Friar’s Club – Monk Character Design and Animated GIFs Champagne Juggling Monk
In 2012 I had the distinct honor of being asked by the legendary New York Friar’s Club, to create a cartoon character version of the club’s signature monk and a series of cartoons and animations for the official Friar’s Club website.
The briefing required animations and graphics featuring the monk in all kinds of different situations and poses to be placed on the homepage and also some special custom monks featuring caricatured faces of recognizable “brothers”.
The animations were to play as animated GIFs with a transparent background that could be placed throughout the Friar’s Club website.
Even the furniture such as the wooden bar and the pool table at which the Jackie Gleason monk is playing had to be recognizable.
As a previous member of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS), I had the pleasure of attending several Christmas brunches at the Los Angeles branch of the club, so it was a particular pleasure to be able to contribute to the Friar’s cause.
I created several more animations, not all are shown here.
Please visit my portfolio for many more samples of my artwork and don’t hestitate to contact me if I can design some custom made illustrations or animations for you.
This is what the rough sketch looked like when it was completed:
and then I placed this rough sketch on a template layer inside my Adobe Illustrator document and drew and inked the line art for the three characters, the Jack-O-Lantern pumpkin, the witch/vampire lady and the werewolf.
Finally I also colored the artwork in illustrator using flats and shading and also several gradients.
The final artwork looks like this and is 100% vector art so it has no pixels and can be scaled to any size losslessly.
Follow me along in the following tutorial videos. If you have any questions please post them as a comment under the videos in my YouTube channel and I will try to answer them as quickly as possible.
Also please don’t forget to like my Facebook page to stay updated about new projects and new videos I am uploading. Facebook is also a good way to get in touch with me if you have any questions about what I am doing in these videos.
Video 1: Digital Sketching in Autodesk SketchBook Pro
Video 2: Inking the lines of the Jack-O-Lantern Halloween Pumpkin in Adobe Illustrator
Video 3: Inking the lines of the witch/vampire lady character in Adobe Illustrator
Video 4: Inking the lines of the fierce werewolf cartoon character in Adobe Illustrator
Video 5: A look “behind the scenes” of the final color vector Halloween art in Adobe Illustrator
Thanks for watching. Please visit my website http://marsdenillustration.com for by bio and more samples of my artwork.
I am an independent illustrator and I am available for projects.
You can also find me on Facebook – Click Like! if you enjoyed these videos and if you would like to keep up to date with my latest projects and new YouTube videos.
The Toyes – Website Illustrations and animated music video for “Smoke 2 Joints” Character Design, Cartoon Illustrations of the Band Members, Illustrations and Flash Animation By Ian David Marsden It was a great pleasure for me to create illustrated cartoon versions of the band members of The Toyes as well as designing a whole bunch of other fun characters such as smoking and dancing trees and several aliens in their UFOs for the animated music video for the classic Toyes Song “Smoke 2 Joints”
Still Frame from the video “Smoke 2 Joints” by The Toyes illustrated and animated by Ian David Marsden – www.marsdenillustration.com
Watch scenes from the music video and how I work inside Adobe Flash software:
I also created a whole series of illustrations for the official website of The Toyes: http://www.thetoyes.com which were also really fun to create. There is an illustration or character for each of the song titles on their latest album. Character Design, Cartoon Illustrations of the Band Members, Illustrations and Flash Animation By Ian David Marsden Freelance Illustrator, Designer, Cartoonist and Animator http://marsdenillustration.com