Illustrations that Personalize a Business to Clients

Every fall and winter I draw a number of holiday greeting cards – and now e-cards – for businesses who like to show the human face of their company to their customers. Some-times I draw the staff themselves, sometimes I use humor to engage industry trends, but in all cases the card is created to personalize the company’s brand so their clients get to know and like the people behind the logo more.

This year Gina Furia of Furia Rubel Communications, an integrated marketing and public relations company serving many industries, asked me to draw her and her staff of delightful marketing experts in an office scene, which would be used on a card and in an animation. In the scene Gina would be interviewing Father Time while her staff zooms in through a virtual meeting.

I started with a rough pencil sketch of the scene –

After some edits from my client, like adding her husky dog, I tightened it up a little –

and then was able to scan and digitally color the background and each figure, such as those below.

I put it all together, along with Gina’s caption, for the printed card –

and the little trailer cartoon that appears on the back of the card –

and then FRC worked with an animation company to turn it into a video greeting as well! Click he image to watch.

Animated video for a business

My friend Jake Toyberman is a realtor with extensive banking and investment knowledge – having come from a banking career into real estate – and he posts tips and trends for home buyers, sellers and investors on various social media platforms. I recently worked with Jake’s media advisor, Amy Berridge, to create a fun animated intro for Jake’s short but insightful posts.

To show Jake and Amy what I pictured for the intro, I roughed out pencil sketches of homes, condos and keywords and faded them into a scene using Windows MovieMaker. Click the triangle to play the rough animation.

I drew a caricature of Jake and dropped him into the scene, along with some of his business contact info.

After getting good feedback from Amy and Jake, I added more contact information, and then drew the finished artwork. Jake said he liked the look of the black & white artwork and I agreed, so we kept the intro black/white, and I found some fun music to overlay the video, (music by: http://www.bensound.com) completing the upbeat feel of the intro.

Music: http://www.bensound.com

And just recently Amy assembled the intro and Jake’s latest tips into a new post for his social media promotions.

It was a pleasure to work with Jake & Amy on this, and I recommend them both highly for their expertise!

Distance Dancing

“I call it: Dance of the Social Distancers.”

Click the arrow to animate.

Especially for Temple University Graduates

I’m playing around with animated GIFs and would like to share this one I drew. Temple University’s graduation ceremonies are this Thursday, so please feel free to share this on social media or send in an email to a 2019 grad.

(for sharing in an email, click the ‘insert photo’ icon at the bottom of your email screen and when the box appears asking you to upload or give a URL address, copy & paste this URL into that field: https://media.giphy.com/media/VJfDubcBZH5zxII9Ri/giphy.gif – then click ‘insert’)

Best wishes to all the graduates! (especially Temple grads – Go Owls!)

Snow and the Groundhog

I drew this a while back but it seems appropriate for today in the Delaware Valley. Click on the link below the picture to enjoy a little cartoon animation, with music.

https://achillesportfolio.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/the-shadow-knows/

Illustration for a Nutrition Slideshow

Recently I illustrated about two dozen slideshow scenes for a doctor who gives talks on nutrition and metabolism. One scene I enjoyed doing showed a ‘Paleo’ family during the winter months. The client wanted a family of parents and four children preparing for winter, around a primitive dwelling.

My first pencil sketch had the family getting ready for a hunt and adding skins to insulate the dwelling like this:

I did this rough color sketch using colored pencils –

The client wanted it to be deeper into winter, with lots of snow on the ground, birds migrating in the background and snow flurrying through the air – he even wanted you to be able to see their breath in the air. I put the finished art together using the computer to colorize the scene, and then put progressive slides of the steps into Windows Movie Maker to make the brief animation below. It shows my process of laying in the background and then dropping in the Paleo people, which I drew and colorized separately.

 

 

 

 

 

Holiday Video for a Marketing Firm

I’ve been drawing the staff of Furia Rubel Communications for over 10 years now for their holiday cards, and in the last few years FRC has also been animating my drawings into a video greeting to their associates and clients. Gina always slides a clever reference to their integrated marketing strategies into the card’s message, as in this year’s card. I send her pencil sketches of ideas – some mine, some of theirs – and the FRC team picks which scene to draw for this year’s card. I draw most individuals separately for the animation, as well as a separate background scene and important furniture pieces.

FRC’s trademark is to have elves be an integral part of the story. The finished card illustration this year looks like this –

– the top half being the front of the card, the lower half the back. The imaginative animation does quite a bit to make everyone move and speak:

 

 

Pretty clever, I’d say!

 

Merry Christmas!

My Christmas Greeting

To all my family and friends, colleagues in the arts, and also to my much-appreciated clients:

See you all in 2016!

Cartoon Animation for a Book Trailer

My friend, humor writer Mary Fran Bontempo, has written another funny and insightful book for women, to be released soon — The Woman’s Book of Dirty Words. It follows on the themes and success of her previous humor book, Not Ready for Granny Panties, which detailed:her ’11 Commandments for Avoiding Granny Panties.’  I was once again delighted to draw some cartoons for Mary Fran’s chapter headings, and when we were done tweaking the interior and cover art, she thought it would be fun to create a little animated sequence to promote the book, using the character.we developed for the cover.

Mary Fran suggested the action for the little scene, and I made a partial version of it to work out some of the movement, with just a pencil sketch of the figure.  Here’s how the 20-second partial version looked:

From this experiment I drew the full color character and made this finished 1-minute book trailer:

I used Windows MovieMaker for this animation. It is done fairly traditionally – I drew the character in various poses and made jpgs of her moving across the background, gesturing, etc., then put them in sequence into MovieMaker and added ‘fade’ transitions between frames to blur the transitions between actions.

When the book’s in full release, I will post more about it and the cartoons I made for it. I highly recommend The Woman’s Book of Dirty Words, by Mary Fran Bontempo – it’s very funny reading, especially for us gals, and would make a great gift!