Retro Pixel Background for Keep the Heat

To celebrate hitting 500,000 subscribes Alex of YouTube's Keep the Heat fame commissioned this fresh new background. It was a fun challenge since I had never created anything with this pixelated look before but I think it came out great.

Working with Alex is always a good time since he always has a fun new idea. I'm glad that I'm his go-to illustrator!

Toothless Illustration for Humpty Dumpty Magazine

If you check out the new issue of Humpty Dumpty Magazine you'll find my work on the back cover. The piece accompanies a poem by Jody Jensen Shaffer called "Toothless". Below you can see some of the concept sketches. The first attempt (far left) came out a bit too scary looking to be age appropriate so I created two more sketches as options and we went with the latter one.

2011 Winter Wallpaper

It took a while for me to get around to this with workload, Christmas holidays, and a new baby in the house, but here it is at last, a fresh new wallpaper for 2011. If all goes well I'll have 3 more this year - one for each season. So please check back in April for the next installment.

Since Blogger limits image sizes to 1600x1000 pixels, go here if you'd like to download the full size wallpaper.

Elf Cam

I recently had the honour of working on this iPhone App project called Elf Cam with Wet Nose Design. It's a really fun app that lets you see Santa come down your chimney as well as a multitude of other functions. I find the Ask An Elf videos particularly enjoyable!Make sure you download yours today!

Wet Nose Design was a joy to work with on the project as they allowed me a lot of creative freedom, and had lots of good input, and a good vision of what the final product should look like. This was hopefully the first of many apps that I get to work on.

New Location, Same Great Marcus

It's been a very busy time for me and my wife these last few months. We're expecting our first child in a matter of weeks and so have moved to Windsor, Ontario to be closer to family. If you'd like to contact me my email and fax number are the same, but please note the change of phone number in the image above.

So You Want to Work With an Illustrator

 
I created this animation in response to clients who have approached me with questions about the process involved when working with an illustrator. I can understand the apprehension, but hopefully it will answer some of their questions. This movie can also be found on YouTube, so please feel free to post it, and share it with others as you see fit!

This is my first ever animation. It was a lot of work, and a very steep learning curve was involved. I'll take you through the process below.

My first step was to do a whole bunch of research into animation. I've had some of my illustration work adapted into animation in the past so I had a good understanding of how to construct the illustrations, plus I had some past experience using Adobe Flash so I had a good starting point.

Lynda.com was my sole resource for learning the software involved for the animation and music. If you've never checked out their service it's worth your time. For the actual animation theory I turned to The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. I'd recommend it to any who have an interest in animation.

Adobe After Effects was the workhorse behind the animation. While I'm aware that I've barely scratched the surface of the program, I now have a decent understanding of how to use it for my immediate needs.

The expanded "Marcus Puppet" showing all the parts involved.

I wrote a script and made a storyboard, both of which we're altered during the process as I learned what I was doing along the way. A big lesson that I learned was that it's extremely helpful to have it all sorted out in the beginning rather than having to fudge with it down the road. I then created most of the illustrations that I would need, adding a few more during the animating process (again, it's better to get this all organized ahead of time).

I bought a nice usb microphone and recorded the voices. A big thanks to my very helpful and co-operative wife Holly for voicing the role of Suzie. The audio was then edited and refined in Adobe Soundbooth which I also learned through Lynda.com.

I started animating from the first shot and went shot by shot until the end. If you watch the animation closely you'll see my skills improve as it goes. The first bits are way too over animated and it looks like my character is flopping around like a fish. The cliche holds true kiddies; less is more!

I completed the animation and added the sound effects which were found at SoundJay.com. The music was composed in Garage Band which luckily came preloaded on my Mac. And it was all put together in Adobe Premier Pro. Once again, thanks to Lynda.com for teaching me to use both those programs.

Even though it was somewhat arduous, I had a good time making it. Hopefully I'll be able to create some more animated projects down the road.

On Shelves Now!

Wow, exciting week! In one day I received copies of both Turtle Magazine and The Writer Magazine which both feature my work. The piece for Turtle was created to accompany the poem City Street by Betty L. Hass. Many thanks to Bart Rivers for the super fun assignment!

The piece for The Writer was for an article by Lynn Capehart titled The Importance of Inclusionary Writing. It's a very interesting article about how many white writers will only describe a character in terms of race if they're non-white. It's a more heady topic than I'm used to, but I think it turned out great, thanks in large part to Ron Kovatch the magazine's Senior Editor.