Save-A-Lot Nascar

Save-A-Lot got into Nascar this year and I got to work on a lot of the artwork. We did just about everything; t-shirts, web stuff, hero cards, and even full size cardboard cutouts of Carl Edwards for the stores. Carl placed second in the Nationwide series so it has been an exciting year. I was never really that into Nascar before working on this project but it was a ton of fun and I can't wait for next season.

J.Higgs packaging concepts

Up until last week I haven't posted a lot of Graphic design stuff although probably 50% of the work I have been doing lately has been Graphic Design. Here are a few concepts that I did for Save-A-Lot food stores. I'm still working on other concepts so maybe I'll post more as I get them done.
Get it! everybody likes Save-A-Lot Beef Jerky hence it is "Wanted" I'm so clever sometimes.
If they decide to go with this concept I am going to see if I can't get someone to make me a matching J.Higgs belt buckle.
This flavor is so intense that the package has to be wrapped in chains, but you know what even the strongest chains can't hold in this explosion of Nacho goodness.

I'm a big winner

I work as a graphic designer for Save-A-Lot food stores and I do a lot of their private label packaging. This week I went to a big private label sow in Chicago called PLMA where I won an award for Crunchy Granola Raisin Bran. The PLMA show was lots of fun it's full of a lot of grocery buyers and vendors and we go to look at and study everything the competition is doing. Developing grocery brands is great, it's not cartooning but I really enjoy it and it helps pay the bills. I wish I had a photo of the back of he box I got some nice lifestyle shots and I wrote some killer verbage about how Crunchy Granola Raisin Bran can pretty much solve all your life's problems. So go to your local Save-A-lot and pick up a box of the award winning Crunchy Granola Raisin Bran it tastes three times better than your favorite food wrapped in a suculant blanket of pure love.

Jacob Black

Something leftover from Halloween. I had a lot of fun with the style on this one, making the legs kinda gangly, kinda angular. Howling good time!

Pumpkin Carving

I dug this image up an old illustration I did for a Pumpkin decorating contest a couple of years back. I think that the scariest part about a pumpkin is the mess you have to clean up after you're done decorating it.

Pirate

It's hard for me to remember a Halloween where I didn't dress up as a pirate. Okay maybe there was this one time when I was four and I was Superman, and I think there was a year when I went through an Indiana Jones stage, but I always turned back to piracy.
I had fun with this sketch and tried adding a few textures and effects in photoshop. A lot of the cartoon work that I have been doing lately has had to be really clean with a lot of the work done in adobe illustrator. This sketch was refreshing because I just used the rough sketch and kinda let myself be a little sloppy.
Yarr! Be ye warned! Thar be shaols ahead, Them what die 'll be the lucky ones!

Bye, Bye Monster

I really want to get some Halloween stuff up on this blog for October. This post has monsters but they are probably a little too to cute.

Here are some drawings from a children's book I just finished. It's called "Bye, Bye Monster" and I think it should be available soon ( http://www.byebyemonstershop.com ). The brown monster character wasn't mine but I got to come up with a lot of his monster friends which was lots of fun. The style was simple and it had to be done very quickly but I really enjoy doing kids books. This is just a small sampling I'll have to try and post some other stuff later on.

I love October so stay tuned for some spooky stuff coming soon!

Hanging around

I have been all over the place last week so I haven't had a ton of time to do anything for the blog, so I just grabbed something a little older from one of my cereal boxes. I had a lot of fun with this character on Save-A-Lots Fruit Berry Crunch (similar to crunch berries only better). Since leopards like climbing trees I always have him hanging upside down from somewhere and you never see his feet, so that was pretty fun. This picture is from the side panel so it had to be a little longer. Cereal Box characters are probably one of my favorite things to do, they are cute happy characters bent on eating breakfast cereal. We often don't take cereal box art seriously but when I was a three year old the cereal isle in grocery store was like a fine art gallery.

Full Sketchbook

I haven't had a chance to do a whole lot for the blog this week but I just filled my sketchbook so I thought I would post some of my sketches. I carry my sketchbook around with me pretty much everywhere and I'm always doodling stuff it's never really polished stuff but it's all good fun.


This is a typical page from the book with written notes, logo concepts for an ice cream packages, and some black sharpie sketches. Good times huh!
I liked this pirate and I think I might try and color him this week or maybe later. It's like a pirate road rage sketch, here the Captain is giving Davy Jones the hook.
I like Pinocchio it's beautiful.

This illustration would have been funny if they would have let me go through with it. This was a rough concept for the Save-A-Lot Green Team. I think that they couldn't get past the boots, oh well.

Forget to Cash a Check!

This illustration is a departure from my usual style which was fun. I was going for a look that looked my Graphic Designy, more shapes and no outlines. My inspiration came from all those great Esurance commercials, I love how a pink haired super spy is able to somehow tie into selling insurance. I would have loved to see how the creative team pitched that one.
Here we have Maria she and her adorable son Ramon are waiting in line ready to check out at the grocery store when >gasp< Maria realizes she forgot to cash her paycheck! Ramon is starting to cry and Maria needs to think fast, she locates her check, somersaults past stupefied onlookers and punches the cashier in the face making a b-line for the Money Center. Check cashed, cotashrropie avoided.

Moses is pretty cool

Old time prophets can be really fun to draw, I think this is mostly due to the beard. Some people will tell you that you can have just as much fun drawing a wizard or Rip-Van Winkle but it's just not true. Bearded wizards are fun up until the point where you have to add the goofy hat and wand, then they just seem silly. Moses is probably the most fun he's well over 100 years old and he's been wandering around in the wilderness for forty years.
Like my last post his came from something in my sketchbook (probably something I did during church). In the original sketch Moses was just looking up at a blank space so I added the staff and the snake to give him something to look at.

Love Potion #7

These guys have been hanging around in my sketchbook for a while and I always kinda liked them. I'm not sure exactly what I liked, maybe it was the doctors crazy hair or the fat guy looming in the background. Whatever it was I decided to throw the sketch into a scanner and color them up. When you do illustration and design work for a living sometimes it just feels good to do something random for no particular reason.
What does Love Potion #7 do you might ask? I'm thinking that it doesn't do anything great, otherwise they would not have had to make Love potion numbers 8 and 9. It probably just makes you bald and turns you yellow which is only mildly useful in very rare situations. But when you are an aspiring Mad Doctor there are no failures. Every mistake is a learning opportunity and think about it if every potion was a success you wouldn't have as much to be mad about.

My First Post

I had an art teacher who said that the toughest page to fill in a new sketchbook is always the first one. For my first post I decided to to go with this illustration of a Chameleon that I did recently for Patch games. Why a Chameleon? because I figured that it would be good to start with something versatile and a chameleon is like the most versatile thing ever. Plus I really dig the way that their eyes can look in two different directions at once.