It’s been a very “head-down-tail-up” few months here at the Martian lab with the work flowing thick and fast.  But that colloquialism was could be not any more perfectly relate to this particular illustration job.

This illustration was doddled up for a client who wanted a personalised cover for their iPhone.  The requirements were that it “must be a cute widdle tiger looking like it’s ready to pounce – and have a red background”.

And zip-bang-whallop, there it is.

I started off with a quick pen drawing to give get the proportions right.  Then it was scanned into Adobe Illustrator where I drew the entire picture using the vector pen tool and coloured fills.

The finished tiger artwork was saved as an image file and sent to wrappz.co.nz and is in the process of being made into a set of covers.

The client is so happy they now want to adapt the layout to suit their iPad and has even mentioned using it for a tattoo!

Brent, a mate of a mate, emailed me the other day with a quick question: “Would I like to do an illustration?”

Well, when does Mr Martian ever not want a reason to doodle?  :)

The brief was: “Something to illustrate how supermarkets charge heaps for farmed products but the farmers get bugger all”

I sat down yesterday and dusted off my doodle cap and banged out this graphic.  It is all vector, all created in AI with no effects save changing the opacity of some of the layers.

Brent is super pleased and the image is has voomed it’s way to Switzerland.

….. no!  it’s TURBO COW!!

That’s right folks, evil doers beware, for Turbo Cow is on the case!

No, seriously now.  I was contacted recently by Paul Hamilton of Communique Marketing regarding one of his clients requiring an illustration for one of their products – an energy drench for cattle.

The brief was “we need transformer cow”.  The brief got refined to “a cow with jet boosters that looks kinda robot like or similar”.  The final illustration had to be in vector format so it could be easily scaled without degrading the quality.  Not a problem – the creative Martian goo flowed.

A quick sketch was sent to the client to confirm the orientation of the cow and general concept then it was into Adobe Illustrator for some vector doodling.  The end result was a dairy cow with big old boosters taking flight in her cyber-suit.

The entire image was constructed in Illustrator using mostly gradient fills, overlays and opacity settings to give detail.  The final artwork will feature on labels being printed for the drench container.

That’s the great thing about illustration- you never know what someone is going to want next!  Maybe a nuclear powered hamster??

One of the shifts I have noticed in small to medium business these days is that more and more are making the leap onto the web.  And it’s products like WordPress are making that leap even easier with their fantastic, user friendly Content Management System which is FREE thus cutting a big chunk out of development cost for their website.

One of our latest clients to make the leap to WordPress is Mount Hiabs.  WordPress has allowed us to quickly put together a site that they will be able to easily maintain themselves at a fraction of the cost that such a site would have been even a couple of years ago.  The Mt Hiabs site is a fairly basic layout – no bells and whistles, but with WP as the backbone there is plenty of room to grow over time without having to sting the client with massive development costs.

Another great tool used in the site is the Thesis Theme.  This theme is extremely comprehensive and gives a designer a great framework for applying heir design too.  Thesis also incorporates great SEO tools as well options for customising navigation, media boxes and other whiz-bang features that you would normally have to write yourself or find plug-in’s for.

Just as a side note, the logo was a custom illustration by martian for Mt Hiabs.

If you are interested in getting an affordable CMS site our would like to know more about WordPress or the Thesis theme, contact Martian today.

What better way to spend a rainy Friday afternoon than to update the good-old Martian portfolio? Martian has had a massive increase in the amount of illustration work requested over the past few months so it was about time to toss them up into the site.

It seems people are starting to realise the value of illustrations as a marketing tool. Incorporated into your logo or marketing material illustrations make your business stand out in a crowd. They are an attractive and practical way to convey concepts and emotions to your clients. And of course they are fun to draw so bring them on!!

We have been tackling everything from halloween masks to mascots, even a happy laundry bag!

All the illustrations have been drawn in Adobe Illustrator, a great way to create clean vector graphics that are easy to reproduce. The illustrations are all suitable for the web, print, sign writing and screen printing – making them versatile and hassle free for our clients.

Check out our illustration portfolio or contact Martian about getting an illustrative solution for your own business.

I recently had the pleasure of doodling up a concept character for Alsco, a leading international laundry/textile service.

The project was obtained through a website that allows illustrators to apply for international projects.

Although Martian was a newcomer to the site we were chosen by the client out of a list of 37 international applicants – proof that a boutique design company in New Zealand can stand up and be noticed in the world wide market place!

The Alsco character is fun to draw and I look forward to working with Alsco on the projects they have planned for the future.

Contact me at tony@martian.co.nz to find out about having a mascot developed for your business.

Graham Potter of Life Code came to the Martians with a plan. To help kids that are either on the wrong track or about to step onto it. To aid in this he was going to need some tools in the form of Workbooks, which is where we came in.

Graham outlined the style of imagery he wanted and “sha-zam”, the 12 page MyMatrix Workbook and complimentary Facilitator Book were born. Well, not just like that, there was a fair amount of effort and designery doodling involved too.

A pilot version of the program is now running with sets of the Workbooks being distributed along with the rest of the program material to Social Workers around the North Island. If all goes well the program will go nation wide and Graham will have the chance to see his idea change some lives for the better. To find out more about Graham and the work he does visit: www.lifecodematrix.com

Every once and a while I get volunteered to do something creative. Mainly by my wife and usually without any chance of a say-so on my part. Maybe it’s because she knows that even if I put up a fuss about having to do it, if I kick and scream and pout and mope and call her a poo-face (and worse) that in the end I will enjoy doing whatever it is because it is in my nature to want to be creative. It may also just be a way to keep me too busy to bother her.

Anyway, she recently nominated me to design a tattoo for Jo, one of her workmates. Jo wanted something that incorporated a yellow rose and a silver fern. It had to be detailed but not too big, have the right amount of tattoo edginess while still being delicate and girly. So that of course led to lots of pouting and moping but in the end I ended up enjoying playing the tattoo designer and Jo was completely wrapped with the design, which she now sports on her lower back.