12/31/10

WebDesign Israel

I've finally got a steady job in my field!!
I was just hired part-time by local company WebDesign Israel, and the first thing I had to do was revamp their logo:

Nice, innit?
Can be seen on their website here.

Drawn using:
Adobe Illustrator CS3

12/28/10

The All-Villain Baseball Team


I created this photo manipulation last April to accompany a humor article written for the-iss.com, consisting of the play-by-play announcement of a game being played by the All-Villain baseball team. I was fortunate enough to find a team with nice big "H"s on their uniforms to use as a base. Article here.
The team members shown are as follows: (Back row, l-r:) Attila the Hun (center field); Adolf Hitler (shortstop); Ivan the Terrible (pitcher); Pope Alexander VI, a.k.a. Rodrigo Borgia (manager); Josef Stalin (right field); Caligula (first base); (Front row, l-r:) Benito Mussolini (second base); Pol Pot (catcher); Saddam Hussein (third base); and Vlad the Impaler (left field).
Not shown: Genghis Khan and Admiral Tojo (coaches); Ted Bundy, Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, Harold Shipman, Jeffrey Dahmer and Jack the Ripper (bench); Cesare Borgia (batboy); John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald and Rameses II (bullpen); Ayatollah Khomeini (closer); Mao Zedong and Idi Amin (owners); and Solobodan Milosevic (umpire).

Drawn using:
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

12/22/10

SONIC: Legacy

I'll be quite honest, I have no idea why I drew this. I mean, I've seen the posters for TRON: Legacy and I've read a few scans from the Sonic comics, but really, there's no earthly reason why I would connect them in my mind. Maybe it's the ring/disc similarity.
Anyway, poster! The characters turned out to be trickier than I'd originally envisioned; this was my first time drawing either of them, and as it turned out, Sonic and Sally are basically the same height, whereas on the poster this is based on, Olivia Wilde is about a full head shorter than Garrett Hedlund. This made it impossible to place them in the exact same positions as the original (chest to chest, or rather head to chest). I had drawn and scanned in both character separately, so I had to do some digital manipulation to get Sally in a position where she could be standing next to Sonic with her hand on his chest, while keeping their overlarge heads at a reasonable distance from each other.
In another first for me, I combined hand-drawn characters with a computer-created background. The grass was fun to paint (experimenting with brushes and so on), as were the smoke and clouds. Instead of directly replicating the original poster's background landscape--dark and detailed--I just placed them in a representation of a game level. Blue sky, green grass, random earth tower, glimpses of the palm tree and yellow flower (please don't hurt me if this sounds ridiculous; I've never played the games and my knowledge is based off a two-minute Google Images crawl), as well as a random green Chao.
Well, I had fun making this, and I hope you have fun looking at it!

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Adobe Illustrator CS3
Adobe Photoshop CS3

12/20/10

Today's jpost.com cartoon

Boy howdy, did I go to town on this one. Let's see: the ghost of Adolf Hitler as Emperor Palpatine, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as his uranium rod-toting apprentice, the Samuel L. Jackson character (Mace Windu) referencing a line from a Samuel L. Jackson movie (Snakes on a Plane), Bashar Assad showing off his height, Saudi Yoda, and Ban Ki-Moon (note UN symbol on stomach) as the haplessly inept robot. Oh, and a punny title.
Yup, I'm good.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

12/19/10

Parshat Shavua comic

This sample comic was made for a friend who was pitching a new Parshat Shavua (weekly Torah portion) sheet for kids, which sadly didn't make it off the ground.
The joke here is based on the line in Genesis 19:25 (and not 18:26, as noted at the bottom presumably due to a brain fart), dealing with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which reads, "And He overthrew (literally, "turned over") these towns..."

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black ballpoint pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

12/16/10

Cartoon businesswoman

Initial character design for a project bid. Not chosen.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.4 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus SE

12/14/10

Today's J. Post cartoon, with predecessor

two israeli men bundled up walking through wind rainy wet blowing newspaper peace 2010 gone with the wind peace process
It's been particularly windy around here lately (as well as rainy), so I decided to toss in a neat little commentary about the state of the "peace talks".
This cartoon actually has a bit of a backstory to it, as those two blokes you see walking along actually first appeared in another (unpublished) "winter weather" cartoon I drew back in February, although then they were in the US:

two men bundled up walking through heavy snow winds storm so much for global warming holding newspaper headline record snowstorm in dc philly car and tree buried
Please note how the characters are identical down to the color of their clothes. Also, I think I went overboard with the wind effects in today's cartoon; the older one was much more restarined and better-looking.
UPDATE: Second cartoon reposted by conservative blog The E-Blast.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Black marker
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

12/10/10

Sunny Roo

Kangaroo design drawn for merchandising project. Cancelled.
The legs are all sorts of messed up. Next time I draw a cartoon kangaroo, I'm doing it right.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

12/8/10

LynxBytes

Proposed logo for a computer-related website. Not chosen.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

12/6/10

Today's J. Post cartoon

You may have heard about the Carmel Fire, Israel's worst forest fire ever. They finally extinguished it after four days, leaving over 12,000 acres of land totally burned.
This is my declaration of hope in the aftermath.
Note how everything but the plant (a vibrant green) is colored in shades of gray. As you may have guessed, this is deliberate. Symbolism, don'cherknow.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen

Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

12/3/10

SolarMan

Proposed character design for a company mascot. Not chosen.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.4 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus SE