Freeman Christie's New Website

Freeman Chrisite's website has just been giving an overhaul, complete with simple illustrations from me! If that wasn't reason enough to visit have a read of their horoscopes (libra is my favourite) and Industry in Stats section on the front page.

Caught 'e' a mermaid

To make up for the pitiful last post here is a work in progress.

I am trying to sort out a series of seaside postcards (being that I live by the seaside, it seemed a good place to start), both as promo and to sell in shops. Here is the first. I think it will change as I render it in, my self promotional work always does. so it will be interesting to compare this with how it turns out.

Two Colours

This started life as an idea for a logo and became an enjoyable experiment in line weight,shape and colour.

A Story (board)

Just been digging through the archives and I came across this. It's a storyboard for a 30 second cheap flights tv advert. Nothing came of it but it was good fun to work out how the illustrations would work. If I ever get a chance to learn flash I may animate it. Click the image above to see it bigger.

Community Pubs

The week before last I got a commission for the cover of the South West and Welsh Big Issue's. Here's a quick peek into how the image was created.

The basic premise for the issue was about community pubs and how they are in the risking of closure. As a result many pubs are introducing various other activity to keep them afloat and are be coming much more community based, in one case with the village forming a co-operative to run it.

The Editor suggested a couple of ideas showing a community feel with lots going on but with the 2 day deadline it sort of ruled out going down this approach. Instead went for something simple graphic and hopefully eye-catching.

The ideas was to have the beer engines forming objects at the top of the handles which related to the activities going on in these pubs.



Rough

Once the rough had been approved, I had a day to work up the image. Here are the stages it goes through"



Colour



Shadows and Lighting



Textures and Final Details

I then sent it off to and although the image was well received there was a concern the image was a bit dark, especially for a cover image. I increased the saturation and background colours to make a lighter version, which i think is a better image.
I was really happy with how it turned out.



Thanks to the folks at Big Issue SouthWest and Wales for commissioning me.

A Couple of Fxu Sketches

These are two of the sketches a did for the fxu site I mentioned in an earlier post. The above image is a super pirate. I guess that probably makes him a villian, as most pirates were.. but he means well, honest.

Below is a couple of horses, amazingly drawn I am sure you will agree! It was late, I was trying to draw a horse from memory, you know how it is...

Fxu

The Falmouth and Exeter student union, fxu, website went live today. It's something a little different from the usual work I do, but fun and rewarding (improving a service for my old college) all the same.

Working together with Michael Robinson (another fellow graduate) we came up with the idea that the website would take the form of students notes. Looking through my sketchbook at roughs for a single header idea we realised that lots of doodles would suit the concept more.

So clearing a space next to the computer I started scribbling away on loosely formed topics. I had pretty much free reign which made for some inspired ideas. The result is a jolly good website and something incredibly different from every other student union site in the country, functional but interesting.

Behind the Scenes

I sent over my submission for the new If You Could... book this morning, fingers crossed it will be acccepted.

I had been trying to sort out an image for it for quite a while but had many false starts and dead ends. The main problem was I was just drawing things for the sake of drawing them rather than having a solid concept.

One of the ideas that I eventually rejected had me selling ice creams to characters from history. Whilst this sounds good, it was too difficult to decipher this from the image. Why am I telling you this? Mainly because I was pretty pleased with how the characters turned out and rather than consigning them to the shelf I thought folks may like to see them. So freshly dusted and in various stages of completion I present some retired characters and a spot of type:



A saracen warrior, he was going to be best friends with the Richard character I posted previously. (he was also part of the ill fated idea along with the mammoth) I am particularly pleased with how his clothing turned out.



The chap is from 101st Airborne or Easy company
and appears to be missing a hand.



A very rough Queen Victoria and a Centurion.



This was a bit of type I created for the image, it still needed alot of work but there was something nice about it, pleasantly unbalanced. It's an element I would like to incorporate into more of my work. There is something therapeutic creating your own font rather than using one off the peg.





Lastly these are the 'sketchbook' bits that the other images are created from. Phew that was a big post! Update to the main site soon.