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Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Transformers: Drift in 3D!

Hasbro's new Transformers Autobot Drift Toy

Hasbro's new Transformers Autobot Drift Toy

A couple of years ago a good mate of mine, Transformers writer Shane McCarthy came up with a new Autobot character for a minor role in IDW’s All Hail Megatron comic book series. He was called Autobot Drift and was in part a homage to the japanese origins of transforming toys. Shane worked with the series artist, Guido Guidi on coming up with Drift’s look (see his initial designs here) My small contribution as the resident petrol-head was to suggest that the drift car he transform into be a Nissan Silvia S15.

As is the norm with this type of work, the editors at IDW Publishing and Hasbro, the owners of the Transformers franchise needed to approve the inclusion before publication. From what I can tell, the marketing types got a bit excited. Okay, they got a lot excited. So excited that they decided “We’re going to make this into a toy!”

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Posted in Blog, News, Transformers | 2 Thoughts →

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Top 5 Job Application Tips for Graphic Designers

Earlier today as part of my regular job I was reviewing job applications for a Senior Graphic Designer position. While some of the applications were quite decent, there were so many bad ones that I gained a LOT of insight into what NOT to do when applying for a graphic design position.

There were 20+ applications to sort through and I was surprised at how many made it so easy for me to eliminate them from the running. So to help prevent aspiring graphic designers out there from making these same mistakes, I thought I’d present my top 5 job application tips! All of these were based on actual employment applications I reviewed! Amazing!

1. Check your spelling.

Especially paragraphs where you write about how much experience you have at proofing things for print. I kid you not! (more…)

Posted in Blog, News | 8 Thoughts →

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Rare Transformers Covers

Retailer Incentive Covers for Transformers Last Stand of The Wreckers

Free comics are the best comics

On of the perks of designing cover art for comic book publishers like IDW is receiving complimentary copies of the comics you worked on.

With IDW I usually get two copies of the regular comic, and as in the case of Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers, where they print a limited run of variant covers based on my artwork, two copies of the variant covers.

The variant covers (pictured) for this series are my regular cover design minus the titles and other cover markings, printed on better paper with a matt varnish finish. The matt varnish feels really slick, although it reduces the blackness of the dark areas in the design, so tends to work better for designs that are lighter or more saturated. I design my covers with the titles in place as I believe that they are a fundamental part of the finished cover design, so sometimes this can leave a bit of an unbalanced space at the top when the titles are removed. But overall I think the variants are pretty neat to have. The rareness of them is an extra bonus!

I haven’t read LSotW all the way through yet (although I did read the script many months ago) but I’m looking forward to it. From all accounts this series has been really popular, particularly with the die-hard Transformers fans. I like this approach from IDW. They seem to be mixing accessible storylines that make it relatively easy for new readers to jump on board, with mini-series and single issue stories tailored for the hardcore fans.

I have some more IDW cover work coming up, but as with these things, nothing I can talk about just yet, sorry!

Posted in Blog, Comics, News, Transformers | 4 Thoughts →

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Hoop Dreams

This is a little outside what I’d normally post on here, but I wanted to share this hoola-hoop burlesque act my friend Clara Cupcakes performed recently with Sugar Blue Burlesque. The tune is Fred Astaire’s Top Hat, White Tie and Tails.

Yes, I really am friends with someone who goes by the name Clara Cupcakes.

Posted in Blog, Retro | 2 Thoughts →