Lately....

After a short trip to Budapest. Here's what I've been up too:

3 Green Bars series 4 trailer:

I create a series called 3 Green Bars which looks at different fighting game communities around the world. Here's the trailer for this season.

My wife thinks "Just 99 more of these and I can start my new life" is funnier.

I actually love Disney franchises, they just have so many so I thought I'd poke a little fun

Between editing, parenting, teaching, drawing there's been a lot going on at the moment. I'll post some more updates next week.

Book Week: International School Hamburg

This week I had a blast running illustration workshops for the International School Hamburg as part of their book week. 

Kids from grade 3 to grade 7 took part in a total of 12 sessions of 3 days! (over 200 kids!)

All the kids and I had a blast. A huge thanks to all the teachers and people who made it all possible. And of course a big shout out to all the kids who created some fantastic characters!

Here are some photos taken by the Junior School principal Suzan Weisolf, more photos coming soon.

Having a chat about illustration

After a few years of teaching you learn to draw upside down ;)

The kids all pitch in their ideas.

The character the kids came up with is complete! BEAUTIFUL!

We all draw together step by step

Checking out everyone's designs as we go

Doing some dental work.

Working on some angry eyes.

Putting pictures to prose part 1

The job I'm currently working on is a childrens book written by esteemed Irish author Terry McDonagh. It's a beautiful coming of age story set in Hamburg called: Michel the Merman. It explores some really interesting themes and doesn't patronize it's audience.

A month we had our first meeting, I read the book and did some mock up concepts.

Making a Merman

Michel starts off as an 8 year old boy, transforms to fish-boy and over the span of the book grows into a young Merman:

Here's the current version of Michel we are going with:

As you can see he's not your typical Merman. The book is a real epic! It has Michel finding joy and harmony in new underwater home while coming to terms with his new fishier self. I thought it would interesting to have him look more "fishy" than the classic one half man, one half fish look.

His design had to carry over from how he looked when he was human:

So he shares Mike's smile dimples nose eyes and face shape.

Took quite a few designs to finalise Mike's look. Here are a couple of the drafts:

I knew I was on the right track once I drew one of the key scenes from the book:

I won't spoil the story for you but the contrast of Michel's fish appearance really shows you that he has no choice but to leave his life on land behind him.

Michel is so much fun to draw, as are all of the characters Terry has lovingly crafted into the book. You can check out Terry's work on his website:

http://www.terry-mcdonagh.com/

More updates coming soon :)

Let's make Crappers Classy

Let's face it. Art in toilets isn't the best, sometimes the poetry is good but basically it's a pretty crappy place to crap (pun intended) 

After having the unprofessional urge to graffiti after seeing Europe's amazing graffscapes. I decided to put the urge to good use in a little project I like to call:

"Make Crappers Classy"

I will draw a work of art on your toilet doors of your club or restaurant and in return.... Barter.

A meal for me and family, small bar tab, materials, Nothing major.

Just contact me HERE if you manage or own a restaurant, bar or any place with loos in Hamburg and I will come and create something for you.

If you are an artist into this idea, go for it! Send me a link to your results and I'll post them online. No rules let's just make Crappers Classy!

Here's the first series:

Jim Burritos Mexican Restaurant Shulterblatt 12, 20357 Hamburg

Inside door of the Men's Room

Outside door of Men's room, people had trouble telling the Men's and Woman's toilets apart. Probelm Solved!

Woman's room inside

Woman's Room Outside

Kids CAT logo Design

Not that often is logo design this much fun. I designed a few logos back when I was Creative Consultant/Graphic Design when I worked for the Ad Agency LAB Ltd. 

This Logo is for a research project being conducted to assess the Quality of Life for kids with chronic illnesses. There is a program they use called Kids CAT, which is an computer questionnaire for kids. It was just finished a couple of weeks ago.

The first sketches looked like this.

Then the render:

The Eyes represent graphs  on a screen and the mouth a keyboard and the cat looking at the mouse.

Needed a bit of softening up so I ended with this, the final client approved image:

The eyes are now pie graphs and it is inspired by the classic imac design. A lot softer and the client was very happy with it. The colours could also changed out, mmmmm different flavours.

They were also going to have me update the actual questionnaire, This was the quick animation sample I created: