Creative Freelancer Conference starts today

Sorry for the lag in posts lately. Last week I was on vacation with my family, and this week I’m in Chicago for a client meeting followed by the first annual Creative Freelancer Conference. The conference starts this afternoon, and I’m very excited about it. I’m looking forward to meeting lots of other creatives, doing a little networking, and soaking up tons of great info and advice on how to take my freelance business to the next level.

For those of you who can’t attend the conference, I’m told that at least some of the speakers’ presentations will eventually be for sale as MP3 downloads. If that’s indeed the case, as soon as I find out I’ll post a link to the content here on my blog.

Evolution Of A Racing Game

Yet another project I can finally go public with. Earlier this summer I was hired by BI: The Business Improvement Company to help develop an online racing game with an Olympics theme. The concept went through several stages. Here’s a brief rundown of how we developed the look of the game:

First I wanted to nail down the “look” of the characters. I wanted to give the client a couple of options so I sketched up a few characters in different styles. The crouched runner is meant to represent a more conservative style, and the two running characters were meant to show more cartoonish extremes.

Due to a misunderstanding on my part, I thought the client liked the more cartoonish styles. So I developed six goofy runners with a variety of body shapes.

Once I realized my mistake, I worked up another version with characters that were less extreme. I included a running sketch to show how the characters would look once they took off. The characters would be animated in Flash, so to keep things simple for animation each run cycle would be viewed straight-on from the side instead of from an angle.

I also made sure there was a clear range of ethnicities in the runners.The client liked it but decided there should be an equal mix of men and women. For budgetary reasons we also cut the number of runners from six down to five.

Here’s the final concept sketch, with women runners and color added. It was lots of fun to draw!

I also animated much of the game. Hopefully I can post the animation at a future date.

Plastic Tree Concepts

As I mentioned a couple of posts back, one of my clients specializes in themed birthday cakes. They decided they’d like to manufacture little plastic trees to use on some of the cakes, and asked me to draw one up. Here’s the concept sketches and final turnarounds I submitted.

The tree could only be so tall and so wide. The grey boxes in the first image represent those dimensions that the tree had to stay within.

Some Character Design Sketches

Here’s another project I can finally let out of the bag. A large regional company is in the process of rebranding itself and expanding its market base. I was hired by an ad agency to help develop an updated version of this company’s current mascot. After a couple of rounds of sketches the company decided to go in another direction with the project, so this is as far as my involvement went.

The agency has given me permission to post some of the development sketches under the condition that I don’t reveal the name of the company. As part of the deal, I’ve been asked to change the colors of the character’s clothes (he was wearing the colors of the company’s logo) and also erase the logo from an article of his clothing. So, here are some of the modified concept sketches.

Toy Concepts For Disney’s “Camp Rock”

It’s been a while since I posted any actual artwork on this blog. I’ve been cranking out artwork like crazy all spring and summer, but because of NDA’s and other client arrangements I haven’t been able to show much of the work publicly…yet. Here’s one project that I can finally let out of the box.

One of my clients is a local company that produces themed birthday cakes for licensed properties. Each cake includes a toy as part of the decoration, and I sometimes get the privilege of working up concept sketches for the toys.

Disney’s megahits High School Musical 1 & 2 were recently followed up by a new TV movie, Camp Rock. My client was hired by Disney to develop a Camp Rock-themed cake. The target audience for Camp Rock was a little older than for most cake toys, targeting teens and preteens instead of kids. Ultimately the Camp Rock cake concept never made it into stores, but the client has given me permission to post some of my work. Here’s a few of the concepts I helped develop:

How To Retain Good Freelance Talent

If you are an art director or art buyer who hires freelancers, there’s a short article you should read from HOW Magazine:

How To Retain Good Freelance Talent

The article lists five things every freelancer wishes they could tell their clients. I found the article through HOW’s free e-newsletter, which is a great resource for creatives of all shapes and sizes. You can sign up on their home page.

For a longer list, check out one of my past posts: Being A Dream Client

You Write The Caption

On Saturday a local comic book shop was promoting an event and hired actors to walk around dressed as super heroes. It was as close as I could come to attending Comic-Con this year.

During a break my friend Mike snapped this photo in the parking lot:

Here’s your assignment: Write a funny caption and post it in the “Comments” section (please be clean and tasteful). Unfortunately I don’t have a cool prize to offer, this is just for fun.

“The Artist Within” Gives You The Ultimate Studio Tour

On Saturday I was in a comic book shop and came across a real treasure of a book,The Artist Within: Portraits of Cartoonists, Comic Book Artists, Animators, and Others by Greg Preston (Amazon.com link). This hefty picture book features full-page photographs of over 100 prominent cartoonists at home in their studios. The long list of legends featured includes Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Alex Ross, Chuck Jones, Peter de Seve, Mike Mignola, Bruce Timm….and that’s just a small sampling. You name a famous cartoonist or comic book artist that is still living (or a few that aren’t), and chances are he or she is in this book.

The format is very simple. The left page of each spread contains the artist’s name, one small sample of his work, and a paragraph summarizing his accomplishments as an artist. The opposite page is one large, elegant black-and-white photo of the artist posing in his studio. If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite artist’s studio looks like, this is your chance to see where all the magic happens.

Many of the artists have allowed the photographer to shoot their studio “as is” with messy desks and cluttered shelves. While a few of the photos look very pristine and artificially posed, most do not. That’s refreshing, because it makes the studios of brilliant masters feel like places in the real world and makes these artistic giants feel more down to earth and accessible. Also, I can point to almost any page in this book and say to my lovely wife, “See? I’m not the only artist with a messy studio.”

Thumbing through the book I noticed that many of the artists have their studios crammed with books. More than a few have giant wall-size bookcases behind their drawing boards with books sometimes spilling out into piles on the floor. Since most of the artists are at least a decade or more older than me and built their careers in the pre-internet era, perhaps many of the books are filled with reference images (for you college kids, that’s how artists did research for an assignment before Google Image Search). No doubt many of the books contain inspiring artwork from other artists. As a hoarder of books myself, I can appreciate the value of a good book to help nurture my artistic brain.

It’s also fun to notice some of the unusual objects that may cross an artist’s desk. In various photos I’ve spotted a baseball, a hand-drill, a plastic skull, a handgun, a juke box, a stuffed poodle, and an Oscar (on Chuck Jones’ top shelf). And of course, there was no shortage of toys lining the studio shelves.

Some of the studios are large and open, others are small and humble, almost cramped. But each photo gives insights into the working habits of a great artist at the top of his/her field.

My wife and I are contemplating either moving in a year or two or adding on to our current house. This books gives me some great ideas to consider as I plan my next studio. I don’t claim to be anywhere near the level of the great artists featured in The Artist Within (Amazon.com link), but if anyone is interested here’s an old post that shows you what my current studio looks like.