Virgin Ads Complete

They have been finished for a little while now, but the Virgin Media advertisements which I was a big part of designing are finally all aired or being aired in theaters and television in the UK.







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Finally... another video!

I've gotten around to editing the last video I recorded. Future videos will have sharper production quality as well as better audio, as I've ironed out a few errors since recording this one. But I hope you enjoy!

For the rest, visit my digital podcast blog or YouTube page.
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It's ALIVE!

UPDATE: It appears that artsquaredbooks.com is now LIVE!
GO GET YE SOME BEOOOKS!

The great folks over at Art Squared Publishing have informed me that there is a slight delay with the launch of the new website, so I apologize for mentioning Famous Corpses and Blubber Lubber early. You can still go to the page and enter your email, to receive notification as to when the books will be on sale. I was told it would not be later than November 15th.

And for those first 50 to buy Famous Corpses from ArtSquaredBooks.com, you will receive a unique signed sketch from Jan Op de Beeck, the brain and pencil behind this great book. This is rare, so don't miss out on it.

Next, if you're one of the first 25 people who order more than one copy of Blubber Lubber by Dan Hay, you will be placed in a raffle to win the book I used as my portfolio for the 2008 NCN caricature convention. I was asked to provide this for Art Squared Publishing after the vocal popularity it showed at the convention. This book is approx. 14" x 11", spiral bound and on heavy cardstock. It features mostly unseen work, almost all from the last year, and is primarily caricatures. This is one-of-a-kind, and Dan's book is only $15 and makes an amazing gift for a friend.

Check back here to see updates, and if you drop your email at ArtSquaredBooks.com, it will not be spammed. :)

Jan's Corpses

The books are finally in the warehouse, and nearly ready for your orders! The publishers are giving the artists at the NCN convention (in Raleigh, NC, starting next week) a first chance to get this great book. If you order from Art Squared Publishing, the first 50 orders will have a signed insert with an original sketch from Jan Op de Beeck, himself.

I should also take this opportunity to remind everyone that by buying directly from Art2Books.com, you support Jan Op de Beeck and the publishers more directly, helping them make it possible to bring you further volumes of Famous Corpses and other great art books from amazing artists. If you find the book elsewhere on the internet, take the time to visit the publisher website directly and support them the best you can. If you are going to order it online, you may as well do your part to keep these books coming.

That's my little service announcement... hehe. I'm now finalizing my seminar for the NCN convention and getting packed and ready. I hope to see lots of you there and have a great time.

Famous Corpses

From the talented Jan Op De Beeck comes a true 'celebrity epitaph roast'. This book is like nothing else you've seen and will have you instantly smiling and laughing. Cartoon illustrations by Emi Sato and written by Danielle Griffith, this book is the ultimate "What did they just say?!" read, skewering recently deceased famous people from around the world.

(animation by Brian Haimes, production by Joe Bluhm)

This book will be available in mid-November from the folks over at Art Squared Publishing, with a pre-sale special only at the National Caricaturist Network convention (NCN) in Raleigh, NC from November 3rd through the 7th. Anyone is welcome to attend the NCN convention, but if you can't make it, simply log your email at Art2Books.com to receive notice when the site is live and when the books are on sale.

Art Squared Publishing will also be carrying Blubber Lubber by Dan Hay and REJECTS (by yours truly), among other titles. These will also be available at the NCN convention, so drop by!

Another warmup sketch

Here's another drawing I did just to play around before continuing a larger canvas painting. I'll hopefully keep warming up and sketching like this... I really have fun doing it.

PS- Lots of special stuff to pop up here soon; check back.

Jerry & Larry, another warmup sketch

To get warmed up for a new piece, I decided to do a sketch of two guys whose comedy I adore, as well as whom I've been meaning to draw for a while now. This is about 45 minutes on the Wacom Cintiq. My intention was to plan a simple line drawing cartoon, but then realized I wanted to see more light/shadow. This would be fun to turn into a more complete painting (a species that I hope to share more of soon).

Paul Newman warmup sketch

A 20 minute digital sketch done on the Wacom Cintiq to stretch out before working on an illustration.

Mel B and Virgin Media

Here's the second of a very cool series of advertisements from Virgin media, that I was fortunate enough to be a part of. The amazing team of creatives and hard-workers at So! Animation are responsible for this one, just like the Mick Hucknall "KWACCS" advertisement aired last month in England (as well as more to come...). They did a great job and are a great team to work for.

I got to design and help create the characters, from start to finish. Here you can see some sketches and versions of the design for the to-be animated Melanie Brown (aka Mel B, aka Scary Spice). I offered a few versions of each character and some revisions, based on the team of creators and writers at the Y&R agency, responsible for this campaign. This will air in theaters (HD!) later this month. It really was a fun process, and you can see the result is just as fun:

PS- It was great to work with Ed Steckley on this one: can you see other influences (for those that know me or Ed) or art that Ed and I collaborated on? Maybe on the walls? hehe.

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Mick Hucknall

Here's a new Virgin Media ad featuring the popular Simply Red frontman. I was fortunate enough to have done the character design, modeling, texturing and supervision. I am so proud of my studio-mates and the amazing animation, rendering, lighting, interior, compositing, editing, modeling and everything else they put into it. It turned out great, and there are more to come! These can be seen in the UK (nationwide) in Odeon and Cineworld theatres.

Kylie Minogue, CG Animation

Here are a couple sketches that were done for the current animation spots I'm working on (these specifically will not be used). They are for commercials to be aired in the UK, containing a celebrity and an original character or two.

