•BEEBLE & BLINK GO GLOBAL

•BEEBLE & BLINK GO GLOBAL

My new app. picture book went 'live' this weekend.

Beeble and Blink's first book of COLORS was published as a 5 page free preview on the Interactive Touch Books App site.

I had imagined that releasing it early as a free preview - showing the first 5 pages - might prove to be a very useful marketing tool.

My expectations were vastly exceeded when I realised that over 50,000 readers have automatically received it into their library this weekend.

Hence the frantic ratings. Ga Gunk which has done quite well in the 8 weeks that it's been out has totalled 34 ratings.

In the few hours that COLORS was available it has already shot to over 100 ratings with the majority being 3 stars and over.

I must really put the hours in now to have all the rest of the book available in around 2 weeks time.

It's a total joy to work on, so I'm hoping I can pass this on the the users in their experience of the book.

•PRODUCT LABEL

•PRODUCT LABEL

Kicked off this year by finishing off a very nice job for the guys at Chilli Design.

Don't think it would be fair to say what the exact product as yet as it will probably be rolled out during this year.

The crop shown here is about a third of the total illustration which was a slight departure in style for me in an attempt to try and capture a certain look and feel required by the client. It worked well and should be seen up and down the country on labels. POS and van livery.

So, if in a few months time you see these cows and sheep flying past you on the M1, remember you saw it here first folks.

Please click on the image too enlarge it but remember they are all strictly copyright. ©

•HERE'S TO A WONDERFUL 2012

A new year a new picture book app!

I'm now working on a few follow up book apps. and the first in line is a series of 'first' books of Colour, Shapes, Numbers and ABC.
To host this fun series I've been working on a couple of brand new characters that we've decided to call Wiz Bods.
I say we, as they were developed during lots of play and drawing sessions with my little nephew Gian.
At the moment there are just two Wiz Bods, namely Beeble and his friend Blink.
I'm hoping that they flourish and that they feature in their very own stories in future.
My first flurry of commissioned work has arrived and needs must, so these little fellas will have to wait a while before they go 'live'.

• MY FIRST EVER PICTURE BOOK APP!

GET IT RIGHT HERE

• MY FIRST EVER PICTURE BOOK APP!

Just finished work on the conversion of Ga Gunk to become an interactive app.

The artwork for Ga Gunk was finished a couple of years ago and has been seeking a publisher ever since. It's a very short, sweet little story that features two cute little froggies.

They fall in love one magical moonlit night under the shooting stars.

Ga Gunk is the sound that American youngsters think frogs make. I must admit that I'd never heard of it either, but it kinda makes sense once you've become accustomed to hearing it.

And boy have i become accustomed!

This adaptation took around 3 weeks of solid work with many a late hour working on it and liaising with the Interactive Touch Books team in California.

They were always available to help and explain their brilliant (but complicated at first) web.app software.

Ga Gunk is now one of the 30 or so books available in the ITB bookstore and hopefully will prove a popular little tale.

The words came from Susie Ramsey who contacted me to illustrate this tale and told me that her grandma used to sing to her when she was little.

The PB app features 13 pages with a colouring-in page, a build-your-own-froggy puzzle and a Ga gunk song and narration by Rachel Baier.

I now have two further books in development and plan to offer my app creation/conversion skills to other authors and illustrators who might not be able to tackle the online creation process.

•JINGLE BELLS

•JINGLE BELLS

As a freelance illustrator I'm asked to produce seasonal artwork at any time and all through the year. A santa character might be wanted for a new festive chocolate bar, or a game that has to be launched in time to appear in next year's christmas brochure.

It still amazes me when the 'real' christmas frenzy rushes around once more tho and  I know it's such a tired cliche to utter this.

It makes me think about the few 'lazy' houses that you see around the neighbourhood, the ones who didn't bother to take down last year's glowing reindeer neon lights but have left them up all year, might have a point.

It hardly seems worth it, just cover the christmas tree in the lounge with a nice throw and then come December - uncover and voila! All that hassle of searching through the loft, unpacking and bauble dressing is gone.

Anyway, before I descend into a scrooge-like rant ... here's a lovely job I did for Second Nature cards. This stylish santa and reindeer will be magically chopped, trimmed, glued and cleverly re-assembled into a luxury pop-up greetings card, glitter everywhere! Pah!

