Some new work for Penthouse. Did these recently for their December erotic fiction piece. It was a fun piece although somewhat challenging since not all that much was happening in the story (a girl meets an old flame at a condo she’s eyeing, they make out in the pad’s outdoor shower). I tried to come up with some ideas that didn’t involve showers, but couldn’t really. The magazine prefers the images to be more direct and less conceptual anyway. The suds were quite fun to figure out, and I think generally it worked out well.

Here’s the spot that accompanied it:

I kinda liked this sketch that didn’t make it (thanks for the anatomy help Vince!), might do it up when I have the time:

Did this some time ago for the video game ‘Adrenalin Misfits’ by Konami. The game is made for the Xbox 360 and works with their Kinect motion control system. The game features some funky animal characters who (from what I gather) compete in various boarding contests. Presumably it’s like Marty’s flying skateboard in Back to the Future 2.

The version above was my final art. The final-final result that is printed is a bit different as some additional effects were added on to the piece.

Big hugs and thanks to Jason at CRP for working with me on this one! It was a lot of fun, and I really hope to work on more game related stuff in the future!

Here’s the final cover version that’s on sale on Amazon. The cover is for the North American market, I think other markets have different art:

Scholastic 'All together now' poem book

Scholastic 'All together now' poem book

Did this illustration some time ago for Scholastic Canada. Got the books in the mail the other day and was very pleased with how it turned out!

I did the illustration for a 2 page poem spread about singing frogs. Half of the spread was used for the cover of the book. It was a fun project and I hope the kids enjoy it!

This was a piece done for CG Monthly for an editorial piece about choice in games.

The premise of the article was that when given a choice, gamers tended to choose endings that were most beneficial to the player. This  presents a unique storytelling problems for developers who want to give players more control over their expereience with the game, but who also want to tell stories that don’t end with ‘and the hero saved the day and was loved by all’.

I wanted something to do with games to drive home the point of choice. I was a bit tired of doing controllers pointing, so I came up with the UFO catcher idea instead. It’s a bit of a personal joke too; people tend to not think of UFO catchers as games but they are always at arcades, along with those annoying photo snapshot booths (well at least they were back in Singapore).

The pixel people were a way to try and tie things back with video games, and to make the scenes stand out. I did them in Illustrator and they  were quite nicely reused as decorative bits to the article. I apologise for the somewhat crappy pixel art – it’s not something I do, but it was an interesting experiment. If you want to see some good pixel art, pop by Superbrothers‘ site for some really nice work.

Penthouse Sep - Fullpage

Penthouse Sep - Spot

Work’s been great, terribly busy over the last few months. Haven’t had time to put up new stuff for a while, so getting the ball rolling again with these two for Penthouse. They are a bit risque, so I’ve cropped them – click on the thumbnails to see the whole image. These ARE meant to be erotic so you’ve been warned!

These two were for Penthouse’s erotic fiction article. The story was about a lady who goes to get her Macbook repaired and ends up having a fling with the three Apple store technicians.

It was a fun thing to work on. The ‘enter’ pic was actually my husband’s idea – I thought it was a little cheesy but it seemed to work well with the article. I was asked to eliminate any references to Apple in the imagery, which was fine. It struck me as a bit odd that it’s alright to name companies and brands in prose, but not so in graphics.

Anyway, hope you enjoy them. The next work-related stuff I’ll be posting will be educational (for kids… not that kind of education).

alternate full page sketch

Alternate spot illustration

Did this a while back as a quick overnight fix for a magazine. Usually I’m not one for using Photoshop filters but for once it actually worked out pretty well. The article was about a indie punk band called Trigger Effect, and was mainly talking about how they tended to do a lot of their business independently, although they disliked the being associated with the term DIY. For visual sake though, I thought the 80′s DIY punk aesthetic made sense for the article.

I basically ran a stamp filter over a photo of the band and cobbled their heads together to make the record cover. Was trying to get it to look like a grainy black and white photocopy – actually tried drawing it but it looked too clean. All in all  I thought the experiment worked out pretty nicely.

This was done for the June cover of Lucid Media magazine. The focus of the issue is the North by North East (NXNE) music festival, which is a big free music bash in Toronto that features a huge array of up and coming bands, as well as a few big names.

The festival’s mascot is the bunny that you see on the yellow wristband. I was hoping to create something that was eye catching and keeping with the spirit of the festival without being too overtly like a music poster. The editor wanted to try to tie in the multi faceted aspects of the festival (apart from the music, it also has a film and interactive/ conference portion). I worked the other elements into the tattoo on the main hand.

The piece is probably more inspired by the game, Rockband than the festival itself. I really have no idea if people still wave lighters around at concerts. But heck, it was cool when they did…

My husband is an avid gamer and game reviewer. One of his passions is tackling the matter of narrative in games by examining their current state in the medium, and anticipating their development. This piece was done to accompany one such feature article in C&G Monthly, a Canadian pop culture magazine focusing on comics and video games.

Being married to someone who is passionate about games, it’s inevitable I suppose that I share some of his love for them. I’ll admit I’m much more of a backseat gamer than one that actually plays games, mostly because I don’t have the reflexes for many games and I tend to panic under the time-sensitive stresses that are core to the gameplay of most games. But I do enjoy watching the games that we buy, in  particular the ones that have good storylines.

Rough concepts for the illustration

To me, the current attitudes towards stories in games is similar to the attitude people had towards comics when I was growing up. Comics were viewed as this sub-par combination of badly drawn pictures and bland, 2-dimensional stories for children and no-too-bright adults. In recent years, thanks to successful movie adaptations (or so i think), the public has come to accept that it is possible to tell a deep, meaningful and engaging story through comics, and at some level  it’s more socially acceptable now. Games, in turn, have moved in to fill the spot vacated by comics to being the pariahs of  storytelling.

Which is a darn shame because while some games still have bad stories, there are some stories to be enjoyed in the still-developing medium.  Stories in games are uniquely experienced, both as gamer and observer, and the bottom line is that it’s a bit unfair for people to dismiss the stories or to simply say that there is no story to be had.

So, when my husband said he was doing a piece about narrative in games, I wanted to cook up something that helped illustrate the article in a nutshell, in a way that looked hopefully more mature and intelligent. It’s not much, but I hope that combining a thoughtful essay with a picture that isn’t just space marine/bikini warrior will help to eventually get people to realize the same thing they did about comics – that both comics and games don’t need to be stupid entertainment for kids, and that you can get some good stories out of both.

Did this fairly recently as a promo to folks in the kid’s market. It was meant to be a Spring thing, but I suppose it fits in with Summer as well. On a side note, the NY trip was great. Went to Surtex and the National Stationary Show, met clients, hung out with friends.

Worked on this a couple of months ago with the good folks at Mclaren McCann Toronto.  The project was for World Vision’s Spring 2010 direct mailer. The job was to create an illustration for the envelope, which would be repurposed for the letter and note card inside. Additionally, I was asked to illustrate a little mask for kids that was to be printed with lenticular printing (remember those plasticy cards where you turn them and the image changes?).

The project was great fun and I really enjoyed (more…)