Art

Cartoon Art & Halftones Tutorial: From Inkjet Printer to Photocopier

| George Coghill

Halftone cartoon comparisonA cartoon illustration & design project for a friend’s party required the resulting art to be suitable for reproduction on a photocopy machine. After some trial, error, Google search, trial, error, Google search, trial, error I discovered the magic combo that allows you to create a halftone in Photoshop for an image and print it out on your inkjet printer so the art will be perfect for photocopying.

This technique is perfect for flyers, newsletters or any other short-run printing needs you have where the cheapness of a photocopy is desired, but so are grayscale images.

Continue reading →

The Girl In The Moon

| George Coghill

Sexy pinup Girl in the Moon cartoon illustrationI recently updated the “Girl in the Moon” artwork (while drinking some Miller High Life beers, of course). I had initially created a version of her a few years back, and while I thought it was good at the time, lately I have been wanting to update her as she was my first attempt at a pinup style illustration. I have been working towards a certain look/style for the pinup girls, including some devil girl pinup art and others and felt I was getting closer to that vision as of late.

I thought it only fair to go back and update the original. A request to get that original art in t-shirt format prompted me to start work on the new version.

Continue reading →

SCUBA & Snorkeling Fins Dive Flag T-Shirt

| George Coghill

SCUBA/snorkeling fin dive flag t-shirt designI just posted this SCUBA dive flag t-shirt design up on Zazzle. I was going through some of my archives and had forgotten about this one. I came up with this after taking a camping trip to the Florida Keys (the Bahia Honda Key in particular) a few years ago.

The campsites are right on the beach (with electricity even!), and it’s one of the few areas in the world where snorkeling can be done right from the shore. The entire group brought snorkeling gear “just in case”, but we all found ourselves instant snorkeling enthusiasts from day one. From the outside, it seems kinda boring. When you are actually doing it, it’s inexplicably awesome. Since the creative gears are always crankin’, I ended up working up some sketches for t-shirt ideas and when this one popped up, I knew I had a winner. And then I promptly filed it away and lost track of it for three years!

Continue reading →

Cleveland Clinic Medical Mart Star Wars Parody – Cleveland Free Times August 15, 2007 Issue

| George Coghill

Mart Wars - Star Wars themed parody on the Medical Mart controversy in Cleveland OhioI (very) recently worked on a two-page spread illustration for the Cleveland Free Times issue that comes out this week (Wed. Aug. 15, 2007). The piece was a satire on the controversial Cleveland Clinic “Medical Mart” being proposed in Cleveland, Ohio.

Writer James Renner found my work via my website and wanted me to illustrate his Star Wars themed parody of the shenanigans. The piece was done in a cartoon style (obviously) reminiscent of MAD Magazine, as I was flexing some serious Mort Drucker, Sam Viviano & Jack Davis idolisation while creating the piece.

Staff writer Renner, along with Editor Frank Lewis were extremely pleased with the final piece, which was created on a super-tight deadline (even after being given a requested week’s bump by Art Director Ron Kretsch due to many existing and pressing projects on my end).

Continue reading →

The Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State University

| George Coghill

Who knew that Ohio State University has a Cartoon Research Library? Who knew anybody had a Cartoon Research Library?

A quick search to test the database, I searched for “Mort Drucker, magazine cartoon, MAD Magazine” (by selecting from the pre-existing categories in the search fields). Turns out you only get a textual search result, much like an old-school computer card catalog in a library.

They also sponsor an annual Festival of Cartoon Art, which this year is held October 26-27, 2007.

Tip: OS X Window Switching Keyboard Shortcuts for Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign)

| George Coghill

Here are some super handy keyboard shortcuts for switching between open document windows when working within the Adobe Creative Suite applications (Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign). These are Macintosh-only keyboard shortcuts since I do not have access to a Windows machine. Sure to increase your productivity.

  • Illustrator: Command (Apple) + ~ (that’s the “tilde” key, to the left of the numeral one, otherwise known as “the little squiggly line thing”)
  • InDesign: same as Illustrator
  • Photoshop: Control + Tab

Continue reading →