My super talented friend James did an awesome piece for our challenge. Check it out!
I took the term “power animal” a bit differently than just an animal I share characteristics with. Maybe that’s because I really couldn’t think of any. However, the first image that came to mind after reading this illustration challenge was that of the great cat of the grasslands, the tiger. I feel that a power animal can be something to draw strength and inspiration from. Anytime the world has you feeling caged up, you can reach down to that primal self. That part of you that hunts and survives. I picture that part of me with claws, black stripes and wild eyes.
My daughter Rory chimed in with her answer to the Power Animal Challenge: a kitty cat. On her blog, Peace Signs Rule, she says she chose a cat, “Because cats sleep a lot like I do. I like cats a lot.”
But that’s not all. She also wanted to share Warrior Woman, her latest work:
While she made Warrior Woman, we were listening to Adrianne’s music blog, Diamond Studded Brain Waves (rock-steady-betty.tumblr.com). Here’s the song that got her excited while drawing to put some music into the post:
The challenge up on Illustration Time is for us all to illustrate our power animals. And while I like to think of myself as something of a grizzly bear due to certain personal characteristics mainly revolving around my rather ursine attitudes, if I am being honest with myself I am a coyote to my core.
Coyote’s have always held a strange fascination over me. The ghost in the woods, the gray dawn, the illusive sneak thief. They are beautiful and mysterious, and at the same time strange. They mate for life, hunt as a loner, and only get insanely violent when cornered and left with no other choice but to attack and kill. At all other times they are avoidant when it comes to people and even other animals.
I have always felt a very strong connection to animals and the more superstitious part of my being regards them as omens hailing change. I’ve only ever seen one in the wild, and its beauty, its strangeness has locked the memory in place forever it seems.
So there’s that. I am a coyote. Because I am a loner, a non-aggressive till challenged and at times rather mysterious I suppose. Can’t say I’m completely satisfied with this. And I don’t know why I have to do everything in blue…the next one will be in pink, I swear.
I also write bad poetry from time to time. I always post it as it’s written in the journal, hence the terrible hand and the scratched out words. 😉 ————>
The bear can teach us that to get the honey, sometimes you have to put up with a few bee stings. Like the bear, I choose to live my life and fight the challenges it brings every day in the hopes that when the time comes the honey is worth it.
Brando here. My power animal is a jackal, the African black-backed kind to be precise. My coworkers and I were discussing what the new Illustration Time drawing challenge should be and power animal was the decision. I initially suggested that my power animal should be Yoda or Gandalf, but Joe and Adrianne wouldn’t let me be so cheeky. So, after some thought, I realized why a jackal is so powerfully perfect for me.
The black-backed jackal is much more than your average wild dog. He’s actually very family-centered. In fact, my wife and I watched a BBC special on mammals that featured the family life of jackals. A jackal pair mates for life. When the two have pups, while the mommy jackal does the nursing, the daddy jackal faithfully secures food for mommy. As the pups grow, daddy-jackal plays with the pups and expands his efforts to bring food back for the whole family.
I’m a family man, sharing with my jackal friend those very same characteristics. Taking care of my family is very important to me. My wife does the hardest work there is—staying at home to nurture our growing children (we have four pups). My job is to earn the money our family needs and play with the pups. It’s becoming very rare now for a mom to stay home while a dad is the sole breadwinner, but my wife and I believe it’s best for our family right now (pups grow fast and need lots of love; time flies when they’re young and you can’t get it back).
It is a very joyful life to have a family and it’s also a part of my faith. I recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity. Go jackals!
If you’d like to see how I developed this one in my cutesy style, head on over to my blog, Drawing Faith 🙂
Dear world, it has been a long time. The Illustration Timers have been on something of a sabbatical with the holidays, and sickness, and general busyness…we have neglected you!
But no more I say, no more!
A new challenge is here. And it is a simple one.
Power Animal : Fox
This challenge is to illustrate ones power animal. A power animal is an animal you find similarity with, you should have some definite characteristic meshing for your animal to really be your animal. You can’t simply say “I’m a Liger”, that’s not good enough. You need to say why.
