Another Charity Christmas Card

Here's the other design I've been working on:

Everyone loves baby penguins.

Charity Christmas Card Preview

So every year I do some Christmas card designs that get printed to raise money for the Irish Hospice Foundation.  One of my most popular designs from was a fashionable Santa's Helper from a few years ago. It was reprinted, and people always wanted more than we had in stock, so this year I decided to update the design, make it look classier and more polished.

Here's a design I've been working on:

{-I went for a retraux style, since the 60's is so very now-}

I was inspired by old print ads, 50's pinups and the art style of Batman the Animated Series. I tried to keep things simple, with bold colours but no harsh black outlines.

Early Animation Test

A rough (I won't say quick because it took surprisingly long to create this sad little scribble) test of animation for our next deadline. 

I may fiddle with it some more but for now I wanted to upload it here, keep a copy safe and all that.

The sounds are stock, as we haven't got to record our live sounds yet.

Although I do like the baby talk, maybe using stock for him would be smarter than trying to get a baby to read my script?

I added colour because I'm a masochist.

Panda Sketches

They look how I feel.

Panda-ing to the Audience

More concept work for my film.

Now with Pandas!

Yes, it's the same film. Only different.

Little Alva dressed as a fairy - this was based on memories of my childhood. 

As a kid,  I would dress up in home-made costumes and imagine I was off in some magical world. 

And yes, by 'as a kid' I mean 'two months ago'.

Commissions: Mini Characters

Recently I've been in a sort of an art-slump - it's not that I have nothing I want to draw, rather too much! I don't know what to do first: there's so many ideas bouncing around my head,  bashing into eachother, it makes it difficult to concentrate for extended periods...

These mini characters were done as special freebies - a different person chose each one- to kick-start my commissions. They helped to give me some focus:

The characters come from a variety of places, from left to right:
- Freddy of Nightmare on Elm Street fame
- The eponymous hero of Disney's Pinocchio
- Madoka from Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica
- Mr. Teatime from the Discworld novel, Hogfather (not the mini-series, where his glass eye is black).
- Riella, an original character created by a friend of mine, Leah Reddington.
- Ahiru (Duck) from Princess Tutu
- Finnbarge the talking boat, from a film by another friend of mine, Joe Loftus.
   Watch it here: To The Edge With Finnbarge


- A few of the characters' series were unfamiliar to me before this, and I had never drawn most of the ones I was familiar with, so it was a very interesting exercise!