New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Animal Crackers"

Hello, hello again! More fun stickers to share… it's kind of a random theme, but I always love drawing animals.

I only did the sketch for this design… the vector art was completed by a designer in-house. The final stickers (at least the cookie stickers) are rendered in moulded resin, a really nice touch.

I think I have a real sample somewhere, but I just wanted to get these posted for you. Maybe I'll come back and update the post with a prodcut scan a bit later. :)

New Work: Sticker Sunday - Happy Father's Day

Not everyone has the world's greatest Dad, but I suspect there are a LOT of us that think we do… which really says it all. Dads Rule. I myself, can't say enough great things about my Dad. Last year, when I bought my first house, he came to stay with me for a month to help me with various house projects and generally settle in. Then, a few months later, he drove across the country with me in his truck - schlepping all my "stuff" that had been in storage back east out to my new home… then stayed for another month, culminating with a visit from from Mom and a family Christmas together. Wow!
I really hate that I somehow managed to settle myself so far away from my parents, but at the same time, I think it helps me appreciate them both more. Happy Father's Day, Dad! Wish I could be there today, but lucky me - I'll get to see you at the end of the week! :)

Above is a sticker I designed a few years ago. I don't think it was ever distributed nationally, but it must have been a special order for a specific Retailer - because I got a sample (wish I remember WHERE). I made this Appreciation/ThankYou card for my Dad and used the sample, so I don't have a picture of the whole sticker sheet and I can't find one online. It's a shame, I really liked this design - a counterpart to my Best Mom design that is readily available in stores and online.

Below is another Dad themed sticker I designed last year. Same themes, but slightly different as icons are given more equal focus. I have the sketch and vector art I provided them, and the actual product seems like a pretty literal interpretation. But It's interesting to see how much vector drawing details are lost (like the necktie for example) and how they changed the gem placement (also on the tie). Funny little things. Still, I think it looks good!

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Congrats Grad"

It's still Graduation season, at least it's winding down… actually I have no idea but I have one more grad theme to share so here it is… I did this one for the Jolee's line of 3D stickers. At this point, I've been doing these sketches for a long time and I've developed a clean, but very editable, way of presenting concept sketches (lots of layers , mirrored half-sketches, etc).

I think I've drawn 5 or 6 really detailed gem illustrations and I just use them on EVERYTHING now, so I don't have to go back and draw gems every time I need to suggest an embellishment.

They translated this design quite literally… although I don't think the glitter looks quite as good in actuality as it did in concept. Oh well.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Cap & Gown"

For some it's still graduation season… so here is another grad themed sticker design I worked on recently. I can't say how many graduation themed stickers I've worked on in my career, suffice to say it's been a lot. After the 10th time for so, it starts to get hard to look at it fresh and not repeat yourself, so when I was asked for a cap & gown theme again, it knew it was going to be a challenge.

Color can also be tough, because many graduations are dependent on the school colors, so product design has to stay generic enough to work for eveyone, but not be SO generic it isn't fun & interesting.

But I was really happy with how this one turned out. The gowns are maybe a bit stiff, but I love how I got to play with the cap & tassel icons, and lay them out in such a way they mimic the actual tossing of the caps that usually comes at the end of the ceremonies.

Stickers like these are usually used as accents on graduation scrapbook pages and/or party invitations and the like, to add an exciting little bit of theme-specific flare.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Class of 2010"

I apologize for missing Sticker Sunday last week - but I was a little busy. ;)
This week, I'm posting a graduation themed sticker sheet… even though it's from last year's graduation season.
As you can see in the sketch, it started out being a numbers game - a customizable design that would be timesless. But this typical approach to the graduation theme, it just looks boring. Somewhere in development the decision was made to make it specific to 2010, and I really like the results, even though it only got to sell for one season. I'm never actually seen one of these sheets in person, I wonder how the production materials turned out. Guess I'll never know, now. :(

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Best Mom"

Happy Mother's Day!!
This is a design I did quite a while back but how could I resist posting it ON Mother's Day? It was such a joy to see the actual sticker sample in the shops - the shiny gold foil, the delicate layered vellum flowers, the embossed lettering on the trophy, the diamond gem - it's just so sweet, and perfectly detailed. Of course, I like the lettering I did better than what they used, but since this wasn't a project they asked me to take to vector, I didn't have a say in it. Oh well. Happy Day, Moms!

