American Greetings "Fall's Magic Spell"

Here's a Halloween e-card for American Greetings' front page for this season. See the classic porch go from Fall to Halloween thanks to one little black cat. I provided the sketches and assets while other talented folks animated and brought it to spooky life.

Enjoy here!

"That's Amore" e-card

Puppies, Cats, and A-more!

Recently I did some background illustrations for an e-card for American Greetings. It features quite a cast of singing animals friends. See it  HERE and share with whomever this Valentines season.

It features a dog gondolier with, dare I say, amazing acting ability. If he looks familiar, you might have seen this little pup auteur "Uggie" on the red carpet at the Golden Globes.

He was in the recently released and Oscar nominated silent movie "The Artist" and added adorable character to a great film.

The shots are pretty quick, but the backgrounds (watercolor with digital embellishments) are meant to evoke a dreamy evening in Venice.

Bridge Intro

A Dog-gone-Gondolier

Curious Cat

Enamored Poodle

aMoon Pug !

Woof!

Portraits of Melancholy Mansion

I sea nothing wrong with my new pet...

Portrait of a Monster as a Hang Man

It's that time of year when all things wicked walk about-- Halloween! These were for AmericanGreetings as one of their new line of Halloween e-cards.

I did storyboards for another one which you can check out on the storyboard side of things here.

For this card, you can upload your own picture as part of a spooky hallway of creepy characters with a hint of misfortune ala. the Haunted Mansion. Moving to the tune of "The Addams Family" theme, the portraits animate to life to the ::snap, snap:: Try it out for yourself here !

The General: May he rest in hair piece

Lady Dashwood is a fan of sharp wit

One of them didn't make the cut and only passes by as a blur, but was one of my favorites...

...so here's a little spotlight on the painting process for the "Guillotine Twins":

You can see I referenced a combination of Thomas Gainsborough, Mark Ryden, and Asaf Hanuka-- one part classic and two parts contemporary~ The twin on the right actually loses his head in a step not because of any nod to the deadly contraption, but because I was trying to make them look alike ;]

Going back further in the design timeline and more process goodness, the above is an initial sketch of ideas done in one of my go-to mediums for art and drink: coffee

Hope everyone carves and paints themselves a fantastic Halloween~!

More Holiday pieces

'Tis the Season

Happy holidays out there! Here's an illustration for a couple good friends, R.J. Hochmuth and Abel Stearns [of Digital Sarcasm and the Thought Police] for a (slightly wacky) CD idea. Not quite a musical compilation, not quite spoken word-- but RJ's got a really great voice that I think just has to be exploited/shared with the world. Think, the voice on that automated Moviefone or... maybe a real dapper sounding baritone GPS navigation voice.
"Turn left, Turn left, Turn left!"

A bunch of American Greetings

Several cards I worked on for AmericanGreetings.com have gone live. To see some development storyboards, check out my other blog.

I was playing around with the iphones on display at the Apple store and found one of my works on the AG app-- yay! I still have a bit of trouble working with what feel like chubby fingers typing on those shiny gadgets though. Takes me about a minute per word still...

Screenshots and links--!

A Holiday Wishing Star card for use thru email/ Facebook/ Twitter featuring this adorable lil' owl. [storyboards]

"I'm too Festive" parody song for "I'm too Sexy" [storyboards]

Card for Aretha Franklin's "Winter Wonderland" [characters/background design, storyboards] Animated wonderfully by Heather Dunn.

"Christmas Magic" card with classically cute critters [character design]

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Life on the Prairie

Cake and cowboys are an odd combination... cowboys and pie maybe. A Birthday e-card for American Greetings

Valentine's Constructions

I recently did character and background designs for a Valentines Day e-card for American Greetings involving the construction of a giant heart by a team of cupids. Though the animation itself was not done by me, the freedom in the storyboard stage allowed a fun challenge. The animator found some funny gags which I hadn't thought of as well--

More Add-a-Photos

Fun projects for Kiwee
where you can incorporate your friends into some classic movie posters. "Army of Dorkness" was my favorite-- Call to all nerds: find all the easter eggs in there!
[there are at least a dozen different movies/games/genres]

backup monsters!

These guys never got to share in the limelight for the Superfreak music e-card.
So for Halloween time, they get to be here~

"Freaks" and "Superfreak"

Add-a-photo e-cards for Kiwee.com
Thanks to Matt Dow for references for the 'sideshow' project (in book form that is...)
To add your own photos check out one of them here (<--mermaid)
Character design sketches and background for a music card for AmericanGreetings.com. It's finally up in time for Halloween HERE. Great animation to Rick James' "Superfreak" by the amazing Chris K from Down Under, Mr. Kennett.


[Copyright © 2007 – 2008 AG.com, Inc. All rights reserved]

Kiwee.com and AG Character Designs

A character designed as part of a family, "The Blockheads" are an e-card series over at Blue Mountain. Animated and brought to life by Chris Kennett, check out the finished card here !




This here is "Cheekie Monkey", a saucy British simian-- and she don't take no guff~ One of many characters you can download for your messenger windows, see her animated here.

Not exactly a Golden Book... this one is entitled ::ahem:: .."heavy petting"
check out the storybook version to have it spelled out~ :P


[Copyright © 2007 – 2008 AG.com, Inc. All rights reserved]