So the guidelines :
Pick a power animal that is likened to you in some way.
It must be a real animal. No Ligers. No Gandalfs. No Dragons named Smaug.
You must provide an explanation as to why you chose the power animal you did.
As a kid I saw Rocky 3. It made an inspirational impact on me. Clubber Lang—Mr. T’s intense beast of an adversary against Rocky—always stood out to me as a premier symbol of personal drive and tenacity. While Rocky lazily lost his edge, Clubber stayed hungry and was able to knock Rocky out of the championship spot. I felt inspired recently to draw some tribute fan art for Mr. T. The above image is the result.
We can gain spiritual insights from both villains and heroes. This artwork represents both sides of the equation. Clubber is the villain, while Mr. T who portrayed him is a positive role model to me—hence the title of this post is “Spirituali-T.” As I prepared to begin this piece I researched Mr. T. Not only does his intensity to achieve goals stand out, but his charity as well. Fans may not know that he gave up his gold jewelry after helping to serve those devastated by Hurricane Katrina:
“As a Christian, when I saw other people lose their lives and lose their land and property…I felt that it would be a sin before God for me to continue wearing my gold. I felt it would be insensitive and disrespectful to the people who lost everything, so I stopped wearing my gold.” (The quote is from a Sky News interview with Mr. T.)
When I asked my wife what color I should use for the background, she suggested the obvious: gold. I think it’s more than fitting. Mr. T may not wear gold around his neck anymore. No, it’s in his heart now. To anyone who’s hungry to improve their character or accomplish a worthy goal, I invite you to keep at it with Mr. T’s Clubber Lang intensity.
One of the songs I listened to quite a lot while working on this was From the Arrow Loop, by Ronald Jenkees. Click play and listen in while you take in the art. It has just the right dub-stepped feel of that intense drive and thirst for achievement that says “Mr. T” to me. Enjoy:
The Thing About Perfection (Unofficial Fan Art), by Brandon A. Miltgen, 2014
“The thing about perfection is that it’s unknowable. It’s impossible, but it’s also right in front of us all the time.” —Kevin Flynn, TRON: Legacy
Some Tron-love for y’all ❤ Here’s my cutesy expression of Kevin Flynn meditating in his outland home on the Grid, having a happy aha moment. Flynn’s pursuit of creating a perfect digital world led to his overlooking what was most important to him: family life with his son, Sam. It’s a thought that’s very poignant to me, as we all are capable of delving too deep into our own personal Grids. Work, hobbies, you-name-it—all worthy endeavors, if rightfully prioritized and moderated—have the potential to eclipse the friendships and family life that we should pay the most attention too. Sometimes it takes a trip onto our own Grid to help us recognize the need to focus on what’s really important. Just one of the many worthy life insights this film has allowed me to glean. Enjoy the animation with some music:
Here’s a look at my Christmas piece for this year about the Savior offering Himself to us. My newborn, baby Jack, was a wonderful model for the Babe of Bethlehem. If you’d like to read the full message of the piece, head on over to Drawing Faith, my personal blog. Merry Christmas!
They say it takes a village to raise a child. In this case, it takes a team of really creative people to build a sweet, preloaded, educational tablet for kids. Allow me to introduce you to Little Scholar™. For all of the apps, videos, songs, storybooks, and more on this device (requiring no additional purchase), at $199 this thing is a steal. That’s my son up there by the way, the photograph is by Adrianne (or A. Adelle as she’s known on the side bar).
Visitors to this website might wonder what the regular artistic contributors to Illustration Time actually do for a living. Believe it or not we’re not paid to draw mermaids and cryptids—we just do that in our spare time. The six of us regulars (featured to the right) are some of the creative employees of School Zone Publishing. We’re composed of graphic designers, illustrators, animators, and more. Each of us has multiple artistic strengths and abilities. With our powers combined, we get some pretty awesome children’s educational product out the door. Because Little Scholar™ is our most recent (and epic) collaboration as a company, I thought it would be nifty to share a little about the device, from the standpoint of our creative efforts.
