Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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.

Continue reading 'Sexy Bail Bondswoman'

by George Coghill -
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Although technically these tips apply to any graphics software, this particular tutorial over at Spoon Graphics focuses on the exact steps to set up bleeds for print design in your document within Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. The method to do so in other graphics application might be slightly different, but these walkthroughs should give you enough info to apply it to non-Adobe software.

Continue reading 'Setting Up Bleeds For Print Design In Creative Suite'

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

A cartoon illustration & design project for a friend’s party required the resulting art to be suitable for reproduction on a photocopy machine. After some trial, error, Google search, trial, error, Google search, trial, error I discovered the magic combo that allows you to create a halftone in Photoshop for an image and print it out on your inkjet printer so the art will be perfect for photocopying.

This technique is perfect for flyers, newsletters or any other short-run printing needs you have where the cheapness of a photocopy is desired, but so are grayscale images.

Continue reading 'Cartoon Art & Halftones Tutorial: From Inkjet Printer to Photocopier'

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

If you aren’t familiar with cartoonist Tom Richmond, make yourself familiar. This guy’s work is absolutely amazing. Very much in the style of Mort Drucker from MAD Magazine — only taken to the extreme. Not only is his cartooning & caricature style excellent, but his color work is also phenomenal. Tom graciously has taken the time to outline exactly how he digitally colors his artwork in Photoshop in a juicily-detailed three-post tutorial/how-to series on his cartooning blog.

Continue reading 'Digital Coloring Tutorials by MAD Magazine cartoonist Tom Richmond'

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

Genopal is a color scheme generator software application I just stumbled across, and it’s pretty interesting.

Instead of the standard color wheels most color scheme generator/explorer software programs utilize, Genopal doesn’t give you the option of choosing a color model such as Complimentary, Triadic and such. Instead there are two sliders, one for Color Diversity and one for Lightness Diversity. There’s a “Generate” button which them cycles though color schemes as analagous or as wild as you set the sliders.

Continue reading 'Genopal Color Scheme Generator Software: Weird Name, Cool Tool'

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

Primary, secondary, tertiary, complimentary, analagous, brightness, hue, value, saturation, tints, shades… do these words mean anything to you? They should.

A post by cartoonist Matt Glover points out ColorFAQ – very basic web guide to color theory. It got me poking around on the internet for some other sites with some more depth on the subject. Sometimes I forget how much I use color theory every single day, it’s just something that sometimes goes on autopilot and is an easy topic to forget to recommend to others.

Continue reading 'Color Theory Resources'

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

I touched on the awesomeness of using multiple pencil grades in a previous post on essential cartoonist tools before, but there’s a great overview specifically on pencil grades by cartoonist Matt Glover. There’s some decent additional pencil grade classification information over at Wikipedia as well.

Find out what those cryptic “2B”, “HB”, “6H” and the rest really mean. Knowing the difference, having a full set of pencils with all the grades in the range is a must. This is the way to lay down very thick, dark blacks in your drawings as well as fine, light grays. It’s all in the blackness and hardness my friends.

Continue reading 'Pencil Grades: An Overview'

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

Still using that pencil you found in the couch and an old dictionary as a drawing board? Don’t feel like the biggest computer wiz when it comes to graphics software? There are plenty of inexpensive tools out there that will boost your productivity and enjoyment level when drawing, sketching or just doodling. And you don’t have to spend a ton of money to expand your tool kit in ways that are sure to make your life much easier, giving you more time to draw.

Continue reading 'Ten Essential Low-Tech (and Cheap!) Tools for Cartoonists & Illustrators'

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

Creative Bits has a neat informal poll going on about readers preferences for working on concepts: do you sketch with pencil & paper, or jump straight to the computer and work on the graphics software to start?

You can read my 2¢ in the comments section regarding the gradual takeover of the Wacom tablet and my Photoshop sketching habits. I still work on paper, but I find myself more and more finishing up sketches in Photoshop due to the endless flexibility I have to tweak and refine while I am perfecting things.

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