For a one-armed artist I am staying pretty busy. Here’s what I’ve got going right now on the drawing board:

NCS Reuben T-shirt Illustration- Wrapping this up over the weekend. I will share it once I get the okay from NCS president Jeff Keane.

Cover art for Stay Tooned #4- I was honored to be asked to do the cover for John Read‘s terrific magazine. That I will finish next week.

MAD job- Two pager that got bumped from issue 500 and will now be in #501, so a ton of time before that is due.

Workplace poster- My usual monthly assignment from The Marlin Company. Incidentally they are preparing to sell individual copies of these posters as stock allows on their website, so when I get more info on that I’ll let people know if they are interested.

“Super Capers” DVD comic- Not much to this as all I did was crop and size the panels of the comic into a DVD video frame format. It will be included on the DVD release of the movie as a video comic.

Not much I can share at this time, but here are cropped sneak peaks from two recent jobs where I used the colored line technique I’ve been experimenting with. I will be able to show the full jobs plus sketches, etc. sometime later this month:

After finally putting to bed several ongoing projects last week and this weekend, the only thing currently on the board is a pretty big MAD job, which is more than enough for the next two weeks.

Just for something to look at, here is my latest “workplace poster” job- pencils, inks and final color:

Click for a closer look…

In the initial pencils there was a lot going on. The client wanted four servers in tuxedos, race/gender specific serving Thanksgiving dinner to a family of turkey farmers. The catch is, of course, they are serving anything but turkey. I needed to show it was: A.) Thanksgiving. B.) A family of turkey farmers (race neutral) happy with their dinner. C.) something obviously NOT turkey they were getting served.

My solutions were to add a cornucopia with a “Happy Thanksgiving” message in it (I briefly thought of a wall calendar with the date circled and marked, but thought that too convoluted), a picture window showing a barn with a “Turkey Farm” sign on it and some gag turkeys looking in and a platter of seafood being presented to a happy family.

Click for a closer look…

The client decided four servers was too many, so I eliminated two and changed their positions to balance the scene. They also wanted more cartoonish, exaggerated faces of glee and anticipation, hence the wide, googly eyes on the family.

Click for a closer look…

The final colored piece. They like the bright, colorful look. These posters are 17″ x 17″, so they really stand out on the walls in a busy workplace environment.

Hoo Hah! A few projects ongoing right now and sadly not much I can share yet. Here are two pieces I did a few months ago that is part of the “Super Capers” movie project I have been working on for some time now. They don’t give anything away as far as the movie goes, so I think it’s okay at this point to share them here.

Sometimes jobs evolve as they progress along, and this particular job has definitely done that. The movie is a superhero spoof/comedy and my part of the production was to be three different jobs… “turnaround” illustrations of the 14 main characters to be used for maquettes and possible toy designs, static caricature gag illustrations of the cast for the opening credits that would be incorporated into an animated comic book sequence with the credits, and finally a semi-animated comic book sequence of a flashback scene in the movie itself. Lots of work. Along the way things changed and additional work was added.

The opening credits work is “in the can” as they say in the business (over 30 illustrations for that alone), and we are getting serious about the flashback scene this week. The “turnarounds” are partly done but on hold until the actual film work is finished. In the meantime back during filming the director called me and asked me to do two very quick illustrations for the film to be used as props during a scene. The scene itself is of the main villain in his lair, and he wanted some funny, tongue-in-cheek illustrations of the actor as a rich adventurer doing some daring things. He was going to have them printed about 40 inches tall and framed so he wanted them to look like formal oil paintings, as might hang in an egotistical CEO’s office.

The actor’s name is Michael Rooker, and he’s one of those actors who’s been in a lot of films and you might recognize right away but not necessarily remember his name. He was most recently in “Jumper” and might be most recognized for his role in “The Replacement Killers” or ” Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”. Anyway, here’s what I came up with, cranked out in about 2 days:

Click image for a closer look…

Click image for a closer look…

I did the safari hunter one first, and took too much time so I didn’t get to fully paint the “Mission Impossible 2″ mountain climber one as completely as I’d have liked to. I am also not much of a real digital painter… being much more comfortable with a line and color style than full digital painting. Still, it’s fun to break out of the box and try something different sometimes.

