Memorial Day Weekend Working On DOOF N' PUSS

Got a rush job with a tight deadline around two days before Memorial Day Weekend and so I spent the holiday working on Doof N' Puss while others frolicked and relaxed  in the ocean surf. Doof N' Puss is a segment on Phineas and Ferb and it's a lot like what the Itchy And Scratchy Show was on The Simpsons, meaning that it's a show within a show. Doof N’ Puss was an 80’s-style TV show that Doof pitched to a network exec at the Science Fiction and Fantasy convention in the Phineas and Ferb episode “Nerds of a Feather.” So once I got the model sheets, I was off and running drawing Agent P battling the zombie pigs and aliens I created. I'll be working on it till mid-next week. More as I go along...  

Monster Attack - SCOOBY Style!

Here's a Scooby Mystery Incorporated piece I did called "Monster Attack", and it's a teaser for you all! Pencilled on paper and then scan as a guide and then all digitally created from there to the end. I forget how many layers it wound up being but it was a lot. Hope you enjoy!

ALFIE Sketch

After I finished up my Phineas and Ferb work Sunday night for a Monday deadline, I drew this Alfie sketch before I went to bed last night. It was done in about an hour and was easy to draw since Alfie was tired and curled up to sleep. He occassionally kept raising his head to wonder what I was doing while looking at him. It was drawn with the Micron Pens and I used a PITT Brush Marker for his back body hair.

PUSS IN BOOTS On The Drawing Board As Well...

And also just started working on some Puss in Boots stuff, which I'm working on at the same time as the Phineas and Ferb work. Yes, Puss in Boots is getting his own spin-off movie and it's been in the works before Shrek 4 came out. There is a tease for it at the end of Shrek Forever After, where Shrek closes the book at the end of the movie and puts it up on the shelf and right next to it was a smaller book with "Puss in Boots" written on the spine, meaning that Puss has his own story as well. Anyway, it's feast or famine being a freelancer... so you grab it when you can. Still in the early stages of it so I'm not sure how long I have to get the work done yet before Puss comes out.

And Some Graphic Design This Week As Well...

Since the economy is still chugging along slow, I've been doing some graphic design as well. Below are three concert banners that I did earlier this week and they'll be 7 feet wide by 3 feet high when they are printed. I did one banner each for Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, and Zac Brown. They were made for WYNK radio for some concert thing that Clear Channel is doing. The basic idea is that fans will sign these banners and then the radio station will give each banner with all the signatures to each country star as a token gift from the fans, hence, why there's plenty of open space around them for signatures. The hard part was separating the characters from the backgrounds in their original photos and creating crisp edges. It takes some time to do it right and I think they came out pretty cool in the end. The Kenny Chesney one also had a small mic on his shirt collar and so I had to digitally paint that out as well. I sent the files to Vivid Ink who did the printing job on them and so I had to add their logo to the bottom as a final touch.  

And right after that I did a business card design and two ads for Rima Akoum at Mai Mira Salon in Baton Rouge. The first ad I did was in black and white for some charity publication and then I did this full color one that will run in City Social Magazine. It's a half page ad and took me a little time to figure it out since I was given the five smaller pics to work into the design that weren't in the black and white ad. I kept the background white since from the specs I was given there was no bleed and I though that it would look better with a bit of separation to it instead of adding a solid color in background which would box it more. I'm happy with how it turned out as it was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle to get it to work. It's just like the previous post with Phineas and Ferb, you have to have all these elements in a drawing and make them work. Design is 95% of the job no matter what I'm working on.

Working With PHINEAS AND FERB Again!

I've been bad about posting stuff of late but allergies have been killing me this year and it's hard to draw when you sneeze 15 times in a row. But I have been working on some stuff here at Casa de Neely. Since the 12th of May I've been working with the boys again... the boys being Phineas and Ferb! Above is a rough layout that I drew with a blue ball-point pen on some better than average art paper. Those of you who follow me know I draw mostly on cheap copy paper when I do my rough sketches but for this one I somehow started drawing it on good art paper. Can't remember why at this point but I think it was because I was too lazy to go and grab the cheaper paper in the closet at the time. I was probably too tired from sneezing to get up and get it. I'm posting it since it was one of the rare times that I actually had this layout really well thought out in my head and was able to put it on paper. I also drew it with a ball-point pen to change it up; plus not having an eraser on the end helps you draw faster. I sometimes do sketches with just a pen as it forces you to get the image out and not worry about fixing it as you go along. It's kind of like being a writer and banging out a first draft and then going back and fixing it after it's done. A lot of times, I create in pieces and then move the elements around the get the best position for stuff to make a better design. This one kind of came together a little easier than normal and once I had it pretty well etched in my mind I put it on paper. The work was approved and I've been doing the final art the last two days and will be working this weekend on it to get it done.

