a smart girl's guide to money

I'm going to be doing more posts like this one soon.  That is, posts where I get to reveal a project that has been done for what feels like an eternity!  

I illustrated this book, A Smart Girls' Guide to Money, and it's partner, Making Money, almost a year ago.  I just got a big old box of them on my doorstep a few days ago, and I have to admit, no matter how many times it happens, it's always exciting to see your work in print and bound together as a book.

These books in particular are very, VERY dense with illustration.  There was at a least an illustration per page, and sometimes multiple illustrations or images that spread across more than one page.  A lot of work, in other words!

Things I had to learn while working on these books:

-how to design stacks of money in an appealing way

-how to design a box of receipts in an appealing way

-how to draw girls of every body type and ethnicity between the ages of 8 and 12 (it was easy to go to young and too old and I did both at times...the tweenage years are tough to draw!)

-how to design an illustration that packs many, many ideas into itself at once (the art notes for this book were DETAILED)

-how to have fun with an idea that could otherwise be very dry, like illustrating some credit cards, or a bank building. I had to make it fun for myself.  

Anyway, the books are published by American Girl (yes, THAT American Girl!) and they'll be available next month.  I have to admit, even though I'm supposed to be a grown up lady, I actually did learn a lot about money from reading the text as I worked on it.  It's VERY smart, and yet very easy to understand, and if you know a young girl with an entrepreneurial spirit, I'd say you've found yourself a birthday/Xmas/whatever gift if there ever was one.   Here's your sneak peak at what's inside!

where does kitty go in the rain?

It's been a looooooooong summer, guys.  

It started out great with trips and anticipation, but it ended in the most bummer-est way possible.  Without getting into too, too much detail, there was a death in my husband's immediate family and any of you out there who have lost someone close to you know how that goes...it SUCKS. 

But sucky times seem to be drawing to a close now, and we're moving forward into fall!

School is starting!  It's my third year teaching at CalArts in the Character Animation department, and it is pretty fantastic. 

Me and Sean have an anniversary/birthday trip to look forward to in October!

It will no longer be one-billion-million-jillion degrees outside!  (Those of you in Los Angeles know what I mean: it's been freaking HOT.)

I have a couple big, important, awesome projects that I get to dive into head first!

It's all good stuff!

These illustrations are from a book I illustrated for Blue Apple LAST summer.  That's one of the toughest things about working in publishing.  You have to wait THIS LONG to share stuff!

It's an e-book, for the iPad and such, but I understand that it's going to be printed eventually as well.  I didn't actually know that while I was illustrating it, however, so there's a lot of things resting in the "gutter" on these pages.  Gutter is the fancy word for 'middle of the page where the crease in the book usually is'.  A good rule of thumb for all you would-be illustrators: don't put things in the gutter.  

The story is very cute and simple: a little girl wonders where her cat hangs out when it's raining outside, and she goes out to find him, and sees bugs and worms and stuff.

This is the title page.  I really like how that cloud turned out.  

I played with color a LOOOOOT on this project.  It would have been easy, but super dreary, to make every page gray and blue and rainy looking.  Instead I decided to try making the background colors different shades of desaturated, soft color, so it feels cool and rainy but not out and out sad.

And then yeah...the sun breaks out at the end and girlfriend finds her kitty!  I think this is my favorite spread, probably because I can very accurately remember squeezing my own cat in this exact fashion.  

faith and lola

12x12, photoshop!

Here's a little illustration I did for Australian clothing label Faith and Lola.  Best part of this deal: they paid me in clothes.  That is like...a dream.

My inspirations for this piece were: actual faith and lola dresses, 1960's fashion illustrations, and cornflowers.  Cornflowers are beautiful and you should google image search them immediately.

happy holidays

I know it's kinda early...but is it?

This is the holiday card I designed for 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Echo Park, Los Angeles!  They are super great and awesome.  

I never ever ever work for free (if you ask I'll say no) but when they inquired as to whether I'd be willing to donate some time + energy to illustrate a holiday card for them I said yes.   I just really believe that what they do is fantastic.  

If you live in the area, you can visit their Time Travel Mart store front (the front of the space is a little store, and the back of the space is a big giant room where they tutor the kiddies).  The store is very silly, and very very fun.  If you live in San Francisco you might be familiar with the Pirate Store, it's founded by the same folks.  

Read your kid a book!!!  And happy holidays.

cheer book art

While digging around in the folders on my desktop looking for stuff to update my portfolio with, I ran across many (many many) folders of artwork from the CHEER! series that I worked on last year.  Then I realized that I never posted any of it!  I guess I was waiting for the books to come out and kinda forgot!  It all works out because now I can post my favorite drawings from the third, fourth and fifth books altogether.  

Unfortunately, the last two books had very, very few illustrations in them at all.  I guess they weren't selling so hot and they had to cut back where they could, so the books went from having about 80 illustrations total to having about 12.  Ah well, it was fun while it lasted!

This is one of my favorites from all 5 books.  This girl is in love with Dustin-something-pop-icon-kid (basically Justin Bieber), so I got to draw really silly, jacked up versions of Justin.  The narrator, like myself at that tender high school age, really doesn't get the whole boy band infatuation thing.

The team mascot in the book is this wall-eyed bear costume.  Ha ha!

These are "artsy" kids.  I like the kid with the cameras.  He's really into photography, man!

A fashion blogger type!

I always like drawing tea cups.  Or coffee cups.  Any cups, really.

New York boys.  Too cool for school!

Little spice dudes!

Another Dustin-Justin, signing autographs with a booger in his nose.  

Did anyone else have teachers that looked like this?  80's blouses, miserable wrinkly face, sensible shoes?  I think all of mine were this way.  

Who hasn't wished they could high five someone through the computer screen?  Is anyone working on this technology?

