This year I learned that May is apparently mermaid month, in the sense that everyone draws a mermaid every day. Some people uploaded really spectacular ladies (and gents) of the ocean, do check out the hashtags!
I only managed a few at the beginning (some of them might seem somewhat familiar) and one for the last day, which also happily coincided with World Otter Day.
Much has changed in the year+ since the last post. Well, not MUCH, but one big thing: I’m now a full-time freelance illustrator! My website got a small renovation, which this blog and my Facebook Page should probably share at some point, but if I waited with updates until that was done, well, it might have been another year before the next post.
The reason I decided to become self-employed is that – while I really enjoyed working on Viber sticker packs and being part of that awesome team – I wanted to branch out and do some different things as well. After a little more than a month “on the job”, I can happily say that I’m doing just that.
One project I recently started is an illustration for “A Town with Pep“, an indie RPG from Richard Williams. It’s the first in several projects Richard commissioned, which is great because a) they’re all different and interesting, each in its own way; b) Richard is a client who knows what he wants, knows how to convey that, and still leaves a lot of the creative “reins” in my hands and c) he’s totally cool with me sharing my work in progress. Which is what’s happening now.
“A Town with Pep” is a “Teen mystery drama in small-town America”. Think Riverdale in RPG form. Richard commissioned a title illustration featuring 5 teenagers – examples of the characters one might play – and he gave me complete freedom in designing them. But, since complete freedom paralyses me artistically, I asked him to give me some character design “seeds” in the same way a player would start creating a character in the game: picking an object that symbolises the character. Richard sent me these five images of everyday objects. As a little exercise, see what kinds of characters come to your mind before reading on to see my interpretations.
Looking at the objects, I started getting ideas for some of them, and collected references that came to mind from various media (mainly TV). I often do that when coming up with characters for roleplaying games as well, probably because I watch ALL the television and that’s just what my mental library is composed of. After getting a more or less solid idea of each character I drew a quick sketch for each. Are they anything like what you imagine when looking at the objects?
The next step was tackling the composition of the image. Richard gave me a good reference shot (from Riverdale actually), and I tried two takes on it:
#1 was approved, and I moved on to pencilling the scene. During feedback on the first draft, Richard got the idea of showing a “missing” sixth teenager made up of negative space. I like it because it makes the composition more interesting, as well as playing into the sense of mystery this game is all about. Here’s the approved pencil stage.
That’s where we got to so far. Work in progress, whoo!
Aviv
I’ve started a new illustration project a few months ago, once again fanart-based and following the ABC. It’s a good frame to get me drawing: serialised, with a clear end point, and otherwise completely open; which is why I always add another “rule” or two to get some more focus. In the last one it was two characters per letter, with a secret connection between each following couple. This time it’s a character, a verb, and a giant-sized food item, all starting with the same letter. It’s strange up in my head, but also very organised.
Here are the first five. In days long past I would upload each one in its own blog post, but today, with so many quick channels for sharing things, it feels more cumbersome than ever to start a new post for every single piece. That’s my long-winded way of inviting you to follow my Facebook page if you want to stay up to date.
Let’s see, what else is new…
We’re just starting a new story arc over at Up to Four Players. It’s one about conventions, fandoms, cosplay and family, and it has a lot of colourful hoops. Like, A LOT. Many more than I would have put there had I given some thought to how long it’s going to take to draw all of them in every single panel. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or at least slightly averse to the colour magenta.
James and Kat, from the podcasts One Shot and Campaign that I must have mentioned before, are in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign for their new game NPC – Noisy Person Cards, a party game for improving your character voice acting. We at Up to Four Players tried the beta version (see us on the Tube) and it’s super fun, so I’m really looking forward to the final product, which will include a lot more illustrated cards from various artists, myself included. Check out their Kickstarter page, and if it sounds like something you might enjoy, consider backing!
Completely unrelated to their game, I’ve also done some more fanart of their Edge of the Empire party on the Campaign podcast, with clear Zootropolis influences. How awesome was that movie?
See ya in…a few months, evidently!
Aviv
It’s customary to upload all holiday-related content before the actual day of Christmas, but this is a whole day when no one works, everything is shut down, and the chance of rain is too high to risk going out for a walk (also, that would involve getting up and going out for a walk), so what better time to compile some recent artwork into a festive blog post?
