Well, so much for regular blog updates. It’s not my fault, honest, I mistakenly purchased a Playstation 3 and lost a month’s worth of free time to Metal Gear Solid. Blogging has suffered, but on the bright side I’d probably be able to infiltrate an enemy base armed only with a chloroform-soaked hanky and a swanky bandana – if ever I needed to…

Thankfully however, the design work has continued parallel to bouts of virtual espionage. Mostly I’ve been working on small commissions to try and raise a bit of cash, but there has been time for personal work too. It’s definitely important to keep the fun stuff going alongside professional commissions, as it helps to maintain and develop your individual style.

Early last month I was cordially invited by my talented friends Chrissy and Leanne to collaborate on a fun little project for Peperami, who were looking for innovative ways to advertise their new ‘Peperami Bites’. Leaving the expert character designer to work up some expert character designsand the expert storyboarder to produce an expert storyboard, I set to work on a couple of print campaigns to support the main concept.

I thought the combined results were fantastic, but only time will tell if the Peperami-folk agree!

So overall I suppose three lessons have been learned this month:

1) Personal work is good, make work for fun not just for money.

2) It’s good to collaborate, different people have different strengths and you will learn a great deal by working with them.

3) No matter how much time you waste playing games, you will never be as cool as Solid Snake.

In celebration of all things horrific, I’ve submitted three new abominations to the Threadless Loves Horror II Competition.

Nyctophobia II is the sequel to my original Nyctophobia design, Lily is a more subtle approach to the theme taken from my old project on Phobias, and Elemental Rapture is a re-imagining of the old biblical concept of apocalypse.

If you get a chance, swing by and cast your vote.

Thankies!

Well, I don’t really know where to start with this one folks. I’ve had quite a lot of work on this month, continuing my work for Clooci alongside a few other freelance endeavours.

For starters I designed a counter-top point of sale stand for Mimobot EU, to display their wonderful products in stores nationwide. With all the calculations involved I was glad of my long forgotten GCSE Maths classes. Two things surprised me about this: 1) I was able to recall enough of it to complete the task with brain intact and 2) You really do need maths in everyday life! Sorry Ms Allen, I thought you were lying.

Next up was the catalogue, which had to be designed from scratch and made ready for print within quite a tight timeframe of two weeks, hence the broad chasm between blogs of late. It was quite a challenge, but I learned a great deal about designing marketing collateral and everyone was pleased with the outcome. The pages have been blown up to cover a Clooci exhibition stand at this years Autumn Fair, so pop along and have a look, if you happen to live in Birmingham!

Ken and I also had the chance to make some more 3D anaglyphs for the Clooci press kit, which is always fun even though hours spent staring at a computer screen in a pair of red and cyan shades invariably culminates in a spectacular seizure.

Following all this, we were each asked to design a Mimobot of our own for the European market, and potentially for the US market too, as long as enough people like it! If you have a spare few minutes, all votes are gratefully accepted, and all voters will receive virtual cookies for their efforts*

In other news, my design for Southsea Deck Your Chairs has been made up into a proper deckchair, and is currently posing for photographs all around Portsmouth. I hear it’s even going to be in a few shop windows, which is very exciting! You can see most of the photographs on Flickr, and it’s definitely worth checking out the website, where you can even buy one of the chairs if you fancy a nice sit down.

And finally, I worked on a Logo design for a Hampshire-based company called tecVISION recently and I’m heading up there on the 10th to interview for the role of temporary art worker. Wish me luck, and I’ll let you know how it went upon my return!

Meanwhile if you want to get in touch, you have many different options available thanks to my shiny new Contact page, but for now I’ll give my fingers and your eyes a well deserved rest and bid you goodnight.

‘Til next time!

*Subject to terms and conditions. Virtual confectionary is not transferrable to the material realm and therefore not fit for human consumption.

Thanks to a kind invitation by my good friend and indigenous industrialist, Ken Leung, I’ve been collaborating on several freelance projects for Clooci, a cool company concerned with all things contemporary, collectable and geek-chic.

It’s been a great experience so far, striding out of the old pen and paper comfort zone to work on, amongst other things, a Mimobot exhibit for Top Drawer Autumn and a point of sale display stand for retail stores. They’ve even been kind enough to promote us on their website alongside some fantastic artists.

Also, I finally got around to designing a logo for illustration booth, which inspired a new header for the site.

All I need now is a catchy tagline to go underneath. I was thinking something like, “Illustration Booth: let your spirit soar!” but ideally I’d like something slightly less poop. Any suggestions?