These were all done in good old fashioned Photoshop, by the way.  I used a scratchy-inky brush.

In other news, I have a big THING to share with you soon and it has to do with 

Disneyland 

and Toy Story 

and Mickey Mouse 

and t-shirts 

and vinyl toys. 

 Doesn't that sound cryptic-ly exciting?? 

 I can't divulge any specific stuff YET (well, they actually gave me an official blurb I could post on my blog but it is so obviously not written by me that you'd probably be offended that I posted it at all, assuming I thought I could trick you, and then you'd be mad and never come back, right?) but as soon as it all goes down I'll post lots of pictures and it will be great!

an album cover

My super talented musician friend Brian asked my husband and I if we would make a cover for his album, and of course we said yes, and even though it took me a while to get around to it it's finally (mostly) done (except we haven't figured out the text quite yet).  

So it's really a collaboration between the three of us: it's Brian's concept -- that it should feel like his old apartment where he wrote most of the songs, Sean's layout/grayscale pass, and my color and painting.  

This is how it turned out!

I still really don't understand light, or lighting, or how to make something look all pretty and luminous with colors.  It seems that whenever I ask someone to explain it to me, they're all "Oh it's just a bunch of photoshop filters!  You just screw around with it until it looks right!"  WHAT.  

Since I have no idea what to make of that advice, I just googled a bunch of images with nice afternoon-ish lighting and then made little color keys based on those.  

The last one, which is the warmest, and really feels like Brian's old place to me, is the one we went with.  

Here's husband's drawing!  Sean doesn't get himself out there on the internet much (I know because I googled him and there's really barely anything of his out there besides some Adventure Time stuff: he story boarded Tree Trunks!), so I thought I'd post this.  He's the Background Supervisor on Gravity Falls now, so expect to hear a lot about that when it comes out in a few months!

He kind of slap-dashed the organ together because he couldn't remember what it looked like.  It is based on a real instrument though. Look!

Aren't those colorful keys enticing?  It looks like a big toy.  

dum dum girls

The Dum Dum Girls are al all-girl band.  They wear lots of black and fancy tights and red lipstick and they sound real good!  I've seen them play a couple of times before and they are one of those bands that really sounds best live, I think.  

I love how they all dress in black.  Why don't bands art direct their costumes more often??  It's so effective at making them feel like they go together. 

Look at them go in this video!

 

I think the text on this is a little wonky but hey, I'm no graphic designer.  

In other news, I'm pretty not-busy right now.  It's nice to have time to do things like fan art for bands I like, but I'm starting to get stir crazy.   I like having a BIG project to work on!  Also I like to be paid for it!  So I can buy clothes and then write about them on my other blog!  But that's how the freelance life goes, ebbs and flows, and lots of blog updates.  

stereo girl

I did this for my friend's zine!  I remember wanting to make zines when I was in high school and college, and then never doing it.   Sometimes I would even do a bunch of drawings and be like, "This is for the the ZINE!" And then the drawings would sit there forever and ever the end.

I'm not sure where this girl came from.  I did a super rough sketch of her a few years ago and I just liked the idea that her clothes (and maybe also her body?) are like a stereo, but a cool analog stereo, that plays how she feels.

In these drawings she's in a joyful dance-y kind of mood!

What's she dancing to?  Maybe THIS?  That song always makes me feel joyfully dance-y, even though it's not necessarily super dance-able.

Or THIS?  I mean, you can't really argue with that.

In other news, I've been around old CalArts a lot this week looking at student portfolios!  I have a workshop-stype situation going on.  SO MANY PORTFOLIOS!  It's great though.  I get to meet the students and hang around in the faculty lounge.  I'll be there next week too!   Busy busy!

perfect princess day

The e-book (that's electronic book) that I did for JibJab Jr. is now available!  It's specifically designed for the iPad (which I guess technically makes it an ibook, too?), and like JibJab's most well known internet goodies, it has a special customization aspect to it: you can insert your little darling's FACE right into the picture!

Or your own face, I suppose.  

This is really only a tiny selection of the final illustrations...there are 22 pages of girly goodness in all.  

Here are a few pages from Perfect Princess Day:

This book has lots and LOTS of animation in it!  All kinds of stuff moves!  I didn't animate it though.  Some talented cats over at JibJab did.  

Because it was meant to be animated, and I knew that someone was going to rummaging through my photoshop files (which usually never ever happens in illustration), it was super important to keep all the layers organized and labeled and separated.  Which was extremely time-consuming, but also absolutely necessary.

Another thing unique to this project was the whole insert-your-face-here idea.  It took me a while to adjust my brain to the concept that there would be, and there was meant to be, a photographic face in the midst of my illustration.  I know it doesn't seem like a big deal but I was trippin', regardless.  That grey void is where your face is supposed to be.  

Considering the animation aspect was a new thing, too!  Although my background is in animation I honestly hadn't thought much about it in...well, a long time.  Setting things up and allowing room for limbs and wings and faces to move around was a (kind of) new experience.  

I had the chance to imagine my own versions of the classic princesses: Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty.  That was fun!  Because the photo head would inevitably be a child's, I wanted to keep the body proportions child like so it wouldn't be like, a baby head on a grown up lady's body.  Ick. The rest of the princesses are ageless but very young versions of themselves as well.  Also, I took every opportunity possible to make Sleeping Beauty asleep.  Lazy girl.  

Oh yeah, and I got to draw fairies, too!

What does it look like animated, you say?  Here are some clips from JibJab Jr.'s Vimeo:

Perfect Princess Day - Page 18 from JibJab Jr. on Vimeo.

There are  more clips on their channel, too!

You can get the JibJab Jr. app and this book from the iPad Book Store!  Oh yeah, and you have to have an iPad to read it.  (I don't have one either.)