Lucky Cat Illustrations and Catalog Layout

These are some illustrations I worked on for a "lucky cat" line of kids rain gear. Elements of the yellow scene with the cat were originally designed by or with product designer Bin Tan who also designed the clothing (she did an amazing job).

I directed and retouched this photoshoot and created this catalog spread using the scene I created above. The model was about 3-4 sizes too small so I had to use some "tricks" to make the clothes fit in the final photographs.

My niece Olivia just turned one year old and can just start to wear the smallest size of the coat (1T). She'll grow into it ;-)

Letter "S" Snake

A preview of a project I'm working on with illustrative letterforms:

I want them to seem bright and happy, but what's a snake without cool fangs???

Image of Humanity

I recently designed this banner for my wife Melissa's new photo blog Image of Humanity on the Chicago Now blog network. I used a tilt shift photo she took of one of the city neighborhoods:



Check out more of Melissa's photos on her website and her blog.

Pirate Catalog Cover and Design Process

A quick look into my design process on a catalog cover for a new line of pirate rain gear for kids:

1. A rough sketch of how I envision the catalog cover before I shoot photography.
2. Photograph that was selected before any retouching.
3. Final publicity photo that will also be used on cover. Colors have been corrected. White umbrella sword handle prototype is colored and the hand is swapped for a better pose. Bottom of coat went from jagged to straight for production costs. Tool box was replaced with drawing of a treasure chest.
4. Next my original sketch is redrawn around the final photo with vector tools. Light sourcing, shadows and textures are finally added in photoshop as you can see in the finished piece below.

Afterburner Technical Illustrations

The Afterburner is a product from Triton Labs, a video game industry client. It is a kit that for the first time ever allowed video gamers to install an internal lighting device inside their portable video games. The kit was very successful and to this day the largest video game hardware makers use similar technology that was spurred by its success.
The following are selected technical illustrations and layouts I did for the kit's instruction manual:

Raincoat Packaging Project

A sketch of packaging for a line of raincoats for kids. We ended up going with a snap instead of zipper to keep costs down and added a couple straps so it could be hung in stores or carried. You can compare a vector illustration plan with the final product, the graphic system for this line was already in place and it was just a packaging upgrade.