Design Festa Poster

Here's a one off for the Design Festa booth me and the lads from Pixel Envy have over in Tokyo coming up in december. Pretty much used it as an opportunity to clean up some character design and polish my style and method a bit more. Pretty happy with it, as usual I feel like I coulda done more.....

Beware of Ladders......

Don't ask me to explain why these ladders are doing what they're doing, or what the idea behind the advert is because I don't have any more of an idea than you do. This particular job I just did what was asked. "we want ladders invading a country with guns" "we want ladders peeing into a river" "we want ladders getting drunk and rowdy outside a closed pub". Interesting eh? The ad (I've not seen it yet) was going be like a 1940s/50s propaganda flick, with narrator and black and white footage to boot. I had to do three stills for it. I must say for all the obscurity of the theme, I actually enjoyed doing these pics!

Revised Version of Cat

I've further developed the colours on Cat. The saturation just wasn't there in some of the colours. Especially when placed next to the other characters. I'm happy with the way he looks now. Even the yellow bag isn't bothering me too much although I'm not 100% on it. The balance is better overall I think.

Alva, my main man!

Here's Cat's best mate Alva. Constant travelling companion and also, conveniently enough, a mechanic. He keeps their two seater mini jet humming along. I'm pretty stoked with this one. I've found a level of detail I'm happy with as my style is developing from character to character.

main plot character coloured up

Well here's another. I'm not completely convinced by it. He's the main character in the story but his colours just aren't sitting right in my mind. I've tried numerous combos.... anyone out there let me know what you think!

There will be no cutting, I'm talking to yewww....Mr Cutter..

Well here's a tricked up version of an old character I did back at the start of the year for my animation book. I'm trying to get started on it again. So I'm going to vector up all the characters (which needs to be done anyways) so as to ease myself back into the feel of it all....

Mural Finished! (for now)

well here it is in all it's er..... Glory. Not as complex as I'd have liked but I'm certainly going to add to it down the track. It's a tricky bit of space to fill, but I'll slowly filll in the gaps underneath. At this stage I just don't wanna bite off more than I can chew. Being my first paste up project and all!

Mural Stuff Part III

Still plugging away at this mural. I'm coming up with miscellaneous icons that I can maximise my use of space with. They don't have to mean anything, just want them to create some extra interest aside from the main images and compliment the rest of the design. The little dudes I'll prob slot in here and there expressing themselves in different ways.

Skateshop Mural: Work in Progress

well here's the hypothetical start of my mural. It's gonna be all paste ups as the building is heritage listed so I can't paint on there. No doubt it'll take quite a few sessions to get it all up. But it's prob 50% complete at the mo in this pic (it'll prob change a few more times). I'm going to layout some kind of character based scene all the way to the door from where the little dead mickey dude is.
How friggin crap is their signage!? it had nothing to do with the shop owner, more to do with the guy that owns the building.....average stuff, man I'm still shaking my head about it... it'll be interesting to see the public reaction, as the town's population is on average pretty old.

misc skateshop ideas

now that I'm doing the entire shop front I'm just sitting down and drawing with a theme in mind but no real specific ideas. Here's a couple....

social security

If anyone has ever been on the dole or involved with the social security system in this country then you'll prob be able to relate to this pic.... I didn't intend to draw this pic it just kinda fell out on the page and then I thought what would make me cry and want to use a gun?

skateshop stickers?

figured I was gettin a little tired of just doing a lot of pen drawings so I've been hittin' freehand pretty hard and it's refreshingly fun. Colour can sometimes make the difference! This is justa couple of colour muck arounds for potential shop stickers.....

Meeghan's Grandpa

If life wasn't tough enough on my wife Meeghan's family after her death, four months to the very day her grandpa also passed away. He literally could not bear life without her it seems. I was asked to draw a small picture for the attendance book. This is it, it was emotional to do it but it just came to me and I was finished without really thinking about it. He always saw her as his little grandaughter and used to take her fishing, the family wanted a fishing oriented illo so it seemed kinda natural to do it like this...this blog is gettin rather depressing is it not?

to my wifey and her boys

Well it's now been four months since Meeghan died. I must say I feel pretty upbeat these days. I miss her like hell but my memories are now happy ones. This pic popped in my head and wouldn't go away so I put it down on paper and then fiddled aroudn with it in Freehand. Here's a couple of colour versions of it.

*yawn* just passing the time

Well my boys are keeping me rather tired these days. There's absolutely nothing on TV worth watching so I sat down and doodled some gear whilst listening to the Hilltop Hoods latest "The Hard Road". Quality hip hop that, class all the way. Good aussie stuff. anyways here's what I whittled out of my wooden brain tonight. I like the result considering the train of thought was a fairly blank one. Don't ask me what the dude in the bg is all about.... but he's up to no good me thinks.

