Blue Moon Blog

I’m having a blast with this fairy tale comic book story, collaborating with my old pal, gadfly, raconteur, man-about-town and writer, Professor Len Strazewski. Here’s a preview panel in rough layout form, from a story that is one of many in a Fairy Tale Anthology book. More details as I’m able to share.

In this case so far, I’ve been working all digital, drawing right on my Cintiq screen, then doing the final lettering right away in Adobe Illustrator. I probably won’t ink digitally, but will more likely instead blow up pages, printing the roughs/pencils in blue and inking traditionally with a brush. Then it’ll be back to the computer for coloring.

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Around this time last year, I was asked to design a cartoon beaver character mascot for a sign company. I don’t think the company ever got off the ground, but I was indeed paid for my work, and can share some preparatory sketches and the final Beaver art. The web designer and I had many potential names for him, but I don’t think we settled on one.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, sometimes with initial designs, concepts and layouts, I like to stay loose and just doodle, sometimes outside on the deck, sometimes while watching TV with a sketch board or book on my lap. That way I don’t worry too much about drawing the perfect character or illustration right off and stiffen up.

And once that part of the process is finished, I’ll whittle away what I don’t like, and try and coalesce and tighten to a few options for clients from which to choose:

In this case, we’d started with the idea of the beaver holding a sign or incorporating him into the logo. And just for grins, I threw in a fourth option that I liked stylistically, but figured the client wouldn’t go for.
Turns out I was wrong, and the extra beaver was the one chosen!

Then I inked up the selected beaver with my trusty brush and my wife and I colored up the final illustration at the top of this post.

And if it ever turns out he makes his official appearance, I’ll provide a link, etc.

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