No smoking!

Invisible was hired to design and produce the characters and backgrounds for a series of anti-addiction ads. I've included the BGs here because they are painted. I went with a pretty simple black and white style that I felt complimented the line-work. The overall sensibility was to keep the art black and white with the only colour points of focus being the various 'addictive elements' in a scene.
I'm not sure how effective the Ad campaign was, but every time I look at this grungy shot of a filthy back alley I find myself craving a cigarette.It's weird because this type of 'smoker's area' is really what most smokers have to look forward to these days, tucked away by the garbage and littered with old butts. It's gross and shouldn't give me a nostalgic feeling for smoking, but it does. Hopefully it's just me and the actual Ad campaign was a success. Stay off the crack kids.

Lumberjacks!

A few years ago I did the hockey logo for the local junior hockey team (essentially one tier below major junior). I'm a huge hockey fan, and possibly an even larger hockey jersey fan with a collection that is now around 150. I always wanted to design a jersey logo, so when the opportunity came I was very excited. When I started doing the concept art I originally was told to do a 'Buccaneer' logo, I liked the 'Bridgewater Buccaneers' name and got pretty far in the concept art before the name became the 'Bridgewater Lumberjacks'.



The best part of the experience is seeing people around town with jackets, ball caps and bumper stickers with the logo on it. It's also great to have a few of the jerseys myself.

NDP Samurai

This little piece (9"X12") was probably my favorite painting of 2010. A very simple image that was originally inspired by a doodle I drew while waiting on hold on the telephone.

As you know, I really don't like parting with these paintings but I recently gave this piece to a local MLA who was instrumental in restoring Nova Scotia's Film and Television Tax Credit. Pam Birdsall, MLA for Lunenburg, represented the provincial animation industry like a champion, she was communicative, responsive, caring, passionate and hard working. Pam was everything an elected official is supposed to be, and she represented us with pride and helped our little industry through a very tough time. Thanks again Pam, enjoy your childish painting.

Visit Pam here:
http://www.ns.ndp.ca/PamBirdsall/

Monkey on the brain

After I painted Isabella's growth chart last year (in December) I took a break from painting on canvases and concentrated more on digital painting and praying for animation work. In early June I decided to get back to the analog painting by slowing in with some smaller canvases. I did a few of these smaller 'sketch' paintings where I took a doodle and transcribed it onto a small art board canvas. These canvases are 8"x 10" and are quite easy to paint in layers and short sprints.

This particular image was not inspired by anything specific, just a fun little image of a monkey (with headphones?) rummaging around in some dude's head. These days I seem to have a bit of a love affair with green monkeys (www.4thmm.com) so there may have been some osmosis happening from my right brain to my left as I painted this, if so it was unintentional.

I was hoping this small piece would inspire me to produce more paintings and I did a few small ones in a row after this... but then I stopped again. I have a 5' X 3' canvas in the works, and hope that I can take a chunk out of it over Christmas.
~M

Final Omarr image.

One more Omarr image, roughed by Derek Jessome and cleaned and painted by me. I love the fact that the three wise men look like such jerks. How wise can they be? They are not even wearing shoes!

Countryside

I don't have much to say about this, it took a while as I was experimenting with texture brushes a bit. It's washed out with a lot of green, but I was trying for a slightly more realistic feel than my usual stuff. It was fun! 'Awesome Stuart Dunphy' did the initial rough, what a sweetheart.

Finally new stuff! With JESUS!

Sorry again for my delay in posting (ha ha I actually sound like I think people are anxiously waiting for me to post new stuff), I've been pretty busy and largely uninspired to paint. I have a few canvases on the go, but it's been a while since I put a brush to them.

I have been digital painting, and I recently completed three development images for a feature length production from the U.S. from a company called Snowfall Films. The project is entitled 'Omarr The Camel'. http://www.snowfallfilms.com/

My frequent co-conspirator Derek Jessome did the initial rough and the art was cleaned in Flash and painted in Photoshop. I've been attempting to get more painterly and show brush strokes and even add a bit of watercolor paper texture to the work in Photoshop to try to get it to look more convincingly hand painted. I feel it's coming along and with each new piece I get to try a few new techniques and approaches.This first image is my favorite, it's adventurous, dangerous and mysterious... just like me!
The second image is cool too, very sunny and reminds me of teasing Patricia for her love of 'Egyptotology'.
The third image is what you would expect for a Christmas movie. It was hard for me not to put a Street Fighter style Fireball in baby Jesus' outstretched hands.

These paintings each took about 18-22 hours to paint, let alone the couple of hours they took to clean and prep out of Flash. I'm not used to being a slowpoke, but I certainly am when it comes to these types of set-ups.