Polar Bears: Uncommon Angles

Matt and I made a trip to the Detroit Zoo yesterday.  I was calling it my polar bear "research" trip.  I'm currently working on a secret project which involves a few animals. Matt and I were completely blown away by the polar bear exhibit at the zoo.  There is an underwater tunnel you can walk through that the polar bears can swim around.  We didn't get quality pics with Matt's camera, but these are still pretty fun, thought I'd share

Proof that I was virtually underneath a polar bear!

Anybody missing the cold yet?

Well, not me, it could be summer year round and I would be happy, but snow is always fun to illustrate:

Here's my "Before" sketch:

It's like extreme makeover illustration edition!

Ok, I'm a nerd, I better get back to work. Thanks for stopping by!

Global Girl

These illustrations are of a new character I was recently asked to design for a young girl's magazine.  Very fun to work on!

To start, this is the logo I created.  It will appear in about 9 issues, along with this:

The Global Girl mailbox.  Note the little caterpillar sidekick!

And finally, this is a little spot illustration of Global Girl (she'll be introducing one of her friends from around the world).  You'll be seeing more of her in the future as I create new spots for upcoming issues! Yippee!

For the sake of sharing, this was the original sketch I came up with for the Global Girl spot illustration:

I liked it better, but it was rejected because it could possibly seem too 'racy' for young girls (Global girl is around 10yrs old).  To counter the problem without completely redesigning the character (They did like her after all), I eliminated all of her curviness and changed her pose.  I think it worked.

Nice suits...

It was fun to get to try something a little different for this illustration I just completed.  These are swimmers from around 1910, and those are their swimsuits!  The art director asked that I try to give the illustration a "Gibson Girl" look as created by Charles Dana Gibson.  I greatly admire his work, and while I can hardly say I did him any justice, it was a lot of fun to give it a whirl.  I also gathered some great reference photos of swimsuits from 1910-1920.  They are so neat I may have to do some more illustrations. 

Meet Emma...

  Two blog posts in a row (Cheeto eat your heart out!)!!!         

This is a magazine illustration for a young girl's magazine for one of those write in sections, "Dear Emma"
She will be used in 9 issues. 

I basically had to update an already existing character of a friendly college student.  It was fun!

Here were my (very) rough sketches for Emma. I was partial to the pose like #'s 1 & 2.  I was a bit surprised the art director chose 3!  Do you have a favorite?