I’ve posted before about the Minnesota Historical Sites project I have been working on the last couple months. Recently they took the artwork I did and animated it into a short TV spot that is running throughout the summer on the local NBC affiliate. Check it out here.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid73758764001?bctid=89828143001

I was going through some work folders on my computer and stumbled upon this promo sheet for a character design I did for a possible project.

I did them to show the client I could nail the look of the character they were hoping to use as their corporate mascot. I believe the Esurance girl had really taken off at the time and this would have probably been a duplicator of her.

I remember the project came from an online job posting site. I don’t frequent those sites much anymore but I do have project alerts emailed to me that fit the categories I work in. I occasionally take a look at those if work is slow and see if anything sticks out that seems professional. That is usually rare. Mostly the projects are either not worth doing or the budgets are ridiculously low. A lot of times it’s someone who wants you to draw their new tattoo or someone who’s written a kid’s book for the first time. They don’t have money but would be willing to split the profits. Cause every book make it’s money back right?

So for the most part I avoid those places. There are clearly better routes to finding new work. But every now and then I read one that seems like they could be legit, like this one. I took 20 minutes of my day and did up some pencil designs and sent them in. They liked them and asked for an estimate and low and behold it was too much for what they were looking to spend. Not a shocker, but not real loss either. The pencils were done while sketching in the sketch book which is something I do a lot anyway. I guess the moral of this story is to be skeptical. Don’t invest more time than you can afford to on projects. You probably are not going to find a ten thousand dollar job amongst the tattoos and wannabe Twilight knockoffs but sometimes it never hurt to check.

Brent

Over the last couple months I have been working on a rather large ad campaign for the Minnesota Historical Society. This summer the MNHS plans on promoting it’s twenty five plus sites all over the state. They will be using the artwork I contributed to the campaign on signage all over the place. Billboards, bus ads, websites, posters, etc. It’s been a rather large undertaking but also very rewarding.

The look and feel we decided to go with on the project is very inspired by the WPA poster movement during Roosevelt’s new deal administration. Between the mid 1930’s to the early 1940’s thousands of posters encouraging the country to do anything from buy a war bond, to visiting a public park. With these tough economic times the Historical Society is encouraging Minnesotans to stay home and vacation in state.

So be on the look out for this poster and many of it’s historical site icons. They will popping up all over the place this summer.

As a bonus here’s the first sketch e did on the project.

Brent

A while back I worked on a project for the University of Nebraska about an ocean virus called EhV. It was a ten page comic that would be followed by an essay about the virus.

The plan is to develop a series of short comic stories and essays to develop a hardcover book for retail and libraries. The University’s marketing strategy was to develop the comic stories to make them into a motion comic application for IPhones.

The motion comic idea was ditched due to money constraints but the comics were released last week as a web application for your Iphone and can be downloaded here.

Overall these experience of making a motion comic was fun, but very challenging. Every panel was developed in two to four separate layers depending on the background. I think some spots become a little stiff due to my inexperience working in this way. I’d love to see it work as a motion comic and we might get that chance down the road. Also it was fun working with my friend Martin Powell again, whom I used to work on a very short lived web comic called The Phantom Shadow that I would love to do again someday.

Brent

If you live in the Minneapolis area be sure to go out and pick up a copy of this week’s Vita.MN Magazine. I was lucky enough to do the cover for the annual winter guide issue. This makes it two years straight of doing the cover for this issue. I love working on Vita.MN. They are a great local magazine. Below is a step by step process from concept to creation of the recent cover.

1. This cover kind of had a quick turn around do to a holiday vacation on my part. I was told that the main focus of the article was going to be about extreme ice climbing. We wanted to use a crazy Spider-Man like angle on the main character. I did these two thumbnails and it was pretty obvious the one on the right seemed to work great for the text and logo on the cover so we ran with it.

2. After getting some great reference from my art director Leslie on ice climbers I started penciling. I wanted to do a fun sporty chic for some reason so we just went with that. I found some climbing reference of a younger woman sporting pigtails that I liked so it was added in. It helps cause most woman tie their hair up when climbing so this give her personality and also eliminates me from having to draw flowing hair to show it’s a girl and not represent the situation properly.

