Designing George, Part 2


One of the challenges of working with a client who is just looking for an illustrator rather than someone who specifically wants my illustrations is that I need to figure out what the client is seeing in their mind when they are describing an image. “Intelligent”, “friendly”, “masculine” all look different to different people. It’s even more of a challenge when the person who is art directing me isn’t actually the client. The two of us may get something together and then the client will say that that wasn’t what they pictured. George took quite a few back and forth sessions before everyone was satisfied.

Designing George


This the first of a number of development sketches for the character of George. George is the mascot for a series of self help legal books. He went by a number of different names before they decided on that George. The client was looking for a character that seemed friendly, trustworthy and knowledgeable. It took us a while before we got a design that worked for everybody.

Happy Books


These are development sketches I worked up for a mascot character for a book packaging company. He was used as part of a diagram to show the different stages for writing, editing and printing a book.

Crustaceanman


This happy fellow is part of a superhero team who gained their abilities by accidentally merging with alternate dimensional lifeforms. Said team was exploring said dimension when their equipment malfunctioned. Isn’t that always the way?