Pee Wee Herman

Here is a character design of Pee Wee Herman. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure is one of my favourite films from my childhood so I thought I’d try to come up with something that would look good as a cartoon character! I kept the style nice and light with just a few lines to get a good toony feel.

Caricature of Karl Pilkington

Karl Pilkington is one of my favourite people on TV. His matter of fact manner and hilarious remarks and deadpan delivery is absolutely priceless.
And he makes for a great caricature subject too. Inspired by his series ‘An Idiot Abroad’. Enjoy!

Toy designs: All City Breakers

Back in 2009 I was comissioned to design some toy figures for Vinyl Toy specialists www.kidrobot.com. The brief was to design entire turnarounds of breakdancers. Anyone familiar with breakdancing will know that there are many different dance moves, most of which have the body contorting into all kinds of wild positions. I jumped on this project with enthusiam as I saw it as a great opportunity to practise my life drawing skills. Usually we draw the figure in static postions, especially when designing characters for animation. So trying to figure out all these poses was a great learning experience. I even had to draw top views! Once the designs were finished, they were sent to sculptors to create the full 3D figures. I guess these were then shrunk down for the final toys 2 inch height scale.

Almost 2 years later and the final products were released. For some reason I expected them to be dark green like those little army soldier toys, so it was a great surprise to see them in bright pinks, blues, greens and oranges. Very retro and fitting to the 80′s theme of the product.

Once in a while a project comes along that ticks all the creative boxes. This was one such project and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute it. And the icing on the cake was I strengthened my life drawing skills along the way.

New course! Character design with Toon Boom Studio

I’ve been locked away in the studio for some weeks now and have finally finished my first course for ‘Toon Boom Studio’. It’s 6 hours of character design goodness, so you can learn the techniques I use to create characters and character packs for the Toon Boom Studio software package. It covers many areas such as basic shapes, facial features, hands, turnarounds, rigging and much more. Click the link to see the product on the Seen Creative video store. http://www.seencreative.co.uk/studio_videos.html

And if you buy from www.seencreative.co.uk you receive an extra bonus video file unavailable anywhere else. Remember, Seen Creative creates these products so from buying direct you will receive extra files and bonuses on new packages. Get your downloadable copy today for just $20.

Back to work

Where did the last few weeks go? Well, I decided to take a few weeks off and spend time just relaxing and gearing up for lots of new projects I have on the horizon. So I’ve been getting some fresh air and sunshine and getting back to basics and enjoying the company of loved ones and generally emptying my head of all the complications of work related issues.

Well it’s back to work now and I must say, that although I enjoyed the break I also missed the buzz of being creative and throwing myself head first into work. Funny how working for yourself can become an absolute passion so I guess I can call myself lucky.

My ebook ‘How to draw cartoon faces’ has been quite popular so I’m looking at creating some more ebooks covering other subjects that all fit into the subject of cartooning.
I had a lot of fun creating the first book and recieved some great feedback so I look forward to starting work on some more.

This week saw the launch of ‘Digital inking & colouring in Corel Painter’ over at www.seencreative.co.uk  At almost 3 hours in length this course shows you how to ink your sketches and colour them in a bold and cartoony fashion with minimum fuss and tools. An ideal way to bulk up your portfolio in a short time.
For just $10 you can download this course and get learning right away. Includes source file.

Ok, that about wraps it up for this week but I’ll post some work next week just for fun. Have a great weekend and I hope the sun is shining in your neck of the woods.

Keep tooning.
Best wishes.
Justin =)

 

Toon Boom Event

Last night I headed into London to see the Toon Boon event being held to promote Storyboard 3D and Harmony. It was a fantastic evening and it was great to meet the people behind the programs. Both packages were incredible and certainly made me want to own both right away! Harmony is just amazing!

Prior to my journey I used Google Earth to get my bearings for the venue. A funny thing happened when I typed in ‘Russell Square London’, so I’ve included the picture here for you to see. Quite amusing!!!

Ka-Blam!

Just thought I’d quickly post a cool link for anyone interested in self publishing comics. Ka-Blam specialise in printing comic books (very affordably too) and are ideal if you have a comic all written and drawn up and ready to go. There are a number of formats available, a very helpful FAQ section and even templates to help you lay out your comic and make sure everything fits nicely on the page.

Check them out here and get all those comic book ideas happening!!!

http://ka-blam.com/printing/front/

Toon Boom Harmony & Storyboard Tour

The Toon Boom gang will be touring with presentations on the new Harmony and Storyboard Pro 3D software. Joan Vogelesang, Toon Boom’s President and CEO and Francisco Del Cueto, CTO of Toon Boom, will both be demonstrating the benefits and capabilities of the Toon Boom software.

Check http://www.toonboomevents.com/ for details on the events.
The tour kicks off in London on Monday 20th June from 7pm to 9pm at the Baker Tilly Conference Facilities, Ruseell Square. (FREE EVENT)

If the tour lands near you, be sure to check it out!

 

Talespring

Just wanted to share this very cool link a friend referred to me yesterday after seeing my new ebook.  www.talespring.com is a “Create Once. Publish Everywhere” service for authors of books. If you have created a book digitally, you can hire these guys to set it up and convert your files and submit them for sale on iTunes. It is usually 2-6 weeks before Apple posts your product on the App Store but the vast majority are close to 2 weeks with only a rare few taking longer. This is a great idea as getting an app (ebook) on iTunes can be tough work, so for a fee you can use this service t do all the work for you. Bear in mind you will make 50% of the price you set due to costs but considering the work involved and the potential to sell, I think it’s a worthwhile investment. I’m certainly going to give it a try soon once I have a couple more publications finished.

eBooks and updates!

It’s been a few weeks since my last post so just wanted to give a quick update on everything that is happening. Firstly I’ve been hard at work on a huge signage project, designing tons of cartoony images. Still lots to do so this is keeping me very busy. Also I may soon be working a day or two a week at a local college teaching cartooning and illustration to students. This will be a great opportunity to teach some fun subjects such as caricature so I am just making notes as I go and compiling some lesson material.

Finally I’ve just finished my first eBook entitled ‘How to draw cartoon faces’. It’s 32 pages of instruction which is ideal for the beginner, although there are some tips in there that anyone could certainly benefit from. My aim was to create a product with tips and techniques that I employ when designing characters with the use of many visual examples. Wording is kept to a minimum, this way you only have to read what needs to be understood. There’s no padding or unnecesary detail to wade through. As a result this makes the book a quick and easy guide to read so you can get straight to the important part, ‘Practise’. And being a Seen Creative product, the price is kept nice and affordable at just $4.99

So that wraps up everything for now. I’ll post some work related content soon for you all to check out. In the meantime have fun and keep drawing!