mababang langit

so i did a one-page illustration for UNO's july issue, the one with aubrey miles' boobs on the cover. it was a high-concept "wordless" issue: images would tell the stories instead of fat chunks of text. my bit was supposed to be a film review or essay, in pictures, about four major hollywood releases coming out that month. apol st. maria and manix abrera also did one-pagers.

i work as a freelance character designer with the folks at tisme.com.au , and they were recently featured on spicywebdesigners.com . i got to answer one interview question: 7. What kind of projects do you work on for clients and how did you earn the title of “mascot illustrator”? Answered by FERDINAND, a mascot illustrator at Tisme.com.au: Basically I get called in when the client wants to project a specific personality, image or message through a character design. Mascots work in a similar fashion to any logo in that they represent the company and its ideals, but mascot designs can also give the consumer some things logos can’t; a face, a look, a human touch. We respond instinctively to eye contact and body language, and that’s the area of expertise for a mascot designer – to try to get the audience to relate to a brand on that intimate, personal level. full article here .

so i'm currently doing simple black-and-white coloring pages for coloringfun.com ... these aren't online games now, you print them out and color 'em in old school. more at this page dedicated to my stuff, heh heh and still more to come in the future!

smilies of the non-digital kind: and a serving suggestion: available now at mollystamps . and i thought these were really cute, stamp pieces that work like those paper dolls you mix n' match... ... so you get something like this: and they come with glasses and baubles and things: you can get' em here .

new strips for a niche blog about domaining , the business of buying and selling web addresses: and also a series of strips for a portuguese fan site dedicated to the national football team, benfica. unfortunately a lot of comments about the characters not looking like the players they should have been based on :(

art in site calls itself a "magazine for artists, by artists, about artists". imagine that. the maiden issue isn't due out until next year, but they're looking for 3,000 people to create [not design, create--you need to mail in the thing you made so they can stick it on the book] 3,000 unique covers for the release. pretty cool idea. interested? click here to register and reserve a slot. there's still over 2,000 slots left, and you have until september 15. credit to toni for telling me about it. and speaking of magazines: graphikapinoy is a free, periodical pdf magazine about the local visual arts scene. their latest issue is about pinoy illustrators, some wicked stuff in there :] via komikero

it is such a treat to have a client mail over a complimentary set of the stamps i designed for her: i've never seen transparent stamps before. the very first physical evidence of my labors. :) here's some of the art:

sweet revenge is when the contest holder, who had earlier declared as winner a work that plagiarized your own work , contacts you and asks you to do the rest of the illustrations. oh no no, sweet revenge is gloating about it. bwa ha ha ha

did a couple of four-letter jobs this past week. one paid out, one got cancelled, but both featured the f-bomb:

so he said he wanted: A hamster in an army helmet, firing an assault rifle. The helmet can be any type of modern infantry head protection. The beast itself must be a brutal Golden Hamster, none of those puny Russian dwarf things please. The rifle must be either an SA80 , M4 Carbine or an Avtomat Kalashnikova Forty Seven -whichever you prefer. i thought hamsters and AK-47's just seem to naturally go together, and so...

did this for an infant wear company. the client asked for like fifty revisions :)

if you use igoogle, maybe you'd like to try the naruto-themed igoogle theme , the headers of which i designed for subscribemanga.com. the picture changes automagically every hour! the layout gets a little screwy sometimes though(the google search bar occasionally covers a face or something). ah well. :)

i'm sure this happens a lot in online design contests, but it sure sucks to have it happen to me. so the contest is here . it's for a graphic to be used for wedding materials. my entry: and here's the last-minute winning entry, submitted about a week after mine. notice the tree : side-by-side: i contacted the copycat (aka eventual winner) and called her out on her plagiarism. at first she said we must have used the same reference material but i drew my tree from scratch ! she never replied after i told her that. i also asked the contest holder to have the winner redraw her damned tree.

the folks at problogdesign.com have started a slightly nerdy webcomic that i am "drawing" (click on the link below to see why i used quotation marks). it's on trial basis for now, so please show your support by voting for it! click here to read (and vote)

there were a bunch of pigeons, actually. first, there was the naughty little pigeon i sent in as a sample. the client liked it, but not so much that he didn't ask me to design a new one. and so... then i made a preliminary sketch... was asked to do revisions... and asked again... until finally...

i get almost all of my work off the internet these days, via freelance job sites where schmucks like me bid to work on paid projects. it's kinda like ebay, only the bids tend to go in the other direction. and once in a while you get projects that are... well... fun. to look at. and naturally we get some of these, too: