AD 32 - Artist research - David DeGrand

David DeGrand may be one of my new favorite illustrators, I chose him because we have a similar way of drawing people, we both like to exaggerate features and make everything look a little disgusting. We also use similar shading techniques and our line qualities share similar traits, a perfect inspiration for me really. I also chose David because his client list is pretty marvelous to look at and it also has some clients that I would like to work for Including Nickelodeon and Walt Disney Television Animation. DeGrand has also landed clients such as MTV, Spongebob Comics and YUCK! magazine.

David's style is extremely cartoon and has an alternative feel to it, his work is a little gross and disgusting yet it is delivered in a socially acceptable way. He uses outrageous colour palates that are easy on the eyes but give the image that WOW factor to great effect. There is a lot of sketchbook work and from looking at the quality of line id say that he scans in original artwork and then colours it digitally. It's heavily based on character design but the lines and colours lend his work out to be used in comic books and cartoon ads.

David makes a lot of indie comics and higher caliper comics, there are a lot of kids books and design for cartoons in his portfolio. Id say his main audience would be aimed towards a younger generation but some of his comics fit into a slightly older catagory of maybe 18 -25 year old's.
So to sum that up he is an indie cartoonist who has a broad range of work aimed at the younger generation whilst still keeping the interest of people my age with a passion for all things gross.

David worked on a series of books called The Zombie Chasers and I would have liked to have worked on the dust jacket for one of them, it looks really busy and featured a load of characters on the cover, that would have been heaven for me to work on something like that.

I found David through a promotional website called Illustrationmundo which is a site dedicated to artists and their work, it's essentially a catalogue for illustrators and designers. The site lead me to his actual website which is really nicely set out, he also has a Facebook presence and a blog. His online space is pretty well managed and he has appeared at many art shows including Naughty Nineties, the end of an era, Cartoon Funanza and Seduction of the Idiots. Pretty much every art show he had attended was local to his home state Texas but the numbers were pretty impressive as he has appeared in around 23 local shows so far.


I couldn't really see if David works on commissions as there was no evidence on any of his sites, His main portfolio site did include a load of personal work though so id imagine if he had enough time on his hands to work on personal things he might have some room for commissions.

Speaking of personal work, David has a book of his own artwork published by Milk Shadow Books and a lot of his personal characters have been made into stickers that you can buy online.

It seems like David is busy but has enough time to work on his own things which he also makes a living from, I looked at some interviews with him and there was no indication to a regular job. David has illustrated for Spongebob comics for the past two years and is also a contributor to Heeby Jeeby Comix so it seems like he sustains himself by jumping between these two jobs and selling his personal work online.

AD 32 - artist research - Glen Mullaly

After looking through my folder of illustrators that I liked I manged to find a few that have similar styles and interests to me. Glen Mullaly was the first one that I chose, I did so because he focuses mainly on character design and the application of them. Most of his stuff is digitally rendered and includes a dominant black line which is similar to my methods as an image maker.
I would say that Glen has a style heavily influenced by retro cartoons and comics, his colour palates are gentle on the eyes yet still pack enough punch to give the characters some extra life. There is quite a lot of emphasis on the lighting on and around his characters, the light is emulated with a white mark. His heavy weight black line changes in size slightly to pick up the smaller details of his piece which fits in and pays homage to the traditional comic book/cartoon style. Most of his images are rendered digitally but there were some on his website that looked more hand made, see below for examples.

Obviously some of these images are still rendered digitally but they still have hand made features and textures about them, either that or Glen is really great at emulating hand made textures. 

Most of Glen's images target a younger audience, after looking through his client list I can confirm that to be the case as he has worked on various illustrations and comics for kids including some comics based on Star Wars Published by Dark Horse Comics. His clients also include Mcdonalds and Simon and Schuster, both of which are big names to have on an illustration CV. 

After going through Glen's blog I was able to find out some more information on the image he worked on as there was little description on his professional site. He worked on a book collection titled 'My Teacher is an Alien' which was a book I was looking into during the early stages of my dissertation, it would have been pretty awesome to work on a book with such a cool concept.

