Inspiration and break!

I'm off home tomorrow for my Christmas break and I have to say I'm muchly looking forward to it! I'll be doing some drawing but it'll mainly be doodlings and research on children's books. I'll also be making a hella lot of promo items to spam publishers with when I get back. I've already emailed a lot of samples off to various children's book publishers and had a great response from Egmont Books so fingers crossed for the New Year!

Hope everyone has a great Christmas! :D

Milk Town Deli!

Milk Town has a lot of specialist produce that the townsfolk like to eat, and where better to pick up a tasty snack than the local deli!
Why not try a Sea Cucumber, Fire Drop or rasher of Rainbow Bacon? Radishes and gherkins are chock full of vitamins and goodness and Rainbow Coral is expensive but damn tasty! :P

Milk Town Dentist!

He may look like a bit of a maniac, but Milk Town's resident dentist makes sure each pulled tooth becomes a new citizen! I'm having a great time creating characters for my new character series called Milk Town. I'd like to expand this into a comic series as I just seem to do a lot of character work without actually having them in any kind of situation. I'm aiming to make this my next challenge! Milk Town will soon have it's own website too which I'm starting to design at the moment. When the New Year brings a more stable money situation, I'll be getting some Milk Town stuff printed too!

Milk Town Choir!

Website Pondering

The last day or so, I've been prepping myself to contact publishers (seven emailed at time of blogging) and so had to update my website. At the moment, my website just serves as an online portfolio for people to look at (the whole point of it, I guess!) but I'd like it to be a hell of a lot better. There are 2 things that stop me doing this though: 1. I'm not a great designer when it comes to these things and 2. I always feel that I can't invest the time it would take to redesign it. My site is hosted through Moonfruit which for someone like me is great because it's easy to edit and update and is pretty flexible when it comes to layouts and what-not. The downside is it's a lot more expensive than most people probably pay for their sites.

Who do people use for their sites? How do you go about deciding on the design? Any help would be much appreciated as I'd like my first port-of-call for potential clients to really stand out!

More from Milktown!

The Mayor of Milktown!

Fantastic idea executed to perfection!

This animation from Sugimoto Kousuke is absolutely stunning and makes me slightly envious that I can't have and pull off these kinds of ideas! It reminds me a lot of the ideas and projects of Michel Gondry who similarly manages to bring to life the most implausible-on-paper ideas to a jaw-dropping extent. Enjoy!

A Bit of Everything!

Sticker packs coming soon!

Bear-faced Destruction!

More Paintings!

More superheroes/comic book characters! Usagi Yojimbo (one of my all-time favourite comics), Phoenix and Havok!

Marvel Pops!

Set of 4 small, quick canvases. I wanted a simple pop-artish feel to these whilst trying to keep the characters as simple as possible but still recognisable!

Hero of Hyrule!

I'm back from my (very nice) rest in Swindon, where I did very little work (intentional) and did little else but read and play on my DS. I've been obsessing over Animal Crossing again after a long lull but after getting a bit bored with that, ventured back into the Gameboy Advance version of Link to the Past that's been sat in my DS since I bought it over a year ago. Being an Amiga/Sega/Playstation player during my teen years, the only access I had to LTTP was through my friend's brother's copy, so I'm really really enjoying it at the moment! The graphics are gorgeous, the game play challenging and it's very very addictive.

Staying with the Zelda theme, Freshly-Picked: Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is a very good, very odd LOZ spin-off for the DS. The graphics are stunning (2D) and the game play strangely addictive. It's a hard one to explain so I'd say try and get hold of a copy. It's not for everyone though!

Lastly, here's a little drawing I did, inspired by all the Zelda gaming I've been doing...

R & R!

Well, I'm off home this afternoon for some rest and relaxation in my hometown of Swindon! I'm taking my sketchbook and some drawing materials with me but to be honest, I'm really looking forward to just reading, playing on my DS and watching Ulysses 31! However, my creative block has been lifting so I'll probably end up doing a lot of pen and ink work ready to be coloured on the comp when I get back.

I also picked up 2 of my favourite magazines yesterday that I deliberately haven't read yet to enjoy when I get back! Computer Arts Projects has been an absolutely invaluable source of information and inspiration and this months issue is all about apparel design so I can't wait to have a look! I also have Giant Robot - an awesome Asian culture mag that covers everything from Japanese cinema to Thai street art. I've missed a few issues of High Fructose which is a fantastic contemporary illustration magazine as very few places seem to stock it. I may take out a subscription on the basis that it's an important artistic resource...

Cute Animal Shakespeare Theatre!

Creatively Wedged

Yet again, I have succumbed to the fearful artist's block. And what's worse is I do have a lot of work to get on with, I just can't seem to get motivated in the slightest! I've already posted about this subject so I wont bore people with the usual "what-can-I-do-to-get-out-of-this" gunf as I'll do what I always do. The added frustration this time comes with the fact that my brain is churning out ideas yet when I sit down and try to draw them, my motivation drops drastically. In the meantime, whilst trying to draw and paint, I'm watching Reno 911!, reading Flashforward and Revolutionary Road, playing Animal Crossing and trying to find my copy of We Heart Katamari. Come on, Brain!

Protect the King!

Attempt at typography

I'm currently making some superhero-themed shoe designs for Kings of Neon and they want some comic-book style sound effects to go with the characters. Here's my attempt at some comic-book style typography! Some I actually quite like and some are a bit bleh, but it was a fun exercise!

I Heart Dyb and Dob!

I've been doing lots more pictures for the Wellington St Matthews Beaver and Cub Scout group, which are really really fun to do. The leader I've been emailing (Mike; very cool chap) is great fun to work with and I think between us, we've created a couple of great characters! The designs are going down really well with the rest of the leaders and the kids which is fantastic. Here are the latest batch which will be used for various sections of the website.

Choose Your Player!

Please vote for my t-shirt!

Howdy fiends! I was recently asked by the lovely peeps at Infectious to enter their Tee Party t-shirt competition. If you could vote for my humble design, I would be very much appreciative!

Make Your Own Christmas Cards!

Much along the same lines as my Make Your Own Postcards, I've made sets of Make Your Own Christmas Cards. Each set comes with 10 9x12cm green cards with red envelopes and 12 6x9cm red cards with ribbed Manila envelopes and a set of vinyl stickers to deck them out with! There are way more stickers than are pictured above but I don't want to spoil all the fun!

Available here!