This sexy bail bondswoman cartoon character design was created for—you guessed it, a bail bondswoman. The client wanted a woman character design that was sexy, but not too sexy, and had to be professional-looking as well.

After working on some initial rough sketches, I realized we needed a prop to make her stand out as a bail bond agent. I thought a big chunky ring of skeleton keys would be perfect to get the idea across that she had the keys to freedom in her hands.

A very rough sketch was worked up with pencil on paper, then scanned into Photoshop for cleanup:

The cleaned up sketch in Photoshop, with some rough tone added:

Note the cleaned up sketch is considerably different that the original rough sketch. Typically for my rough sketches I work very fast and loose. I want to get the overall feel of the character and the general proportions down. When the sketch is brought into Photoshop, I have much more flexibility to tweak, resize elements and the like. Sometimes the intermediate sketch stages are lost due to erasing, but lately I have been saving all the phases of the sketch stage in the Photoshop file so I have a reference for later.

While the client was pleased in general, she asked to see a more leggy, sexy version of the character. I worked up a rough version to give her a quick idea of how it might look:

I think this version has some potential (but would definitely get some reworking if we were to have gone with this approach for the final character; the head needs some serious fixing). The client decided that this was a bit more sexy than she wanted, and approved the earlier rough sketch.

With the client’s OK, I went back to the initial rough sketch and cleaned everything up to prep it for use as a template in Adobe Illustrator, where I create the final color artwork.

The woman character herself didn’t change much from the rough sketch, but you’ll note the keys got some more attention. I wanted those to really be dynamic, and also enlarged them a bit so they were a bit more prominent. A careful observer will see that I pulled the keys & hand from the unused sketch, then enlarged them for use in this final sketch.

This final sketch was approved by the client and ready for the vector art stage. The final sketch was placed into Adobe Illustrator as a template, and used to create the hand-created vector art paths. Once the color was complete, hair highlights and overall shading was added.

We went through a few small rounds of color tweaks, most notably n the hair color. The original had an orange that was less red than the final seen here.

Great project, great client and I was very pleased with the final artwork for the cartoon character.

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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Sexy Bail Bondswoman is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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This cartoon character of a Young Marine was created for a custom t-shirt design for a regional Young Marines troop. I was contacted by the troop leader to create an original character that not only represented an iconic Young Marine, but also had some humor to it.

The client had some specifics that had to be in the artwork—mainly the hat, the uniform and the insignias. With the word “Marines” firmly planted in my mind, I began to work on some rough sketches, the best of which I scanned into Photoshop to begin the refinement process.

Above is my initial rough sketch sent to the client for feedback. Usually at this stage I like to get some dialog started before I start sketching too much, to make sure I am on the same page as the client. While the client liked the overall direction of the artwork—particularly the hat covering the eyes, he felt it might be a bit too old of a character. The young men in the Young Marines are usually around 12 to 14 years old.

I had envisioned more of the “ideal” Young Marine that perhaps the guys in the troop saw themselves as, but the client rightly wanted to see a younger-looking version of the character.

My next sketch (above) was an awkward reworking of the original body with a new, younger-looking face. We also started to emphasize the ears more in this version. Again, the client thought this was better, but still not what he had in mind. we went through a few more variations, but I still was not “getting” the look.

It began to become clear to me that I was fixated on the initial body I had sketched. Going back over some photos of the actual kids in the client’s troop, and clearing my mind as best I could of the existing sketches, I was able very quickly to work up the following all-new character sketch:

Keep in mind that at this stage, the client was OK with one of the earlier variations I had created. The problem was that I was not satisfied that I had created the right character for this project. The character sketch above was something I went back to work on after getting an OK from a different sketch. However, once I showed this concept he immediately saw what I did and knew this was the guy.

What I think made this version successful was going back to the source photos as opposed to my earlier sketches. Draw from life, or at least the photos.

With the general concept approved and agreed on, I went to work on the details and refinements:

Hat insignia was added, proportions tweaked and details to the uniform were added. I also got a crash course in salutes during this project. If you look closely at saluting hand in the initial rough sketch and compare it to this cleaned up sketch, you’ll see there are slight variations in the angle and positioning. Also the non-saluting hand was fixed to conform to the standards.

