• DISNEY LION KING SPIN-OFF GAME •

• DISNEY LION KING SPIN-OFF GAME •

I was tasked with changing over the blue balls, adding motion and drama to the balls and brickwork for this new Disney game. I've just seen this on the shelves of the Disney store and had that pleasant double-take moment when I recognised the artwork. : )

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• PHOTOSHOPPED TEXT - DISNEY PIXAR • 

• PHOTOSHOPPED TEXT - DISNEY PIXAR • 

Earlier this year I was commissioned by Forest Pruzan in the States to illustrate some elements of a new game for the innovative toy creators - Wonder Forge. 

Amongst their other exciting new releases were a couple of pre-school science based activity games. This one explored slime, ice, heat, bubbles etc and so the name of the game box needed to reflect this in the eye catching typography title.

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• DISNEY ANIMATION GAME SET •

• DISNEY ANIMATION GAME SET •

Another fun game that I worked on recently was this animation kit from Disney. It featured around a dozen or so Disney film-themed characters and game boards. Hopefully youngsters would have enough patience (or enough rainy days), to start the process of modelling the characters in air drying dough. This was greatly helped by super accurate snap together moulds.

Once the characters are ready they become the game playing pieces and can be place on the boards.

The game above shows Donald and Mickey's Hedge Maze. Created by judicious use of Photoshop custom brushes.

 This Mickey Merry go Round (above) whilst being fun to play helps with Maths too. It was quite a challenge for me as it required realistic rendering of a playground merry-go-round, with all it's associated highlights and shadows.

My 3D software of choice is Form Z. It resides on an older Mac which was in for repair.

So what to do!? I decided that I would have to make an actual scale model of the ride and found some nicely pliant plastic coated wire in my workshop. By printing off the base artwork and mounting it on foamecore I was then able to attach the 9 shaped rails in position and take reference photographs with real shadows. Then it was a matter of simply taking the resulting photograph into Photoshop and lifting the shadows. In the end the shadows had to be downplayed quite a bit anyway, but I'm still happy with the result.

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•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.

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•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.
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•OLD YEAR / NEW YEAR



•OLD YEAR / NEW YEAR
Happy New Year to all. A little late I guess, but still January!
Plenty of work was done at the end of last year including a fantastic game called Discovery Garden for Forrest Pruzan in Seattle.
It afforded me some brilliant illustrations to complete, including the box cover, sides, inner box and gameboard.
Here's a section from the incredibly detailed game board and hopefully I'll post most of the other artwork up here too.
As I type this I have various jobs stacked up in the InTray - beer labels, greetings cards, cheese labels and another game.
It's promising to be an exciting year especially since it's a 'special' year for Hot Frog. But more on that later.
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