3. Final art went some what smooth. The only thing we needed to do was add a little more room at the bottom to show her foot. Color palette was decided early on. The only real trouble I had was with the ice. I had kept the same dark blue overlay color that is on the main character for the longest time on everything. It finally hit me to change the tone of the ice to make it seem A) Colder and B) Push the bottom of the ice farther down and give the environment some depth. I blame missing the obvious solution on all the holiday activity;)

I think the end cover turned out well. First time I’ve only had to draw one person for a Vita.Mn cover. Looking forward to doing more with them in the future. Now go out and start climbing some ice!
Brent

Last summer I posted an image I illustrated based off one of the wacky characters you can find over at the Saint Paul Saints baseball games. His name was Timber! and he is one of the many awesome “Ushertainers” you can find over at Midway Stadium any given night.

This year I decided to continue the tradition and illustrate Superfan. Probably the most popular of them all. You can’t really explain Superfan, you just need to go see him for yourself. He’s awesome.

I’ve been in somewhat of a drawing rut lately and have been hating everything I’ve drawn. So this one took a few sketches to get where I wanted it to be. I was looking at doing something more abstract and shapely. Make the character more simplistic yet keeping fluid shapes. Anyway the first two sketches were OK but they seemed too much like the work I usually do. The form and anatomy was too typical. I was looking to change it up, even if just slightly.

The third sketch was pretty close to what I wanted. The character looks more like a ball of fun than the other ones. Which is exactly what I think of when I think of Superfan.

My only real complaint is I wanted to go with some abstract colors  but I decided to keep it normal as it needed to portray the character more. Sadly not everyone is familiar with the Superfan yet so it’s easier to make that connection if you keep the color scheme to more natural tones.

I am happy with the final. Superfan himself approved it and that was the end goal. Hopefully the illustration does him some good and helps promote him and the Saints. Both are a lot of fun.
Brent

No this isn’t about that awesome cover band. I just have a few things to promote.

First up, even though the book has been out for a bit, we are still getting nice reviews for Astronaut Dad, this one is from Mickey Lin over at The Examiner. Thanks Mickey!

Next up, keep your eye on this website. You might see some of my work popping up there really soon.

This week’s Vita.MN is sporting two illustrations I did for them. The issue focuses on the summer concert scene, national and local. The First one is a all about the Minnesota concerts.

The second one is all about the national shows.

The art director Leslie and myself came up with a cool way for them to play off each other with the point of view and color scheme. Had a lot of fun doing these and it’s always great to work with the cool crew at Vita.MN. Thanks guys.

Finally, something not so much about me. Friend, collaborator, and fellow My Bloody Valentine 3D fan Brandon Terrell had a wonderful baby boy recently. Alexander Martin Terrell and family are adjusting to their new lives together and it’s going very well. I decided lil’ Alex would be the perfect test subject for a new project I’m planning on starting after Astronaut Dad wraps (12 pages left!). You can see Alex sporting some of my artwork here. Not saying much yet but I think I could get used to seeing more of this in the future. I know, so cryptic!

Schoonover out.

Today’s post concludes Toy Story week, this final character is of course Buzz Lightyear. I first did a more straight on version of him below, I liked it but some of his features need to be adjusted.

After getting the feedback on some of the features I went ahead and penciled another pose of Buzz, this time adding his wings on his back.

I sent the pencil to my friend Eric Wight and he suggested some tweaks that were really helpful.

Once I revised those parts of the piece I moved ahead to the final.

And there you have it.

Brent

Here is the second character I did for my Toy Story samples. This is Jessie, I wanted to make sure I got a female figure in the samples I sent. Personally my favorite characters in the movies were the ones that mostly stayed in the background like Rocky, the big wrestler.

A few months back I submitted some samples for consideration on the new Pixar comic projects through Boom Studios. I was asked to do samples for the Toy Story comic and over a couple months I did a few character designs. In the end it didn’t work out but I really enjoyed getting a chance to work on some of the best animated characters to be created in the last twenty years. Over the course of this week I’ll be posting some of the designs.

Today’s character is Woody.

Brent