I have no idea how much or little these paintings will be seen in the film, but they were well received by the director and apparently Micheal liked them as well. It also look like they want me to do a full comic book as part of the film’s promotional marketing, which would be a a lot of work but also a lot of fun. That is not yet decided on, however.

I’ll share more stuff about “Super Capers” as I am permitted to. In the meantime here is the IMDB page for the film as well as the official website.

Other stuff on the board right now:

• Website gaming graphics- Most of the trial and error work is over and we are almost ready to do the final artwork for this. I will be illustrating the game environment, 16 avatar characters and the gameplay graphics. I will let everyone know when it’s on-line
• Workplace poster illustration- Should have this done by the end of the week.

Actually kind of quiet right now all things considered. It’s just that the few jobs I have going are time consuming, long term monsters.

Here’s another of those posts detailing what I’ve currently got on my board. Frequent readers may notice I don’t do these very often anymore. I don’t like posting about jobs I’m doing because in 99% of the cases I can’t show you any of the art because it’s bad form to share it before it’s seen publication. However, this is a blog about freelance illustration, and it provides some insight into the life of a freelancer to see what kind of workload and types of projects are being taken on. So, here we go:

MAD Parody- Five pager of a TV show that has been needing the MAD treatment for a while now. A fun one. Three of the last four jobs have been TV parodies… that’s unusual these days. Reasonable deadline as well.

“Super Capers” Movie Job- Really getting going on this job now that they have the necessary elements I needed to do the work. The scope includes illustrations for animations in the title sequence, three animated scenes int he film and designing “turnarounds” for character maquettes and a possible toy line. There is talk of me doing the movie poster as well. Due in April.

Resin Pen designs- In final art for a set of sports related humorous resin writing pens like the Sherlock Holmes prototype. Due ASAP.

Workplace Poster- Just inking and coloring that cowboy illustration I posted as the “Sketch O’the Week” this week. Due Monday.

Star Tribune Job- This one is a new client. The Minneapolis Star Tribune is a major newspaper here in Minnesota. I’ve often thought of sending them some work as I sometimes see caricature illustrations being used in the paper, and not by local illustrators. They beat me to it and called me, refered by the Minnesota Twins baseball team whom I have done a bit of work for. This is, coincidentally, for a baseball preview section. I haven’t done much newspaper work so this will be a new experience. Due next week.

Scholastic Cover Job- Another political cover (gotta love those election years) for one of the Scholastic publications. Caricatures of McCain, Hilary and Obama. Due early April.

Retail Novelty Product Job- This one is a tight-lipped project involving a novelty item of a political nature. My art will be used on the product itself, packaging and possibly advertising.

Book Illustration- This is a “maybe” job right now but looks promising. Longer range deadline (thank goodness).

As always, will share the art as it is appropriate to do so.

I know I say this every time, but I don’t ever remember having this much stuff to do at once. With the economy in the toilet it’s impossible to turn down work, so I just need to buckle up and hit the gas. I’m sorry to say that the caricature tutorials may be on hold until the first week of April.

The above is a very quick gag cartoon I did for a travel agent website that is now up and running. I was supposed to do regular cartoons as updates but I don’t know if that is going to happen. I’m just throwing it up here for the sake of having some art in this post, since as always I can’t share my latest jobs until they see publication.

I’m going out of town to St. Louis and the National Caricaturist Network Mini-Con on Sunday, so last week and this week have been/are crazy with my trying to get all my jobs out the door before I take off… I’d hate to have to spend time in the hotel room finishing a job but it looks increasingly like I may have to do that on Sunday night and Monday morning. Blecch.

Last week I finished or worked on:

• MAD TV Parody- Just finished the pencil rough stage, and have to do final pencils, inks and color before Sunday morning. Sleep will be a luxury this week.
• Movie Project- I finished two “set” paintings for the movie project I am working on. This movie job is very unique for me… I’ve never done work for a movie before but you’d be surprised how much art is involved in a movie production. The digital paintings I did are not part of the original scope of the work, but they needed two humorous images that look like oil paintings they planned on printing up at a huge size, framing and placing in the office of the main villain as part of that set. I am not sure how prominently they will appear in the film, but they were fun to do, even though I only got two days to do them in. I can’t show them to you yet, but the name of the movie is “Super Capers” and it’s up on IMDB with my name listed as “Illustrator” so I guess there’s no need to keep that part a secret. The main work I am doing has to do with the opening title sequence and some partially animated scenes in the film… I’ll be doing that in March.
• Retail Project- A political based retail project involving the major players from each party for some merchandise. Caricature illustrators have to love major election years… I’ve done three magazine cover jobs since the summer thanks to the elections, and they are still almost 9 months away!
• Workplace Poster- Finished up another of those regular poster projects.

