Recently I have been working with Positively Cleveland, the visitor and traveler’s bureau of Cleveland, Ohio on some illustration work for their promotional and marketing materials. The publications in which these illustrations were used went on to win awards in the Ohio Association of Convention and Visitor Bureau‘s 2009 “Middy” awards.
What an awesome project to work on—creating cartoon Frankenstein artwork for a custom hot rod 1971 Barracuda. This project started life when Murray Pfaff of Pfaff Designs contacted me to create the artwork as part of a custom hot rod design he was working on for a client.
Just posted over at Design Interviews is an interview with yours truly. Jeff Andrews—the mastermind behind not only Design Interviews but also illustrator group sketch blog Sugar Frosted Goodness among others—was kind enough to ask me to answer some questions and provide some artwork to feature me as one of the artists on the site.
Head on over and read up!
Cartoonist/illustrator George Coghill interview at Design Inspiration.
A set of flying disc sport icons I created for Flying Disc Magazine. These icons were created as part of the redesign of Flying Disc Magazine (of which I was also the designer). The client wanted to expand the magazine further out from the original focus on disc golf to include additional flying disc sports. We needed to figure out a way to indicate that different magazine articles and columns were associated with the different sports.
This sexy bail bondswoman cartoon character design was created for—you guessed it, a bail bondswoman. The client wanted a woman character design that was sexy, but not too sexy, and had to be professional-looking as well.
This cartoon character of a Young Marine was created for a custom t-shirt design for a regional Young Marines troop. I was contacted by the troop leader to create an original character that not only represented an iconic Young Marine, but also had some humor to it.
This t-shirt design was created for the 2009 Ohio Canal Corridor‘s annual River Sweep event. The Ohio Canal Corridor exists to create a park system that follows the route of the historic Ohio Canal. River Sweep is an annual volunteer cleanup event, and part of the gift package that volunteers receive is a t-shirt. I have been working with the Ohio Canal Corridor for a few years now designing the -t-shirts.
The initial sketch started out in a much different direction, as seen below. I was thinking much more frog than Statue of Liberty, and the client had more Statue of Liberty in mind with some frog elements. The frog is the mascot of the River Sweep event, and the ongoing theme is to work a frog into various famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa and American Gothic (some past themes we created for the t-shirts).
This was an interesting project. I was contracted to created a cartoon fish mascot character for a niche fishing tool—basically it’s an air bladder deflate gizmo for fishermen so they can sport fish deeper-sea fish and release the expanded air in the fish’s buoyancy air bladder when they arrive at the surface. this allows the fishermen to release the fish back into the water without permanently harming them.
After an initial phone discussion with the client, I was mailed the existing packaging (as I was to also re-design the packaging) as well as some rough sketches drawn by the client to give me an idea of the fish they wanted to see. Typically when clients do send rough drawings, it’s with the “it’s not the greatest” disclaimer, but I actually encourage clients to suck up the ego and send these over. The more information I have from a client about what they have envisioned for the project, the better.
This project was a blast to work on—very cool client and a fun theme How can you beat drawing a surfer dude holding a gyro/souvlaki while surfing a giant wave in front of a Greek temple?
This project came about after the client had commissioned a previous artist to illustrate the logo for “Surfin’ Souvlaki”, which was the client’s new restaurant. The results were less than satisfactory, and after finding me he knew I was the right illustrator for the job.
The final artwork was intended for use not only as the restaurant logo, but also for use on the sign on the front of the store. As the client had already purchased a large sheet of diamond-shaped steel, I needed to work up a the illustration to fit within this shape.