Hello 2013...

Year of the snake and all that...

Hope you have a good one!


Shane

Blue Nose Friends Sunset Snow House and end of year recap

Image courtesy of Carte Blanche Greetings Ltd

So 2012 is nearly over, and it's been an interesting year to say the least.  The first half started out pretty much as normal; Working away on Blue Nose Friends illustrations and squeezing in the odd personal piece when by amazing, but very distracting, 1 year old son allowed.

Then the greetings industry started to change, some well established high street names nearly went under, and I realised that I needed a safety net.  So with the intention of building a freelance client base I spent the latter half of the year putting together a portfolio, website (stop by www.ShaneMadeArt.com!), business cards and a cool little pack to send out.  Beyond freelance opportunities I also hoped to use this work to break into the videogame industry, so I headed off to the Eurogamer Expo to show my stuff.  Although I received some excellent and positive feedback from some well respected industry professionals, it also made me realise that maybe the industry I choose isn't as important as I think it is, as long I enjoy what I'm doing.

This was further confirmed after attending the Schoolism.com live workshop in London and listening to the advice of Bobby Chiu.  Inspirational is an understatement;  After the four hour lecture I finally felt I had direction, and that direction was to do what I loved doing and do it well.

So although I had put a LOT of work into my videogames focussed portfolio, it turns out it hadn't gone unnoticed.  Soon after I was offered pretty much the best job I could possibly get within the greetings industry, a role with so much potential it's almost daunting!  So I packed up my pencils and left the home of Tatty Teddy.  For better or worse this obviously means that I will no longer be illustrating My Blue Nose Friends, therefore the above image will be the last MBNF christmas image I ever post - it was used on this years Blue Nose Friends advent calendar by the way.  It's been a good run but I'm glad to move on to something different and stretch my artistic legs a bit.

2013 is going to be a super exciting year for me and I hope to show of some of the work I've done for my new employer as soon as I can.  In the meantime I still have a few unseen pieces to keep things ticking over.

This blog will live on!



Have a great Christmas and a fulfilling new year,

All the best,

Shane

Dust Bunny

A finished painting of this earlier sketch done for my new portfolio site over at www.ShaneMadeArt.com.

Fur is always fun, but challenging, to paint.

Shane

Phew...glad that's over

After a month long absence I'm finally back to get this blog back up and running.

Rather than enjoying the sun I've been frantically working on my website, portfolio and a few other promotional bits (that I'll post about on here in the coming weeks) in an attempt to break into the daunting world of freelance illustration.

So if you have a few minutes please stop by www.ShaneMadeArt.com and let me know what you think...good or bad.  In time this blog will be altered to match my website and eventually they'll be integrated.

Until next time here's my newly created logo;

It represents the fact that I like to illustrate both cute and creepy subjects, and sometimes a combination of both.  It's based on the idea of the kind of creature that would hatch from this "Hybrid Egg" that I previously used as a placeholder image while the site was being built.  Pretty apt I guess!

Shane

Quaint toy fireplace

Image courtesy of Carte Blanche Greetings Ltd

A painting used as a decal inside "Tatty Teddy's heart shaped house", a new toy that's part of a range from Worlds Apart.

In the snap below you can see it on TV, the second time my artwork's been shown on the small screen (the first was the result of a competition I entered when I was 8 so it doesn't really count);

Check out www.TattyTeddyToys.com to see the rest of the toy range.

Shane

Sketch commissions

A few recent sketch commisions.

Want one of your own?  Send me a message and I'll see what I can do.

Shane

Blue Nose Friends Character designs Part 3

Images courtesy of Carte Blanche Greetings Ltd

Part three of the ongoing series where I post some of the Blue Nose Friends characters I have designed which made it onto store shelves in plush form.

From the top;
Float the Manatee
Ramble the Centipede
Shelter the Woodlouse
Treetops the Gorilla (actually based on an initial concept by my colleague, I illustrated the final design)
Ocean the Sea turtle
Foo the Pug

As usual, stop by Mybluenosefriends.com or your local card retailer (in the UK) to buy them!

Shane

Cute, creepy and everything in between...

After ten years of using free gallery sites to show my work to the world I've finally bought my own little corner of the web and am creating a dedicated portfolio site.

Turns out that things have changed quite a bit since I last dabbled with HTML back in 2000, so it's taking a bit longer than expected to get everything to a state I'm happy with.  Until the main site is ready you'll be greeted with a good old 'Under Construction' placeholder page displaying the weird thing above.

What is it?  It started out as an egg that's meant to be half nice and sweet, and half creepy and gross to show that I enjoy illustrating cute things as well as um...not so cute things.

Successful or not, it was a good oppertunity to experiment with different textures and lighting.

To see the hybrid egg in it's natural habitat head over to www.ShaneMadeArt.com.

Shane

Tatty Teddy and Blue Nose Friends Sky Scape

Image courtesy of Carte Blanche Greetings

An image used in a kind of trailer animation for the newly released Tatty Teddy and My Blue Nose Friends toys.

This is what I call the 'Sky Scape', an aerial kingdom found within the sky door (to be shown in a future post).

About the new toys, got to www.tattyteddytoys.com to check them out; Your small female relatives will love 'em!

Shane

Woody and Buzz watercolour

I painted this a few months ago for a very poorly little boy who loves Toy Story.  His favourite character is Woody, and his twin brother's is Buzz.  The final version included both of their names side by side on the soles of the character's touching feet.  I didn't think it was appropriate to post that version online but it does add some context to the poses if you visualise it.

As cheesy as it sounds, the original Toy Story means a lot to me.  Along with it's influence on my artistic development (which you can read about here), I used to watch it with my little brother when he was a toddler and the soundtrack as much as the visuals bring back a lot of great memories of time spent with him.  Now thirteen years later I plan on watching it all over again with my own little boy.

I can't imagine how it must feel to watch your child suffer and not be able to do anything to help, and that's what made this so heartbreaking to paint as a new parent myself.  Toy Story also has a pretty emotional soundtrack, unfortunately listening to it while trying to paint wasn't very productive - it was hard to see the details through teary eyes.


Shane