First, let me wish a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year when it comes to everyone who may have happened upon this blog post. As we all know, 2020 hasn't been great, to say the very least, so we will march forward into this new year with a heightened sense of optimism.
In the last few months, I have been working on a number of projects, some of which I am able to share at this moment in time. I did a re-design of Ross Decor's (a local decorating company) logo. As can be seen below, the initial design was quite pixellated due to the low quality of the image. I took the original concept and maintained that design as requested, creating a much better quality of image. The logo was then used for printing on t-shirts for the employees.
Below is another piece of digital art that I created featuring my son Logan and his cousin Zack, as Spider-Man and Iron Man respectively. This image was later printed onto A3 high quality card.
Going forward, I have a few digital drawing projects coming up and an animation that I will create with the help of my son, who recorded the dialogue. My next update will be showcase some of the digital projects I've done and production updates on Logans animation. As mentioned previously, the animation "Cartoon about a Balloon" has been put on hold indefinitely.
A quick update on my recent digital design work. I have a few personal projects coming up that I am really excited to get started on.
Below, I have a hippo character sheet that I had initially planned a few years back but has lay dormant until now. I intend to do another sheet of his friend in the future and have a few animation ideas to go with that once I have completed upcoming projects.
This character was really fun to come up with - I intend for him to fill the "stupid" role in some comedy cartoons.
Here we have another design, completed quite a while ago for a builder client, that I am now able to share publically.
Coming next, I have a few different digital pieces to finish then I will start an animation project that I'm very passionate about, involving my son. Unfortunately that means the balloon animation has been pushed even further back. More updates to follow in the coming weeks!
This is my most recently completed piece of artwork. I have decided that instead of returning to the balloon animation, I am going to complete another few passion projects before moving back to that.
I also created an alternative version of the miner design that I created a while back, which I have included below.
I am now working on a piece of artwork that features my son, which I will post here in a few weeks.
As mentioned previously, I've had a few projects completed for a while but due to the wishes of the client, I've kept them under wraps. I've had confirmation recently that these are now ok to share, and so I've uploaded them now as part of the update.
This work is in-keeping with previous pieces for this client, which makes use of elephants as the main subject within the design. The client knew that he wanted a front facing elephant and that he wanted it to have a cute appearance as it would represent a beauty brand.
As the design developed, the client chose to incorporate flowers. I also designed the "MOORLIFE BEAUTY" logo and the client asked for the addition of vines and roses. The second design was inspired by another design that the client had seen and will be used as part of promotional material.
I still have some other completed projects that I haven't been given permission to share so they will most likely form part of my next update, which will hopefully be soon.
My intention after these projects was to return to the balloon animation from previous updates. However, another animation option came along so I'm going to be pushing that project back until I've developed the new idea further.
I will update again soon with my most recently completed projects.
As mentioned on the previous blog post, a while back I did some graphic design for my local pub.
This was finished a few weeks ago but I waited until it was hung up to post the pictures below. I have a number of other projects in the pipeline which I will post about soon.
In the weeks since my last post, I have worked on a number of different projects and now have several more proceeding behind the scenes.
First off, I created a simple Viking design, mainly for my own use. However, I really enjoyed designing this character and I'm happy with his final look. I have a few ideas for what I can do with him in future so watch this space.
A future project..?
I have recently completed some artwork for print, which I will post in another week or so and will discuss in further detail when I do.
Additionally, I completed numerous logos and advertising pieces for Kenny at Moor Life, as mentioned previously, and I am now able to show these off in all their glory:
Different colour variances of a design for Moor Life.
-These designs were a lot of fun to work on. Kenny was inspired by Snoopy when he sent me the idea for these designs and this is particularly evident in the "Moor Sleep" piece.
I have suspended development on "A Cartoon About A Balloon" for the time being while I continue to do logo and graphic design work.
Next update will show the aforementioned artwork and then shortly afterwards I should be able to show recent graphic design work.
As we all know, the last few months of dealing with Covid-19 have been very difficult for everyone. I haven't been up to a great deal lately in the way of graphic design & animation. In addition to lockdown I have been suffering from pain and inflammation in my knee, so as a result have been on medication and lacked motivation to do much.
I have completed work in this time but for now I will be unable to display it until it's been handed over & I get the all clear from Kenny.
During this down time, I have tried to keep myself busy & so have developed a new character below, who I will likely use in future.