Glen has quite a large online presence including a Facebook page, Blogger, Glossom and a Thats My Folio. He also makes appearances at local art fairs such as Victoria's Ultimate Hobby and Toy Fair where he sells mini prints and autographs his work. He also has an online store and his books are also on the Amazon listings making him quite easy to come across. Finally I have found some of his books in stores such as Waterstones, this is one of the best methods of marketing he could get, to land a book in a big branch store can have great results.

I couldn't find much on Glen's agent but I found out that he works in a studio that he shares with his wife and cat, id assume the cat doesn't do much art. Glen has had work in TD Art Gallery and according to his blog post he appears at recurring events there and has done for a while. 

Reading through Glen's blog was pretty interesting as it showed me how busy he can be, one post stated that he was really busy getting work finished for a load of different clients, it seems that he doesn't have a lot of time to take on commissions, there was also nothing on his blog to support him taking any on. 

Glen makes prints and paintings to sell on his online store, he also makes appearances at comic book fairs and art shows where he sells mini prints and things. He seems to update his store quite frequently so there must be a high demand for his work. He seems to balance out doing art for fun and as a career pretty well. 

After sweeping through Glen's blog and looking at his impressive client list I couldn't find anything about him having any other commitments, he seems to be able to sustain himself using his chosen tricks of the trade. every week he seems to be working on something new, may it be character designs for an advert, new pages for a children's book or even some new paintings to go in a gallery.  

Syfy design campaign - A new inspiration

After completing my menu I was feeling super inspired and wanted to create more art in that style, I enjoyed working with shapes and I liked keeping things busy.

I have been a big fan of Andrew Kolb for ages and I love how neat and precise he can be with his illustrations. The Dexter's Laboratory image in particular was screaming at me, it was telling me that I could do something like this, I felt like I was on a roll and the workload kept flowing at this point. Although I loved my scientist Syfy poster design I felt like I could make something a little more busy, maybe think a little more geometric this time as well.

I had an idea to create a Syfy themed weapon wall. (See sketch folder for sketches)

I wanted to keep it well regimented and fairly geometric to see how much I could push my style.

The main idea that I wanted to capture was the idea of the Syfy channel being very at home, the low budget films give off a home made kind of vibe so I wanted a few of the "weapons" to look like every day items that you could find in your house. Some weapons would maybe have a retro science fiction theme to them so that they all tie in together.
Below is a screen shot of the colour mock process which is similar to the way that I mocked up colours for my menu. Just the original inks with some digital colour loosely thrown over the top to give me an idea of where the colours would sit against each other.

Due to the time scale I didn't really have time to alter this image or take any screen shots, I just wanted to commit to something and make it good, I planned this image out fairly well before I started it, I just wanted to let my digital skills do the talking. I am really pleased with these outcomes and it was great to work almost purely using shapes. The blue background was my original palette but I mixed it up with the brown and purple for some variations. The bright background was what kept me focused on the grey weapons, the contrast was needed. These however are not the final images as I felt that the background colour almost took something away from some of the more colourful elements like the hair dryer and the Super Soaker. Below is my finished image,

The black makes everything pop off of the background and it all looks a little more uniform this way. My lecturer mentioned that the Syfy logo maybe shouldn't have the white underline as it doesn't look deliberate but instead looks like a printing mistake. That is something that can easily be changed but for the college deadline I will keep it this way as I think it adds a little depth to the title and makes it look engraved within the metal.  I would definitely like to do more work like this in the future!

Self Initiated menu brief - Contextualization and the final concept

Here is the menu fully printed out with the two masks either side, they look good together but what could make this even better?

If the menu now came with an interior!!!

I apologize but there aren't any sketches at all for the interior as I did not have much time to throw it together but it turned out pretty good. I sampled some food options from an existing Mexican restaurant in London called Wahaca. click for website

 I re-wrote the text and picked various dishes I liked so as to make it as unique as possible. I took the check pattern from the outside of the menu and made it black and grey so it was easier to read the text and then I just drew all over it digitally, filling the gaps with similar elements from the outside cover.

This just polished off the whole piece and made it look totally believable, now the finishing touch.

 My cousins and their son were very kind to allow me 20 minutes of their time so that I could photograph them interacting with my menu as if they were out for a family meal, the first few shots are of their son as I wanted to contextualize the coloruing sheet and mask wearing.