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Young Artist Supplies"

I think the only theme I got for this was "artist" (thus, the title worked into the design). But I wanted to get a little more specific so I decided to go for a generic (in a good way - more universal), elementary school, art supplies look. I wanted it to feel like these were all things you would find when you walked into an elementary school art room - except all these are clean and brand-spanking new supplies. LOL.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Bubble Gum Machines"

Yummy! Even though gum ball flavors lasts all of 20 seconds, I still remember LOVING them as a kid. This is a fun little design I did a while ago, focusing on different gum ball dispensers. I knew the actual sticker sheet was going to be really fun. Even though I didn't have anything to do with color or material selection, I think it turned out great!

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Bug Collector"

This was a sketch I did a while back as well. I figured it went with the Spring season, so I decided to share it here. It was kind of an interesting theme and I thought I did a pretty good job with the sketch… but this was not one of the vectors they asked me to do, so someone on staff did the vector artwork and color selection. They obviously did not care for my butterfly, I guess they felt something a little more traditional was called for.

New Work: Sticker Monday - "Cherry Blossoms"

Whoops, late again. I try… mostly I'm good about posting these updates… unfortunately I injured my drawing hand on Friday and had to give myself the weekend off! Fortunately, I'm healing fine and all appears to be be well on the mend.

So, these are my cherry blossoms. I actually finished them a couple years ago now - so I can't rightly call them "new work", but what are you going to do? The artwork did not change much from sketch to my final vector artwork, but you can see they did change the layout quite a bit after final art was submitted. Usually, they like smaller icons - after all, the smaller the icons, the more icons fit on a sheet, the more perceived value of the sticker sheet. But they enlarged the overall icons here, and it apparently worked. It has been a best seller for them - so much so they came back asked for several more "blossom" designs in this style with different colors later on.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Living Green"

This is another one of my older designs that I never really got to show off. The request came in right after "Green Living" was all the new rage. This was one of those strange, kind of tough-to-nail-down, icon sheets. I was worried it might not translate, but in the end I was very happy with the results. Don't you just love my mushy little not-quite-a-Prius? Cars and transportation vehicles have never really been my thing, so I made it more of a caricature of the actual car - but I really like how the whole sheet came together. Like my Gardening post from a few weeks ago, this seems to tell a little story about being more aware, conscientious, and conservative when it comes to our community & world environments.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Spring Buds & Leaves"

In keeping with the new spring season, here's another spring theme sticker sheet I recently completed. This one is pretty straight forward. I used several light and yellow-greens to convey the "new-ness" message of the theme. I had a lot of fun researching all the strange looking buds as well.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Spring Rainbows"

Hey, tomorrow is Spring! In honor of this new season, and the end of a cold & dreary winter (not to mention exceptionally snowy in some parts of the US) I present one of the more fun sticker sheets I illustrated recently. As usual, the theme was given to me in title only, with no more to go on than that - it was basically left up to my own interpretation. I've always appreciated the clean graphic rainbow, but this theme allowed me to add a bit of twist with blooming flowers and growing leafy vines. It's just so brightly colorful and happy - especially with the butterflies to add a little life in the mix. It's always fun to play around with stylization and graphic simplification.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Gardening"

And so, it is almost springtime! It's time to start thinking about garden plans, needs, and supplies. This is a sheet I worked on a couple years ago, and although I'm not much of a gardener, one I've always been quite fond of. I guess I like the idea of gardening, but I can never seem to get myself out the door to do any! I'm much more of a houseplant aficionado. Give me a Bonsai any day (and yes, I did a sticker sheet for that ;). Anyway, even though it's a theme made up of not-the-most-exciting icons, I guess I've always liked the color and flow of this sheet - it almost tells a complete story of someone about the head to the garden, what they've planned, and what they'll need. That's kind of rare in stickers.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Birdhouses"

