Drink and Draw - the Norwegian division, Episode 1!

Yeah it's here! My fellow illustration and art loving friends and I have joined up for a little drink and draw session via Google Hangouts. In this video we do just as the title says. We drink and we draw, and we talk a loooot!

This episode is our very first one and our aim was to draw beloved children's TV and movie characters as horror inspired characters. Join us and see the madness that ensues!




Warning: Explicit content and adult language is used in this podcast!!!

This is a Drink and Draw Hangout hosted and run by Norwegian illustrators and artists living in Norway. We drink, we draw and we talk, we talk a lot!
Join us in our first episode where we draw beloved children's TV and film characters as horror inspired characters!

Hostess:
Anita Olsen Stoebakk - Freelance illustrator
Website: http://www.anitaolsen.daportfolio.com

Blog: http://a-vinter.blogspot.no/

Adriane Vinter Freelance illustrator
Blog: http://a-vinter.blogspot.no/

Inna Hansen: Freelance illustrator
Blog: http://doodlepod.blogspot.no/

Jeanett Mikkelsen: Self-procclaimed artist

Also check out:

Vaginal Fantasy Hangout:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcnYb8u9nSM

The Story Board:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52khu_YJAmo

Logopalooza! Lots of logo sketches

Yes, yes, yes, walk right up and sneak a peak at the lovely fruits of my labor!

As some of you may have read in one of my previous posts I was hired to create a logo for a local company specializing in fish and shellfish, namely Røa Fisk AS. As a result I blogged about how one should approach the process of logo design. (I don't know if anyone besides myself found it interesting, but you can read about it here).  

Anyway, I've finished the project, and my employers seemed to be very happy with the end result.
If you read my previous post about logo design you might remember how I talked about the importance of doing proper research, sketching down your ideas and choosing a selection of your best ideas to show your client in a semi-finished version? Well below you can see a selection of logo sketches I made. These are all sketches I showed the clients, and still there were quite a lot of ideas I didn't show them. I gave them a lot to choose from, and since they didn't know what they really wanted I think it helped them to see the possibilities of what kind of logos they could end up with. It helped me as well, because after having looked at other similar logo types and having sketched 15-20 different logo suggestions I felt very confident in the selection I presented to my clients. We still needed to have several rounds of editing, but having done all the prep work I never lost that feeling of confidence in my own work. So I can't stress it enough, the prep work in the beginning of your projects are the most important ones, because they are the building blocks for the rest of your projects. ( I hope I didn't get too preachy on you guys there, I just get all hot and bothered when I talk about illustration).

I haven't posted the finished logo yet because they haven't launched it officially in their store or on their website, and even if we don't have an agreement on when I can show the design publicly I have chosen not to show it until they are ready, out of respect for my clients. So you'll just have to wait and see.

Until next time
Anita K. Olsen

Website:
www.anitaolsen.daportfolio.com

Contact:
anitaolsen.illustration@gmail.com

Goblin pilot

So this guy started out as a character sketch for a children's book I have been working on, but I ended up using a different concept that went in quite a different direction.

I still really liked this sketch. He has a certain charm about him ^^

Maybe I'll re-use him later in another illustration or maybe I'll just color him? We'll see.

Until next time
Anita Night

Style Struggles - how to adapt to different assignments

I just signed on to a project where I'm supposed to illustrate a children's story for a book. At the same time I'm doing a very different project for an app game for a company called Dilemmr. I have found over the course of this weekend that it is quite hard to work with two styles at the same time.

The app project is sort of a Manga/Science fiction inspired style with as proper anatomy as possible and use of perspective and the like. The children's book is supposed to be child friendly and humorous, but inspired by fantasy, and I have to morph the anatomy and work in a more cartoony style than the other. I started sketching some of the characters from the children's story and this is where the trouble started. I just couldn't let go of the anatomy and my usual way of building a character. The characters weren't stylized enough and I didn't find them very funny either. I'm usually good with cool or cute characters, but funny is not really a strength of mine. This problem made me feel stuck and I felt a bit hopeless to be honest and I wasn't sure how I was going to solve the issue.

What I did know however was that I was not going to give up. So I started sketching a bit, gradually changing things on the characters, making things simpler, not drawing all the joints on arms and legs, making some body parts abnormally large or very tiny. halfway through the process I was still frustrated and I didn't know what to do. I bitched a bit about it to my fiancée who looked at the characters and then he came with the most ingenious suggestions of how to make the characters more funny. He is usually no help at all, he says he does not know what to say or look for, but this time he was a great help. I did some amendments to the characters and after seeing Ole's satisfied grin and giggle when I showed them to him I'm certain I'm on the right track.

So what do you do when you're a bit stuck? After having struggled with it myself and having thought about it quite a lot I've come up with some pointers that might help you should you ever be in a situation similar to mine.

1. Sketch - a lot. Don't be afraid to make silly doodles or drawing with the wrong hand. Sometimes it loosens you up and opens the door for that creative spark you are looking for. Don't shy away from reworking things either. I reworked my characters 5 times before I felt happy about them.

2. Have someone else look at your sketches if possible (if your not under a strict NDA or something). A fresh point of view may be all you need to see what's missing in your artwork.

3. Look for reference on the Internet or in books or movies, whatever is relevant to your assignments. For example I needed to do something very cartoony so I looked at a comic strip by Frode Øverli, the creator of Pondus. His drawings are very humorous, stylized and fun. Now I didn't copy any of his characters or his style. I merely looked at the way he stylized his arms and legs, mouths and noses. It really helped me along.

4. If you feel stuck and nothing of the above helps you should put your work down and leave it for a couple of hours or overnight and get back to it later. It gives you brain time to work things over and you'll maybe look at the artwork differently when you come back to it.

Well this turned out to be a fairly long post, but I hope someone can gain something useful from it, or indeed throw in their own ideas of how to switch between illustrative styles when you are working on two very different projects at the same time.

Until next time
Anita Night