The artist at work! 

Trying to decide what to have!

Taking the masks out for a spin. The image on the right is by far my favourite, that mask in particular was also a good choice as the expression makes him look as if he is having trouble trying to decide. 

Tried out the mask with eye holes and it does look good although I still prefer the one with cartoon eyes. The image on the left has the test flyer I made in the shot to show its use, when you are in a restaurant you normally have a little stand where the salt and pepper is stored and usually there are menus and things clipped to the top of it. You could even go as far to say that the design could go on napkins, if not that then a simpler version with maybe just the arrows or something along those lines.  

Trying to decide what to get for dessert! 

Happy days!
Menu fully opened and stomachs happily full! 

Finally I left them with some sheets to keep and colour in, I am truly thankful to my cousins for lending me their time and welcoming me into their home. They gave me the context that I needed for this brief to properly come to an end. 

Self initiated menu brief - The puzzle idea

After completing the menu and the masks I sort of wanted to make something else like an activity sheet of some kind that kids could do whilst they were waiting for their food. I remember looking at Thomas Flintham's work a while back and he has had many of his puzzle books published so I thought he would be a good place to start.

His puzzles and mazes are super effective and are really nice to look at. In my sketch folder you can see some basic concepts that I had come up with for a wrestling belt themed maze. below is my digital mock of what the maze section would look like.

The idea was to start at the entrance on the left part of the belt and work your way along to the middle and then out along the far right hand side. The centre maze would have extra paths going along to fill the circular space and I had thought about maybe adding wrestling mask in the middle, not unlike the logo for the menu. I used a program online that generated a square space, it then allowed me to carve various pathways into the shape and then all I had to do was screen shot it and use it as a guide for the digital sketch. In this case I actually found it easier to take the shape and lock off the pixels and then change the colour to whatever I please. The two side panels are constructed of four individually designed mazes and then merged to make a larger one, the middle section is a scaled up version of the smaller maze sections.

After a lot of thought I decided that I did not want to carry on with this idea as everything felt a little too artificial and although I made the mazes myself there was this feeling that made me feel like the mazes were not my own which obviously threw me off. My lecturers also mentioned that this kind of thing did not really match with the other images that I had made for this brief. So the maze idea pretty much ended there and then, it was a cool idea but not for the audience that I am aiming for, also I can do better than this.

Enter the colouring sheet idea. This was a lot simpler to do and a lot more effective, I thought it would be a good idea to name characters that are on the menu, they could have a favourite food and maybe a strength level as to tell who is the strongest, sort of like Trump cards. This one is called Fancy Pants and he was just traced from a section on the back of my menu, I have also added the challenge of finding him on the menu and a tick box to show that you have found him. The background elements were just made up to fit his body shape, they reflect the elements from the menu but I mixed them up to make him harder to find.

Sadly Fancy Pants is the only one I have had time to create for this deadline but there is nothing stopping me from making the whole team in the same style. That way if anyone wanted to take this design and make it a reality then I would already have the activity sheets finished.  Now to contextualize everything.

Self initiated menu brief - Mask making

I had an idea to create wrestling masks based on the characters that I had made for the menu, they could either be in black or white so that they kids could colour them in themselves or they could take the palettes from the menu and act as a plush "cut and make". Either way this menu needed something for kids to take home and keep as a memento.

My sketch folder has some basic sketches of wrestling masks which were inspired from my mood board below.

 I found some pretty neat designs on Pinterest and the image on the far right was something defiantly worth looking into. It was a website that allows you to download all kinds of templates, I was especially interested in these designs because they were 3D and actually fitted around your head like a wrestling mask should. All I had to do was apply for a template with my email address and that was it. Once I got the template I completely changed the design and went over the shape to get the measurements correct, from that point I had a blank mask sized canvas to work with.

Before I got my hands on a template I decided that I would mock up mask digitally, above is my mask sketch. A bit too serious for my liking and it did not fit in with my menu at all but it was nice to try something out before I moved on to using templates.

These two are based on characters from my menu, I changed the template eye shape so that I could mimic the eyes that my characters have. In the top left hand corner of each image there is also the colour palette that was used for my menu so I could get the inks spot on.

