Groundhog Day 2019!

It's Groundhog Day 2019, and for this installment, I decided to create a comic. Why- because I'm working on a graphic novel, and I wanted to keep the momentum going!

This one's for all the optimists as well as the pessimists. There's something for everyone!

Thanks for looking and sharing- I appreciate it!

There are MANY more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog.

I have a collection of my favorite Groundhog Day illustrations on Behance.

Challenges of a Student with Poor Time Management Skills

The first student I illustrated for Engaging Minds is physically and mentally disorganized.

The second student is stressed out and has trouble concentrating. 

The third student (below) has poor planning and time management skills. He has trouble following directions.

Attributes of student 3 include:

• Poor planning and time management skills
• Doesn’t use a planner (s/he says she can just remember things in her head or just find it online)
• S/he doesn’t even really know how to use a planner to begin with so s/he jettisons it
• Doesn’t know how to prioritize
• Doesn’t know how to make lists
• Doesn’t know how to break down tasks into manageable pieces
• Never learned how to effectively plan out long-term assignments
• Doesn’t know how to create an agenda and estimate time on task
• Poor self-monitoring
• Doesn’t read directions
• Doesn’t follow the rubric
• Doesn’t use an assignment book effectively
• Doesn’t follow through on goals and plans

Engaging Minds is a learning and tutoring center in Massachusetts that helps students to enhance their academic engagement, and strengthen executive function and learning skills.

Challenges of a Stressed Out Kid

The first student I illustrated for Engaging Minds is physically and mentally disorganized.

The second student (below) is stressed out and has trouble concentrating. 

The third student has poor planning and time management skills.

The top image was a lot of fun to put together. How often does one get to include a 'poop' emoji in one's art?

Attributes of student 2 include: 

• Stressed out!
• Procrastinates and struggles with task initiation
• Always leaves things for the last minute
• Constantly thinks s/he has more time
• Easily overwhelmed
• Doesn’t know where to begin
• Doesn’t know how to break assignments down into manageable pieces
• Doesn’t have a homework routine
• Can’t focus
• Has a really hard time sitting and doing work for more than 20 minutes at a time
• Constantly daydreaming while reading
• Easily distracted – even by the squirrel out in the front yard
• Inflexible
• Unwilling to try new approaches; stuck in a rut and can’t see another way out
• Has a hard time shifting from one activity to the next
• Doesn’t do well when things don’t go as planned

Trouble focusing:

Procrastinates and struggles with task initiation:

 Inflexible:

Engaging Minds is a learning and tutoring center in Massachusetts that helps students to enhance their academic engagement, and strengthen executive function and learning skills.

Challenges of a Disorganized Student

Engaging Minds is a learning and tutoring center in Massachusetts that helps students to enhance their academic engagement, and strengthen executive function and learning skills.

Dan Levine, President and Founder, was in need of visuals to help convey certain types of students and their challenges in his presentation to parents, and he called on me to create them.

The first student (below) is physically and mentally disorganized.

The second student is stressed out and has trouble concentrating.

The third student has poor planning and time management skills.

Attributes of student 1 include:

• Disorganized
• Physical disorganization
• Messy backpack, messy binders, messy locker, messy bedroom 
• Consequently, s/he can’t find their homework, the book they’re reading for class, or their assignment book. 
• Mental disorganization
• Can’t get ideas out of their head and onto paper, doesn’t know how to take notes, doesn’t effectively prepare for exams, can’t follow multi-step directions.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I'll post the other 2 kids another time.

On the Big Screen

My wife and I went to opening night of Avengers: Age of Ultron and were treated to a happy surprise.

About a year ago, I created an animation with Cut to Create for National Amusements' chain of theaters to publicize their Popcorn Club for kids.

You can read my blog post HERE.

The 45 second animation was to air before each (Most? Some?) movie and although we had been to that theater four times in the last year (we don't get out much!) we had yet to see the short.

This time, we were sitting back popping popcorn and waiting for the previews to start when suddenly my animation came on! I'm not sure if my eyes were wider than my mouth as the realization hit me. Holy Moly! It's one thing to work on something on the computer in front of you but to finally see it projected on a huge screen in front of a hundred people? Very satisfying.

And it looked really good.

You can watch it below:

After a short while I shot a couple of pictures as the animation played (a little silly, but I'm sure you understand!).

Popcorn Club Animation

A short time after I designed the 1-2-3 Go Box (Happy Meal) for National Amusements/Showcase Cinemas, the art director contacted me to explore the possibility of creating an animation. They were considering having a short created utilizing the characters from the 1-2-3 Go Box to highlight their Popcorn Club for kids.

A few pages from the animation storyboard

I've been creating animations with production by Zach of Cut to Create for a few years now and the above is one of our latest. Together, Zach and I wrote the story (based on conversations with the client and their goals) and once it was approved I began work on storyboarding and creating the (many, many) characters and backgrounds as well as other assets for the animator.

We produced a three second test animation with Timbuktoons which completely floored me. It just blew my socks off and was immediately approved by the client, and we were on our way!

