Youngling and Terentatek (Unofficial Fan Art for Star Wars), Original Artwork by Brandon A. Miltgen, 2014
We’re still out here… floating around. My co-workers and I, the ones of us who used to be regulars on this site for our challenges, have been busy with, well, life of course. Since there haven’t been any posts for awhile, I thought I’d give a shout-out about my latest, a gift for my son. Happy Friday! We’re not dead… we’ve just been… actively elsewhere…
Give a click on those profile pics on the side to see more of what we’ve been up to 🙂
There was an angel in the snow that day.
I know because I went outside with him.
The snow was very high,
And we felt taller than usual while standing on the front lawn.
Our footprints wound around,
Through the snow,
Like a maze of dashed lines on paper.
It was beautiful.
We even stuck a shovel into the snow
Before we made our snowy angels.
We headed inside,
My legs chilled,
And he drew an ‘x’ in the snow by the door.
His words could have melted the snow:
“I’m gonna make a lowercase ‘x’
To remember what fun things we did.”
The snow didn’t melt that day.
My heart did.
There was an angel in the snow that day.
This one was tricky for me. Once I’d stared at those lines and saw a super hero in there, I knew it would be a Captain America fan art piece. The trouble came ultimately with meshing an invented physique with reference and fitting it all to Joe’s line constraints (the hands and face are from reference of me; but the rest of him is obviously very stylized). It was a very fun exercise conceptually and very worth doing. But I think I’d be a little more careful in the setup phase if I could go back and do it all over again 😉 Happy Tuesday, Illustration Timers!
Here’s a look at Joe’s challenge lines overlaid on my drawing efforts.
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 🙂
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:
Adrianne’s a busy lady of late—making cool art that is! She’s been running a schweet Advent calendar on her blog, The Brooding Artist. Her mom works the poetry; she works the illustrations. They’re a great team. So go on now, get caught up on that calendar! Christmas is coming:
There’s a track on Savage Sister‘s self-titled album called Glass Peacock. The title of the song (as well as their awesome sound) inspired me to make this piece. But as I delved further into creating it, I found some deeper meaning. If you head on over to my personal blog, Drawing Faith (click here), you can read about the fuller symbolism of it and see the process that went into making the artwork (I threw down a color variant there for it as well). Below is a link to the song for all you art appreciators who dig listening while looking:
While I was working up Ding. Ding. my sweet wife said something like, “If you get to be a boxer, what do I get to be?” She followed that up a little later with the sentiment, “I want to be a tigress.” My sweet wife is surely one hot tigress. Not just for my attraction to her, she keeps our home working, our kids alive, and my sanity intact—she’s basically a super hero, with the eye of the tiger. So this is a companion piece to go with my self portrait. Tomorrow we welcome our 4th baby into the world. She’s ready for it with super-heroic intensity as usual. Love you, honey!
This one’s for my sweetheart, Bethany. Her favorite movie is the Tom Cruise epic, Legend. As my wife and I discussed what the concept to encapsulate the movie should be, she suggested that gorgeous moment of transition when Blix, the foul-hearted goblin, destroys one of the unicorns. I like that Blix and the unicorn are the metaphorical “hands” of the forces they represent—Blix is the hand of Darkness, while the unicorn is the hand of all that’s good and pure. One of the most impressive elements of the film for me is the crazy amount of leaves, wisps, and what-not you can see floating around so many of the frames of the film. For my fellow geeks, below is the Unicorn Theme by Tangerine Dream that was part of the soundtrack I listened to while creating this artwork (if you want to play something while taking in the image). Happy Thursday! More posters for the challenge are in development, so stay tuned 😉
We’re giving ourselves a little bit more time to complete this one, since it’s an ambitious challenge: a montage movie poster (so expect to see the entrant efforts to start coming in a few weeks from now). The only requirements are 1) that each piece somehow display more than one character, and 2) the poster should incorporate the logotype for the title of the movie. It can be fan art for a favorite film, or the movie can be something completely original by the artist.
The reason I’m choosing this for our new challenge is a) to challenge us creatively, and b) because my favorite place to dwell illustratively is on the line between illustration and design. This type of project fuses the two disciplines in a way that will force careful compositional planning while inviting engaging figure work. Here are some stunning examples of movie posters that I like to grab your attention about this cool type of art:
Aliens (Poster Art) by Ken Taylor for Mondo
The Little Mermaid (Poster Art) by Tom Whalen for Mondo
Iron Man 3 (Poster Art) by Martin Ansin for Mondo
Conan the Barbarian (Poster Art) by Jason Edmiston for Mondo
As you can see, I’m a huge fan of Mondo and the work their artists produce. If you check out their site archive you’ll find countless ways that those artists have created gorgeous designs and illustrations to celebrate some cool movies. Some are iconic in simplicity, others are near baffling in complexity. Challenge on!
Illustration Time 