So first with the Christmas-y stuff: this is a pack I designed and was released for free on Viber as a holiday gift to our users (you can download it now if you have Viber). The idea was to steer away from the usual sugary, kitsch Christmas stickers, and show both sides of the holiday: the annoyingly enthusiastic and the bitterly cynical. I don’t even really celebrate Christmas, but having had my fair share of family dinners, long holidays and festive atmospheres, I could absolutely relate to both.
Speaking of festive atmospheres, our two recent posts in Up to Four Players are all about Christmas, from the (quite autobiographical) point of view of foreigners coming into this strange wonderland. I’ve spent three Christmasses here, and I’m still discovering new things; for example, how many times a person can hear the same Christmas song before losing their mind. (Clicking the thumbnails will take you to the full-size strips in Up to Four Players.)
Speaking of players, next Saturday will join several of them, in a 12-hour-long roleplaying marathon for charity. It’s in Hebrew, so if you’re into that sort of language, do check it out. Eran will be running a victorian monster-hunting adventure in the Savage Worlds system, with 3 brave heroes who’ll stick by him throughout the day, and several guest players who’ll pop by for a spell (me included!). I drew portraits of all our characters.
Speaking of guest-appearances, I made one in Leigh Lahav’s recent video about Star Wars’ rising star, BB-8 the robot. I also helped her design some of the characters, but I’m much more excited about my small voice-acting role. See if you can guess which one it is.
Speaking of…umm…roles, I recently sketched the characters from our ongoing roleplaying campaign in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying system. These are, in order: Evyatar’s character Brioche, the slightly crazy religious fanatic; Dassi’s character Marion, the slightly mysterious gold order wizard; and my character Agnes, the slightly criminal apothecary.
I think these are all the segues I can come up with this morning. Have yourselves any kind of very merry holiday that you’re prone to celebrating this time of year, and if perchance I fail to write my “End of 2015” post before the end of 2015, a very happy new year!
Aviv
A few months ago I got an email from a guy named Ivan. He told me about his long-distance relationship with his girlfriend Jelena, how Viber’s helped them keep in touch across different continents, and how – when the sticker market launched – they found their alter-egos in Freddie and Eve.
Other couples have shared similar sentiments with me, and it warms my heart to dangerous temperatures, every time.
I’m a sticker artist. I draw stickers for a living. It’s a bloody awesome job, don’t get me wrong, but occasionally I find myself feeling frivolous, wondering what’s the point of doing what I’m doing. And then someone sends me a message on Facebook, telling me how the characters I created have become part of their relationship with their significant other, and cheer them up when they’re away from one another. It surprises and humbles me every time, and it’s the best damn reason I can ever think of to do what I do.
Back to Ivan and Jelena. Some time before writing to me, Ivan visited back home to propose. Jelena said yes. And since Freddie and Eve have been “with them” throughout their relationship, Ivan wanted to surprise her with real Viber wedding stickers, and found me. He said he knew it was a long shot – we don’t really create sticker packs “to order”, but his story really moved me (few work emails bring me to tears in the middle of the office, thankfully), and I passed the idea along to people more in charge than myself.
The result was one of the packs I had the most fun working on. I drew on experiences from my own wedding, stories and photos from my parents’ wedding, and of course every trope from every romantic comedy I’ve ever seen. And as a gorgeous cherry on top, the talented animators we work with animated the whole pack, and did a brilliant job at it, which you can see if you get it from Viber’s sticker market.
We even got Jelena’s reaction on video, in a surprise production by Viber.
This pack may have been created following Ivan’s request, but it’s dedicated to every couple who’s found joy, humour or comfort in these characters. You make me happy and proud to do my job.
Aviv
After years of looking more or less the same (and following some antiquated web design guidelines from when screen resolution averaged 1024x768px), I finally gave the blog a bit of a facelift. The changes are not massive: some extra width and bigger fonts, as expected with age, and an updated header that was drawn this decade.
I also added a button for Up to Four Players, the webcomics I illustrate that has been online for almost a year and yet had no links from my own blog. Nice.
This isn’t very exciting news on its own, so here are a few recent sticker packs I’ve done for Viber, to make for a worthwhile post. Anyone following my work for Viber probably knows my Freddie and Friends characters, but occasionally I get to come up with new ones, so here are three of those; and the fourth pack is for one of our Public Chat partners (my favourite one), 2Forks.
Hebrew