Zen Grenade Blog

Like raisins? Like oranges? How about a raisin that tastes like an orange? Or for that matter any other kind of fruit? This is what I've been working on this week. Rough character sketch and final design are below. n.b. Amazin' Raisin Logo was supplied by the client.

Back in 1994 , when I was working as an assistant animator at Amblimation studios in London. I noticed that some of the animators had pics of Audrey Hepburn pinned up alongside the usual approved modelsheets and reference photos. this struck me as odd because we were working on Balto, a movie primarily about sled dogs in Alaska.

It turned out that the female lead, a Siberian husky called Jenna, was based at least in part on Audrey Hepburn. As strange as this may seem. Amongst the animation community, Audrey Hepburn is widely considered to have had THE most perfectly proportioned female face, a face that  I suspect has been used many times over the years as a model for animated heroines and yes, even animated animals. 

It has been documented that Audrey was the original inspiration for Tom Oreb's princess Aurora character design from Disney's 1959 movie, Sleeping Beauty and again 32 years later with Mark Henn and James Baxter's Belle from Beauty & The Beast. Therefore it does seem that there is some truth to the notion that was held by the ancient Greeks that true beauty always conforms to certain timeless proportions and as such is not subject to the vagaries of fashion. 

Above: From woof to waif Jenna - Audrey comparison

Now, I don't normally do caricatures, or portraits of  famous people, but I thought that it would be highly remiss for someone like myself  who calls himself a character designer, not to at least attempt to get on the Audrey Hepburn bandwagon so here's my take on the gorgeous Audrey below.

I was recently asked to come up with a rough design for a mean looking biker character by Interactive game company Betsoft. The character wasn't used in the end but here are some of the rough sketches which were part of the design process.

Question: What do a lizard, a mouse a stork, a bear and a fox have to do with the world's largest radio telescope?
Answer: The animals are a group of characters that I was asked asked to create in order to explain the workings of the S.K.A ( That's the Square kilometre array) to children in the 9 - 14 age bracket. They live in a desert but the country couldn't be too specific as that hasn't been decided. So no monkeys or kangaroos in the group, although South Africa and Australia have been shortlisted as potential locations.

Here is an excerpt from the first comic together and some rough scribbles that were part of the layout process

To download the first 2 comics and visit the SKA Telescope website please go here.

http://www.skatelescope.org/

This is something new for me but I've been asked to design a mural for our local cheeseshop. The original inspiration was a birthday card which features mice looking longingly into the window of a cheeseshop which you can see below. I wanted to do something similar while avoiding a complete rip off of the original, so I came up with the idea of a gang of "jewel thief" mice a la Mission Impossible except the jewels would be rounds of cheese rather than diamond necklaces.

So I came up with this initial rough sketch.

Keith , the owner of the cheeseshop liked the concept but thought the mice were a bit sinister looking  so I redesigned the mice and made them cuter and more generic.

Here's the final sketch and mock up, made in Illustrator and Photoshop

So now we just need to get on and do the hard bit, actually painting  the mural, so I'll keep you posted about that.

Here's another free clip from my video.

I recently posted the above finished Jungle Girl Pin Up image on my Deviant Art page, where you can also buy it as a print. Here's the final You Tube video in this series showing me colouring her up in Adobe illustrator. Hi Res files for this image are also available for download from the Zengrenade Shop

After many requests, I finally got around to producing a video that shows in detail my method of inking and colouring using Adobe Illustrator. The video is one hour long and shows how I create the various different custom brushes I use in my artwork, how to create dynamic  colour and shade using gradients and many other tips and tricks that I use to speed up my workflow.

I've uploaded a free preview clip here

And the full video is available to download now from the Zen grenade shop for a mere $7.99