example ...

I had a week or so to stare at it before Stephen got back, giving me the opportunity to improve odd details like Humpty's pink skin-tone. The red ball's bigger now and the label's design was completed by adding 'Ale' on the bat ...

Everone said it was great, so i zipped up all files for emailing but it was too big for my miserable broadband limit to upload so i resorted to sending the job in three seperate emails (really must try out Dropbox!). Now i'm looking forward to receiving some Pumpclip samples to add to my trophy cabinet. Cheers!

...............................................

By the way, in creating the 'Humpty Ale' label i Googled "beer label" and bagged a folder load of inspirational reference material - people actually collect this stuff! Maybe you have a general interest in 'brand psychology', and what better example than the aesthetically challenged 'London-2012-Olympics' logo, curious when one considers its outrageous cost to the taxpayer of several hundreds of thousands of pounds, not to mention its fascist looking overtones - is this the future? Suffice to say there's lots of column inches worth of babble out there but for now i will leave you with my doodoos on it ...

Beer Label

I got an email enquiry from Humpty Dumpty Brewery asking for a totally different label design from the usual, for their new beer launching Easter '09, called 'BAD EGG' (odd name for a beer!?) The partner-director of this 'Micro' Brewery was inspired by one of my T-shirt designs here and seized the initiative to commission me. His vision was for an egg-shaped Humpty character pictured on a motorbike with hands (on handlebars) sticking out each side of the label. Nice job i thought. After i agreed to cave-in on the price, i sent him this very rough sketch just to put the idea over ...

He liked the concept and i worked on it some more ...
"Coming along very nicely" however the consensus opinion was to reduce Humpty's tongue and instead add a headlight. Other suggestions were also thrown in at this stage - by a committee of 'all the king's men and all the king's horses' (i should think) - which, by the way, is great becouse i now had a good idea what exactly this beer label required. I slept on it and the following day, sent this new Rough ...
"This is getting even better" was his basic reaction, just one or two minor suggestions about the headlight area needed defining some more and so i felt ready then to make something approaching a 'finished artwork' presentation ...
By way of a reply i received a cheque less than a week later for the full amount from his partner in accounts dept' with enclosed compliments-slip saying "Thank you for the excellent Bad Egg" but no response from himself. He was probably busy testing the new brew, and so i posted off a CD containing that finished artwork - saved with the cutting-vector-path needed for the label's shape - which was outputted from photoshop as a PDF document.

However, later that same day he did respond to my presentation! "We like it but headlight looks a little spare" I took that to mean too much shine. I replied that i'll be happy to amend this area and send another CD ( being as i probably was bit too quick in the first instance. ) He also said there will be further projects in the new year for me as new beers come on stream. The Humpty Dumpty Brewery is winning awards hand-over-fist for its beers since the new owners took it over just two years ago.

Saucy Seaside Postcard

I saw this posted on the local web - "Illustrator Wanted for Cartoons ... I am looking for an illustrator to produce characters to represent the gay community 'By The Seaside' in a slapstick manner, the theme is to be that of the 1950's cheeky postcards ..."
This post went further to state that 12 charactors are needed, which then have to be combined into 4 illustrations. The finished art should be supplied as layered illustrator eps files, and that the price quoted needs to include sale of copyright. A sketch was also suggested at this initial stage of, "... a Drag queen signing into an Ice-cream cone that is melting down her arm with a seagull just about to swoop down and eat the entire ice-cream ..."
I could be wrong about this word 'signing' - spelling mistake? However i accepted the challenge as read and fired up my illustrator program to produce an artwork sample peice in the required eps format. I then zipped that over along with this jpeg -


A very short time later i got a reply. "... Great effort, thanks but ..." Seems my price was too steep on this job as, "... it's for the 'Gay Pride' charity organization and the maximum they'd pay is about £400 ..." Damn it! (me thinks, Pink£?%T@X# = chumpchange!) So being as it was, a warm sunny and barmy afternoon, i went for a gloriously idyllic ride on my bike to fuckin' Devil's Dyke and shouted at some sheep.

Global financial crisis

Inspiration for this picture of Fat Cat Stock Trader Man came to mind while listening on the radio about the current 'Economic Depression' being potentially as serious as the crash of the 1920's. Apparently my super-safe triple 'AAA' junk billions are being resecuritized as a new government backed packege of financial instruments. Its all exotic voodoo futures to me as i'm a very time-rich freelancer here in my uber-office at Doodling Jim Towers and so have the luxury to wisely spend my valuable time keeping an eye on contemporary illustration trends and noticed it's decidedly painterly.

So not to be out-classed, i've been digitally credit-crunching Photoshop's filters and effects to nail down this painterly style of illustration in order to reproduce it on a commercial basis. As they say - 'When the going gets tough, the tough get their illustrator of choice'. Here's a close-up section you can click on to see all the detail at 100% resolution in new browser window ...
Should you be a Commissioning Art Director on the lookout for illustration in this painterly cartoon manner, its reassuring to know the overall time i spent working-up this portrait, it took me just three days as no roughs needed approval and no reference material needed gathering. Original file's (.psd) print dimensions are magazine format full cover at 300dpi (about 150MB.) It's unpublished accept here as a 'self promo' piece. By the way, this particular pic is available 'off the peg' with layers included so its editable - ready to receive further direction. Or if you got a Brief with about a comfortable two weeks turn-arownd time, then contact me via my webfolio: www.doodlingjim.com

Maybe i'll do Retro style ..?

This is some mucking about with retro style. Am thinking i should do more bollERX like this. Maybe there's an imaginative Art Director out there who's looking, eh?

A bread and butter job

Finally received the last pay-off for completing 2 commissions involving 4 projects to provide over 100 b\w illustrations for Oxford University Press ELT, which has been trickling along since last May. "Thank you for acting so swiftly, they are looking very nice. Thanks again for all your work on IEK3+4 Teacher’s website" said the Art Editor. Always a pleasure, I thought as I signed-off with the warm fuzzy feeling one gets but then thought, OUP could have added a couple more zeros to my cheque - just for that extra gooey factor.
So now I can show some examples from this job, bearing in mind the style of illustration asked for - "just plain b+w line, simple, as most of the images required will be photocopied and coloured in by children - if they feel like it! but please don’t age them down, they should look as if they are drawn by an adult unless otherwise stated". The print dimensions (approx' 1 to 5 centimetres) for each illustration was also provided and is why they are presented here looking quite small but actual size.

Each of the 4 projects was emailed as attached Zip files containing Grayscale Tif images and produced in Photoshop at 300dpi resolution.

Last but not least - big THANKS to Malcolm for being my agent on this job. Cheers!

Cameron the Fuhrer

Tory twit David Cameron. What's he about? Well this ain't no political blog and i couldn't give a flying salute - I was goofing around the net finding about twenty pictures of each charactor - Cameron and hitler, with the idea in the back of my bacon sandwich about how similar they look, like father and son!? -
I Then played with the pics in photoshop and, well to cut'n'paste a long story short, here's some other results - This last snapshot is of a work in progress. What i have inmind for this pic (A2 Poster in full colour with 2012 Olympic logo as swastika backdrop) will take some time to complete and as its not a commission will likely remain as is for the foreseeable -