Just posted over at Design Interviews is an interview with yours truly. Jeff Andrews—the mastermind behind not only Design Interviews but also illustrator group sketch blog Sugar Frosted Goodness among others—was kind enough to ask me to answer some questions and provide some artwork to feature me as one of the artists on the site.

Head on over and read up!

Cartoonist/illustrator George Coghill interview at Design Inspiration.

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

Cartooning & Illustration: Recent & Current Work Teaser is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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Just a quick admin note that the blog has been upgraded to WordPress 2.3 from 2.2.1. I used the WordPress Auto-Update plugin for the first time, and it worked great.

In anticipation of the new tagging structure I switched over to the Simple Tagging Plugin earlier, and an now using Simple Tags which is the 2.3 optimized version. Tags were the big thing I was concerned about in the 2.3 upgrade, but all worked fine.

Also some other weirdness of the Similar Posts plugin (related to technical/code details) resulted in my switching to using the related posts option in Simple Tags, although I prefer the look of Similar Posts and it seemed to do a better job. Also keeps the modifications to the K2 theme to a minimum.

Also switched over to the All In One SEO plugin, consolidating many other plugins doing similar functions. This adds all of those and more.

Modified the K2 theme so it is no longer adding the default WordPress description to the description meta-tag of every page. Meta-tag description plugins were creating duplicates, now the descriptions are page-specific as intended all along.

Also, this post should not appear in the RSS feed if the Feed Control plugin is working properly.

Save for my webhost blocking my IP address (all fixed now), everything went much smoother than anticipated, and future upgrades should be painless.

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

Blog updated to WordPress 2.3 is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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Just a quick note that I went into the bowels of WordPress and updated some things — and added new stuff as well.

Most notably, I now have my Flickr photos (drawings, sketches and vector illustration art, actually) automagically appearing in the RSS feed for this blog (via Feedburner). Also upgraded to the newest version of the K2 theme used as the basis for the blog design. Manually updated most of the plugins used on this blog as well, getting ready to upgrade to WordPress 2.3 as soon as I am comfortable doing so. Need to learn how the new tagging system works, and how things will translate from the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin I have been using to date. Default thumbnail resizing in WordPress bumped up to 250 pixels since this is an image-intensive blog. Clicking on posts from the main page ‘continue reading…’ link now jump to the top of the post page via the Striptease Wordpress plugin.

If anyone notices anything kooky, unwelcome or unexpected going on, please let me know.

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

Recent Blog Admin Updates 2007-12-15 is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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Just a quick post to let all you Wacom users out there know that a Wacom driver which supports compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is now available. The new version is 6.05-3.

Just one less thing holding me back from jumping to Leopard, and looking forward to it. Seems the Wacom notes point to an issue with the login window, so most likely your tablet should have been working fine in Leopard for the most part. Nice to know that Wacom has officially looked into things and cleared up the minor glitches.

via MacUpdate

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

Wacom Tablet Driver for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Released is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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The past few months have been insanely busy with projects, and as a result the blog (and it’s readers) have not been getting their due attention. I hope the art, cartooning & illustration del.icio.us links that get auto-blogged in the RSS feed for subscribers have staved off the information withdrawl just a bit.

I’ve had my eyes glued to vector paths, my hands have solidified around the Wacom stylus for many, many weeks now. This is a good thing, a very good thing. However keeping up with promotion, especially or even more so during the busy times, is something all the freelance and small-business resources continually harp on.

Keep an eye out soon for some work-in-progress update posts here, what better outlet to do such a thing is there? I’ve been working on some really fun projects, including an huge group of lifestyle characters, a phoenix school mascot icon (the mythological creature, not the city), tropical fish (including packing design), a toy catalog design, concert posters and more.

Also on the plate with some patient soon-to-be satisfied clients are a gorilla character logo, a street cyclist line of t-shirts, skateboarder kid characters, sexy pinup girls, an ornery leprechaun and much more.

I’ve been working like crazy, messing up my sleep schedule, eating poorly, shaving infrequently and neglecting my social life; in other words — perfect!

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

Cartoons Galore! Blog Posts No More? is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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I just noticed via my blog stats that I was receiving traffic from Wikipedia; turns out my blog post on the Pixelmator release is being cited as a reference on the Pixelmator Wikipedia entry in regards to criticism of the software — specifically the lack of graphics tablet pressure sensitivity.

In the post I actually mention that the Pixelmator creators have that feature on the drawing board for a future release, but I suppose it is a bit of a criticism. I still think Pixelmator is great stuff, but as a Wacom geek the pressure sensitivity is something I have come to rely on in a graphics application.

In particular, I am looking for something lighter than Photoshop to be able to sketch and doodle in. Acorn supports pressure sensitivity, but it’s still a ways off from Photoshop in that the size is affected, but not the opacity. I’m not even sure I would expect that to be included — and definitely wouldn’t consider it a criticism of Acorn as I don’t think it’s one of the intentions of that software. Pixelmator, on the other hand, seems to be striving to become a Photoshop alternative (and I think it’s done a great job so far). I am sure when Pixelmator includes the pressure-sensitivity it will be done with the same care the rest of the app has been given.

Of course, given the nature of Wikipedia that citation could be gone by the time I post this! And no, I didn’t add myself to the entry…

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

Wikipedia Goes Legit is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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I just noticed that the WordPress settings were truncating my RSS feeds, even though I had things set to display full text in the feeds. For now I have reverted to summary-only feed content until I can find a plugin to work around this.

If you’ve been reading posts in an feed aggregator and wondered why the posts seemed to end mysteriously, that’s why. Posts usually have enough content to sink your teeth into, so you may want to go back and read some of the posts from the past month if you weren’t viewing directly on the blog.

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

Blog Update: Truncated Feeds Fixed is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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Graphics tablet manufacturer Wacom has just released graphics tablet driver Mac OS X software update 6.05-2 for the Intuos, Cintique and Graphire products lines. The new feature included is support for the as-yet unreleased Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, due out in October, as well as other unlisted bug fixes.

Windows driver 6.05-7 update is available for Windows Vista, XP & 2000.

It’s great to see the support for upcoming Mac OS X technologies being actively developed, very reassuring to know that your Wacom tablet will continue to run on future software updates. Because once you have a Wacom, you cannot use your computer without it.

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

Wacom Intuos, Cintique & Graphire Driver Updates Released is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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Just posted this funky cartoon skull illustration to my iStockPhoto illustrator account. I was trying to get a good chunk of Halloween imagery uploaded for the upcoming holiday, but with other work projects I just have not had the time to get much done, and it’s getting pretty close to printing deadlines for October/Halloween this year.

Regardless, I have always loved drawing skeletons, and anything Halloween related - monsters, zombies, The Mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula - you name it.

I did get a pumpkin cartoon illustration finished as well, and have sketches ready for a witch in front of the moon on a broomstick and of course a ghost. Those should be uploaded shortly.

For this series I was going for something different, a little more funky than your standard Halloween fare. It took a awhile to settle on a design for the pumpkin, and the final I think had a unique feel to it. The skull also took some time to get the right proportions down, and the end result came out fun. I want to also add a full body to have a complete skeleton.

I sketched these out in a Moleskine softbound notepad, scanned in the drawings and hand vectored in Adobe Illustrator CS3.

Licenses are very reasonably priced, and you get the actual vector art to use for your project.

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

Cartoon Skull & Pumpkin Halloween Art Available for Licensing is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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