• Mouse & His Child •

I've recently found time to sketch out and plan to illustrate one of my all time favourite children's books. The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban. Published in 1967 it charts the incredible adventures of a tin mouse father and his child. These wind-up toys make an epic journey, surviving just about ever obstacle that could possibly befall the, including robberies, fires, floods and wars. But they stay resolute and with new-found friends they end up in a perfectly happy place. There are some scary and sinister episodes on the way which suit my darker side as I illustrate these in monochrome. If you've not yet read the book I highly recommend it.

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•MOUTHWATERING CARAMEL SWIRL•

•MOUTHWATERING CARAMEL SWIRL•

A quick and satisfying job last month for TAG in Leeds. To create a delicious caramel swirl with photo-realistic illustration. This small vignette would be dropped into the bottom corner of a cereal pack so wasn't even taking centre stage as the hero shot of the product. Nonetheless it needed to convey all the sticky lusciousness that we associate with melted caramel.

From my own photographs (of honey, chocolate and golden syrup) and reference images from online sources, I distorted and then re-coloured melted chocolate to look like gooey toffee. Using the twirl filter and one or two other distortion filters in Photoshop and then judicious masking and trimming, I managed matched the flowing swirls of the brief.

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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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• More Miles from Tomorrowland •

• More Miles from Tomorrowland •

More samples of the games I'd helped produce arrived just before christmas.

Here's another from the Miles' series. There was an incredible amount of detail (and therefore time) invested in this artwork. The biosphere 'egg-shaped room, for example, took 2 or 3 days to illustrate. I had loads of fun experimenting with foliage brushes in Photoshop though and learnt quite a bit.

You can read and learn more about customising Photoshop brushes in these two articles in Words and Pictures magazine ...

http://www.wordsandpics.org/2014/03/photoshop-brushes.html

http://www.wordsandpics.org/2014/05/photoshop-brushes-part-two-lets-make.html

Forrest Pruzan in Seattle commissioned half a dozen spin-off games and when I get around to photographing them all I shall be featuring them here.

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• NEW YEAR - NEW WORK •

• NEW YEAR - NEW WORK •

The year started very early work-wise at Hot frog Graphics, I was even catching up on a few on New year's Day.

I'm very pleased that jobs have flowed in but it has meant some long hours to kick off 2014.

I've just finished the first of two great novelty picture books for Cheeky Monkey publishing.

Obviously these won't be ready for release for a while, but I couldn't wait to share with you a few of these cropped teaser pictures.

If you want to discover where these fun critters are racing off to, then watch this space.

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•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. ©