Category Archives: commissions

Corporate Creative Department, panel 1

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Corporate creative departments have always been a target market for the company I work for. They tend to have more money to spend on a regular basis than home studios so one corporate client can provide the income that would otherwise require multiple small clients. Corporate clients usually already had an IT department but that department usually had PC/Windows expertise and rarely felt comfortable supporting the Apple computers that the creative departments used. Often the IT departments were glad to have us take the Mac support off their plate.

This strip was the second of three comic strip ideas that my boss had me pull out of the larger, abandoned comic book. I don’t remember what our hero here is upset about but we can assume that it’s computer related. It probably has to do with server issues. Back in 2002 it was usually only our large clients that even had servers.

The Home Studio Strip, Panel Four

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“Oh no! It’s the blinking question mark!”

If you’ve never seen this you’re a lucky Mac user. The blinking question mark was a sign that your hard drive and your operating system weren’t talking to each other. These days that problem is indicated by what we call the rainbow ball of doom. Either way it’s time for this kid to call tech support.

The Home Studio Strip, Panel One

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Once it became apparent that having me draw an eight page comic was going to take longer than he wanted to wait the boss started thinking of ways that we could repurpose some of the ideas in the story. Our primary means of marketing in 2002 was postcards. Every month or two we would send out a postcard to clients and potential clients. It was a pretty effective way of keeping us in people’s minds. I got quite few calls that started with “I’ve had one of your postcards sitting on my desk for years …”

Anyway. Our client base broke down into three main categories – one or two person home studios, independent creative studios and the creative departments of large corporations. The boss asked me to come up with three strip ideas (one for each of our client categories) that could be used on postcards. This is the first panel of our home studio strip – a young boy comes home to find the house dark and foreboding.

Awesome Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches

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In 2002 or 2003 Labor of Love was commissioned to design a logo and menu for neighborhood minimart that was adding deli service to their offerings. They made a good variety of good sandwiches, their specialty being a philly cheesesteak that I thought was really excellent. They even offered a chicken version that I thought was even better. I prefer chicken over beef most days so I’m sure others would disagree. I did the base illustrations for the menu. Jason Oxrieder did his meticulous magic and turned them into vector art. This fat pasha is the only one that turned up in the zip disks I was cleaning off.

Saleh’s is still there but the deli service only last a year. I was never clear why they gave it up. Too expensive? Time consuming?

Dance Logo 1

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Back to the sketchbook. In 2002 Nizzibet and one of her brothers spent a little time working on redesigning some of his marketing materials and she asked me to take a stab at redesigning his logo. He’s a dance instructor and his logo includes a stylized illustration of people dancing. I spent 5 five years as an assistant in ballroom dance classes so you’d think this would have been an easy challenge. Dancing is, however, one of many activities that I’d never spent any time drawing. Easy in theory, requiring a lot of thought in practice. Many of the movements of a dance don’t look that interesting individually. Many of the dramatic moments are hard to capture without seeing someone performing them. And I had no models. Back in 2002 there were also a lot less visual resources on the net so a lot of drawing had to be done from my own memory and imagination.