Where have I been? MOVING. It was hectic and awful, but it’s now all over and I am safely in Miami, Florida.

My blog updates have been woefully lacking, not just from the move but also because all the work I have been doing has been your basic logos and things– nothing too exciting! I do have a few sketches to show now, however. Heck, I’ll even show some of the less glamorous stuff I’ve been doing.

I’m working on a painting for a woman in Canada, for a baby’s room. It’s based on a Filipino folktale called “The Deer and the Snail.” It’s pretty much the Rabbit and the Tortoise… but with, you know, a deer and the snail. Snails are freaking awesome, so this will be a lot of fun.

Next up is another foray into international illustration. WTS Productions in Britain needed an update to their poster for “Father Christmas and the Magic Fir Cone.” A girl and the forest creatures discover a magical fir cone, but a nasty black cat and Baba Yaga want to steal it for themselves. Oh no!! I believe the story is based on a Russian folktale.

Like I said, I’ve also been doing a lot of pretty simple, quick jobs for people. This is the kind of bread and butter work I’ve been doing to practice various skills and just keep making money as I seek out the big jobs.

Mascot Design of girls with lollipops. This is my attempt at, um, “sassy.”

Green Goddess Logo, which is still in progress as the client is out-of-state.

Golden Beet Yoga Logo Design

Tattoo design - Client wanted a Meeple (from Carcassonne) riding a catfish in the style of those Koi tattoos you see all over the place. This was ridiculous and fun, and a good way to brush up on my Photoshop skills.

This was a really small painting for a client who wanted to “look toward the future” after some life issues. She wanted absolutely nothing weird in it, so it might not resemble my usual work.

I’ve been working with the ladies at Art Beast, a nonprofit children’s center for homeless kids. They needed a mascot/logo for their organization, and it was a lot of fun working with them to create the perfect beast.

The original sketches. They liked number two, so we went with it with some revisions (simplification, etc)

Some of the colors we contemplated (we ended up with a combination of these for the final one, though!)

We ended up going with this beast, but they also wanted a version with texturing, which spawned this guy….

Thank you John Foerster for the demo on texturing in Illustrator!

Phew! It was quite a process, but a lot of fun.

I’ve done it! And I must say I am pretty proud. Yes, my site looks exactly the same… but guess what! It now contains NO tables. Yep, none! I spent the last few days expanding on my knowledge of CSS (One of my goals in my last post) and managed to redo my site using only styled divs, floats, and all that other CSS goodness. The code is so much nicer without all those nestled tables (especially on the portfolio page) so I am quite pleased.

I even found a great way to get rid of javascript rollovers. Check out this page if you’re interested in some clean, image-based rollovers using CSS: Image Sprite CSS Navigation.

It might look a little confusing in the start but once you change your mindset from thinking in grids to thinking about the purpose of various page elements, it’s actually much easier than dealing with tables and the like.

For anyone who isn’t sure why they would ever give up tables, read this site: Why tables for layout is stupid.

I posted a while back about Wendy the Moth on SCAD’s web site, and it seems her rise to fame is increasing! I just got an e-mail from Adobe with a contract to show Wendy on their web site feature of SCAD as well as a video! Exciting! I always liked Wendy in all her nudist glory (if not that particular picture of her) so I’m happy others seem to like her as well.

In other news, I’m poppin’ out these Pooch poses for Piedmont Healthcare like rabbits in the spring so I’ll attach a couple more for your viewing pleasure.

I’m also working on a BIG children’s book project (my own for class, nothing published yet, sigh) and I’ll be posting some process pics soon!

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If any of the 3(?) people who read this remember my entry about Piedmont Healthcare’s Mascot contest, I’m delighted to share that the “Piedmont Pooch” was chosen as their compliancy mascot and I have since been hired to create the graphic design and illustrative work for it. (Hooray!)

My first task was to redo their Compliancy Powerpoint modules which has also given me a good reason to finally learn Illustrator without getting angry and spitting/pooping on the computer screen. Yeah!

The Piedmont Pooch is © Piedmont Healthcare