Scott Jackson

If you ever wanted to see the sketch process behind a character vector illustration there is an article over on VectorTutsPlus that shows just that.

There are a number of vector artists that have given their sketches and the final artwork along with some info about their working practices and the stuff they use before working them up in Illustrator and yours truly is amongst them.

This is the sketch I worked from when I made the “Monkey King” character and you’ll see it’s pretty rough and rather than having a desk hogging scanner to import the sketch I just use a digital camera hence the quality.

You can check it out here.

I was recently asked to create the T-shirts for a coast to coast road trip across the USA for my friends Adam Rifkin and his partner Joyce.

They are a pair of web moguls from out California way who are undertaking this mammoth adventure departing tomorrow.

Here’s the gist of it:

They’re going all the way on Interstate 10 in 2010, stopping at 10 special restaurants, for 10 days and also going to test 10 mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Palm and the like along the way to see how they perform in a variety of locations and conditions.

Their steed for the trip is going to be a white 1986 Toyota Camry “The Pandamobile”.

From what I understand Joyce will be doing the bulk of the driving whilst Adam “His Pandaness” will be doing the testing (mobile devices/food).

It’s been a real fast turnaround on the artwork but they should just about be ready in time due to Eric over at Zazzle pulling all the stops out to get them made.

I want to wish both Adam and Joyce all the best for their epic 3000 mile trip and I hope they relish every mile of it.

Recently I was asked to contribute an artwork to the “One Sugar To Go” exhibition in Perth, Australia.

It’s an exhibition of customised paper coffee cups (and lids) and designers and artists from around the globe have contributed to the event with their own unique creations.

The BamBOO stage in Perth will be transformed into a gallery for the occasion and after the event the artworks are to be auctioned off with all profits going to the Leukaemia Foundation.

It starts on Sunday 18 April 2010 at 3pm until late and as well as artwork there will be music and I’m sure there will be more than coffee to drink.

As luck will have it I wont be there:( although my sister and brother-in-law who live around the corner promise to tell me what I miss.

So, if you’re in Perth on the 18th be sure to check it out!

As a sneak peak here’s my contribution “Karma Kuppa” that’s winging its way over to Australia as I type.

This is pretty much the most recent thing I have done to date having completed it only yesterday.

It is a depiction of a character from Chinese folk lore called Monkey or Sūn Wùkōng taken from the book “The Journey to the West” and it’s for a project that I’m working on at the moment.

I grew up watching the TV series which was dubbed into English and I would be sure to be sat crossed legged, watching BBC2 at 6pm on a Tuesday (as I remember).

If you don’t know it follows him and his companions on their journey to India to fetch some Buddhist scriptures and I still watch it with my own kids on DVD today.

He was made to go on this “Journey” by Buddha in penance for his behaviour in the Kingdom of Heaven (He smashed it up a bit, ate all the peaches and peed on the Buddha’s finger).

How’s that for disrespect?

While all the other kids at the time were into Superman or The Hulk, Monkey was my hero and still is.

He was a sort of anti-hero in the fact he was mischievous, arrogant, self centred and refused to do as he was told.

Can’t imagine why I like him so much:)

If you’d like to download it as a desktop (1920×1200) you can do so by clicking HERE and the iPhone wallpaper HERE.

Monkey Magic:)

It’s always nice to stumble across your work on the net and extra nice when someone else put it there.
Whilst looking at the design portal DesignYouTrust I found THIS.

It’s a site that I provided the graphics for and put together by the talented designer Mohsin Amjed

I also made the site mascot based on the owner of the academy.

Mohsin told me he liked it so much he was having a full size cut-out made.

While I was off line recently I wasn’t able to update my blog in any way and one of the things that happened was one of my designs won the title of “Mojichamp”.

It always means a great deal to me when this happens as the people that vote are themselves members of the Mojizu community and are character designers.

Gumbo is the little girls imaginary monster friend and she likes nothing more than to play at tea parties but Gumbo always gets carried away and spoils things. Jemma doesn’t mind so much but she knows that the way out sucks.

You’ve done me proud guys:)

Depending where you are in the world it’s Blog Action Day and bloggers across the world are blogging around the topic “Climate Change”.

I’ve already seen many contributions by other illustrator about this subject so I thought it was time for me to add mine.

Okay I didn’t create this especially for Blog Action Day as it’s from another personal project that I’ve been working on but as it’s a good cause I’d use it as a sneaky peak.

Mine is called Ride a Panda to Work Week. It’s to encourage alternative and less polluting forms of transport. In this case a Panda. I think it could really take off although I don’t know how happy the pandas of the world would be about it.