Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Work in Progress

Hot Bar at The Bernard Shaw

Sketch work for some labels I'm designing for cosy winter drinks at the outside 'Hot Bar' in The Bernard Shaw. The first is a general label, with boarder still to be filled, the second is a mock up of the hot whiskey label. Still to design is a mulled wine and hot cider label. I'm not sure what type of labels/cups are being used yet, so these are just designs so far. Its great fun though, I love hand making type AND illustrating so getting to do both is amazing!



Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Character Development


Lion Animation Ideas and Development

The app/game that I have been working on in the posts previous needed development of characters to allow for visual changes during stages of power up. I played around with the whole design to try to find expressions or positions that worked. It's in progress but here some of the work so far. I included some of the changes that the lion has gone through so far to reach the sequence I wanted, changing shape and style along the way.





Sketches:








Sequence: (click to enlarge)


Lion


Rhino


Birds




Sunday, September 9, 2012

More Super Fun mock ups

And heres some further development. What am I doing you say? My friend has been developing this awesome word game for ipad/iphone. Basically you use your finger to select words from the grid, in any direction, aided by three power ups/helpers for when you get stuck. It is highly addictive to play, be warned. I came on board to help out with a bit of design. All of the work here is very unfinished, more style sheets to improve upon, and to test their functionality and suitability within the game. The idea of the concept to work on was that the letter blocks were effectively floating as a canopy over some kind of rainforest or similar, and that there would be a night and day, day time being when you can really hit up your power ups, night time draining them. Elements such as rain and lightning interact with the play, and theres a beautiful ever changing soundtrack by the lovely Cora Venus Lunny. The power up symbols given to me were bomb-to pop a letter out of the grid and send its surrounding letter blocks spinning, shove-to push along a whole line horizontally or vertically one space, and swap-to tap blocks to trade their places. There are sound effects with the power ups that are animal noises. I'm working on converting the symbols to relevant animals for the specials. The lion roars and pops out the block, the rhino charges to shove a line along, and the 2 birds pick up and swap letters. I have a lot of work to do on improving the design of the animals, and including changing expressions depending on the amount of charge they have, for example awake and happy to sleepy to grumpy for the lion, depending on how much juice it has. 
The first two pics here and the last post are sketch and mock up versions of the game, and the last pic is the start splash page for now. 
The game is in testing mode at the moment, more info can be found here http://www.solocobits.com/






Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Super Fun Time Thing To Do!

Here's some rough work towards the design of super fun time thing. All will be revealed later.










Conan Poster!

Just done with my poster for Conan, Slomatics, Hornets and Lesshelp in The Limelight, Belfast. I like conan and amplifiers, so this was awesome. If you look closely, the Thulsa Doom amp controls read "Loud, Low, Gain and Snakes". As usual on my posters, I hand draw the line drawings in a few bits and pieces and then assemble, trace and colour digitally.


Thursday, August 9, 2012

Andy at Irish Comic News was nice enough to interview me. Of course I talked to much. Naturally.
Link!

Friday, July 20, 2012

Character Development

Taking a break from the story board to have another go at refining the characters. Decided to make the lady more troll like. Don't mind the compositional inaccuracies, it wasn't supposed to be a composition but I just kept drawing.




I also took a very quick trip to the packed natural history museum to remind myself of what sparrows look like, luckily they are general bird shaped! Very rough stuff to start.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

The Sparrow with the Slit Tongue

I have started to put together what I intend to make into a mock up of a children's book, as a personal art zine project for myself, and to be adapted for my illustration portfolio as a show piece eventually. With this project I want to be able to go through every step of the process as it happens, so effectively you get to see the whole thing from rubbish ideas to polished final pages. It will be my online sketchbook.


The story I am illustrating is an old Japanese folk tale. The version that I have been working from so far is the version below, from the Andrew Lang edited 'Pink Fairy Book' from 1879, which is available free on Project Gutenberg here Pink Fairy Book


I plan to look into other versions and incorporate elements as the story requires.


Here is the text:


THE SPARROW WITH THE SLIT TONGUE 

    A long long time ago, an old couple dwelt in the very heart of a high mountain. They lived together in peace and harmony, although they were very different in character, the man being good-natured and honest, and the wife being greedy and quarrelsome when anyone came her way that she could possibly quarrel with.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Wizards of Firetop Mountain

Here is a T Shirt Design/logo I have been working on (under my wereworms name) for my 70's rock influenced band Wizards of Firetop Mountain. I have printed a one layer version in grey/silver ink on a black shirt, and am in the process of printing 2 layer coloured inks on to grey and blue shirts. The design was hand drawn and then modified into readability and coloured digitally. Available soon in mens and womens sizes, photos to follow.



Typography Project

The brief started very simple. Tear/cut out some letters from black paper, keeping them roughly within 75mm high.