Spoke To The Graphics Class At DCCC Today!

This afternoon, around 2:30pm, I spoke to the graphics class at Delaware County Community College. My former Photoshop teacher, Robert Jones, had asked me to come in and speak to the class and tell them what I do. I've done this before for him in the past years as well so I offered this time since I had some down time. So for this talk I showed the class some of my layered art files since I think they would've given them a good idea of how work is done in licensing since it has many concepts that are used in graphic design and how to keep thinking in layers even from the initial sketch. I think I talked for about and hour and a half and took questions. Hope it wasn't too long 'cause I can ramble on! Ha! They seemed to have liked it so that was good. I took this pic of the school when I was leaving around 4:15 or so.

Life, Taxes & Hard Drives

Kinda stuck in a holding pattern of sorts this week. I did an audition last weekend, turned it in Monday, and then haven't heard back about anything yet... so it may have collapsed as a project (since even if I was approved they could pull it for time since the deadline was super tight) as it would have been slapdashed together to get something out. So who knows... work on Puss In Boots is coming soon though.... plus I did my taxes to get them done in case the government had shut down since who knows what part (if any) of the IRS would still be working if it did.

Other than that I've been sketching, digital painting and mostly backing up my external hard drives, reorganizing my files, and deleting old ones that I don't need anymore. It now seems that even 2TB drives aren't enough. Ha! Backing up my work and other files I've collected onto my Back Up drive (a smaller 500GB drive that sits next to my computer for immediate things that I'm working on or need to pull from) and then after about three weeks or so I back them up to the Back Up-Back Up drive (one of my main drives with mostly everything on it) and then again onto, not one, but TWO Back Up-Back Up-Back Up drives (two clones of the previous drive with everything on it, BUT with much more including comics scans, audio stuff, teaching stuff, etc. And I have two drives in case one fails. These two are the main drives that I can't lose though.) is an several hour process and I usually wait till the weekend at night to do it since you just have to sit and do it. It's a long and boring process but has to be done.

I seem to remember when I used to burn CD's and DVD's with data on them but now it's all about the external hard drive since they hold much more stuff and tranferring files over is much faster than burning. There was a time back in 2004 or so when I'd go to the computer store (no longer in business either) and buy 9 or 10 spindles of CDs or DVDs on sale so that I'd have them, but in the last two years alone I think I've only burned 3 CDs total! Technology is rapidly changing so fast that even the flash drives (or thumb drives) that were the rage for about a year have fallen by the wayside as hard drives have surpassed them in terms of speed and space, as well as keeping the physical dimensions of the drives down to a nice compact size that you can put in your pocket. 2TB drives are a little bigger in most cases but are about the size of a hardcover book.

It may seem excessive to some with all the backing up but I laugh at those who lose all their stuff when their systems crash and they didn't ever think to back anything up and have now lost it all. It's a large peace-of-mind to fire up a drive and back up the day's work and then go to bed knowing it's safe. Once you accumulate a large amount of stuff you don't want to lose it. Even working from the hotel room from my previous trip I would back up the night's work onto a flash drive and then a small external hard drive as well since I didn't want to rely on my laptop though I'm sure it was safe. Laptops can get man-handled going through the airport security and being thrown in the bins as they go down the conveyor belt.

I'm the Back Up Kid!

Captain Blue Hen's Mascot - Bucky Blue!

Thought I'd post the original sketch I did of Bucky Blue who is the mascot for Captain Blue Hen. Captain Blue Hen is a comic store in Newark, Delaware and I was asked a couple years ago to come up with the character as a way for the store to promote comics. Above is the actual raw sketch I did on copy paper with ball point pen. Once I scanned it in I then wanted to do the final art as vector art in case they wanted to blow up the art for something big. Bucky is a little kid (and like most of us did) is dressed up in an Adam-Westy-kind-of-costume and using homemade props as weapons. I used a clothes hanger as a grappling hook once or twice myself as I scaled the picnic table growing up.

Below are the two main sayings that they wanted to incorporate with the character for a poster and t-shirt.

And here's one of Bucky swinging by for their Christmas Card...