The clients on this project are quite wonderful. They write a script loosely around a celebrity that they begin to woo, and if they get an agreement, they finalize it and we start. To keep it enticing, they've begun showing sketches to with whom they are negotiating, in efforts to both get a head start and better sell the idea. These are not the final designs, but a jumping-off point for critique. I've also learned to not get too polished or invested in any of these, because the clients and agency both hold different priorities at times. I've learned that it must be a malleable process, and would not be successful if it were not.

I was asked to do a few sketches of Kylie Minogue (digitally for speed) that were fairly rendered, and I had only a few hours. I'll share more details on this project when I can.

TI, The Game & Lil' Wayne

Seeing step-by-step processes from other artists always helps me gain an insight into the approach of a project or piece of art and offers something to learn, even if small. I like to offer my own process from time to time with an effort to give back to others the way my colleagues and friends have generously given to me.

Here I will show stages of an illustration job for VIBE magazine. I was called to do an spot featuring three rappers, poking fun of their run-ins with the law just after appearing on the cover of Vibe. It is a joke they were making about a 'Vibe Curse', of sorts. The art director wanted a painted and fairly rendered or 'realistic' look to the piece, and cited a couple pieces I'd done in the past as reference. I was given about 36 hours to work on this illustration and I put in almost 18 hours of work.

Starting with a thumbnail for approval, the idea was to show them with a sign board in a group mugshot with a tag line on the board. I sketched how I would exaggerate them, showed the art director and began sketching.

As you can see, my sketches (for the purpose of speed and ease, with such a short deadline) were done separately. This way I could focus on the structure, likenesses, pose and expression and digitally compose the image later.

Once I reached a point where there was enough information to start painting, I brought all the elements together and roughly sketched out the rest in Photoshop. Switching the drawing to a "multiply" layer, I could add color beneath it and give an overall base to start painting with. Once I got approval from the art director, it was a straight 12 or more hours of digital painting.

I knew that the photos had different lighting and color treatment, so to unify them I started with a monochromatic palette that I would use as a base, mostly to give the illusion of one consistent light warmth and environment. I shaped the lighting in the drawing a little differently than the separate reference photos to help convince the viewer that they are 'together'. You may ask why not just find reference of each with a similar light source? That is a great point, however the art director and I felt that a certain expression for each personality would sell the comedy of the piece more, and finding those expressions was not an easy task, limiting what photos I had to work with (two of the three rarely make these sorts of faces rather than their PR poses).

Here you can see the level of detail in the piece. Nothing too meticulous, but when printed at 4-5" wide it will look very detailed. This is before any color variation (except for the irises), using just the monochromatic palette as a start.

Once I reached a point where the heads were nearly finished, the details of tattoos, lips, eyes, shadows and other color variations were added to complete the heads. This was the focus of the piece, so I wanted to get it done to a certain level of detail before moving forward with the rest of the painting.

Here it is about 90% finished. The marks on the wall were added in a separate layer in Photoshop and punched back a bit later, and more details like jewelry, clothing and tattoos were added before finishing.

And here is the final illustration. To be honest, I'm not completely satisfied with it, but considering the tight deadline it worked out alright.

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Jimmy Johnson for Frank Caliendo

This is a digital painting done in 2007. I recently painted the background for possible use in a friend's book, but we went with another piece. It was originally commissioned for FrankCaliendo.com and used on the website. It's a digital painting from a small pencil sketch.

I love his face, because it reminds me of the structure of Fred Flintstone.

(detail)
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Celebrity Warmups #2

Here are a couple more celebrity sketches done in a theme park to keep limber and attract guests to the retail location. These were completed in 2006 and 2007, both at Sea World... but on different coasts of the United States. These definitely took a bit longer to complete than the average theme park caricature - perhaps 30 minutes or more.

I forgot to mention that the materials used for this style of drawing are the Dixon Markette marker and Prismacolor Art Stixx for color. You can see more work like this, as well as the process, in the book Rejects.

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(live) Celebrity Warmups

When drawing in theme parks I would often warm up or practice by drawing from photos from magazines. A great way to attract customers is to draw a current celebrity. This also demonstrates an artist's ability to passers-by in a way that is not as aggressive as barking at a crowd or pointing to samples.

Below is one warm up sketch I did back in 2006 at Sea World and above are two Elvis drawings finished for my good friend Kevin, to be displayed at a Graceland caricature stand.

This type of sketch is not always the "best" an artist can do, but it is a special challenge to attempt a complete piece in 10-20 minutes. It also challenges you to make big, bold, fun decisions in a very short amount of time, helping the drawings for paying customers reach a new level of exaggeration, likeness and unique fun. You could loosely equate this to a good stretch before a 3 mile run.

Ron Paul

He's called "Dr. No" for his vote against excess spending. He's called the "Tax Payer's Best Friend" for his solid stance against both raising taxes and the IRS. He's called "The Champion of the Constitution" for his fight to preserve the integrity of the founding fathers of America.

Ron Paul has not dropped out of the race for president and will be attending the Republican National Convention with plenty of support. If you are tired of the usual candidates, this is a man still worth learning from. If nothing else, his book "The Revolution: A Manifesto" is an amazing read with plenty of history and a refreshing take on our founding fathers and the current state of the United States, with a perspective of true 'change' worth pursuing.

I did this small marker sketch back when Dr. Ron Paul still had a chance to initially capture enough delegates for the Republican presidential nomination. Even if you don't agree with his rare (for today's standards) stances, it's easy to see that we need more sincere and consistent politicians like Ron Paul.

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