Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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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In this video, I am sharing with you a vector path creation technique to speed up the process of creating curved paths by adding intermediate anchor points after your corners have been created. I used to create my anchor points as I was following the curve of the shape I was tracing. Instead, with this technique the anchor points are added to your vector path after your corners have been created, allowing Illustrator to approximate the length of the curve handles for you with much greater accuracy the first time around.

Continue reading 'Adobe Illustrator Video Tip: Quickly Add Smooth Transition Anchor Points'

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

Another brief video in my series introducing some great new features in Photoshop CS4 for artists, cartoonists, illustrators and anyone else who sketches or draws using Photoshop.

This video features the excellent new keyoard shortcuts that allow you to drag-resize the size of the brushes using the mouse pointer.

Continue reading 'Video: Photoshop CS4 Drag-Resize Brush Keyboard Shortcut'

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

Artwork created by & © Enoch Bolles

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

“Suburban Swami” illustration. Artwork created by & © Steve Scott.

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

I recently ran across a link to the London-based Association Of Illustrators AOI Report: Illustration Fees and Standards of Pricing (2007). To sum up what this AOI Report is all about, I’ll quote from them directly:

The information presented in the various tables in this document indicate examples of fees charged in relation to particular jobs or services, based on the AOI’s research and recent survey of the industry. The tables provide information about the variables in costs and gives examples of what factors should be considered as illustrators and clients negotiate fees. It should also be borne in mind that illustrators and clients have agreed fees outside the ranges surveyed here.

There’s a lot of great info here (and be sure to adjust the numbers in your head to your local currency — the pricing on the AOI Report is in UK pounds). It’s always helpful to get an idea of what others in your field are charging for their services to determine of you are charginot too little or too much.

Continue reading 'AOI Report: Illustration Fees and Standards of Pricing'

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

So much good stuff on this guy’s site, I just went with Spidey since he’s my favorite. Be sure to check out his blog for tons of awesome character design.

Spider-Man illustration by artist Sean Galloway. Art created by & © Sean Galloway.

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

Cartoonist and illustrator extraordinaire Tom Richmond has an excellent in-depth guide to drawing hands over on his blog. As per usual with Tom’s instructional articles/blog posts, he goes into far more detail and insight than one could possibly imagine he would have time for, even down to supplying illustrated diagrams explaining everything.

Here’s a quote demonstrating the level of insight you’ll find:

Many people think the knuckle of the finger rests directly behind the crease that represents the base of the finger right under the bottom finger pad. Now turn your hand around. That main knuckle is SIGNIFICANTLY lower on the hand. In fact it’s below the upper pad of the palm that curve below all the fingers. A lot more of your finger resides inside the palm/body than you might think. Understanding that is a big part of figuring out hands.

At some point I can see Tom collating all these posts into a book of some sort. His blog tutorials are better than any book on cartooning I’ve ever seen, and this one is no different.

Probably one of the more difficult parts of the human body to draw, and Tom is a master at the cartoon hand. Head over there and learn from the best.

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

via otomano. Artwork created by & © Vince Locke

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

Another brief video in my instructional series introducing some great new features in Photoshop CS4 for artists, cartoonists, illustrators and anyone else who sketches or draws using Photoshop.

This video features the excellent new Spring-Loaded Keys feature that allows you to access a tool temporarily by holding down the key for that tool, similar to using the Spacebar for the Hand tool – only for every tool in Photoshop now.

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