Free Photoshop Brush: Stumpy Pencil

| George Coghill

Cartoonist Mike Foran has a couple of cool number 2 pencil Photoshop brushes – free to download – that I stumbled across the other day. For some time now I have been on the casual lookout for a Photoshop brush that mimicked a regular-ol’ number 2 pencil. Seems Foran was on that line of thought as well.

Foran’s brush has a nice line quality, varied from thick to thin based on your Wacom tablet pressure, and has a slight angle similar to a flat-worn pencil tip.

The brush also has a nice light feel at light pressure, and darkens quickly with pressure added. The texture and look of the brush marks/pencil lines is perfect.

Continue reading →

The Animator’s Survival Kit

| George Coghill

The Animators Survival Kit instructional DVD setThis Animator’s Survival Kit DVD set from Oscar-winning animator Richard Willams looks like a great resource for those animators out there. Personally, I do not have the patience for animation, but it’s fascinating to me.

This DVD set is a companion to Williams’ highly-rated Animator’s Survival Kit book. The site doesn’t seem to indicate if the book is included with the DVD set, but it seems not to be.

Richard Williams was awarded two Oscars for the animation on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit“. He directed and designed Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, Baby Herman and all the new characters for the Walt Disney/Steven Spielberg production.

The set isn’t cheap at £634.04 (or about $1,252.42 for us U.S. folks as of the date of this post).

Continue reading →

Cartoon Genie Concert Poster

| George Coghill

Cartoon genie poster preview imageI recently completed a concert poster design featuring a fez-wearing cartoon genie mascot character for Nashville, Tennessee roots-rock jam band Vinyl Soup.

I have been working with guitarist Andrew Hooker for some time now with t-shirt designs, a logo redesign, concert posters and other promotional materials for the band.

Recent gig poster design work for Vinyl Soup had started to go down a path of design-only work. Andrew initially contacted me for a t-shirt design for the band, and his initial interest was in my cartooning/illustration work.

Starting out on concepts for this poster, I was again working on a solely design-oriented approach, and before I got too far along I dropped Andrew an email to see if going back to an illustrative style would be cool with him. It most certainly was, so I set about to work up a theme for the poster.

Continue reading →

“Average Joe” Cartoon Mascot Guy & Sexy Woman Illustration

| George Coghill

Cartoon guy with sexy girl color vector art“Average Joe” is a recent cartoon character mascot I created for a client. The project specs were pretty straightforward – two cartoon characters, one being “Average Joe” who would become the company mascot, and for this particular illustration he would need a sexy cartoon woman wrapped around him.

This project had a very tight deadline, so I got to work immediately on the sketches. The initial rough sketch was created to get the general idea down and to start the conversation. Being a tight deadline, I sent out a sketch that normally I would have refined a bit before sending. In this case, I needed immediate feedback on the direction so I sent this rough concept to get the client’s OK on the overall posing of the characters and the general look.

Continue reading →

“Left, Right, Setty!” cartoon character drawing

| George Coghill

Cartoon character with bulging eyes & tongue hanging out throwing dice, holding a shot glassThis cartoon character drawing was created for a friend’s upcoming party, which will also be doubling as a U.S. wedding reception for our friend Setty, who just got married over in India.

Setty is obsessed with the drinking dice game “Left, Right, Center”. He’s also notorious for exclaiming “Shots!” when out drinking, therefore the shot glass.

The friend who requested the art suggested creating it in the Odd Rods/”Big Daddy” Roth style which I am known to emulate from time to time.

Continue reading →

The Beziér Artist’s Liberation Front: Adobe Illustrator Feature Requests

| George Coghill

Adobe Illustrator logoAfter an engaging exchange on Twitter with illustrators: Garth Bruner and Von “Vonster” Glitschka, who are constantly Twittering about their frustrations with being forced to switch from Freehand to Illustrator after Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, things reached the point where all involved thought that we need a way to band together and get some feature requests implemented in the next version of Adobe Illustrator.

Continue reading →