jens claessens

Generous

2013-01-18T12:32:00.002+01:00

Last year I designed the packaging illustrations for Generous, a new bakery in Brussels. They make organic, gluten free cookies. And they taste super good as well. :))

The packaging and concept was designed by Bowling, a new ad agency in Brussels, who did a really good job complimenting the illustrations.

So here are some of the steps in the design process. The good people at Bowling asked me to do a pitch and I spent half a day dishing out some sketches, to show the client in which direction I would be taking the illustrations.

All went well and the client like what I did, so I continued exploring the characters with additional sketches. Charlotte was by far the most fun and demanding character, she required multiple revisions, but she was also the character on which we were deciding the style.

So for a good moment we were going with a more cartoony feel and flat shading style (a combination of sketch 2 and 3) but we eventually went back to a more painted approach (based on sketch number 4). Which in the end worked far better.

head sketching disorder 2

2012-11-15T02:23:00.000+01:00

Another outburst of the most deadly obessive-compulsive head sketching disorder has, yet again, left these poor characters without a body. (Click for bigger view)

drawing board

2012-07-12T01:19:00.001+02:00

advice portraits

2012-07-02T18:31:00.001+02:00

I've been doing another portrait assignment for a Belgian magazine and, like the colored portraits a couple posts down, I've also been doing this one for 3 years. They are for a weekly business advice column. So that makes around 200 portraits. The top ones are some of the latest I did, the bottom row some of the first I did, 3 years ago. It's interesting to look back, and wonder why they gave you the gig in the first place.

(Click images for bigger view)

mother mouse

2012-06-06T17:08:00.000+02:00

Pitch image for a project that didn't go through, but then did.
(Click the image for a bigger view.)

ramshackle

2012-06-06T01:57:00.000+02:00

(Click image to enlarge)

some sketchbook pages 2

2012-05-14T13:12:00.001+02:00

Here's some more pages from my sketchbook. Click to enlarge.

portraits 2

2012-05-14T01:45:00.002+02:00

Somewhere last year I posted a selection of portraits of this portrait gig I do for a Belgian magazine. So here is a new selection of the same gig, the first head being the last one I did and the rest randomly selected from the last year.

-> Click here to enlarge <-

studies

2012-04-12T22:48:00.001+02:00

verbal aggression

2012-04-04T10:03:00.005+02:00

An illustration for an article about verbal aggression against teachers.

witches

2012-02-10T03:02:00.007+01:00

Some witches designs I did for an undisclosed project (about witches)

(Click for bigger size)

alan wake: american nightmare

2012-01-19T10:29:00.008+01:00

Since they have been showcased in Edge magazine and on the internets I think it's ok to show you these enemy designs for Alan Wake: American Nightmare (it's a video game)

Full Size

all images above © Volta, Remedy Entertainment

Here's the big guy in the actual game

(screenshots from videogamer.com and gamerant.com)

tweet attack

2012-01-14T23:47:00.002+01:00

A quick illustration for an article about internet mockery towards teachers. Click image for full size.

some sketchbook pages

2012-01-05T01:48:00.004+01:00

(click images for full size)

soldier sketch

2011-11-06T09:03:00.003+01:00

environment practice

2011-09-13T21:41:00.001+02:00

(click images for better view)

F.E.A.R.3 menu

2011-09-05T23:49:00.008+02:00

I designed the insane wall drawings that appear in the main menu of the game F.E.A.R.3 (Day 1 Studios)

In the main menu you see the two protagonists of the story, Fettel and Pointman, as young children locked up in an isolation room. Both boys appear to be drawing nicely. But as you progress trough the game, young Fettel gets more and more insane and so do his drawings.

I pulled this image from the web and also the video below (spoiler). For a better view I guess get the game :)

sketch disorder

2011-08-17T00:07:00.006+02:00

Like many other artists I have the obsessive compulsive head sketching disorder. As a result I have a lot of head sketches lying around, that never made it into fully developed character designs. Here are some of those at various stages of completion.

(Click the images for a better view.)

Gorilla Artbook is out.

2011-06-08T16:26:00.007+02:00

I'm a little late with the publicity but the Gorilla Artbook vol. 1 is out! A book that features some of my work. It's huge and beautiful, hardcover and features work from all these wonderfull people :

Adam Paquette, Alexander Draude, Alice Duke, Allen Williams, Aly Fell, Ben Foster, Björn Hurri, Brun Croes, C.R. MacTernan, Clo, Cody Tilson, Cos Koniotis, Daniel Clarke, Dave Rapoza, David Palumbo, Devin Platts, Emily Gordon, Emmanuel Malin, Erin Kelso, Ev Shipard, Federico Piatti, Fionkell, Gax, Glen Ostrander, Goro Fujita, Gregory Szucs, Guillaume Ospital, Jake Gumbleton, Jens Claessens, Jeremy Love, Johnny Shen, Jon McCoy, Jonathan Standing, Jonny Duddle, Julien Alday, Kan Muftic, Karla Ortiz, Kim Taylor, Liam.C, Luke Kopycinski, Maciej Kuciara, Marc Scheff, Mark Chong, Michael Meier, Mike Dutton, Min Yum, Nénent, Nic Klein, Nicolas Francoeur, Nigel Quarless, OYO, Patri Balanovsky, Randall Whiteis, Rich Pellegrino, Robin Chyo, Rodrigo Luff, Ryan Lee, Ryan Lovelock, Ryan Stevenson, Scott Altmann, Sergio Lopez, Simon Fellah, Thomas Scholes, Tiffany Prothero, Troy Galluzi, Véronique Meignaud, Victoria Maderna, Ville Ericsson, William B. Hand, Winona Nelson, Yi-Piao Yeoh

LINKS to buy the book :

music parade

2011-02-25T04:46:00.002+01:00

An illustration i did for the cd-release of a friend's music group, Dynamo Zjosss
(click image for bigger view)

portraits

2011-02-22T07:40:00.004+01:00

A selection out of the portraits i do for a financial magazine in Belgium. A lot of failed experiments as I try to figure out better ways to draw receding hairlines and double chins. (Click the image for a bigger view.)

Volta blog

2010-12-18T18:24:00.003+01:00

The company I work for recently started a blog to share some of the design process behind the illustrations and concepts we do. This character design is a collaboration between me and my awesome collegue Aadi Salman (check out his work). The steps can be found here.

walking the dead

2010-12-09T06:53:00.002+01:00

A character design for a zombie story after seeing The Walking Dead series. Basically it's like Blade, but with zombies, which makes it infinitely more better. The protagonist gets eaten by a zombie, but is only half infected. Now he roams the post apocalyptic zombie world, mistaken for zombie by humans and for human by zombies. Senseless gore and violence follow.

not amused

2010-11-12T06:23:00.004+01:00

quebec sketches

2010-10-13T06:33:00.003+02:00

(click images for bigger size)