Yoink

I have been working hard… in an office. It’s going well, but beyond a few doodles, no artistry has been done. So why is this blog post?

Last night I received an email, reporting that my Ackbarpography design can be bought for $23.94 here on RedBubble, an online art community / shop.

I didn’t put it there.

Source: Fat-pie.com
Source: Fat-pie.com

I generally use a simple non-commercial attribution license: Marvel all you like, if you share mention me, don’t modify, personal use only. Still, someone crudely lifting my work and slapping their own name on is bad. Add onto that that I sold the commercial rights for it to online clothing company SplitReason.com. They’re being nicked from too.

RedBubble have a handy DMCA reporting link on every page, so gathering my evidence and flinging them an email was a piece of cake. I’ve also sent a heads-up to SplitReason. Acknowledgment have been received, and I await the hammer to fall.

A big crude watermark is now plastered over Ackbarpography here and on DeviantArt, but i’m not fully convinced by this action. It was covered on several blogs, so several smaller but unobscured pictures exist. The copy I exhibit on Flickr is also currently free as a bird. It could still be pilfered from those places, and the art’s very origin will appear as the most unattractive of all Google Images results.

Source: Footprint Theatre Inc. Attribution is fun!
Source: Footprint Theatre Inc. Attribution is fun!

There may still be clones out there, on tiny outlet sites i’ve never heard of. It’s not all about ol’ fish head either – My other works could have been nabbed. So what’s a guy to do?

Well, I guess it comes down to vigilance. If you see a design somewhere, then, erm, somewhere else, figure out how free it’s allowed to be. Trace the origin. Let the starving artist / fancy business know!

Puffins, Dogs and the 3rd Dimension

February was a busy month: After Hourly Comic Day (see previous post), I had a project to return to.

The Puffin Digital Prize 2011 is not so much a prize as a contest. Running from late November to February 28th, the brief was to storyboard a children’s picture book… for iPad. At least 2 spreads had to be fully finished, while the rest could be rough layouts & sketches.

The submission guidelines contradicted themselves, there was no hotline, and the hot-email-address server broke. Nevertheless, I persevered and got it done!

The end result is 775 words, with 9 finished images (6 complete pages), 24 doodles, and a pile of digital post-it notes.

No, you can’t see it yet.

…Alright, i’ll give you one image (and not the best one):

Highland Terrier using a kite as a hang-glider
I should explain, it’s about unconventional dog racing.

This contest also reintroduced me to Fineliner pens – I was a fool to ever let them go.
Here’s hoping for a shortlisting!

And now, on to the second item. A man in Hebden Bridge is taking a year out to teach himself and others about 3D filming, and he hopes to get a project going. Here’s his article from the local paper last week.
I went to the first meeting on Tuesday – he’s a thoroughly nice chap who knows his stuff, and you should have seen the test footage!

There's some of this, but it's mainly about the new, better 3D.
There’s some of this, but it’s mainly about the new, better 3D.

I’ve passed his article on to my old uni lecturer (now the Dean of Computing), to see if any undergrads are interested. If you’re interested, give H. Clegg a shout!

A Day of Drawing

February 1st was Hourly Comic Day. Once a year, amateurs and professionals alike draw an hour-by-hour account of their day (ideally as the hour to be drawn is coming to a close). Some people ink & colour their pics later, while others just scan their doodles.

This year, I joined in for the first time. You can click the below image to view it.

Carl Mitchell's Hourly Comic Day 2011
Like Hansel, i’m so hot right now.

The forum for this years event, where you can see dozens upon dozens of hourly comics, is right this way.

In other news, this site’s asthetic was bugging me, so i’ve upgraded it again!
To provide more visual interest and definition I introduced a coffee colour, shuffled things around, changed font sizes. Gradients appeared as I learned the wonders of -moz-linear-gradient and -webkit-gradient. Code’s been cleaned up.

Finally, I added a little Geek-ster egg which is easy enough to find (hint: less than 200 pixels down), but not that easy to figure out 100%. Tee hee.

Little Grey Cels

Howdy!
There are now a few images in my flickr photostream of Cliffe the Caterpillar in the wild. To cut to the chase, here are the direct links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Second off the bench, something new:

Poirot cartoon poster - click for full size
If he gathers everyone in a drawing room, watch out!

A poster for Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, if there had been a 1950s animated serial. Inspired by (and borrowing the woman from) this backdrop from When Magoo Flew.

Last topic – quick fixes. The tag search page is improved, and it seems the way this blog’s CMS manages pages broke some of the links to my contact page. Needless to say, that’s now been fixed, but it’s a good thing I put contact info in every page’s footer too!

Now I must be going; Current events include a job interview, a friend’s show, preparations for Cliffe II: Caterpillar Harder, and a family matter.

And I hope you all had your 2 minutes of silence this morning.

An animal and Animus

The second part of the “Cliffe the Caterpillar” project has been pushed back towards Halloween, but the first half has already gone to print. I’ve been invited to the opening of Cliffe Castle’s nature trail next weekend, where the finished boards will be! I’ve seen a preview sheet, but I must get some pictures of the real thing in the wild.

Aside from that, Filmstock has been continuing his web-series based on Animus (a superhero role-playing game), and asked me to help him replace an abandoned shoot with a quick ‘animatic’ episode. Two of the eight panels below:

Penny helps Scott into the garden.
Penny helps Scott into the garden.
Shadow Man heals Scott while Penny & Peter watch
Shadow Man heals Scott while Penny & Peter watch.

Finally, a few tiny tweaks to the site. Cliffe has joined the portfolio, i’ve re-jigged the social network icons, changed the Featured Works, and updated the union logos on Jailbreak poster 2011.

Update: The Animus video is now live – My drawings are around 1min 25secs in.

Many, many Caterpillars

A scant few days after my last post, I was offered a commission!

Cliffe Castle museum are revamping their materials, including the boards for a nature trail. They decided that their rather “dry” images for the children’s sections weren’t cutting it anymore. “Cliffe the Caterpillar” would be born!

Cliffe the Caterpillar - first sketches
Initial sketches. Caterpillar #9, ‘The Devil’s Hotdog’, was quickly dismissed.

The first stage of this project was to produce images of a caterpillar’s four life stages… to go on the five information boards. Ah. Easily solved by adding “emerging from chrysalis” as the fifth picture.

I provided some rough inks of a range of caterpillars, eggs and chrysalides to choose from, allowing them to mix & match parts for their ideal mascot. Once the final design was sorted, the chosen images could be polished up supremely.

Cliffe the Caterpillar - Some concept inks

We’re still hammering out who owns the rights to the final images, so i’ll play it safe and show you one Cliffe, a bit faded & through a watermark:

Cliffe The Caterpillar, life stage 2 (watermarked)

The project continues into October, with the creation of Cliffe reading a map, eating leaves and suchlike.
*Yes, that does mean there is Cliffe The Caterpillar The Butterfly. Don’t be too logical.