2024 Christ-Mouse cards!

This year's Christmas cards are these super cute little paper craft mice! I had such a great time putting these together, although it took a few tries to get the feel I wanted.

You can get them at my Etsy shop, as a single card, or in packs of 6 or 10.

There are printed instructions included in the card as ever, but for those who prefer video instructions, I've also made this little tutorial.

Enjoy! And have yourself a merry little christ-mouse!

Siren

 As much as I love doing cute, happy work, sometimes I want to challenge myself to something with a different feel. Here is an old school shipwreckin' siren. 

What a beautiful murder fish.

Spooky Scooters

Since I've been doing work for vehicle companies, I've had a few unused ideas bouncing around in my brain box. 

Here's a couple I had in mind for Halloween promo, because sometimes you need another means of transportation...

Autumn Witch

 A little autumnal witch for you guys this spooky season!  I like to imagine she couriers parcels and scrolls, a la Kiki’s Delivery Service, but she particularly specialises in tracking down rare ingredients and items for the magical community. And pastries. Always pastries.

I did try this with a background but then I wasn't focussing so much on her, so I left it pretty simple!

I love this colour palette. I tend to go for quite cool, bright or high contrast colours in images, so it was lovely to experiment with something a little more earthy and muted. Will definitely be using it again!

Beryls boating

 A recent piece working with Ross Ringham on marketing ideas. This one was for Beryl bikes.

Ross wanted to have two middle aged ladies, both called Beryl, on various travel-based misadventures, so we went for a narrowboat traffic jam as an example piece.

This layout appealed to me but ultimately we decided it didn't show the Beryls clearly enough, so we went for this...

I tried a few different designs for the Beryls to narrow down the age and vibe Ross wanted.

And here's the final piece!

Toponymy: Nottingham

Recently I took part in the Toponymy project with Nottingham City of Literature, and the lovely poet Polis Loizou.

The idea was to create an image and a piece of writing that worked together to explain the meaning of one of UNESCO's Global Creative Cities.

I had a great time, but it was certainly a challenge created a piece that was nearly 4 foot square! Just getting it through my scanner was something of an achievement!

I learned a lot about Nottingham's fascinating history; what a lot of badasses!

There is a physical exhibition in Quebec, but also an online version if you want to have a look at the other amazing participants.

The thumbnail sketch.

The final piece.

The burning of the castle.

Snot (a possible etymological reason for Nottingham's name)

A surprising number of protest based fires in Nottingham. Including by the suffragettes.

More peaceful protests today, but just as important!

Nottingham was the first place to build a network of bomb shelters during WW2, utilising their natural cave systems

The famous left lion

Luddites

A goose hissing at the Sneighton Dragon. The goose isn't particularly significant, but I think if Nottingham was an animal, it would be a goose.

Super Pedestrian Deep Dive

 I've done quite a bit of work with the e-scooter company Super Pedestrian over the last few years and I wanted to take a bit of a closer look into my process and how things go from sketch to final product.

Sometimes it's very simple. This piece for example went from sketch, to ink, to final with very little alteration...

The only thing that needed changing here was to lower the speed of the granny. I changed up her nose a bit, but otherwise, even her outfit is the same.

Often even if the sketch isn't exactly right, most or all of the components of the final will be present.

The pose of the trainer I ended up using is on the left of the first drawing, and his face is just visible at the bottom of the image.

Sometimes minor pose changes are needed, like this sketch to final...

We thought that extra arm movement really gave the right "after you" vibe.

Occasionally it'll be decided that a character isn't what we're going for and they'll be swapped out.

I really liked this policeman, but we thought with the other images made alongside this one a woman would work better.

The drunk guy hasn't changed at all, as you can see here.

A similar thing happened with this piece but we swapped the woman for a man. You can also get an idea of what my thumbnail sketches look like. I use these to explain very (very) rough layouts and ideas to clients.

I did try to find the reference photo I took of me grabbing at my own face, but I'm afraid it's been lost to the mists of time.

I'll often try a couple of layout ideas before fixing on one, and if there's some part I like but it's not completely right I'll keep it in the back of my mind.

Here I liked the swoop with space left for slideshow questions but it worked better with the characters coming towards the viewer rather than away...

Sometimes aspects of an image can even be used in multiple layouts. That's a nice thing about working semi-digitally like I do.

This piece was for Pride.

The drag queens were drawn separately.

This meant with a little rearrangement (and swapping two outfit colours) I was able to get a secondary layout.

I hope you've enjoyed a bit of a closer look into how my work is created! Here are a last few images I've created for Super Pedestrian...