And these two were just some that I made to try out some different patterns, these guys are a little more full on than the other two but it's nice to have a contrast between the two. Maybe the kids would get a choice before being seated. I also managed to give each of them different expressions as to characterize them and make them just that little bit more unique.

They look pretty awesome in real life also, I cut the eyes out of one so that it would work as a practical mask, it was pretty tight on my head although I guess they are designed for kids. I actually like the mask with the eyes as it can transform a normal person into a cartoon, Like so...

Self initiated menu brief - Building my menu

Above are some swatches that I threw together after scanning in my line work, I did this to get a feel for the final image and this also helped me visualize the appropriate colour palette.

And here are some background swatches, I decided on the blue, yellow and orange palette for my characters and was now looking for a colour to use for my background. I was really keen on the lime green but I tried to avoid it as green is always my go to colour and wanted to try something different.

This was my favourite from all of the swatches that I made, the only thing I was worried about was the yellow on yellow sections, I thought the use of shadows would bring the text away from the background but there was only one way for me to find out. The basic outline was there, the colours were 90% set in stone so now I had to start inking in final characters and neatening up the image. It was good to plan colours first as I believed it would allow the construction of the image to be more smooth. Below shows my process.

Before actually inking in my characters I made this mock flyer which would test various elements out, he tuned out pretty good and confirmed some extra details that I wanted to add to the characters like the dots on his skin. The way I drew the logo here actually looked better than the way that I had drawn it for the colour mock images so that was also something I could take from this practice run.

As you can see I took the logo from my test image and worked it into my final design, the previous one was too chunky and this one sits perfectly within the wrestling belt. I was skeptical at first but once I had seen my elements rendered digitally I was keen and ready to get stuck in.

Made a dramatic change here as I changed the background from yellow to this dark blue check pattern. The yellow was too distracting as I already have a lot of yellow on my image so I changed it out for something a bit more subtle yet dynamic.  At this point I just needed something different in the background so that I could focus on the content without getting distracted.

I believe this was the part where I realized how long this was going to take me, but still the first page had nearly been complete so it was pushing me forward and keeping my spirits high.

It was at this point that I got really excited as the first page had nearly been completed. I chose to not illustrate the mini crowns on my image as there was quite a lot of yellow as it was and a lot of little yellow crown would have been too much. I decided that I would finish the image and then revisit all of the empty spots and decide what to put there.

The last screen shot I had taken before I just went full throttle and finished it off, I went into my own little world and the image was just coming together at a much faster pace now. I had the muscle memory and started making less mistakes, I had learned how to make stitches and dot patterns from the previous page which helped speed up the making of the second. I was feeling very proud at this point as I could see the finish line for this menu.

And here is the completed piece, I changed the background to a slightly more purple version and added in swirling arrows and decorative dots to fill in the gaps. I had a slightly brighter background at one point but it made more sense to make it slightly darker so that it wouldn't take anything away from my image.

 I am over the moon with this piece, It pushed me to the max and I had learnt so much from it. My fonts have gotten better, my character design skills have increased and my ability to build a busy image has strengthened. This is my favourite piece that I have done so far and I can't wait to see it in context.

Self initiated menu brief - Gaining some ground and starting some roughs

After doing some very rough sketches I started to commit to the Mexican theme, I haven't drawn wrestlers before and I thought it would be fun to do because their costumes are always so decorative and punchy. I started to experiment with words and shapes also, I even tried to write some words in Spanish so that they would fit into the theme. I had experimented with hand written type during the previous module and I came up with some good ideas but I need to take this even further and refine my type even more. For that I constructed a mood board for typography to get some ideas.

I threw together a range of different fonts and images, the burger image on the bottom left corner has some awesome illustrations and a real diverse range of type faces. I even looked at photographed fonts to see how the contrast would work, some look like magazine covers and others symbolize their content like the strawberry and the bread images.

After doing small sketches (see sketch folder) I decided that I needed to see this image on a large scale. Above are two A3 pages depicting the front and back of the menu (right to left). I decided on Luchas for the name as it just looked right and sounded good, also I am a fan of one word names as it is easier to base a design around. Obviously all of these items would be subject to change but I felt the next step should be to link these guys up digitally and start throwing some colour palettes on there to get a feel for the final image.