When I did the workplace poster job early last week I took some extra time and saved a few steps along the way so I could do an abbreviated step by step of the process on the blog. I’ll post that tomorrow, starting with the initial art direction through the roughs, pencils, inks and color to final art. Check back tomorrow for the fun stuff.

It never fails… whenever I am about to try and take a little time off the phone starts ringing. I always feel guilty when I start complaining about having a lot of work… I am very lucky to stay busy. Still it would be nice to go on vacation without either having to pull some all nighters to get jobs done or having to bring something along to finish up when on the trip.

Here’s the final for that workplace poster I showed the sketch of the other day:

Click for a closer look…

… I just got a rush job for an L.A. based magazine for a story on the entertainment industry, which I will have to bring with me to do the value work on. It’s just black and white, so it won’t mean days of work… just a few hours to punch up the inks with some grayscale tones. I ALMOST used it as an excuse to get the new Cintiq 12x, but instead I’ll just use the old Wacom Intuos and save the thousand bucks. That will buy me a lot of Mai Tais next week!

When I get back I have a few other jobs I’ll have to jump right into. That’s just the way I like it, though! Likely a new MAD job, as well as the finals on that west coast ad job and the start of my movie project.

I’m a little busy right now trying to wrap up a few things by year’s end, and I guess there is some kind of holiday going on tomorrow? I’ll have to check my calendar… in the meantime here is a rough image of a job that fell through last week. I mentioned it in a previous “On the Drawing Board” post. It was going to be a movie poster for a film that will be in the Sundance Film Festival next month. It’s a documentary following two researchers abroad on their quest. I’ve blocked out the title just in case it was supposed to be top secret…

I ordinarily never do anything “on spec” (meaning for free in order to secure the job and MAYBE get paid), but in this case I spent a small amount of time cobbling together this rough layout for the client to use to try and sell the concept to the rest of the producers. As it happens the concept got rejected because they felt it would have been too humorous. Actually the original concept would have been far more humorous, with a high energy action caricature of the two main guys and lots of surrounding caricatures of some of the colorful people they meet on their travels. This rather boring design was an attempt to salvage the idea a little, but all the reasons one would want to use humorous artwork in the first place had basically been removed, so it was doomed to failure. Too bad because this was going to be a full blown one sheet movie poster that was 40 inches tall. That would have been fun to see.

I have another movie project in the works that involves art for the actual film and credits, which is a definite “go” (more or less) so that will be interesting, fun and a ton of work in the first quarter of 2008.

Yikes. Things have gotten a little crazy this month. All these jobs are due at some point before the end of the year:

MAD- after some delay I’m finally working on the afore mentioned TV show parody… one I’ve been hoping to get. I wish I could share the name of the show, but that would be super irresponsible of me. I guess I’ll have to exercise an almost heroic level of self control and not fly off the handle and spill the beans. However if any of you were mind readers, you’d really go nuclear over this one!

Workplace Poster- Another one of these fun jobs. This image involves a company “exercise day” at the track. Lots of potential with that subject.

Scholastic Magazine Cover- They must have liked the last one… another political elephant/donkey illustration.

National Cartoonist Society Rueben Art- My annual illustration of the guest speakers at the location of the next Reubens. This year’s will be in New Orleans!

Movie Poster- this one is exciting… a full blown movie poster for a film that will be in the next Sundance Film Festival. I don’t think I should name the film yet.

Car Ad Art- Waiting on feedback on this ad job for a car storage company.

Misc.- Turnarounds for a digital animation class, personal caricature painting, designs for some 3-D resin merchandise and another Sherlock Holmes image.

Whew. I think there’s a holiday in there somewhere… It’s always better to be busy, though. No complaints.

As always, once these jobs see print I’ll share them with you.