This Illustration Friday brought to you by my inner emo kid. This one was a quickie, maybe an hour, hour and a half?

I’ve got a blog and portfolio revamp coming (yes, again) so look for that soon! I’m in a real tidying sort of mood, cleaning up my room, cleaning my websites; I need to feel refreshed, I think.

Once more I find myself drawing a motorcycle! How can this be?

I did the character illustrations for two children’s travel guides for Junior Jetsetters - Paris and Amsterdam. (The background illustrations were done by artists living in the cities themselves.) Mike did the other two - Chicago and Lisbon. Here’re just a few of the 200-300 images done for these books. (There were about 150 “frames”, but many of them contained several separate character images.)

My first job was to design the local animal guides of the two travelling children.

Amsterdam Character Designs

Paris Character Designs

The images themselves were intended for insertion into photographs. I only have a few examples of that, in cases where it would have been difficult for them to add the characters after the fact. (The two kids, Keira and Jordi, are not my creation; they’re copyright to the Junior Jetsetters guys.)

Paris La Defense

Musee Grevin

Rembrandthuis

The rest of the images only exist in their free-floating, character-only state. Some of these were intended to go in photos, some not, and frankly I can’t remember which were which.

Nothing says Amsterdam like Bollywood

Cooking

Sports, with kiddie versions of our bosses Pedro and Slawko

Amsterdam Roots Festival

Picnic

X-Ray

Paris style

A badger riding a horse?

Beachtime!

Fun with perspective

A TREE

My one regret is that there was so much to do in so little time - near the end, I was doing maybe ten a day, and this was after school had started - so the shading had to be done in a very quick, loose style, and looking at it now I can’t say I like it. But it was a good time, and I learned a lot. Thanks to Pedro and Slawko for the opportunity.

Oh god I can’t remember the last time I coloured this way. Seriously, it’s been years. And Wolverine looks like a fireman clown in a marching band. From space.

At least he’s not a mountie this time.

Not my real Project Rooftop entry (just a stupid sketchbook thing, really) but it may end up submitted anyhow because it’s… just… oh god what did I spend my evening doing. D:

Besides, what other Canadian superheroes have we GOT? Northstar? Pfft.

A few things! First, I did this image a while back for a school project/ a calendar for Pylon Design. It’s been on my website for a few days, but I haven’t blogged it:

Second, remember that Stephen Harper picture I did way back when? (Perhaps not, too lazy to find the blogpost, but this is it…) Well, it’s a finalist in the Framing Harper competition! And so is the work of my friend Rosemary! Check out the finalists! (Especially Rose’s, which should totally win because it makes me burst into a fit of giggles every time I see it.)

Third, the narrative project I posted a couple of teasers for was finally finished up. I had print copies at the show, but if you’d like to read my shot at writing (or at least look at all the pictures) here’s a PDF! If you’re interested in an actual, printed, hold-in-your-hands copy, let me know and I’ll get you the Lulu link. (They printed out surprisingly well, even if the shipping prices are insane.)

I think that’s it for now. Now I’m done school, I’ll likely, hopefully, be posting work more often - there’s all this stuff I’ve been wanting to do that Grad Show panic has kept me from doing. Ah, art, I do love you.

It runs from 7 PM - 1 AM on Thursday, April 23rd, and 11 AM - 8 PM on Friday April 24th. Check the invite for the location.

The grad book also came in today, and it’s full of awesome:

My final Interp illustration of my college career. *single tear* The last of the four seasons. Guess which!

I have rather pretentiously titled this Mother of Wolves, not to be confused with Australian hard rock quartet Wolfmother, although that would be kind of sweet.

And now, an hour or two of sleep before class!

I have business cards, which makes me happy. The grad show is in like two weeks. I, and everybody around me, are so wound up that the slightest thing will make us explode, atomic-style. That’s about it.

Check it out!

You can still reach it through otherskies.net, but for all personal branding purposes, my personal portfolio address is now kimsokol.com. Haven’t decided yet whether to rebrand the blog or not, but for now I don’t have time so it’ll remain all Otherskies’d.

But the otherskies domain is very dear to me - I mean, it’s been my home on the web since I was 15. I’m still trying to come up with something neat to do with it, so don’t think I’ve abandoned it entirely…

A seeecret preview of a seeeecret project.

No, that’s a lie. I’m redesigning the look of my web site, and putting together a business card, and this is for both.

I’m just no good at keeping secrets, I guess.

The fruits of an all nighter. Third of four seasons. Still have work to do before I head off to class in an hour.

One of these years, I will learn how to draw a cat.

To lessen my shame (and add some semblance of relevance to this post), here’s a preview of something I’m working on for Narrative.

She likes Pixar, and thus - Wall-E meets Ratatouille. I’m rather proud of it, and she seemed to like it a lot too. Hoorah for Yien!

But that’s nothing compared to what others did. Dani made her a giant 30-eyed monster. That was SQUISHY.

And Mike and Rosemary did this fab Coraline doll. Mike’s got some detail shots up at his blog.

Happy B-Day, Yien. Hope the year gets better for you now you’re full of cake and have things to play with. =)

So anyhow, remember how I was pimping out commissions? I got one! And a month later, this emerges. Thanks for commissioning me, Jai.

Two WoW characters! Man, those are some complex outfits…

So here’s the deal. With the economy in the state it’s in right now, our Illustration grad book for the year is in serious trouble. We’re trying to fundraise as much as possible, and would be massively appreciative of any help we can get. To that end, Grad Council marketing girl and all-around awesome person Danielle Crosby has put together the For The Love of Print campaign. So check out the little website (which I’m hosting) and if you have a few bucks to spare, there’s a whole lot of Sheridan grads who’d be very, very grateful.

And to that end, if you’d like to know who you’d be supporting here’s some links to just a few (i.e. all I could find) of my classmates:

Danielle Crosby
Mike Hiscott
Karen Brown
Yien Yip
Craig Arndt
Arthy Balachandran
Jesse McGibney
Amanda Ward
Irma Kniivila
Dominique Fung
Martha Chan
Juan Solon
Tyler Doupe
Bryce Huffman
Carlie Russelle
Rachelle Letain
Bennett Slater
Ashley Ross
Dave Webber
Yuta Onoda
Chris Coles
Miles Pasick
Dave Murray
Jesse Koreck
Nimit Malavia
Greg Dubeau
Jermaine Hannam
Ryan Christiani
Simon Kim
Kim Hughes
Steve McPhee
Lauren Pastuszczak
Peter Du
Tomas Zatrak
Peter Yuill
Melodie Papp
Eduardo Pasaoa

If any Sheridanites happen to find this and can let me know the links of anybody I couldn’t find (and there’s a lot), feel free. =)

The second Four Seasons piece - Spring was the one with the bunnies; this is Summer. If this looks familiar at all, it’s because it’s sort of the spiritual successor (if not a straight-out rehash) of this image, which I quite liked the feeling of in spite of rather hating the final output. Look! A car that actually looks like a car! Probably still too small to really sit in, but, uh, an improvement all the same?

A self-portrait, featuring my awesome new jacket, my ever-present messenger bag, and enough textures to almost crash Photoshop several times over. (800 mb for a 6×10, 300dpi image? Really?) Will probably later post the other version, which doesn’t feature acres of unnecessary background, and in which I do not disappear into the ether somewhere around my ankles.

For Interp, the thesis theme being the four seasons (sound familiar?), this one being spring. It is so girly you will probably puke unicorns and fart pixie dust, and it continues to highlight my ongoing problem with using the colour green, ever.

Click to fullview!

Oh, and another reminder that I’m now taking character commissions. I will draw you pictures!