Croco Crunch a newish cereal at Save-A-Lot Food Stores. Lots more to come soon.

professor

This guy was in my sketchbook I thought he had a nice shaped head so I colored him... that'll teach him.

Aquatic Design Group

Not my typical post something I did for an old friend that I thought turned out pretty good. I did this illustration late last year and recently made a few personnel changes. Fun stuff.

Little Sky Writers

This'll be just a quick post but this is a character sketch that I did last week for Little Sky Writers. It's based on a toy created by Daniel Monahan, Daniel is a stud and I'm excited to be working on this project with him.

Pigs

I like pigs they are so fat and have the coolest noses ever. Some people say that pigs are really smart or that they can talk to spiders or something. Personally I would rater not think about that because pigs are delicious. When I sketch a pig I try to make them fat and dumb it helps me feel better about eating them.

Hop to it

Here's a picture of a frog or a toad. I'm not terribly sure what the difference is, in my head toads are bigger, browner and wartier. If that's true there it must kinda stink to be a toad basically you are just an uglier version of a different animal. Sucks to be a toad.

Hungry for some drawin'

Yeah I have been pretty terrible about posting on this thing but I've gotten a second wind and I'm committed to finally bringing this blog to life. This picture is a new idea I got for a fantastic new sport, it looks a bit dodgy but I'm telling you it's a rush like you wouldn't believe. As long as you trust the person holding your foot you are perfectly safe, and actually getting onto the shark can be a bit tricky too, as well as getting off when you're tried and what to go home.... but seriously other than that the worst part is that your hand ends up smelling like a dead fish.

Cuidate tus cabras

This is my sketch of a Chupacabra these things were all over the place in Ecuador and now they haunt my nightmares...

Another Cheezy post

I'm pretty excited that these will be hitting the shelves soon. We tried lots of different characters narrowed it down to a few and then had a focus group vote on their favorites. Turns out that the kids overwhelmingly choose a duck-billed Cheesapus. 50% Mammal 50% Bird and 100% Cheese, good times.

Good Times Deep in the Jungle

We just had a baby boy and while I think that I should be able to do a pretty fair job as his Father I sometimes wonder if he wouldn't be better off if I just dumped him off in a jungle somewhere to be raised by the animals. Seriously how cool would it be to be raised by wolves, gorillas, elephants or lions! Not only would you be able to learn to talk with all the animals but you would also learn all sorts of skills that you would never learn in any human school. Swinging through trees, wrestling with tigers, and riding ostriches the list goes on and on. A man can be free in the jungle you can yell goofy sounds at the top of your lungs and all you have to wear is a loin cloth (unless you are riding an ostrich, you should probably wear pants if you are going to do that.)

This is an illustration for a game that I did for Patch. Good times.

Shark

I really like sharks. When I was a kid growing up in San Diego we went to the beach a lot I was always a little scared of stepping on a sting ray or being eaten by a shark. I've since changed my mind, everyone has to go sometime right? So I say if you have to die do it in style. I imagine that in the next life everyone is going to be talking about the neat things they did when they were alive and how they died. I don't wanna be one of those poor saps that has to timidly admit that they died one night during their sleep I would much rather recount my gruesome death torn apart in the jaws of a Great White. Sure it would hurt and all but who's to say that it doesn't hurt dying in your sleep, we assume that it's painless but I haven't heard anyone who's had the experience confirm that idea. Death by shark attack is defiantly the way to go, so if you ever win an all day ocean cruise with a sea captain, a police cheif, and a scientist on boat called the "Orca" I say go for it.

I still am afraid of stepping on a sting ray that seems like it would really hurt.

Cheezies

I haven't posted anything for a while, but I'm a busy man and as such I can't be held responsible for my failures and shortcomings. Here is a design that I worked on last week for Save-A-Lots Cheezies. I'm probably going to be doing another version of this, everyone agreed they wanted a mouse on the bag because everyone knows that mice love cheese. But then everyone remembered about all the other things mice love, like how they love to sneak into your house and spread the plague all over the place, but putting that aside I kinda liked it. I'm also attaching some of the sketches, because I was kinda drawn to them, get it? man I'm hilarious.

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!