Sometimes clients feel sheepish about pointing out all these details, but from my perspective the details are what make the characters perfect. And who better to let me know details like this than the client, who knows their world far more intimately than I do.

With this sketch, the client approved to move to the final color art:

Being a screenprinted t-shirt design, we needed to keep the colors to as little as possible. Black and a flesh tone were unavoidable. I was as creative as possible with the chest ribbons to make it appear that there were more colors than there actually are, and also re-use the colors from the arm insignia. Since the insignias play such a distinctive role in the look of the uniform, the client insisted they be included. And with a camouflage uniform, I had to work with multiple colors there as well.

On a technical note, I created the camouflage by taking the fill color of the uniform, copying those vector objects to a new layer and then using those shapes as a clipping path. That way I could just freeform create the camouflage pattern shapes without having to worry about where they met the line art.

The final t-shirt design just had some basic text added per the client’s wishes.

All in all, a very fun project and a great client with a great sense of humor. He put up with all of my “civilian” lack of military knowledge with good humor. We were both very pleased with how the final Young Marine cartoon character came out.

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Young Marine T-Shirt Illustration is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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This t-shirt design was created for the 2009 Ohio Canal Corridor’s annual River Sweep event. The Ohio Canal Corridor exists to create a park system that follows the route of the historic Ohio Canal. River Sweep is an annual volunteer cleanup event, and part of the gift package that volunteers receive is a t-shirt. I have been working with the Ohio Canal Corridor for a few years now designing the -t-shirts.

The initial sketch started out in a much different direction, as seen below. I was thinking much more frog than Statue of Liberty, and the client had more Statue of Liberty in mind with some frog elements. The frog is the mascot of the River Sweep event, and the ongoing theme is to work a frog into various famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa and American Gothic (some past themes we created for the t-shirts).

Back to the drawing board, with a new rough sketch of the Statue of Liberty as the focus. The client also wanted to include elements of a burning river, a small poke at the history of the Cuyahoga River catching on fire some tears ago (it’s much better now).

The client approved this rough sketch, so I went to work creating the final line art sketch. I knew I wanted to go with a clean-line illustrated quality for this one, as opposed to a more cartoon-style approach. I felt it would read better as the Statue of Liberty if the illustration were more formal, allowing the frog element to work better. Below is the working sketch for the line art. Created using a Wacom graphics tablet and Adobe Photoshop.

You can see we added a tire to swap out the tablet in Liberty’s arm—a small joke to reflect the “cleanup” aspect of River Sweep. Nice suggestion from the client.

At this point I left the frog face blank, as I wanted this to read as the Statue of Liberty first, and then match the style of the frog face to the existing line art.

Once the Statue’s line art was complete, I added the face of the frog. The face is a bit exaggerated as far as size, as I wanted it to read well.

This artwork was approved and I went to the vector art stage in Adobe Illustrator. Once all the line art was complete, I started working with the background elements. Being a screenprinted t-shirt design, one must take into account the limited number of colors available to print. In this case, we were looking to stay at around 4 or 5 colors.

My initial design is below.

The client loved the overall look of the design, but wanted more color. I experimented with variations on the sky, using the red and yellow already present in the flames.

The above approach was intended to minimize the impact of the red  and yellow so it didn’t take too much attention away from the focus of the frog/Statur of Liberty. As I expected, the client asked to see a red and yellow version with the expanding rays from the initial design.

Above is the revised design, with some tweaks to the rays; I increased the number of them, but we all agreed it was a bit busy. The red and yellow rays were definitely how the client wanted to proceed.

Above is the final design, the rays spaced out a bit more. I think in the end, considering the limited color palette we had to work with, that this final design worked out great.

by George Coghill -
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River Sweep 2009 T-Shirt Illustration is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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This was an interesting project. I was contracted to created a cartoon fish mascot character for a niche fishing tool—basically it’s an air bladder deflate gizmo for fishermen so they can sport fish deeper-sea fish and release the expanded air in the fish’s buoyancy air bladder when they arrive at the surface. this allows the fishermen to release the fish back into the water without permanently harming them.

