August 9th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
This is just a small sample of a larger poster/publication cover job I did back in May for an NBA related project. Depicted is current NBA czar David Stern. I am not sure I’ll ever get permission to share the entire image. . . it seems to be one of those jobs where once the work is done there are complications with the project and it may never see the light of day. Who knows? Some jobs are like that. If I ever do get the go-ahead to show it here, I will certainly do so. READ MORE
August 2nd, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
Final art- Clicky to embiggen As promised, here are the inks and color final of my latest workplace poster assignment. This was a tricky one, as the wrong attitude/expression on the “Peter Peter” character and you have a whole different message. Also I wanted to have some fun playing with the lighting but I knew I could not have the kids depicted trick or treating in the full dark. The inks . . . Clicky to embiggen READ MORE
July 6th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
For those who asked, here is the final of that piece I was working on in my Cintiq review video in yesterday’s post. Pencil roughs and inks below. As always, clicky to embiggen any image. READ MORE
July 3rd, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
I received this email the other day from a reader: Hi Tom, You are a prolific artist. I was wondering if you could do a blog showing the time-line of your normal work day? I think this might help to explain how you get so much done and what new artists, (including my self), might wish to emulate to achieve more productivity in their own pursuits. Thank you for all your insight. Tom Breitling Thanks for the email, Tom! I thought this would make a good blog article rather than a “Sunday Mailbag”. I can’t really put together a daily “time-line” because there really isn’t… READ MORE
June 15th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2hhgbEau5k[/youtube] MAD’s Al Jaffee spends two minutes giving you some of the best advice about being a professional freelance artist you will ever hear. Via the Daily Cartoonist via Mike Lynch. READ MORE
May 3rd, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
Clicky to Embiggen… This two page-spread illustration appears in the May issue of Sports Illustrated for Kids. It illustrates an article on the Oklahoma City Thunder pro basketball team. The gag with the nesting dolls is twofold. First, it depicts how their “inside game” is integral to their success, and also how most of the players were more-or-less anonymous behind Kevin Durant (until this year, anyway). The players shown (left to right): Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Serge Ibaka, Kendrick Perkins. A bit of a departure from my usual style, which is always fun to do. READ MORE
April 27th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
Clicky to Embiggen . . . Here is my 2012 page in the illustrator’s sourcebook The Directory of Illustration no. 29. I had to search for quite a while to find images from the past year (or ones I had not used before and liked) for this one. It just seems like I didn’t do many smaller/stand alone images that would work well in this kind of layout. . . too many $#@%$@ crowd scenes last year! READ MORE
March 8th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRuzVKSX-1Q[/youtube] Here’s another animated commercial for director Ray Griggs and Swiss America I did some design work on. The Bernanke, Reagan and Obama characters I had designed for previous videos, and I did a series of “ghost” versions of some other famous (and dead) politicians that appear very briefly in the last few seconds. These were not character designs that were going to be 3D animated but single illustrations meant to approximate the look of the 3D animations for the quick look onscreen. I don’t think we quite pulled that off . . . too much contrast and too much of a linear, cartoon look… READ MORE
