Cat clock

I've been wanting to make an illustration based around the iconic Kit cat clocks for some time now.

And here he is with some brush marks for added fur effect.

illostribute - a tribute to Ernesto Garcia Cabral

here's my contribution to the latest illostribute tribute post. Based on the illustrative works of Ernesto Garcia Cabral.

Personally, all the tribute illustrations are fantastic and i would urge folk to go and see for themselves.

here's my contribution to the latest illostribute tribute post. Based on the illustrative works of Ernesto Garcia Cabral.

Personally, all the tribute illustrations are fantastic and i would urge folk to go and see for themselves.

illostribute.com/2011/08/ernesto-garcia-cabral/

illostribute: a tribute to Al Hirschfeld

illotribute has now put up the 5th tribute post, this time based around the masterful pens strokes of Al Hirschfeld.

I have to admit this one was a bit awkward in the sense of working out how to combine the simplicity of the shapes with confident strokes. Should i go like Hirschfeld and do this completely in line form? Maybe a mixture of strokes and shapes? what about some colour or adding some texture? in the end it was mostly all of the above to create my tribute illustration way up there. Based on Hirschfeld's drawing of Clark Gable, i had so fun with this one since its been a while since i've done any form of caricature based drawing, though i think my version i need to make the head a bit fatter in places.

As always, there are some fantastic illustrations done by Steffi Schuetze, Sol Linero, Freddy Boo and also some new contributors have entered the fray including Jon Boam and Jonathan Edwards.

http://illostribute.com/

BusinessWeek Christmas Characters

Looks like its safe to post about this commission now that i've seen it on their website. These festive characters were created for BusinessWeek US magazine to be in a feature about business books which you can basically wing it and get away scot free without reading a single page.

The brief was to design 8-9 characters at the christmas office party interacting with each other but also made independently so that the layout guy can play about with where to position them in the feature. There were also some props such as holly and mistletoe to be designed as well, which was to be used to decorate the page.

These guys didn't take long to create which was a good thing considering that i was only given a few days from rough to finals, but it was all in good fun.

here's a few more images focusing on individual characters.

More of this project can be seen on my flickr account.

Play Calendar

It feels that this was done an eon ago, it was around about june that I was contacted to see if I would be interested in doing an illustration for the Play! calendar which was being produced by the folks at Eiga Design in Germany.

After the piece above was done, all i knew as that the calendar would be released later in the year. Time passed and i Had forgotten about this until that email pinged in my inbox showing links to the finished product.

the calendar/book is a really nice piece of work lovingly put together and is well worth a look.

I've only got 2 links on where to order this. (one from amazon.de and another outlet) if you are interested:

www.nbvd.de/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=25

www.amazon.de/Play-Design-Kids-Henning-Otto/dp/3939028215/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287647068&sr=8-2

Joe 90

inspired by the opening credits of Gerry Anderson's classic Joe 90.

This is my take on the fancy machinery that gives joe his amazing intellect to diffuse bombs and such.

man, i wish they still did shows like this, would be great to work on.

the intro to the show can be found on youtube here.

the mis-adventures of ernie space-face

This one was sitting waiting to be finished for about a week in a very early form of just the large space like cranium and an orange triangle representing the body. I think the gap for finishing this guy off was due to me changing what situation I wanted him to be in.

In the beginning, I wanted him to be holding his head as if he was a bit angsty because he has space for a face. He's still a bit in this one but its changed to more of a school classroom type of setting. He's more in the teenage age bracket in the phase of spots, broken voices and the rest that goes with it.

I was going to add a caption such as 'in the test of despair' or something like that where he's trying to get out of sitting a test by pretending to be ill. But then I'd have to make it into some form of a graphic novel (which is something i might do.) but we'll see.

Alas, our planes were no match for their mighty dust

I created this one earlier this week which was first seen on my flickr account, so that nobody misses out on seeing some of my work, i'm trickling it down the road of blogging and so on. Eventually appearing on a revamp of my own website at some point.

Anyway, this piece was made in response to the news late last week and early this week of all flights from the UK and other parts of Europe being cancelled over the volcanic ash descending from an erupted icelandic volcano named Eyjafjallajokull (bit of a mouthful, well to me anyway). The ban has now been lifted since then but has caused a large backlog of flights to and from the UK.

I created this piece with a mixture of paint, cut-paper while the up-side-down planes were all drawn with a posca pen.

Between the Time when the Oceans Drank Atlantis

When I was starting to create this one the debate was whether to make the character in the he-man universe or in Conan's. I think there's a lot of He-man based pieces floating and I'm sure I heard of an exhibition based on interpretations of the He-man universe so i thought I'd give the love to Conan instead. I admit that i'm not one for fantasy, its just that i wanted to create something in that setting for a change.

It Belongs in a Museum

Another one, this time in super wide-screen and also brought to you in glorious Technocolor.

As A kid I loved the Indiana Jones movies and still do (except the recent one which should of had a better storyline and created around about the time of the original trilogy.) This is not only referencing the indy films but also the old adventure reels which influenced the trilogy as well as the trademark outfit which was combined long before indy adorned that fedora.

I've made the image resolution a bit bigger to help show off some of the textures/details in this piece so everyone can see what went into this piece.