After an initial phone discussion with the client, I was mailed the existing packaging (as I was to also re-design the packaging) as well as some rough sketches drawn by the client to give me an idea of the fish they wanted to see. Typically when clients do send rough drawings, it’s with the “it’s not the greatest” disclaimer, but I actually encourage clients to suck up the ego and send these over. The more information I have from a client about what they have envisioned for the project, the better.

I like to get as much of an understanding of not only what they want created, but also how they envision the final art.

I created a few rough sketch concepts for the fish character, but unfortunately only scanned in the one that I ended up using for the final. I would have liked to have shown the other rough concepts here. As you can see from the rough sketch (above), this guy made it pretty much intact to the final art.

I sent over this rough sketch to the client to make sure I was headed in the right direction and we were on the same page. Client replied with an enthusiastic “yes” and I moved on the clean up and finalize the sketch for the vector art.

Above you see the cleaned up artwork. As this character was intended to be worked into a full logo with an optional tagline, I placed the cleaned up sketch into Adobe Illustrator so I could work on some grayscale concepts. After many iterations, I settled on the version below and send the mockup over to the client for his OK. Again, he was very pleased with the look and approved everything so I could move to the vector art phase.

From there it was just a matter of creating the vector art for the fish and adding color to the existing logo elements already mocked up in Illustrator. As we were working on the color art for the logo, the client realized he needed to get new business cards designed to match the new look of his product. As he wanted to have these ASAP, I created the design of the business cards before completing the packaging design.

Fairly obviously, I went with a blue theme for the design work—it compliments the bluish-green of the fish character nicely, and of course conveys the concept of water/sea/ocean. A slightly alternate of the logo was used for the biz cards—no tagline, and no background oval. I wanted the product name and the fish character to have a floating feel on the card over the dark blue bottom border.

The business cards were designed in Adobe InDesign CS4.

Next, the packaging design. The product very much resembles a ball-point pen, and the packaging is a poly bag with a 2-sided printed insert. A folded “hangtag” (not sure if that is the correct term) would then be stapled over the top opening of the poly bag once the insert and device were inserted.

For reference, I have included the original packaging to compare the re-design to what the client had before:

A few things I made sure to tweak were the emphasis on the “Catch & Release” phrase alongside the left-hand side of the packaging. This was important to the client and it was lost in the original packaging. Also, the choice of background imagery in the original was far too distracting for the text overlaid upon it; this was simplified to a graphical representation of waves to let the text speak. I also suggested the addition of the initial text “Save a fish’s life!” since this was what the product does, and was a sort of call to action to the potential customer. I wanted to sum up what the somewhat lengthy description was trying to get across in as basic and short a phrase as possible.

For the detailed instructions on the back, in general the approach was to make the two methods visually distinct, and also clean up the raggedy centered text with justified paragraphs as well as indenting the text from the numbered steps again for more visual clarity. The superfluous boxes behind the images were eliminated—again to give an open, floating feel to the design.

The packaging was aslo design using Adobe InDesign CS4.

The client couldn’t have been more pleased with the final art and design for the entire project, and I too was very satisfied with the final result.

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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Bends Mender is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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This project was a blast to work on—very cool client and a fun theme How can you beat drawing a surfer dude holding a gyro/souvlaki while surfing a giant wave in front of a Greek temple?

This project came about after the client had commissioned a previous artist to illustrate the logo for “Surfin’ Souvlaki”, which was the client’s new restaurant. The results were less than satisfactory, and after finding me he knew I was the right illustrator for the job.

The final artwork was intended for use not only as the restaurant logo, but also for use on the sign on the front of the store. As the client had already purchased a large sheet of diamond-shaped steel, I needed to work up a the illustration to fit within this shape.

This was one of those projects where I envisioned the artwork pretty much right off the bat. I worked up a rough sketch and then fine tuned the character in a bit more detail as I wanted to flesh him out a bit more when presenting to the client:

The client loved the sketch, and had a few slight modifications. Overall it was good enough to work up the background details and to start fine-tuning the character art:

The wave was kind of a pain in the neck to get just right. the rough sketches seemed as if they would just draw themselves, but when I got into finalized them I found them very difficult to get the look I wanted.

