Gala Bingo Calendar - Bingo Call Character Illustrations

Eyes down for a brilliant bingo based Project

I've recently worked on a great project for Gala Bingo. working together with a fab design company from Leicester called Work Design. We produced a fun promotional calendar to hang on peoples walls and help promote Gala Bingo for the whole year.

I was asked to create the 12 illustrations used on the calendar, and they are all based on the most popular bingo calls. Any bingo officionados out there will know the common and quirky calls used in bingo halls all over the world, but if you need reminding of the full list you can check out this extensive Wikipedia page.

The final twelve we chose needed to be fairly family friendly as they have to appeal to a broad audience of Gala Bingo regulars. The final twelve bingo calls chosen are:

Legs 11, Knock on the door 44, Lucky7, Kelly's eye 1, David's den 10, Droopy drawers 44, Unlucky for some 13, Clickety click 66, Two fat ladies 88, Key to the door 21, Doctors orders 9, Two little ducks 22.

You can see the final calendar design in the gallery above. Work Design have done a great job with the graphics and the colours and background details really make the illustrations pop! You can see the early sketches and all the character illustrations below with plain backgrounds (lucky 7 above).

Let me know what you think if you fancy leaving a comment, or feel free to contact me about this project or any other. Enjoy :)

Scientist Character Design - Empiribox Logo and Illustrated Cartoon Scientist

Mad Scientist - character design

If I asked you to picture a cartoon scientist you would undoubtedly imagine the white coat, big glasses/goggles and some crazy hair of some kind. Add in some bubbling, smoky liquid in a test tube and you've got your typical scientist (mad scientist) character.

This is exactly what the client needed, so who am I to argue with tradition?! I did create a choice of other scientist sketches following the similar theme, and a favourite was chosen and vectored up to final artwork. Let me know what you think or if you'd have preferred a different scientist from my sketches.

Empiribox Logo - design, animate and icon amends

Following the scientist character design, I also helped work on the company logo a little by developing the icons used amongst the text. As you can see the logo incorporates a rocket ship, a test tube and a bug. I designed a few variations of each icon and tried several colour schemes.

We also tried to get a bit of extra fun into the logo and decided to have a little play with animating the logo for the website. You can see the simple animated logo below.

If you have any thoughts, comments, suggestions or questions then please feel free to comment below or contact me in whatever way is best for you. Enjoy :)

Caveboy - Caveman Character Design and Illustration

A client needed a caveman, or to be more specific a caveboy character created. The character needed to appeal to kids and was to be used for learning and informational purposes in an environment that specifically deals with heritage and historical education.

Things to consider were that the character looked fun and friendly but not too cartoony. Also needed to be considered was that the character could have the potential to be dressed in different period costume to show the same boy in different outfits and therefore periods of time.

You can see my first stage of sketches, and following feedback from the client the final vector artwork for the caveboy is shown with and without a background. Any feedback is appreciated as always. Cheers and enjoy!

The Health & Safety Fails Collection - These 2 guy

I’ve been creating illustrations of these two silly, crazy, idiotic guys for several years. They’re two characters I created to convey a message about health and safety in the workplace, and basically how NOT to do it! I recently created a load of new illustrations which you can see in the slideshow below. I've also just added them to my Behance site.

Here’s a link to the project on Behance, and if you get a chance I would love to know what you think.

BTW ALL of these illustrations are also available to purchase individually via my iStock portfolio, or feel free to get in touch with me at nathan@antcreations.co.uk and I'll be happy to discuss selling them direct either individually or as a set.

Updates to the Tigers Family blog and mini site

I've been busy adding new content to the Tigers Family mini site and blog, so please feel free to take a little visit and let me know what you think, and perhaps what else you would like to see. I've added some new sketches and cartoon strips and have plans to add some videos when I manage to finalise all the content I've filmed! Here's the latest cartoon that appeared in last Saturday's Leicester Tigers match day programme. There'll be another one in this weeks programme so be sure to check it out if you're there or visit the Tigers Family blog on Sunday when the strip will be added. Let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Early look at this week's Mal and Lard

Here's an early look at this week's Mal and Lard cartoon which will appear in tomorrow's Harborough Mail. Check out the Mal and Lard blog for more info on the story and lots more duck related shenanigans!

The Mal and Lard mini site is here!

Mal & Lard, the two cartoon ducks appearing weekly in the Harborough Mail have a new online home...right here on this website!

You will find the current weeks cartoon strip, as well as links to all the past strips dating back to when they first appeared in print on May 1st 2003. Hopefully you will find everything you ever wanted to know about Mal and Lard, including the history of the dynamic duo and a list of the most popular characters.

Here's an early look at this weeks Mal and Lard cartoon strip due to appear in tomorrow's Harborough Mail. Let me know what you think. Enjoy!

My second illustration time lapse video!

Just uploaded my second time lapse video to my youtube channel 'antcreationstv'. You can check it out below! I'm really into these time lapse movies at the moment. I think they're really cool, and it's fascinating to see how different artists work. Anyway enough waffle, have a look and please give it some feedback on youtube and let me know what you think! Cheers and enjoy!

Several Simple Slideshow Illustrations

Here are a few of the illustrations I recently created for RS Components.
The cartoons were to appear on a company Powerpoint presentation and therefore needed to be simple and convey the relevant message quickly.
There were 12 in total, but the others were quite personal in their content so I have only added these four.

Feel free to comment and let me know what you think or get in touch via email at nathan@antcreations.co.uk or call 01858 462779

Nelson Skate and BMX Jam Logos, Posters, Flyers and More!

I created these logo's, promotional posters and flyers a little while back. It's taken me this long to get them on the blog because to be honest I forgot all about them!
I did however really enjoy creating this artwork. The world of skating and bmxing is full of great images, illustrations and designs! This artwork was created to promote Nelson Skate and BMX Jam which is a day of fun and competition held in Nelson Skate Park in South Wales every year. A logo was required that represented the skate and bmx scene and would be useable year after year that would be changeable whilst keeping it's overall identity.
This is the logo I created for the 2009 competition and also the 2010 event. The different colour schemes and date show how it is adaptable and unique every year.

I created a few different designs for the logo before the final version was chosen. The images below show the initial design options and the various colour schemes

As I mentioned earlier I also created a poster and a flyer for the event. Because the event is held in my hometown of Nelson which is in the beautiful South Wales valley the posters and flyers needed to be created in both English and Welsh. Here are the final results for the posters and flyers

And if that's not enough cool and funky stuff already the client which was Caerphilly Borough Council also had some other promotional items created. Here are some pics of the shoulder bags and dog tags that incorporated the logo

Phew, long blog post eh! If you need any more info please get in touch by email at nathan@antcreations.co.uk or call me on 01858 462779.