As always please click on the image to supersize it but remember that it is strictly copyright. ©

•FANTASTIC CREATURES

•FANTASTIC CREATURES

These strange and wonderful critters started off as fantasy drawings in my sketchbooks. I must have sketched out a dozen or so and then felt the need to bring a couple of them to life, so to speak.
I love the work of Kei Acedera and the IMAGINISM STUDIOS and I guess I had these very much in mind as I visualised them and worked them up in Photoshop.
They were produced for a project that unfortunately is still under the darkest of wraps and so more explanations cannot yet be provided.
Please feel free to click and supersize these images but be warned they are strictly under copyright. © and must not be copied.

•FUN STICKERS

•FUN STICKERS

Just a quickie this post. I illustrated these four fun stickers for a children's spinning game a little while ago.

It's always more fun and more rewarding to deal with all the elements involved in a game.

Not sure if that's my control freak nature speaking up, but it helps get to grips with the whole concept and for me, always results in a more satisfactory outcome.

Please click on an image to supersize it but remember folks they are strictly copyright.©

• FUN SANTA

• FUN SANTA
A early Christmas commission to create a fun Santa and friends for a CD cover. It was produced for Somerset Entertainment.
The job came in on the Friday and was wanted for Monday morning, a little rushed, but fun nonetheless.
Please click on the image to enlarge but remember that it is strictly copyright, as are all images on this blog. ©

•NEW BEE GAME

•NEW BEE GAME
Children's games featuring bees are really very popular. I can testify to this because I have illustrated 3 myself and they just keep coming.
I can't yet show the full cover of this clever new version but when it's released I certainly will be able to.
I'm also in the process of trying to get an original game of my own published.
Trying to attract a game company with a new venture is almost as difficult as trying to get a picture book published!
I shall not give up on either endeavour though, so as they say, watch this space.
Please feel free to double click and enlarge this image but remember it is strictly copyright. ©

• FURTHER VECTORS

• FURTHER VECTORS
In addition to the set of vector silhouettes that I illustrated a couple of months ago, I was asked to update another range of products.
These are just a small selection of the 'cool' boarders, skaters and trucks I came up with.
I love the simplicity of the vector line and often regret dropping Illustrator from my tool palette. These days I create all my linework in Photoshop as I find it much easier to manipulate but I appreciate that it's not a patch on 'real' Illustrator artwork. Some of it is amazing and what can be achieved by tweaking a few vertices is truly incredible.
Please feel free to double click and supersize these images but they remain strictly copyright. ©

•TOON TV

•TOON TV
This was one of a set of colourful cards I illustrated and designed as part of a new magic trick. It is produced and published by Razamatazz Magic and has special regards to Wayne Dobson, who first invented the fun and intriguing card trick.
I've performed this trick for young relatives and with only minimal rehearsal, it went down a storm.
Please feel free to click and enlarge the image but remember that it remains strictly copyright.©

•GAMES, GAMES AND GAMES GALORE!

•GAMES, GAMES AND GAMES GALORE!

More games this month, and for the last couple of months. Some of these were shown in part as i finished them, but now they are in production so I get sample copies of each.

These are from Interplay in the States and they really make an excellent job of the packaging, nice strong glossy board with colours that seem to be brighter than your average cmyk.

One of my most recent jobs was for research and pitching by a client so unfortunately will not get seen in this blog.

Please feel free to click and enlarge these images but remember that they are all strictly copyright. ©

•Kelly's Ice Cream

•Kelly's Ice Cream
What a great job this was, photograph and illustrate some ice cream - eat some ice cream!

Photograph chocolate, eat chocolate, you get the idea.
The most fun was realising that the insides of Crunchie bars just don't give enough honeycomb texture to use in this kind of illustration, so I had to set to and made a batch of my own.
Luckily the illustration for that particular flavour variant arrived around Bonfire night so I didn't eat all that refined sugar myself, we took it to a friends fire and shared it.
My favourite flavour to illustrate and the one I'm most pleased with is the clotted cream. This was pure illustration (the blue and white pot) mixed with some 3d work (the churn) and some Photoshop brushes (the grass) blended with photography (the cream) bringing them all seamlessly together is very satisfying.
These have been under wraps for a few of months and there is still one more flavour that has not yet been released.
Please click on an image to see an enlarged version but remember that all these images are strictly copyright and must not be used in any way. ©

•VECTOR SILHOUETTES

VECTOR SILHOUETTES

These silhouette illustration are taken from a larger set recently completed for a child based product. Although I don't work in Illustrator any longer I could create this linework in Photoshop from scanned pencil sketches. It made me really fancy doing some more of this type of work and brought to mind the brilliant silhouette work of Jan Pienkowski.

