Birthday Gift Illustration

Recently produced the above image for my friend Mil's 21st birthday. She and I are both fans of the children's tv programme Adventure Time created by Pendleton Ward. Below are some images from the show.

I do draw inspiration from this show. I really love the crazy character designs.

Stanley Chow

Came across this illustrator whilst browsing through Tumblr.com

I really love his use use of simple shapes/lines and bold blocky colours. When you really look at the images you see how simple they really are and yet they work brilliantly. I particularly like the image below because the dinosaur's skin texture has been created just by adding some simple shapes and different tones of colour.

The backgrounds in these images are also very simple and yet are still able to create a feeling of depth within in the image.

I think I need to experiment more with using sharper lines and including shapes to add texture and shading to an image.

http://www.stanleychowillustration.com/

Inspiration

Whilst looking around on DeviantArt.com I cam across this illustrator. There sadly isn't much information on her so I don't think she has any published work... yet...

http://oly-rrr.deviantart.com/gallery/687043

I adore the style she has used for this project. I love how the characters stand out from the soft pencil backgrounds. I also like how the characters go beyond the background to make them stand out further. I never thought that coloured pencil images could work this effectively.

Photograph illustration merge

In an earlier post today I mentioned how I wanted to merge illustrations with photographs... I've had a little play around with this idea and come up with the image below....

I really like how this came out. Each of the recipes will have their own double page and an image similar to this will take up most of the 2nd page.

I think the photos need to be bigger so that the reader can see the end result clearer. Could possibly have two smaller bumble bees holding up the photo.

I also think that the photo and the illustration still feel too separate. I will try out a similar image but with the character holding the image within an illustrated frame.

Background Idea

Have been trying recently to come up with ways of including backgrounds in my character images. I've always struggled with this.

The image above is one of my background attempts... I think it works well but I don't think it would be suitable for the monster cook book.

Was searching through DeviantArt.com the other day and found some images that gave me a possible idea for backgrounds...

http://squeedgemonster.deviantart.com/

I really loved how the backgrounds are so simple and yet still work effectively to make the subject stand out from the white background.

I want to try something similar but with cake crumbs or spilt ingredients. I think this would look brilliant along side the monsters and the recipes. Will look like the monsters are creating utter chaos on the pages.

Something I love about cooking and baking is making a mess so I'm really excited about this idea! I would plan out the pages layout before and then create the spillage after so it fits where I want on the page.... would photograph the spillage and then Photoshop it behind the elements and text on my pages.

In the meantime I will experiment with producing random spillages that could be used to fill in blank areas of the pages :)

My Personal Project

For my 3rd year personal project I am hoping to produce a children's cook book with a monster theme...

I am planning to make the book focused on just cake recipes to make life a bit easier for myself. I have been looking through my own cook books and ones in shops to get an idea of how the book should be set out... It will contain a contents page, a "what you will need" page, all the recipes starting with the most simple working up to the more complicated ones, a page for notes and possibly a games page at the back because it's a book intended for children.

The book will be aimed at young children (Aged 3-10) and their parents so they can cook together.

I want each recipe to have it's own monster character along with a little story to make the book more fun. So far I only have one monster idea for "Bumble Bear Brownies" these will simply be ordinary brownies with honey drizzled on top. There will be a short story or description of the Bumble Bears, the recipe, illustrations and a photograph of what the finished thing should look like.

My hope is to work the photos alongside the illustrations. For example, have one of the monsters holding up the photo of the finished cake so it seems more interactive and more fun to look at.

Best texture so far

Despite not being very active on here with my daily monster I have been keeping up with it... I have over 90 monsters now and have been thinking about making a book of them once I have 100...

Have also been working with a new stronger paint texture... Was finding the other ones less effective because of all the white spaces and areas with too much detail. This took away from the monsters so I came up with a more subtle texture with much stronger colour. I'm very happy with this texture and will be using it on all my future monsters...

Here are a few examples of the texture in action...