New Technique

Me again :) Yes, I'm back in Münster, yes, here I am hard-working again.
I used the whole day to excercise myself in more realistic photoshop coloration, cos that role play publisher asked me, if I were able to do some colored illustrations for the RPC (Role Play Convention) in april. I have never tried realistic coloration - just my well-known comic styles. But, hey, that first two attemps aren't that bad :)

The colored Mermaid-sketch (look at last post)



A close-up of the face (could be more detailed, but I like that pictorial appearance)



And the face of a Zzing-warrior I did for the role play game.



...based on this sketch.



There will be more tomorrow I hope!

New Sketchbook

Uh, long time no post! Well, I had been pretty busy with the schoolbook illustrations for Cornelsen the last weeks, but I have finished it lately :))
Over the Easter holidays I went home to Bochum ("happy belated easter" by the way) and cos I do not have many possibilities and not the motivation to work there, I started a new sketchbook. The scribbles went out more or less dark and unpaschal due to the fact that I got a new job for another roleplay games publisher and they need the darker side of illustration - a nice change to the "happy happy joy joy"-schoolbook illustrations of the past months.





I like this next two nerdy sketches: The left one was inspired by the visit of the Leipzig bookfair on the last weekend. Some mates and me actually went there cos of the comic-hall that in the end turned out to be a "Just Manga and nothing else"-hall full of cosplay-freaks. "Cosplay" is short for "costume-play" and it means that basically fat and ugly young people disguise themselfe as their favourite Manga character and go to manga-fairs to see and to be seen. I just can say that it was pretty strange, but a valuable experience...
The right one is my modern version of Arielle (without shell-cups :)



So hope I will stay on the ball with sketching (hmm... "am Ball bleiben" - do you have that saying in english, too?) and post more sketches in the next days and weeks! C u !

iik iik

And with this shot I know my illu is in good hands :)

Fred as usual

...the new Fred Fisch-Illu deals with Florida Rolf, the well known german social welfare freeloader and his shady popularity he got by means of the BILD's articles.

Rat as usual

you may think I'm not doing anything but drawing rats. Nope, that's not the case, but I'm not allowed to show the illustrations I do for my commercial jobs in public (you know... the old problem).
So I expand my rat petting zoo by introducing:

Die Wilden (the wild ones)



and Die Waghälse (the daredevils)



the daredevil is the winner of the Kopfkino routs-competition. Gamers were challenged to make up a new and unique rout and send it to the Kopfkino Team. The daredevils by Jens Borjaryn made the race and will be published in the next rats-adventure-book (and the winning author got a print and original sketch of his rat as a price *wow* ;)

The Chinese Year of The Rat

On February the 7th (so one week ago) the Chinese celebrated their New Year 2008. The Chinese calendar is based on an astronomical system and regulated by the moon phases, which causes that the New Year starts on a different day each year (so no wonder I missed the right date :)
I don't wanna talk about the calendar system (just look at wikipedia if you are interested in it), but about the fact that the New Year 2008 is the year of the rat! Yeah! So after my last year's efforts to draw mean, ugly and mutated rats I thought it was time for some serious rat sketches to please the great Chinese Rat God :P...

Happy New Year!

Logos

Cap

...or is it me... :-?

The Return of the Fred

I have to admit, I was happy when Backmedia asked me to draw Fred Fisch again. That oafish shark was the main character of a monthly columne in the trade magazine for the backery industry called "Backjournal".
I started drawing him in 2002 and never understood why they wanted a shark to present newsworthy books. Due to internal changes in the publishing house, the last Fred Fish column was published in autumn 2006, and after this time I didn't hear anything from them until last week. So I had to reanimate the desiccated shark (that was already smelling like rotten fishbones by the way ;) and let him present the book "The penguin principal" (don't ask me what it's about... something about helping penguins, the publishing house told me...)



And actually I don't really like to colour with water colours, but this pic turned out well. A good start in a new Fred-era I think :D

Sketches

Between childish schoolbook illustration and bloody rats I tried to do some "serious" sketching stuff again. That mullah guy I drew with reference and did some photoshop-edit to make the sketches look more finished.