Please double click an image to supersize and remember that all my images are strictly copyright. ©

•CLOWN CHARACTER

•CLOWN CHARACTER
Yet another crazy character created for Razamatazz Magic. This colourful clown will feature in their Potty Paint machine where a blank piece of card miraculously transform firstly into a black and white image and then finally into a full coloured birthday card. Magic!
Please double click to enlarge but remember that all images are strictly copyright. ©

•EASTER POSTERS

•EASTER POSTERS
These giant posters (the vertical one is 5 metres tall) will be seen in the shopping mall at Milton Keynes over the Easter break.
The Mac slows down a bit when processing such large images so in order to keep working efficiently I had one job ongoing on the iMac and the other on the G5 and between them they coped admirably.
I suppose there's a good argument for working in vectors on such mammoth illustrations but over the years I've moved away from Illustrator and work almost exclusively in Photoshop, Painter and Form Z.
I think it's easier to 'paint' realistic forms rather than trying to create them mathematically with blended vectors. But then you've only to see some of the best vector artists' work to realise that if you're at the top of your profession and you know what you're doing it is possible to achieve almost any effect.

• SKETCHBOOK WORK

•SKETCHBOOK WORK

Between commissioned work I like to find time for using my sketchbook/notebooks. I've always carried one of these with me ever since leaving college and it sometimes becomes my second brain.

Ideas are jotted down and developed, stored - like in Dumbledore's pensive - and surprisingly re-discovered and used years later.

At the moment I want to draw children, and in particular one little boy. This is for a wordless Picture Book I'm working on, set in a garden.

I need to draw and draw until the shape of the limbs, the folds and bulk of the clothes and the expressions, come naturally to me.

These are some early examples from the last 2 weeks, I've a long way to go before becoming close to Shirley Hughes!

I'm in the process of creating a widget on this blog that will take viewers over to a sketchbook section on Flickr. Meanwhile should anyone be interested (or actually be reading this) here are some of my older sketchbooks

•GAME COVER

•GAME COVER
Recently illustrated this game cover for iWin and Somerset Entertainment. It featured quite an amazing array of buildings and greenery to choose from. I've not tried the game but it sounds like an exciting twist on the Sim City type games.
Please feel free to supersize this image by clicking on it, but remember that all images are strictly copyright. ©

•JUNGLE JAMBOREE

•JUNGLE JAMBOREE

This fun set of magic game cards was illustrated for my favourite children's magicians - Razamatazz Magic. Check them out at www.razamatazzmagic.com they have some fantastically wonderful games and tricks and it's a veritable showcase for Hot Frog too.

Please feel free to supersize these images by clicking on them and remember that they are all strictly copyright.©

•PUPPIES & KITTENS

•PUPPIES & KITTENS
Here's a novel take on the classic game Connect 4.
I illustrated this just before the end of the year for Interplay in America.
When I say 'illustrated', I expect many of you think this is just photography, but there's a hell of a lot of retouching goes on with a job like this.
Each of those individual tiles has to be drawn as paths so that their perfect plasticity can be achieved, as with most of the cut-out holes in the rack.
The kittens and puppies themselves needed no retouching as the artwork for these existed already from the previous iteration of the game. The are very cute I think, I wonder who did them.
I am just about to launch my portfolio on Play.com, where I should pick up more of this kind of work.
Please feel free to supersize the images by double clicking and remember that they are all strictly copyrighted.

•YET ANOTHER FATHER CHRISTMAS

•YET ANOTHER FATHER CHRISTMAS

I know it's going to seem odd posting a Santa character so far into the new year, have a Happy One, by the way! But this traditional Father Christmas for a top chocolate brand, was one of the final jobs of 2010 and I've just received release for him, so here he is - minus the branding! In doing this job for Futurebrand in Milan, I learnt the charming name for him in Italian - Babbo Natale.

So far this year I've worked on a new game for young children and been practising my magic act after a fairly successful 2nd gig on NY's eve.

Please feel free to double click and enlarge the image but remember it is strictly copyright. ©

•WALLY MEETS THE POLAR BEARS

•WALLY MEETS THE POLAR BEARS
Just finished this latest illustration for the new Wally book by Helen Bonney "Wally meets the children of the world". Wally has travelled back to Earth using his amazing PBT and meets some endangered species including these three cute bears.
These illustrations are a welcome oasis in the middle of time-tight commercial commissions.
Please click on the image to enlarge but remember they are all very strictly copyrighted. ©