Mural Stuff Part II

Here's anothery. I'm reasonably happy with how it's turned out. The shop colours are black and red so I'm a bit limited in my palette options.

Further mural stuff

Here's one of the ideas pushed further. I'm pretty stoked with this one at the mo.
Hopefully when I push the rest of them they'll all progress to something nice and solid.

Skate Shop Mural

Here's a fun little project I'm doing at the mo. It's a pic to go on a wall of the local skate shop called "Off The Street". i'm gonna paste it up which oughta be some fun. More so that when some little punk comes along and tags it we can paste another right over the top rather than repainting it. These are just some roughies I've put down to find my direction.

No one should be alone

Here's a rather sombre insight into my emotions yesterday. Not having Meeghan around is bloody tough, and the longer time goes on the more vivid my memories of our life together are becoming which makes it hard sometimes. I felt very alone yesterday, even with the boys. Nothing compares to the warmth and sense of safe you get from your closest companion.

Character concept for book

Here's something I threw up last night in a bid to loosen up and get back in the swing of things, I ain't trully satisfied with it, but then again when is any illustrator really happy with what they've drawn?? I tightened up on it pretty quick so it didn't come out as well as it could have but I feel like I'm getting back there...... oh and she will actually have clothes on in the next concept! She's a mean lady who's bit of an alpha female in a mostly male environment. She knows how to kickass!

doodling to get the flow back

Well it's literally been two months since I last did anything creative. My head is slowly coming back to the right place and things seem to be clicking back into place. In the interest of posting stuff here that I'm not 100% on here's some scribbling that I did the other day...... Don't ask me what it's about I just let it happen.

My Beautful Wife

On the 5th of March my beautiful wife, mother to my two sons, passed away. I will forever be left with a gaping hole in my life, of which I doubt I can fill again. Our young boys will never get to know the mother that brought them into this world. Too soon, too young.

Meeghan Lee Turra 28-07-1978 - 05-03-06

She will be forever with me and my sons.

WOW! EXCITING! .......aircraft hangar background

here's another bg for the book, about 90% of the action takes place in this hangar, and most of it won't be seen as the shots are quite tight. This bg is absent of objects etc, just getting the structure out the way. I''ll add stuff later....

Chapter title pages

Another couple of title pages done and dusted. Keeping it simple, this book is dragging out badly.... not easy looking after two young boys and trying to squeeze enough hours to actually get work done!

*yawn* it's a market.....hurrah....

well it's late again and I've got incredible tunnel vision.... Got this background finished off with a bit of tinkering but it ain't all that I hoped it'd be, the tonal range just isn't there... I might leave it for a bit and try again another day!

Fio - colour muck around

Here's a splash opf colour for once, even though this'll wind up a greyscale pic I had to let loose some colour! I know the pose is as boring as hell but it's merely a concept for her appearance, I'll do something more dynamic later on when I've prefected her. I'm happy with where she is going style wise..... Not 100% convinced with my colour choices, but I'm yet to experiment fully.

Oooooooh props......

Here's some exciting stuff to draw! never the less it has to be done. Just a brief example of prop design for my book.

Female Character concept

Hey ya! Here's a concept sketch for a female character that saves the day toward the end of the script when it looks like our two heroes numbers are up. This is the first complete concept so it ain't perfect but it's gettin there, gotta think of a name for her too! Also have a female character for the Dom gang too but that'sa little way off.....

cargo bay sketch

Here's a rough sketch of what the cargo bay looks like inside the cargo plane, the upper deck is accessed via the ramp that is in the up position underneath the opening. Cargo is loaded through the front and then rolled up to the upper deck, so the plane is essentially a dual level cargo plane....

Finals of Cat's Jet Tourer- Mechanical model sheets

Well, this is dragging out nicely but at least i've got a little bit to show for it! These are final tech drawings for Cat's jet. Bit of a compact yet sporty flyer this one. Goes fast as well as far thanks to some new fang dangled fuel cells.....beats me how it works!

Devils can be both good and bad can't they?

Got a little off track doing a small graphic for an aircraft in my book, altho I quite like what I came up with, could make some cool T-shirts or something if they get pushed further....

Final Mechanical Designs

I enjoy detail, theses aren't overly detailed but they've come up well and not taken too long to do. only a couple more mechanical finals to do and I can move onto the storybaords! Finally I'll be able to loosen up again...