After getting some feedback from the client, he mentioned that he would prefer a Japanese-style wave, which ended up being the right way to go and ended up as the final:

Interestingly, one of the toughest things on this project was getting the Greek “key” pattern down for the full storefront sign design. I ended up discovering this online Greek key pattern generator, which I was able to use to create the vector borders in Adobe Illustrator.

Once the final art was hand-created as vector art in Adobe Illustrator, the diamond-shaped frame was created and the illustration was masked. Some slight tweaking of the waves was necessary to make it fir in the final border.

Styled text was created again in Adobe Illustrator, using the Offset Path appearance feature to create the multi-outlined effect.

I really love how everything came together for the final art—the surfer character, the background, the overall sign design, even the gyro! The client was extremely happy with the final art as well.

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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Surfin’ Souvlaki is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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This sketch was for a client that went MIA after we got started on the project. The theme was for a “USA” branded pinup style girl — the draped fabric was to be a United States flag.

I think the drapery was coming along nicely, but I know I was dreading making all the Stars & Stripes read realistically enough. Probably wouldn’t have been as hard as I imagined though.

She’s been sitting in my hard drive long enough and I liked how this was coming along so I thought I would share.

by George Coghill -
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“Liberty Girl” Cartoon Character Pinup Sketch is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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Working color vector art for a mascot character project. The ogre will be used as a mascot for a video game portal website. We needed a prop and I suggested a video game controller, the client wanted to go with an old-school Atari 2600 controller, which I think looks great. it’s such an iconic design it really reads well, which is important for smaller sizes.

Client asked for two versions, one a “thumbs up” version as well as a more “dumb” version of him scratching his head:

Vector artwork created in Adobe Illustrator CS4 using a Wacom Intuos4 graphics tablet.

Here’s the very rough initial sketch I created in pencil on paper to get a feel for the look of the guy:

I always work very rough and loose to get the feel for the character, and then work on refining the character in Photoshop (note I am still working very rough at this stage):

Working on layers helps immensely. In this case I wanted the legs just a little bit larger. Also did some further refining to the line art:

A little more refining and some rough tone:

At this stage, I suggested to the client that perhaps to brand the character more closely to the video game theme, we should swap the club with a video game controller. The client suggested the old-school Atari 2600 controller, and I couldn’t have agreed more:

You’ll note in the above sketch that I left in a reference photo I used for the hand. I used Apple’s Photo Booth to capture the image with my webcam, dragged the snapshot right from the Photo Booth tray on to the Photoshop icon in the Dock, then copied & pasted into the Photoshop sketch file.

Client enthusiastically approved the Atari version, and the final line art drawing was finished to use as the template for the final vector art:

An alternate version with the ogre giving a “thumbs up” was also created, with some small tweaks to the brow and eyes. From here the art was placed into Adobe Illustrator and the vector art was hand-created using the Pen tool and a Wacom Intuos graphics tablet.

Initially the ogre was too green in color (I was given a lesson in true ogre skin color from the gamer’s perspective on this project):

Since I created all the main color areas as global swatches in Illustrator, the colors were easily tweaked to the finals you see at the beginning of this post.

by George Coghill -
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Cartoon Ogre Mascot Character is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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This character was created for a company providing online, off-site file backup solutions. They wanted a character that would embody the idea of safe, secure and encrypted. Hence, the big key, the secure briefcase handcuffed to the character, the binary code reflected in the sunglasses “Matrix” style.

I knew from the outset that I wanted to go with a “bodyguard” or “secret service agent” look to the character, and that he needed to be big and tough to an exaggerated degree. Read on for more info on this project as well as some insight into the sketching process…

The general look of the character was maintained through out the process from the early rough sketches, with details and refinements added, in particular the addition of the crewcut hair, the handcuff-secured briefcase and the big key.

The client had worked with other artists to create this character to disappointing results until contacting me for the project. We had a very tight deadline, but both principals of the company felt after a detailed phone call that I was the right artist for this mascot character project, and we got to work.