It's almost Spring, time to the birdies to come out and play! This is a really fun design I worked on recently. I actually had a lot of fun researching this one, I cannot tell you how many birdhouse styles there are out there, from the plain to the ridiculously ornate. I wish I could have fit more! I decided to stylize the birds a bit more than I normally would for stickers - I wanted to keep things simple with all the birdhouse designs and details.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Ice Skating"

Is it cold where you are? It's been a fairly cold winter so far for me! This made me think of a fun skating theme design I worked on. This design went through quite a few changes along the way - like the original skating bag I included was nixed and a little ice pond scene was requested instead. I liked out it turned out, that little scene just adds enough "fun". This sheet also includes accents in silver foil (the skate blades and some designs on the skates & stars).

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Friends Forever"

So, we're through with Valentine's, but we can still show a little love for our friends, right? This is a tween design I did for the Jolee's product line a while back. This is one of the cases where I wish I got to work with the production team - I think a few things got lost in the translation from sketch to product.

You can see the sketch translated pretty identically, and as usual the color and materials were a surprise to me. I think the colors are great, perfect for tween girls. As usual, I was only given a title subject and just went with it. Some themes are more vague than others, but I thought focusing on the three best "friend" phrases would work here - and then the production came in with all the cool details.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Rose Hearts"

Happy Valentine's Day!
This was design did not start out as a Valentine's theme. At least, not that I know of. I suppose I could have made the assumption with the only direction of the assignment being "heart shapes made of roses". I tried to find traditional and non-tradional ways of showing the requested icons. Some results worked better than others. I was afraid the heart made from petals wouldn't read well in vector art, but it was apparently the heart shaped rose bud that did not - as can be seen in the change made by the production team after I submitted my final art. I'd also tried to keep the colors varied, including oranges and yellows along with the whites, pinks and reds. But this theme was released last month with other Valentine themes, so I guess they felt the need to make the colors more universally Valentine's related/monotone at the production stage as well.

Working digitally makes things much easier/faster with this kind of theme. I only had to draw 3 or 4 detailed rose variations and 4 or 5 rose petal variations, and use them to create all the varied icons on the sheet. Flipping and rotating the individual pieces so duplicate roses can't be easily identified, I pieced it all together like a puzzle (FYI, I created the original sketch the same way, using photoshop). Along with the color changes, it gives the sheet a nice variation of shapes with uniform "building blocks" to hold it all together.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Hearts & Stars"

Happy February! I've never been a big fan of Valentine's Day, but I have done a LOT of heart and love themes stickers. This is one of the most recent, and most experimental/non-conformist of the bunch. I'm still not sure what material they are actually printed on (haven't seen a sample), but during work on this project, they were rumored to be going on chipboard (a rigid and thick material, compared to standard paper adhesive stickers). I was asked for a doodling style which recently became a popular theme itself, on stationery products at the time. As you can see, I initially included words and phrases in the design, but they were eventually removed because they were deemed illegible.

I started out with a very "pop" color theme (cyan, magenta, bright green, black & white), but I was asked to revise to include red. Eventually the green came out all together and magenta, red, and cyan became the final dominant color way. Personally, I really prefer my first submission - layout with text and color, but I still can't wait to see what the actual product looks like. :)

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Baby Toys"

Moving away from the birthday theme a bit, but continuing with more in baby theme this week. This is a lovely simple sticker sheet that I had a lot of fun drawing. It's actually a little hard to choose toys that can be universally recognized and not specifically branded, or at least finding a way of representing them generically. Of course, I have the most fun with the rocking horse. And what a lovely production surprise, several icons in part or wholly in molded resin - very 3D indeed!