a smattering of sketches...

Still working on, for now, 'keep it under the hat' stuff. Here's some sketches that hint at aspects of the project. All very good fun, I look forward to showing more...

surplus neanderthals... (not a bad band name either)

Well you would be forgiven for thinking I'd dropped off the face of the earth but I've been busy with some exciting projects and won't have anything I can show for a while save occasional sketch crumbs which fall from the drawing board. The first scattering take the form of neanderthal portraits which, although the wrong flavour for the project in question, had a little something I really liked.

Aesops fable of "The dog and his bone" for Storytime magazine...

In some small defence of my slipshod blogging of late I've had one or two illustration jobs that I had to keep under wraps until they saw print. One such commission was for the grand folks at Storytime magazine who kindly asked me to provide illustrations for the Aesops fable of the dog and his bone (a.k.a the dog and his reflection) for their November issue. Y'know the story; dog finds bone, dog happy with bone, dog sees his reflection with said bone in the river and thinks it's another dog with a better bone, so dog goes to bark at this 'new' bone owner and nab the better bone... What do you know, dog loses his bone in the river... The moral of this fable, avoid rivers!

I pitched three different dog characters (named Sniffer, Banger and Spot... for ease of distinguishing them apart) for Storytime to choose between. Most gratifyingly, after the story was illustrated, they asked for a further group illustration of all three dogs (plus heads and a bone icon) to use for a game page to accompany the original story. All in all a very rewarding brief to work on.

I must say it's great to see the modus operandi Storytime have adopted for themselves, commissioning a variety of distinctly different illustrators to accompany a stimulating mix of story content in a well designed and produced quality magazine for children. Long may it continue.

If Asleep, now with a dash of colour.

Couldn't resist adding a wee splash of colour to the previous post. I really like the contrast it gives between the pallid greys of the vampire and the glowing sandy beach. Amps up the gag a bit more. I've also posted some doodles I did after finishing the illustration friday picture. I guess I had vampires on the brain! They are based on the intensely spooky Nosferatu film from 1922. I don't know about you but, even now, Max Schreck's performance in that gives me the heebie jeebies.  I think the skippy frame rate and disjointed effects in silent films create a weird, unnerving feel even before you get onto the vampire subject matter. It really goes to show you don't need all the CGI Hollywood bells and whistles (or even dialogue) so long as the story and performances are top notch. And as for 3D movies... don't get me started!!! The Fast Show did a pretty fine take on Nosferatu too :-) Sleep tight... don't let the vampires bite!