The clients were very pleased with the character at every stage, even going as far to tell me they felt like kids on Christmas morning waiting to see the next variation or revision as the character was slowly being realized.

Both the client and myself were very pleased with the final results.

Initial rough sketches were scanned into Adobe Photoshop CS4, and then cleanup and revisions done entirely in Photoshop with a Wacom Intuos4 graphics tablet.

Final art was created with hand-created vector art in Adobe Illustrator CS4 and the aformentioned Intuos4 tablet.

Here’s a very early rough sketch for the character. This was not sent to the client, but rather used for me as a starting point to get the overall proportions and the general feel down. Note how loose things are, almost like a gesture sketch. And note the use of geometric shapes, particularly in the legs—one large, one smaller circle overlapped. The upper body is also based on semi-circles and triangles:

Here’s a more refined sketch tweaked in Photoshop, based off the rough version. Legs were changed considerably to make him more human and less cartoony. I also reduced the proportion of the legs to the body:

Client very much liked the look of the character, but wanted to add props that said “security”:

Arms changed, props added. We even played with the idea of a tattoo, but I suggested it might get lost at smaller sizes and we shouldn’t rely on it as something to “sell” the character. the skeleton key wasn’t working for the client:

And then it was agreed that he should be less “commando” and more “secret service”:

The legs were streamlined to work with the suit. This was pretty much OKed by the client for the final art, so I went into the finished sketch:

Small tweaks to the position of the lips/mouth, and the head was slightly enlarged. Client asked if we could try some different hairstyles (including facial hair), and the flattop was agreed upon as the best choice:

From here the final art was cleaned up and placed in Adobe Illustrator as a template to create the final hand-created color vector art.

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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Bodyguard Cartoon Mascot Character Illustration is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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It’s been a long time since I’ve updated my blog with recent work, I have been (gladly) super busy with client projects, deadlines and upcoming work that I need to make time for now. A lot of really great cartooning projects have been recently wrapped up, with lots more good stuff on the digital drawing board right now.

The image above is a quick teaser showcasing some of the recent work — both finished and in progress — including: a cartoon Marines character for a t-shirt design for a Young Marines troop, a cartoon monster character for a self-published children’s book project I was just awarded, a cartoon ogre mascot for a video game portal website, an “inventor Mom” character with her home made robot, a tough security guard/body guard mascot character for an online data storage company, a puppy dog mascot character, a surfer character for a gyro/souvlaki restaurant, a frog version of the Statue of Liberty for the Ohio Canal Corridor’s annual event t-shirt, more avatar portrait illustrations for the Cleveland, Ohio travel & visitors bureau Positively Cleveland, and a fish mascot character and logo for a niche fishing utility product.

Whew! And that’s just the most recent. There’s lots more on the plate right now that’s upcoming, including novelty product concept & turnaround art, cartoon-style footwear designs for toddler’s shoes, and a space-themed t-shirt design for an upcoming cake design competition.

I’l be posting in-depth posts on all of the above work once things settle back to a less hectic pace. For now, I just wanted to pop my head up from the desk and get a teaser of some of my recent artwork up here. Lots of good stuff coming soon!

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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Cartooning & Illustration: Recent & Current Work Teaser is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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The “Oblong Ogre” is my most recent entry for the weekly Monster Monday monster art sketchblog.

This artwork was created entirely in Adobe Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet. As per my usual process, the rough sketch was worked up very loosely, then that Photoshop layer was flipped. A new refined sketch layer was then created where I worked up the sketch in more detail, using the two previous sketches as a guide for both the line work and for a symmetry guide.

Once the line art was finished, I added a flat color layer, with additional shading and highlight layers above. The shading layer is set to the Multiply blend mode, and the highlight layer set to Screen blend mode.

I have recently found that you can get pretty good results by just using the exact color you are shading or highlights and just using the appropriate shading/highlights layer. In the past I was selecting specific colors, but it seems the blend mode does the trick pretty nicely. I do find that I need to add multiple shading layers to get the proper darkness for some of the shadows though.

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Oblong Ogre is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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