I’m sort of taking this week off from the “Sketch o’the Week” after spending quite a bit more time than usual on that series of ink wash sketches over the last two plus months. This week’s sketch is actually the rough sketch for a small project. It’s a trading card that is part of a series being used in an ad campaign for a company. Once the campaign is launched I’ll post the finished art here, and tell you about the project and the rarefied company I am keeping in doing one of these cards… some of the artists they have doing art for this series are legends.

I’ve been advertising on and off in Serbin Communication’s Directory of Illustration for about 15 years now, and while the results aren’t exactly staggering I usually get enough new jobs from my ad to pay for it. The real value of it comes from not picking up new jobs per se but new clients from whom I get ongoing work. I still believe the best way to market yourself as a freelancer is a combination of an internet presence, direct mailing and ads like this that get distributed to tens of thousands of buyers of illustration.

The toughest part for me is always putting the page together and finding work that shows a range of subject matter and techniques. This one runs the gamut from my line and color style (Brett Farve illo originally for the Minneapolis Star Tribune) to my new colored line style (guys fighting and guy eating hot wings for breakfast, both for Penthouse) my digital painting style (the Gates vs. Crowley/ Obama referee image done for MAD), a straight up cartoon (Piranha done for the Minnesota Twins) and just for fun I tossed in several of my LOST ink-wash caricatures… I admit did a little digital touching up on some of them as the scans were a bit washed out and some of the detail was being lost (pun intended).

We’ll see how effective the ad is this year.

I received this link courtousey of fellow caricature illustrator Patrick LaMontagne‘s blog. The funniest thing about this video, which depicts “real world” equivalents to some all too typical examples of client/creative freelancer interactions, is that it’s basically spot on with some of the things clients occasionally try to pull.

Fortunately for me I have a lot of terrific clients that treat me as professionally as I treat them. I’d be lying, however, if I said some of the things in this video do not remind me of a few past clients.

Here’s another of those oddball advertising jobs that come along, you do them and get paid for them, but they never get produced or used in the way intended.

This project was done a few years ago for an ad agency. They wanted a “superhero” team designed in a style somewhat reminiscent of the Bruce Timm animated look for some ad campaign pitch to Canon, the photocopy/consumer electronics company. I got the job via referral from a fellow illustrator.

I needed to design 5 heroes, two of which were a hero/sidekick combo. I honestly don’t remember the exact details but the leader of the group was “Golden Eagle” and I think he was supposed to represent some new kind of technology or feature set being introduced. The others were “Canon Man”, “Digital Diva” and “Captain Connectivity (and sidekick)”. I did a few simple roughs with some goofy ideas noted:

Uhhh… legs too short on this one…

They approved “Canon Man” and “Captain Connectivity” right away, but we needed to work on the other two. Apparently someone in the office had a problem with a “double D” plastered across the large breasts of the lady superhero… who knew?? Also, and more bizarrely, they wanted me to give “Golden Eagle” the actual HEAD of an eagle. The client is always right!…

Funny, they decided the eagle’s head was too weird (REALLY?!?). Also even one “D” was too much on Digital Diva’s chest:

Those got the nod, and I did the whole group in a pose together in color for the “pitch”:

Click for a closer look…

I assume since I never heard from the client again after getting my paycheck for this coneptual work that the idea was not accepted and the ad campaign not developed. This could have been one of several different ideas that get pitched to the ad client, you know, like Darren Stevens used to have to do on Bewitched all the time with Larry Tate rolling his eyes in the background… I think I may have just dated myself.

Anyway it was fun while it lasted. You have to love getting paid to draw goofy superheroes.

Still unbelievably swamped with work and deadlines…. I’ve got several jobs “in the can” as they say (meaning done) and several more with deadlines either creeping up, looming or trying to kick my ass right now. I just finished this one the other day for the workplace poster company and can share it right away as the client doesn’t mind me doing so:

Click for a closer look…

It may look like I cheated and used a photo background, but I actually cheated and used the fully painted background I did for a piece I did for MAD a few years ago called “Rejected Characters from Pixar’s CARS“. I really dislike the use of photo images within a cartoon illustration like this… it creates a disjointed and disconnected feel. Even more painterly stuff looks a little out of place when there are no lines to bind it in. In this case though it isn’t working too badly and the subdued color and minimal contrast in values reads as “atmospheric perspective”… I hope. I painted the rest in about 3 hours to make the deadline.

Monday I will be able to post the illustration I did for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, as it will be in the paper on Sunday as the cover of a special pull out section on the baseball opener. The other jobs I’ve been sweating will have to wait for varying lengths of time before I can post them.

Back to the drawin’ board!

The latest issue of MAD (and presumably several DC comic books this month as well) has a special advertising insert similar to the one done several months ago for Ball Park Franks. The concept is the same… kind of a mini MAD with “articles” pertaining to the ad subject. Unlike the Ball Park ad, this one does not advertise a product as much as a group of people… NYC sketch comedy troupe “The Whitest Kids U’ Know“.

The “WKUK” had a sketch comedy television show on the FUSE Network in 2007, and has moved to the Independent Film Channel for season two. IFC is uncensored so, unlike on FUSE, their sketches air intact and unedited. Their material can be very adult and racy, so no doubt they and their fans are glad of the change.

The ads are an interesting study in the differences between comic art and live action television. Our assignments were to illustrate one of the WKUK’s most popular skits. That involved the editors working out a scaled down script, and we illustrators drawing it out in MAD form. What I found most interesting was how the comedy of a live skit could be transfered to the comic page, and what needed to be considered to make it work best.

Here is a YouTube clip of the skit I illustrated, called “Sexy Fawn”. It’s the FUSE version, so the language has been bleeped out, but I don’t know what they bother since they leave in the first sound of each word and it’s totally obvious what they are saying. Warning- the skit is more than a little racy and inappropriate for under 18 or those with a low tolerance for blue humor.

Now here are some panels from my MAD version-

The MAD version was ‘cleaned up’ considerably, replacing words like “sex” with “mate” and of course eliminating the profanity. There was no getting around the concept, though. The ridiculous “deer” outfit, complete with slutty clear pumps, is the funniest thing about this sketch, so I really made sure it was clearly a bad deer suit. I also tried to capture the odd movements the “deer” was making.

All in all a very different project with some unique challenges.