It seems I watched quite a lot of cartoons as a kid as yet again I have found my inspiration in the form of a cartoon titled MUCHA LUCHA. I used these guys as inspiration to help inform my mask designs and body shapes. There are also some illustrations from Pinterest on here which I added in because they worked together as a group of images.

I also started briefly looking at Mexican illustrations and day of the dead skulls, above are some that I really liked and the guy on the bottom right hand corner was apparently so awesome that I had to throw him in there twice. The Matador illustration was a particular favourite of mine, I liked the way the artist had drawn the hands, I draw hands in a similar way so it was good to find a similarity between our work.

Self initiated menu brief - thematic things

To accompany my initial artist research I thought it best to research existing menus and illustrations that would help me along my way. I had already looked through Teagle and Simpson's work and that was a step in the right direction, below are some of my favourite finds.

The two on the top left hand corner were taken by my friend, it was this awesome Mexican themed restaurant in Cardiff named Mission Burrito and the illustrations are simple yet effective. I also came across some impressive typography based chalk board designs which really work in a rustic setting. Finally I came across some spot illustrations which were very well regimented and acted almost like an infographic illustration which I thought was pretty cool.
At this point in the brief I was sure that I was going to illustrate a menu so now it came to deciding what theme would I go for.

I first started off looking around for strange themed restaurants in London to get some ideas and I came across some very weird places indeed. La Bodega Negra for example had some very odd directions which included you going through an illuminated entrance to a seedy-looking sex shop with no reassurance what so ever that you are in fact still going the right way for dinner, you then follow a tunnel and you eventually arrive in this amazing restaurant. Archipelago was also a strange one as it claims to alter your perception of time from the outside world, the randomly placed cultural paraphernalia and the unorthodox food choices such as crickets and crocodile add to the illusion that you are not in London.

I searched for a while, coming across circus themes, steak house themes and I even found one that had handbags hanging from the ceiling which was fairly odd. I liked the idea of either a Mexican theme or maybe a Medieval theme as they both had a lot of content that I could include in my busy menu.

Self initiated menu brief - the original idea

I came away from my last module on a good note, these characters were the last designs I had done for the module and wanting to keep the characters flowing I originally intended for my menu to feature characters in this style. Obviously they wouldn't in any shape or form look like a poo ghost or a frothing tea bag but the style would be the same, below is one of the original burger character I had come up with.

This one turned out pretty good, I gave this guy some more texture also to make him a little more desirable. The original plan was to have a variety of characters similar to these (see mood board in sketch folder) dotted around a menu acting as the mascots for the restaurant. I wanted to then look at making them into large cut outs that would stand around the establishment. The reason however that I did not go with this idea was that I wanted to challenge myself and work without lines, I wanted to focus a little less on singular character design and broaden my horizons to bigger, more professional looking things. This around the time that the Steve Simpson brain wave happened.

Self initiated menu brief - The inspiration

I have always been a huge fan of Steve Simpson as his art never ceases to amaze me. Lately I have been looking more at his product design and it has always made me want to see if I can do this kind of thing for myself. The question is where would I start?
During the early stages of the project I wanted to design some kind of packaging, I felt like that was a bit vast and decided to home it down. It was then that I came across this image by Steve Simpson.

This menu design is absolutely mind blowing, it has everything i'd want in an image, good character design, excellent colour palettes and a great usage of hand made type. All of those things are skills I'd want to increase and I have always wanted to push myself to the limit and illustrate a busy image to a professional standard. A menu seemed like the best way for me to achieve my goals and explore my art style. The menu above is what set this self initiated project in motion.

After getting mega inspired from Steve Simpson's page I started to look around for other artists who have answered similar briefs. Jack Teagle was one of the first I came across, I remembered that he had illustrated for Daddy Donkey in the past and he had created these awesome wrestling characters using a limited colour palette and a lot of well rendered hand drawn type.

It looks even better in context covering the Daddy Donkey food trailer 

Jack is not only good at hand rendered type but he had also done his fair share of busy images before although his colours are a bit more erratic where as Steve Simpson's are a lot more toned down.