The Adventures of Link

Here's something that has taken a couple of days to finish to the piece that you see before you. It's made up of a lot of textures, paint marks, you name it, it's in there. I have to say my favourite parts are the bats with their mono-eyes and blue ears.

I'm kind of Fantasising here but I think these bats would make a great vinyl toy with wings which can be put into any pose, so that you could rap the wings around the body and so on. For the packaging I would have them hanging upside down for the fun of it (and to confuse the folks stacking them, ha ha).

Does anyone know or can give any advice on trying to get a vinyl toy made or anything about getting involved in the designer toy industry?

the power of the atom

here's something thats been sitting around for a while, has a nice retro theme with painted beakers, tubes and some negative spacing to create the white coat.

the league of inter-dimensional gentlemen

hello one and all, any one who popped over to this blog later on yesterday might of witnessed the new blog header adorning this site now. I felt its time to put the last one to rest since it was created during the minor refresh when my actual site still had its grey background. in the new one I decided to downplay the 'scott balmer illustration' part to something that can be seen but doesn't overpower the piece, I was also considering leaving the text out altogether but felt it was better to have some reference on who's blog it is.

Anyway, since finishing off the piece for the Wizard's Hat issue i've been playing with using linear forms with a mixture of geometric shapes to make interesting comps and thus 'the league of inter-dimensional gentlemen' was born. I seem to like giving things long names maybe for my next piece i'll devise a name that will be the longest subject title in blogger but we'll see.

As for the wizard's hat and a few other commissions, i'll post something (including roughs) about these once they have been featured in their intended publications before revealing anything about them.

all toasters, toast toast apparently

Hey all, been busy working on commissions along other projects and still am but thought it might be better to put something new up on the blog for all to see.

The image above was going to be used as a new set of promotional postcards focusing mostly on different forms of hand generated type for something a bit different. If you're wondering why using text such as 'all toasters, toast toast' then you obviously haven't witnessed the abomination that is Hotel Mario on the philips cdi. the game, much like the cdi zelda games are so bad that they're good. Both feature fully animated scenes but the dialogue in all three games are just plain stupid. Don't believe me, search for zelda cdi and hotel mario in youtube to see what i mean.

Anyway, this gem of a quote stuck in my mind as it was fantastically a stupid scene (from Hotel Mario) with a stupid quote but also brilliant in itself. This image uses a photograph of an actual piece of toast (got weird looks for taken a picture of toast but hey you get away with doing weird things in this business.) with hand painted type and some simple shapes to finish it off.

The one below is also done in a similar way but with a potato instead. This time the quote is from one of the zelda cdi games in which the king seems interested more in dinner than saving some far off land.

There are other gems (ganon seems quite daft with his grrrrrrrreatest pronunciations, he also says die a lot) I might make a few more based on these quotes.

dandy lions

hi all, here's a new image that i have just finished recently. for an added kick, the background shapes are made up of the remaining bits of paper that where used to create the dandy lions with. 

and now for something a bit different

just playing around with some of my work, these lions were made out of card and patterns made with a pencil with a bit of paint for the cheeks applied with my finger. it has a quite retro look to it all. 

i've made a few more below

 

These images would work well in a pre-school children's book, its something that i might look into in the future though i would rather make a pre-school children's book first as they seem to be more simple and stylized compared to older age children's books, such as the books that Eric Carle makes. simple, stylized and full of wonderful colours and textures.

The Original teddy boy

one new illustration that i have just finished today.

New images for Halloween and more at moo.com

now available from moo.com are my new halloween images, there are six all together which can be used from cards to stickers. Moo.com also has pre-made packs of cards/postcards/stickers and so on which contain a mixture of designs or you can make your own selection. 

these were done as a bit of fun to break up designing the christmas designs which are also available now and can be used for many different products offered from moo. Here are a few christmas designs below:

There are twelve christmas designs in total and can be found here.

New Logo design

I can't believe that another month has past since my last post, wow, though i have been busy making images for the science council among other things. 

above is my new logo that i've just finished for myself. This is now sort of becoming a tradition with me in which i create a new logo for myself though i think this time this ones a keeper. 

in designing this logo, i wanted to show the soft playfulness of my work while also having a clean friendly design which gives the impression of being approachable, this is the reason why he's tilting his hat as a sort of acknowledgment or friendly gesture.

the lettering was done by  using a fairly thick paint brush and not really thinking about making the letters fancy looking, its quite simple, naive in some respects but it adds to the simple friendly design that i was after. 

i have been planning to change the main image on this blog to something different which could be soon depending on time (maybe this weekend not sure)

The Enigma Machine

Hi all, here is a new image that i have just finished which was inspired by the old 'Game & Watch' lcd games made by nintendo in the 80's.

I actually had a couple of the game & watch games in the past and have always the simple and very basic method of movement from these types of games, i guess that is the main reason way the the characters always had more animated stances to help give the illusion of movement.

Because of the 1 frame movement in these types of games nintendo actually came up with some clever parts of more complicated elements such as arms being used to move levers or other objects.  

I think that whatever type of work that you do, try adding a limiting factor to it, it could be anything such as working with only a few colours to making images without any lines, above all experiment and find a creative way to overcome the set limit, that is the only way to push the boundaries further.