Out of all the stuff we bought today Milkman dried milk was by far the best packaging. Ok so the design is a bit ropey and the girls hair is cut out really bad and all pixelated, but I love the illustration, so much better than a photo. Haven’t tried the milk yet though.
Ihad to have a bit of a think before I posted this. Danbooru is particularly not safe for work, I had a fair job finding the relatively clean image above… I don’t really understand all this cartoon porn, but after stumbling across this site, I’m actually quite amazed at the quality of illustration! It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but you’ve got to admire to skill and time and effort put it. Some of it is laugh out loud funny.
Highly detailed, beautifully coloured & moody illustrations by Tomer Hanuka. He has some prints for sale here, also I’m going to check out the comic he’s made. He has a blog here (with a mate), includes plenty of sketches and work in progress, nice.
I‘ve finished drawing all the Crank band members and have made a desktop of them rocking out. You get it in Green, Blue, Yellow or Orange, hope you like it. Remember you can also get each character individually here. I’m really enjoying doing all this Poke band stuff, mainly because it’s all nonsense and just a bit of fun, refreshing change to the world of corporate web design!
Hopefully I’ll have time to finish the comic book story of Professor Crankingstein and his monster cock and how that led to the bands creation! More soon…
Blue:
Yellow:
Orange:
El estratografico has a great collection of vintage comic book sound effect scans. I love the fucked misprinted detail on these.
Via We Heart It.
There’s loads of great cards to by at Nineteen Seventy Three, the ones by Tado are my favourite.
Via What Katie Does.
As I posted about before, Andy Whitlock from Now in Colour is running Early Designs and wants us all to show some examples of our early work and talk about how it compares to the work we’re producing now. It slightly pains me to unearth all this ancient work, but I agree with the principle that it’s quite an interesting thing to see, so here’s some examples of my Early Designs:
Illustration:
I’d say my illustration style has changed a lot over the years. But actually after going through a load of old sketches and stuff, I’d say my hand hand drawn illustration hasn’t changed much at all.
Some stuff like life drawing, I was much better at then than I am now!
I think it’s the tools I use that have changed, this has had the biggest effect on my illustration. The early illustration examples above are hand drawn, pencil and ink. Spirit marker & pencil crayon. I started during 2000 (because of flash) producing vector illustrations, but these were still scanned in ink drawings, then ran through streamline. God do you remember streamline :P
Nowadays in 2008 I use Illustrator as my primary drawing tool. Which generally gives my work a more stylised & simplified look. I think my hand drawn sketches are quite similar to those of the past though.
Design:
I didn’t think I’d have much direct comparison work to show because I didn’t do web or multimedia design at Uni, I was a industrial designer back in the day. So my work (few examples above) is of products not websites. Even though it’s quite different, I can see my sense of fun in the handheld Sgt. Smiles teeth cleaning game for kids. Also my love of all things ancient and industrial, in the timer dials of the flip-top microwave.
Above is more recent web design work, not really a direct comparison, but I think has a similar mood? But wait, while looking through all the old stuff I unearthed a CD containing the first ever website I built! I kind of forgotten that I’d build websites back as early as 2000 - so bear in mind that this was the first thing done by someone self taught… Now re-uploaded and not seen on the web since 2000, here’s one of my final year projects at University called Jibber-Jabber. Makes me cringe a bit, but I am impressed by the amount of man hours that went into that thing…Blighmy when did I ever find time to do any drinking!
Some things haven’t changed much though. I’ve always liked making charts, diagrams and interesting ways of keeping scores. Above is a birthday scorecard type thing I made for a mates 20th birthday. You can see how the more recent King & Queen of Sports scorecard below, is kind of like an evolution along the same lines.
That’s pretty much me done. Hope you enjoyed looking at my old work alongside more recent stuff to see how it compares. Now it’s your turn! Unearth those old college sketch books and post your own Early Designs.
Illustartor & Designer Helen Dardik writes a lovely little blog - Orange you Lucky! Lots of good stuff on there, generally of a cutesy, retro type nature. What I really like are the patterns she designs on a regular basis. Oh just found the link to her portfolio site, check out One lucky Helen, full of good stuff.
Asite I designed and illustrated a while ago has just launched today, it’s the Are you British in Bed Quiz or K-Y Jelly ;)
They’ve got a new product out in the UK called Touch Massage, or how we had to refer to it endlessly in the site - K-Y® brand TOUCH MASSAGE® 2-in-1 Tingling or Warming… that rolls off the tongue nicely doesn’t it! Anyhow it’s a combination of pussy rub and massage oil, to get you all sexed up in the bedroom.
We basically built a sex quiz located in a passport control booth (I didn’t think of the idea!). It’s pretty well done if I don’t say so myself, Dezza & Russ did the flash development, Mattias did the HTML and FaceBook application. So on give it a go, it is actually pretty funny.
If you just want to get your hands on the lube, it’s available from Boots here »
Blighmy this guys good! Ross Macdonald has masses of class work to see on his site, illustrations, comics, movie props like the National Treasure: Book of Secrets above, childrens books and beautiful letterpress design work. Always lovely to a good breadth of work and even nicer that all of it is made with spot on retro/vintage styling.
Can you Adam & Eve it, today I’ve posted about titty twisters, crocheted cocks and now I’m posting an illustration of me and Nicky in the buff, not bad start to the week ;) Download this week’s Desktop here »
While doing a bit of research into vintage tattoos, I came across this amusing list of reasons not to get a tattoo from legendary tattoo artist Sailor Jerry. Check out the site for more old school style tattoos and other such paraphernalia.
I love the anchor tattoos the most:
We see the drawings they make all the time, but who are courtroom artists? Ironic Sans takes a closer look at what a selection of artists do in the courtroom and outside. Interesting stuff.
Courtroom sketch above by Art Lien.
If you’re in Belgium next week, I’d highly recommend the opening night of Eugene & Louise Bakery. The marzipan characters they make are amazing:
And the packaging for their chocolate bars is spot on:
Cheers for the link Asi.
Cookie & Paul are currently walking the 3000 mile long Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada.
Everything about the walk is on the following pages:
1. You can check on our progress here (or below)
2. You can find out more info about the trip here
3. You can sponsor us here
Tracking our progress right across America is no mean feet. Luckily we've had a good deal of help from the kind folks at Nokia, who supplied us with their latest N82 phone with Sports Tracker. It's what we're using to track our route with GPS, take our pictures and write our posts. Finally it's the tool we use to update the blog, whenever we get reception or a wifi area.
Made in England by Gentlemen is a blog written by Cookie, who generally designs websites, draws cartoons, drinks too much, grows a moustache and browses the web for interesting & amusing stuff. But currently the only thing he's doing is walking northwards towards Canada with his mate Paul, if you're not interested in my holiday pics ;) and were hoping for some visual eye candy, may I suggest you check out my girlfriend's blog: Monster-Munch.
