JaPoppa Brand Concept Logo & Pepper

 

After seeing this,

who would not want a bag of JaPoppa brand Jalapeno Popcorn? 

 Seriously! 

 

This concept logo and brand character of Pappa JaPoppa and his special recipe popcorn was created in Photoshop.  Fun characters like Pappa are a real joy for me to create.  Completely by accident, he ended up resembling a beloved and distinguished real-life friend of mine.  The realization hit during the process, but instead of resisting it, I decided to go with it and see whether it worked...and I love it.

Pappa JaPoppa ended up with a monocle much like another beloved brand bipedal legume who likes to wear tall top hats, but I swear, Mr. Peanut was nowhere in sight when I sat in my sister's kitchen designing this dapper pepper!  After some quick and dirty sketches with SketchPro on a penabled screen, I espunged spectables, tuxedos, leglessness, and muscles from the concept but decided on a monocle, moustache and monobrow.

I always find that rough sketching out ideas helps to get a clear picture of what I want to eventually see, and not want to see in the final concept. 

Monster Illustration for Mobile Game in Vector

This illustration was created completely in Adobe Illustrator using all vector shapes and layer effects.  I had been asked to create a monster illustration for a children's mobile game project providing all assets in Illustrator.  I was given several reference images for a variety of monster styles.  Since one of my own monster characters fit the bill, I decided to waste no time designing a new one and just get down to the nitty-gritty Bezier curve handle-ing.

But, before I opened Illustrator to lay down points, I pulled out my Fujitsu Lifebook with penabled screen and made a concept sketch on Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to keep me on track during the production phase of the Illustrator project.  The sketch was done is a 20 minute sitting and the Illustrator project took a Sunday evening to complete.

A little about how this character was created in the first place.  He, or it, started out as a sketch done while living in South Korea using a mechanical drafting pencils primarily .05 for base and .03 for sharp details.  I was just going with the flow on this one and could see his image on the paper (if you can understand what I mean).  I call it the Monoptic Finger Alien because his legs are flexibly jointed fingers with distinct finger characteristics of knuckle lines, finger nails and rounded ends like finger tips - as to distinguish them from the typical non-jointed, point-tipped structure of tentacles.  The sketch below is lightened to clean up the background of the sketchbook page, but the original drawing lines are darker as I don't care for light handed sketches.