Geek Bar Lounge Friday ad

For my latest Geek Bar assignment, I was tasked with creating an illustration for their upcoming Lounge Fridays, "ultra-casual friday nights at Geek Bar, when patrons are encourage to wear their pajamas." The image suggested was having bar folk hanging around in pop culture-inspired accoutrements, with mugs in their hands. I was also given the request to "specifically include a blonde figure in a pokemon cap and baby blue bathrobe, and pink haired figure in a yellow captain kirk bathrobe." Sounded like fun.

Having people stand around in costume was pretty much the same idea I had for the Nerd Year's Eve ad so I decided to change it up a little, by skewing the perspective to suggest lens distortion. I scribbled out a quickie thumbnail in Sketchbook:

Once I determined that was the direction I wanted to go, I created a more comprehensive sketch in good ol' pencil and paper:

I got this reply: "This is awesome! I wonder about having everybody standing on a lounge day, but it looks so cool I don't want to mess with the artistic process. If there is any way to make a few people sitting that might be neat."

D'oh! Right, lounging. Got it.

I added a couple of people seated at tables on the ends, and we were off to the races. I created the lineart in Mischief, then took it into Photoshop. Because of the description, I knew the illo would have to be full-color. I started with a layer of base colors, then used Levels adjustment layers with masks to pull out the lights and shadows. I also used another adjustment layer to vary the saturation on the characters depending on their foreground/background placement, to help establish dimensional hierarchy. I then applied a low-density Photo filter layer for a little color harmony. And since the characters were in a cel-shaded style, I added some texture to the background to provide some visual interest:

It didn't occur to me until some time after I'd submitted the final art...
How is Boba Fett supposed to drink with his helmet on?
Ha! Oh well, that just makes the illustration funnier.

Another illustration under my belt, and I'm satisfied with how it turned out. I'm told they'll be re-using the ad monthly, and the concept was proposed to make slight modifications for each iteration, if I was willing. It's an interesting idea, having it be an evolving illustration, so we'll see how that turns out.

Mira's Bear in a Tutu

My daughter Mira asked me to cut out a crayon drawing that she did of "a pink teddy bear wearing a tutu" which I thought was fantastic:

I loved it so much that I had the urge to embellish the drawing, with Mira's permission, along the lines of "The Monster Engine" illustrations by Dave DeVries. I painted it up in Autodesk Sketchbook for Android on the Galaxy Note II with a Wacom Bamboo Stylus feel, and I'm pleased with how it turned out:

It was a fun exercise, one that I'll have to do again in the future.