Progression

It looks like I'm going to start some work soon that might not show up for a while but I'm excited none the less. I've been OKed to do several pieces for Cereal:Geek magazine, a publication from across the pond that's entirely about 80's animation.



I have Ally to thank for bringing the magazine to my attention, and I was very happy to run into a contributing artist and writer when I was in Baltimore earlier this year.

It was when I first saw this illustration that I knew I would love to get involved:



I had to thieve these images from personal websites, so thanks and apologies.

Try it

A while ago I talked about creating an iGoogle theme. I've had it up and running for a little while so I thought I'd let other people know how they can use it if they'd like.

First you have to have an iGoogle page, which if you have a Blogger you've already got (you just might need to set it up.) Then you you just have to go to:

http://www.google.com/ig?skin=http://www.albinoraven.com/igoogle/1.xml

That will automatically apply my theme to your iGoogle page with your settings. The screen grab is of my personal page at mid-day. The drawing and colors will change depending on the time of day, and I completed three additional drawings for morning, evening, and night which you can see if you use this theme (and sit at your computer all day.)

Real drawing

Finally, this is what I had to make the previously posted logo and poster for, though I suppose I would have needed to make them eventually for use in the comic. I had finished the drawing of Oly you see here but couldn't decide what to put in the background. Eventually I had an avalanche of "wouldn't it be cool if...?" so I've been working on the various parts of this for about a week. This started as an exercise to see if it would be possible for me to make a somewhat realistic image of a character in my style, and I ended up with a drawing that's one of my favorite things I've ever done.

Fake Ad

This is the second "layer" to my drawing, which you can see incorporates the logo from yesterday. The Spectacle, the titular superhero in my script, is the celebrity spokesperson for Hígado Pine beer. This ad is funny to me, but probably seems insane to everyone else who doesn't have this whole fantasy world and mythos knocking around in their head. I think you're supposed to establish your story and characters to some sort of fan base before you start doing fun stuff like this, but I felt like doing some fun stuff first.

Fake Beer

This is the logo for a fictitious beer brand within my comic script. The research for this was actually pretty fun because I had to figure out just what it is that makes an alcohol logo so identifiable. When you see a beer logo you know it's for beer even if you've never heard of that brand, but it's not easy to verbalize just why that is. I guess the short version of my findings is that beer logos are usually much more elaborate than what a normal logo should be, with lots of unnecessary design elements and bits of text. The Heineken logo even includes awards the brand has won. Plus there are a few general design staples that you see reused quite a bit.



I forgot that graphic design can actually be fun when you don't have someone telling you to suck all the creativity out of your work (i.e. any client ever in the history of the world who is not an artist themselves.)

This logo is part of a drawing I've done that's in three pieces...or layers...or something. This is the first piece.

Super Merchandise Fighter II

I've wanted to make a street fighter shirt for a long time but several things stood in my way. 1.) Not having a good idea and 2.) that whole legal trademark thing. This shirt definitely took the longest amount of both thinking/planning and execution time of any I've done.

Vote!

In action

I've had this for a while but just now getting around to posting it. A picture of a commissioned piece I did hanging in the living room of the commission-er.

Rocking Out

Lately I've been messing with iGoogle which is a customizable version of Google. If you have any sort of Google account like Gmail or Blogger then you have an iGoogle page, you just might not know it yet. One of the cool things about it is that you can give your page a theme, meaning you can change the colors of all the elements on the page as well as add a custom banner image. Even cooler is that the theme can change with the time of day.

When I find out I can customize something like this I tend to get a little obsessed with testing it out and making something unique. So naturally, I created a theme around Oly. For some reason Google wants you to create official themes only, meaning that all themes must be submitted for approval and then put up publicly on their site before you can use them. This as opposed to just letting you do something like throw a family picture on there for use by you on your own computer. That policy seems kinda dumb to me but there is a back-door way to get your own personal theme to work.

Ahem, digressing. Why I started this post was to show off a picture of Oly that I drew for the theme.

Buy shirts, vote for shirts, see a guy wearing one

Here are two shirts that are now for sale:





Here are two shirts you need to vote for. They are both underwater themed, I apologize. Ian will recognize where I got the idea for the Moby Dick shirt.





And here is a random person who was inspired by my artwork to make a total fool of himself as he reenacts my Zelda T-shirt. This makes me feel all warm inside.

Shoulder Angel

With Ted being a shoulder demon it only makes sense that there would be a shoulder angel. Grotesque, isn't he? Sometimes I like to throw in some elements that are a little more cartoony than others.

Young Oly

You may be able to infer from this that there are some flashbacks. I'm kind of proud of this one because typically in my work I have no reason to draw kids so I wasn't sure how this would come out, but I think she ended up pretty darn cute.

Roland

Fakeout's friend and roomate, local boxer, and owner of bar/boxing arena "The Royal Hippo."