Above you can see our YouTube channel art. This was one of my recent design assignments for this project. The image communicates the scope of what you get when you buy a Little Scholar™—tons of full-version apps, videos, a whole Start-to-Read® program, a camera, songs, access to a store for more content if you want it, and a reporting app so parents can monitor the device usage by the little ones. Notice Brian Vander Ark from the Verve Pipe up there? Yep, that’s really him. He made the music for Charlie & Company™, a brand new educational show debuting on the tablet (you get four episodes with the device). With animation and live action, viewers meet Charlie, a golden retriever, and his friend Miss Ellie as they go on learning adventures.
YouTube requires a complex layout for channel art to accommodate several kinds of viewing. Online or on a device you’ll only see the design encompassed in the purple strip above. But if you’re viewing School Zone’s YouTube channel on a t.v. you’ll see the whole design (hence the additional graphics in the yellow area). It was quite the fun assignment to build a layout that accommodated all of these variables in one image.
Here’s a closer look at the device. Terry is responsible for the awesome illustration work—characters and icons—while I did the user interface (UI) design work for the OS (that means the look of the menus the child navigates while using the device). It’s meant to be a bold, fun, inviting sort of playground for the kiddos. Each icon gives a playful and obvious cue as to what’s in store in each area. You can also see that the device spans preschool through first grade. Below are the menus for each grade level, showing the apps packed into each. Note the color and character cues used to help the kiddos identify which area has been entered into, matching the main screen’s buttons:
A ton of work went into porting over existing School Zone content for the device. For instance, McCoy was the lead designer on I Like to Paint, a creativity/coloring app that you get with the device. Below is the icon he developed as well as sample screens of the UI. The UI McCoy developed is gorgeous, bright, and simple. My kids love this app, which is the true sign of a successful design for kids. Terry did the illustration work for this too.
Another brand new app, among several newbies, is Numbers Flash Cards, seen below. Again, all of this work showcases our team effort as well as the fact that we have very multifaceted personnel. For instance, although Adrianne was utilized for her professional photography skills, she also did the illustration work for this one. I did the icon and menu design work for it. At the bottom of this group of images I picked out five of the very cute flash cards she illustrated. One of the most enjoyable aspects of School Zone is that our employers are willing to give us opportunities to work in more than one creative department. Often our efforts to “try on a new style” lead to additional in-house opportunities.
I could feature a lot of other apps that we developed and/or tweaked for inclusion in Little Scholar™. But I just wanted to give a small taste of the monumental, loving care that went into this project. Here’s one of Joe’s awesome contributions. Besides animation and/or design work on several apps, he was also tasked to develop the interface design for the app store on the device (in case someone wants to get more School Zone content, or in case they’re looking for some Angry Birds or whatnot). Again, the illustrations are by Terry:
I haven’t talked enough about Charlie & Company™ yet. For this amazing new kid’s show, Terry did a lot of character design work, including the rendering of these very polished editions of the show’s cartoon characters. Below you can see a couple of large movie poster designs I got to layout that were printed for the premiere of the show (our boss wanted two poster designs for the event). I developed Charlie & Company’s logo design as well (created to match Charlie’s collar):
But what is the show like? Our crack team of animators brought Charlie & Company™ to vibrant life. Jessica was the ink and paint lead for the show’s animation. McCoy also did a lot of the animation work. I’ve got to mention Keith and Michele here too (we’ve yet to feature them on Illustration Time for their personal work). Keith not only led the animation team’s efforts for the show but also worked with Terry on the character development. The love and care he put into Charlie and the gang is very palpable as I view these characters. Michele is another experienced animator that helped to produce the animation work. They all did a great job. Here’s a clip of the show to prove it:
As a couple of last inserts, here’s a look at some package design images (another one of my assignments for the project). Following that is a cute shot of my daughter holding the device, again taken by Adrianne.
We’re very proud of our accomplishments with Little Scholar™. My wife and I got to test it on our kiddos over the course of its development. The finished product is a gorgeous work of art, super-durable, fun, and educational for kids—an amazing value at a great price. And it comes already jam-packed with superb content. School Zone has stood for quality educational products for decades, and you can capture a mighty part of that empowerment for your kiddos with this device. Check it out further at this link:
Illustration Time 