Design

I Heart Apps

Design, Drawing

EXPRESSIONS sketch.jpg

The My Heart Mate app is now live. Working for Flying Bark Productions, I supplied the character and world design and layout for the app that is used by people hoping to strengthen their heart health. The app has you adopt a heart character that you name and keep healthy via brain challenging games as well as real world activities that are designed to maintain good heart health like; exercise, relaxation and a healthy diet.

The character design process saw a few shaped and coloured hearts until we hit one that was appropriate enough and cute enough. The process of creating different versions of the same character and refining down in to the right one was really enjoyable.

OPTIONS

more designs

Once my job was done my designs were used to render and animate the little guy and now it lives in the app, providing people with an entertaining way to recover and keep their health in check.

The app is available to download on iPhone and Android.

THE MAKING OF AN ICON

Design

  

Communicating visually and being iconic.

After celebrating my three year anniversary with Jigsaw I had a looked back at some of the designs I’d created and the skills I have learnt. One of my most constant design challenges was creating simple icons that have been peppered through our presentations.

After Jigsaw had a rebrand 3 years ago by Christopher Doyle & Co. we had a clean and crisp new design direction, as part of that design Chis created about ten icons to use in our presentations with the plan for me to create more as time went on. Over the past three years I’ve been busy in Adobe Illustrator morphing the same 14pt red lines into soup cans, unicorns, anchors and basketballs. At the moment the icon count sits at 861.

  

This work has been great for my creative practice as it has taught me to think about how to communicate simply and directly while maintaining a strong aesthetic – A skill which is very valuable in cartooning. My cartoons have become clearer and more focussed which in turn has made them funnier as the reader is able to digest the joke in a shorter amount of time.

Well all this hard work has made me hungry – I’m off to make a sandwich.

  

GIVE A DOG A HOME

Design

DENISE AT PAWS

Every dog is supposed to have his day, but some get neglected, rejected and fall victim to abuse. To ensure dog’s to get their day Denise At PAWS is a little non for profit that helps dogs that are down on their luck find a home.

I put my hand up to help D.A.P fight the good fight and created their new logo. The simple pentagon seemed like a perfect home-shape to frame the dog character. It speaks directly to the work they do and gave me a great opportunity to work with typography and simple character design.

IMG_2138

Through Denise At PAWS you can adopt a rescued dog or foster one until it can be adopted to a new family.

Some of their dogs have been seen on Bondi Vet and they are always looking for donations to continue their work. Even if you can’t give a dog a home you can spare a few dollars surely. Click here to donate.  if you can’t make it to a Bunnings barbeque.

DAP FUNDRAISER

YOUNG ASPIRATIONS

Design, Drawing

When I grow up I want to be a cartoonist or a train driver. This was my aspiration when I was a kid. I don’t drive trains, I didn’t grow up and that is probably why I’m now still drawing cartoons every day. 

This week I picked up a great gig to translate the the hopes and dreams of a class of 7-8 year olds into a big colourful poster. 

SMALL PHOTO KIDS POSTER

I was given 28 drawings the kids had done and each image was converted into a cartoon. I still wanted to keep an element of their original drawing so I cropped out a segment of their colouring in and trimmed in into a circle. This became the body for each of the little cartoons and a good reference point for the legend at the bottom of the page which also included what they wrote on their drawing, complete with verbatim spelling. 

ninjavet

The final product was a lovely snapshot of what this full class hoped to be in about 20 years time. I hope some of them get as lucky as I did. (Especially for the ninja)

kids poster

And here is the final 100 x 700cm poster ready to be auctioned off to raise money for the school. 

FRAMED KIDS POSTER

A MONSTER TASK

Design, This is Interesting

 As an artist who works as a graphic designer, painter, prop maker, comedy writer, performer, caricaturist and cartoonist, I sometimes get requests to create artworks that are a little more out of the ordinary. I recently delivered on a commission for a full size furry orange puppet to be given as a gift.

 
The puppet was created with glasses, pigtails and overalls which were all direct references to the wardrobe of the person for which this puppet was created. The orange fur was a creative liberty.

I spent a lot of time watching videos of bearded puppet makers giving tutorials on how to create a proper functioning puppet. Turns out it’s a really elaborate process which saw some trial and error before I got the happy looking monster you see here.

nHjXU0

PsIC5C

j53XGc

It was was an excellent artistic task for me riddled with “ah ha” moments as she slowly came together and was given personality and life. It’s now an odd new skill I possess and it was a really rewarding artwork to create. I am however finding orange fur all over the studio and on my coats and scarfs.

 

ED’S ELF

Design

I’ve designed the company Christmas card the last three years and last year we gave away kites as well as a donation to Redkite – a charity that looks out for young Australians suffering from cancer.

Designing a card that matched the gift was a really fun exercise and I enjoyed working with this illustrative flat design.

card

Last year also marked the 20th anniversary of the company. I was tasked with designing a postcard that got inserted and distributed in Research News magazine. I illustrated the trends of 1994 and 2014 and again kept the design within our company palette.

2014 bday crd frt

2014 bday crd bck