So for process junkies, it was a pen and ink sketch and then the rest was done in Adobe Illustrator.

LANESCAN Tri-Fold Brochure Design

Here is a tri-fold brochure I did for ARCM Corp. back in September of 2003. There was a lot of information to tell and only so much space to do it in as the client wanted the mailing card added to it as well at the bottom. I think it's one of my best design jobs and one where the art and text all worked together. It's like a puzzle most of the time trying to get the pieces to fit. Art was all done in Adobe Illustrator and then assembled and laid out in Photoshop. The art of the cars, trucks and roads were done as vector art since the client needed the art also blown up to trade show banner size as well. The backside of the brochure is a little bland since it's a mailer but I'm still happy with how it all came out. I did a bunch of stuff for the company that year before it was sold to another company who then took it over.

From The Sketchbook: Mexican Jumping Bean!

Some things defy explanation. They just pop in your head and the hand draws it.

From The Sketchbook: Crazy Banana!

Don't ask...

The DINING & ENTERTAINMENT Magazine Logo & Planning With Thumbnails

When I found the Family Values logo sketches I also found thumbnails for the other magazine I had to edit/design called Dining & Entertainment Magazine. These thumbnails I did after I had designed the final logo and then had to work up some designs for a letterhead and business card. The two sketches on the second piece of scrap paper were for interior story layouts as I wanted to get an idea of how the text, headers, pull quotes and pictures would look as a whole. Even from these simply sketches you can get a clear idea of what I was going for at the time though they would change over the years I did them.

Here is the black and white version of the logo (for letterheads) and then the color version...

I added the color bar behind it to make it pop more as we always kept the text white as it always popped more as white than as another color. The color bar color itself was changed though every month depending on what we were doing. Below is one of my favorite covers I did and it was jam-packed with a lots of interviews that I did for that month, which was great since I really got to play with the design and layout of each interview as well as the cover. I try to give my covers room to breathe as well. Some magazines jam way too much text onto them and it makes them harder to 'read' at a certain distance.

BONUS: Here's a mock up cover with the super rare logo that only last two issues before we changed it. This was the second issue I worked on and this was the last time we used this logo. It was actually the first logo that I designed though and I really liked it as it had some tooth to it and looked like a steel-cut piece of metal and it had some energy to it. I went this way as originally we were shooting for a young and hip demo but that would change. Maxim was hot at the time and a lot of publications were trying to mimic the look. I got the idea from watching old episodes of Dragnet 1967 where after the credits ran at the end of the show there was a hand that came down and pounded out the Mark VII or something in the steel with a hammer. It stuck with me and so I thought a steel look would work well. 

Looking at it again after all this time, it's hard for me to call it a failure though. While everyone in the office liked it, it became somewhat of a designer's nightmare for me as it limited me in terms of the space I had to layout a cover. I had to run the photo flush left all the time to make it work and most press release photos simply weren't shot with enough bleed and it would have been a hassle each month to have to separate the person from the background and put a new background behind them that would fit. It was easier to simply run the logo straight across the top and then have a full square below it in which to play within. As the cover above shows, even by moving the logo down a 1/3 I still had some decent ratios to play within.

Hope you found this post interesting!

FAMILY VALUES Magazine Logo - Original Concept Sketches Found!

While cleaning out the studio I found my original layout sketches for the Family Values magazine logo that I created back in 2002 when I was hired to be editor/designer. The publisher had wanted to come up with something new for a look and he wanted a new logo as well. Above are the sketches I did with a ballpoint pen on some scrap paper. I did some other designs as well (but this one struck me as working well with the area that it would have to occupy on the cover and I liked it best) and then played with this one to get it to the next level.

Here's the final logo that I did in Illustrator as I wanted it to be vector art in case they ever wanted to make it bigger for something like a banner. I used these colors for the first two issues as they complimented the photos and text but then I would change out the colors to compliment the overall color theory or even to celebrate a certain holiday or seasonal theme. It also works well as a black and white image and could be easily converted if need be. I usually always design a logo with the idea that it must work in black and white first. Scott's Rule: If it works in black and white, it will work in color.

Here's a November cover for Thanksgiving where I changed it up so you have an idea of how it looked. The month before I changed it to black and orange for Halloween and it popped really well off the cover. It was kind of cool to find those original sketches still laying around here. Usually I don't save that stuff as thumbnails are mostly for the artist as a guide, but I have been saving more of it lately as scans just so I have them.