Getting the theatre background right was a bit of a task. We didn't want to overwhelm the viewer but we also didn't want to shortchange the cinema chain by showing a less than stellar viewing room.

Here's one of the versions (with some characters only partially drawn):

The above felt too stark so we upgraded by widening and adding another row for the final animation:

I considered using photos of the 1-2-3 Go Box for when they parachute down but instead decided to recreate them to look more simplified:

As part of the project, I designed 36 characters for the animation, some of whom were based on characters in the 1-2-3 Go Box and the rest completely new. Here are a number of my faves:

The animation hit theaters in the Summer of 2014 and plays before every movie at theaters offering the Popcorn Club or so I'm told. See it in person here. 

This project then led to me designing and illustrating cardboard standees (6 feet tall, die cut) and posters for display in theater lobbies. More on that soon.

Thanks for reading this far!

See my Youtube channel for more animations.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Movie Theater "Happy Meal"

The movie theater company National Amusements/Showcase Cinemas contracted me to create a design for their 1-2-3 Go Box. The box is like their Happy Meal for kids with popcorn, a drink and a candy in a handy package. Until now, their 1-2-3 Go Box was decorated with characters from kids' movies and they wanted to make the box their own.

I created three sets of concepts for the designs and they chose this one with lots, and lots of monster creatures hanging around. I then set to work illustrating and designing the graphics within the bounds of their template.

Here's the artwork within the template:

Some friends sent me these photos with the 1-2-3 Go Box:

If you find yourself with a 1-2-3 Go Box please send me a photo or post it on Facebook: facebook.com/edfrednedillustration

 This job led to a 45 second animation for the theater chain. More on that HERE

Rock Monster Children's Book Illustration

Rockin' Monsters

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Anthropomorphised Characters

What I love about advertising is that it often features anthropomorphised products that appear to be absolutely thrilled despite knowing that they will soon be used up and thrown away, or dropped, poked and prodded for their (usually short) lives.

...but it gives illustrators like me something cute and fun to draw!

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Howdy Crocodile

Here's a personal project I completed today. My goal with this illustration was to create an interesting portrait of an interesting character.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Groundhog Day 2012

Happy Groundhog's Day! 

What did you get me?

Another installment of my yearly Groundhog Day celebration. I've been creating illustrations and cards for Groundhog Day since 1992 (I skipped a couple of years somewhere in there) and this time I show what it would be like for either outcome.

You can check out a bunch more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog by clicking HERE.

Excuse me- I have to go rent Groundhog Day, the movie, and watch it over and over and over...


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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Tickle Monsters

Here's a Sneak-Peek at Vanessa Trien's new stickers which will debut at her big Coolidge Corner Theatre show in Brookline, MA on December 11.

I designed Vanessa's logo, and her most recent CD, Carnival Day, a few years back and she's now recording a new CD. One of the most popular of her new songs is without a doubt Tickle Monster. In fact, after going to one of her shows, a friend asked me if I had a way of getting an advanced recording of that song since I have an 'in' with Vanessa!

Vanessa asked me to design some stickers (and tattoos later!) for her show and this is what I came up with in a very, very short amount of time. The text is all hand lettered to have a fun, organic feel to it.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Characters: Doodle Roll

I received a call from Jan at Big Blue Dot (a branding company for kids I've wanted to work with for years) to create characters for a new product called Doodle Roll. I was given a lot of room to be creative with these characters and I hope you agree that they turned out fun and friendly! In fact, if you go to the Doodle Roll website (see below) you can watch them move (a bit)!

 

Below is a page of second round sketches from which the client chose the top 6 characters for me to create a final illustration.

Final illustrations were created in Adobe Freehand and Adobe Illustrator (I was in the middle of completing a switch to Illustrator at the time of this project).

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Character: 3-eyed Purple Jumping Monster

Adobe Illustrator CS5 has some great new tools and I thought I'd try them out with this monster dude. While this guy's body looks painted, all of the color is actually vector! If you know the difference between vector and raster art, you'll realize just how cool this really is. To watch a tutorial on 5 of the new features, click here.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Step Carefully

When walking behind a slimy monster, be sure to carefully step over the tail. Don't do what Han Solo did to Jabba (54 second mark).

Characters: Monster with Top Hat

Here's a charming fellow I sketched up the other day. I was interested in creating a bit of texture on his skin which I continued when I added color.

I picture him saying: "Thank you for inviting me over. Your cat was delicious..."

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Monster Coffee

Pieces of my new promo postcard highlighting 

the character development and kid's book sections of my website. 

You have to look closely, but there's a tiny little monster 

licking up the spilled sugar in the last drawing.

And here's the final postcard.

Characters postcard

I created some creature characters recently for Big Blue Dot (they do branding for kids) and it really lit a fire under me to create more characters/monsters/creatures. So I have a series of postcards in queue for printing and I just got this first one back:

This postcard is meant to reflect the "ED" section on my website's homepage and to also let clients know that I love (love love!) to create characters- be they humans, monsters, aliens or something new altogether (I'm picturing Scooby Doo saying "Ru-ro!" at that last part).

If you're not on my mailing list and you want one of these cards when I start sending them out, please message me and I'll add you on.