I have created a full character sheet for him which I wouldn't tend to do if I didn’t see potential in the design.
I have also completed the design for an Ictis Ravager, created as an
adversary for the Lepor Knight that I designed a few months ago. I
would very much like to use these characters in a future comic.
Going forward my intention is to finish the balloon animation that I have had in the pipeline for some time. This should be relatively straight forward due to how simple the designs are so shouldn't take more than a few weeks to complete. Once I’m finished with that I have a few personal projects that I would like to make some movement with.
After the pandemic has passed, I am hopeful that several cancelled projects with other companies will become available again as we return to some form of normality.
This post won't be as detailed as I would usually like, the reason being that I already typed the post up and there was an issue with cut and paste which resulted in me losing everything. Lesson learnt, always copy on iphone, never cut. So as promised I have returned to update on what I've been up to in the last few months since September 2019.
One of the digital pieces I worked on was a drawing of Dennis the Menace and Gnasher. These characters were a huge influence on me as a child and were a big factor in my wanting to be an animator/illustrator. I initially drew out these characters in 2016 and only recently got around to bringing them to life in a digital form.
As mentioned previously, I worked on a logo for Elroy of Cut Different clothing, based in the USA. Elroy had a very specific idea of what he wanted the design to look like. I enjoyed working on this design as it does incorporate a character of sorts - character design being one of my passions. Elroy was very happy with this design and recently gave permission to share this design on my site and blog.
Next, I did some work for Kenny, one of Elroy's contacts. Kenny reached out to me to give his current logo new life. As you can see from the images, I upped the detail on the logo, but kept the core principle the same. Kenny was very happy with this updated look.
I helped Kenny again soon afterwards when he contacted me to create a logo for his brand "Moor Life." Kenny wasn't sure exactly what he wanted but was hopeful that we could include an elephant in the design. I created a design as below and Kenny was thrilled with the final delivery.
There was another Hashtag Live held in Classic Grand in December 2019. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, the boys were unable to record audio for another introductory animation so I instead I did various pieces of artwork for the show.
In mid November, I decided it was time to return to creating animation, as it had been 6 months since I had actually done anything in that medium. At first I planned to create an animation that I'd planned out earlier in the year. However, it occured to me that we were approaching the Christmas period, and so I felt this was a good opportunity to create an animation based around that. The result was "To Elf and Happiness" the story of Twinkie, a workshop elf and his secret love for Elsie, an Office Elf. Overall I was very happy with how this project turned out and feel that I am back to my animating best.
Going forward, I have a few ideas for what I would like to do next, including the aforementioned idea, which centres around a balloon character and perhaps another comic. I will also be doing my best to raise the status of Campbell Animation in 2020. I will update the blog as soon as I have further developments.
I have been unable to post to the blog for a while due to other commitments but I am happy to have returned and hopefully back to posting frequently again.
You know, I realised recently that this blog isn't really for the people reading it (if any) it's more for me to just recap the period since the last post and to review what I've been getting up to. Sometimes I'm quite surprised by how much I've actually achieved in that time too. I have been on two wonderful trips to Florida since my last update and I feel that my energy levels have now been completely rejuvenated.
As I had mentioned in my previous post, I was working on a Hashtag Show comic based on the character “Geordie Captain America” who is discussed in the show. The comic shows a violent and obnoxious parody of the famous character. The storyline for the short comic came from Mallorca Lee. This was a fun little piece to work on and I was particularly pleased with how the final frame looked.
Comic books were my first passion, and what sparked my interest in becoming an animator/illustrator.
During my period of silence I created this tribute to the legendary comedian Robin Williams, one of my all-time favorite actors. This was a piece of work that, similarly to the Stan Lee before it, I had always wanted to create. I was very pleased with how this final piece looked and hope that I did Robin some justice.
Robin passed away in 2014. Given that he was my favourite actor, this really affected me more than a celebrity death ever had.
Additionally, I did some work on character design again, which I hadn't done in quite some time. All of this played a vital part in me finding my motivation again and creating new animation. The two characters below were designed during this period. I may possibly use the heavy character (whom I'd dubbed "Egg in a Cup" due to his strange shape) in a future animation, as he would work very well in that medium.
The updates in this post take me up to around September 2019. In my next post, which will be within a few days, I will update everything else I have been doing since September and what the future holds for me and Campbell Animation.
