“3-2-1 Penguins” Character Designs

This past Saturday morning NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! which I had the pleasure of working on. There were only two characters who needed to be designed, Admiral Sowmaster and his assistant, Cash. Both were to be pig-like aliens.

Here’s an early rough concept. The Admiral is on the left.

After turning in the first [...]

Memory Sketch Video by Stephen Silver

Last year I took a character design class online from Stephen Silver at Schoolism.com. One of the lessons dealt with memory sketching, which I’ve written about here.

Here’s a video of Stephen Silver doing a memory sketch and discussing it as he draws. Fun stuff. If you have an interest in character design I’d highly recommend [...]

Mascot Contest!

As a character designer I’m fascinated with product mascots. A good mascot, when combined with a strong ad campaign, can be an enormous benefit when promoting a product or service. My favorite freelance projects are when clients hire me to design a mascot or character, either for advertising or animation.
To help illustrate the power [...]

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs (part 2)

Continuing yesterday’s post…I also designed a future version of Zidgel, the ship’s captain. He’s big on vanity and low on brains. As an old man, er…penguin, at first he appears to have retained his youth and vigor. Then, through a series of gags we find that he is actually wearing a truss, false teeth, and [...]

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs (part 1)

On Saturday NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! for which I did some character designs. The plot centered around a malfunctioning time machine that sends the penguins’ space ship into the future where they meet their future selves. (The lesson for kids was about respecting the advice of our elders.)
The original penguins were [...]

The Value Of A Mascot

As a freelance illustrator I work on a variety of projects, but my specialty is character design. I periodically get calls from ad agencies and design firms wishing to hire me to design a mascot. In recent months I’ve designed characters for Kikkoman soy sauce and SunCor (a large gas station chain).
Having a character or [...]

Review: Stephen Silver’s “Life”

Yesterday I received my copy of Stephen Silver’s latest art book, Life.
For those who don’t know, Silver is an amazing animation character designer whose credits include Disney’s Kim Possible and Nickelodeon’s Danny Phantom. He’s a versatile artist and I find his work very inspiring. Silver also teaches an online Character Design course through Schoolism.com. I [...]

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs

On Saturday NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! which I did some character design work for. This was a funny episode (directed by Tom Bancroft) with a lesson about the importance of inner beauty and character as opposed to vanity.

One of the characters I was asked to design was a cheezy George Hamilton-type alien [...]

Kikkoman Character Design

Recently I was hired by the good folks at Ketchum Communications to create a character for Kikkoman soy sauce. They were printing a brochure and wanted to include a fun cartoon mascot. They asked me to take a bottle of Kikkoman and add a face, an apron, and a chef’s hat.

It was the standard “take [...]

My Schoolism.com Character Design Assignments

A few months ago I took a character design class online through Schoolism.com. The instructor was Stephen Silver, one of the top character designers working in animation today. Stephen’s video lectures were very inspirational and full of meaty content. I probably learned more from Stephen than I did from some of my professors when I [...]