Bronx Zoo t-shirt design - part 1

As mentioned in my earlier post, I'm planning to do a Bronx Zoo t-shirt design (It's just for myself not ordered by Bronx Zoo). It's going to be illustration based and there's obviously an animal involved, and the Bronx Zoo animal that made a strongest impression on me during my visit was definitely gorilla.

It seems to be so typical for me that I first need to do some quite realistic sketches before playing further with the character.



I started to find something here.



E.T. phones home... wrong way.



Something like this...



I put this aside now. I hope to have some time to go on with this soon.


EDIT: The finished design can be seen here

Mika Myllylä and the famous snap of his skiing pole - Lillehammer winter olympics 1994

Just couple of weeks ago the surprising and sad news told that the famous finnish nordic skiing athlete Mika Myllylä has suddenly passed away. Purely by coincidence I browsed my illustration archives yesterday and stumbled upon an illustration which I had made somewhere in the end of 1990's for the Cosmos magazine. The article was making top-list of the most disastrous instants in finnish sport history. One of those unfortunate moments was when Mika Myllylä broke his skiing pole during the furious winter olympic race in Lillehammer 1994 and lost chances to take his first personal medal.

Despite what happened in Lahti 2001 and all sad turns of event after that, we may with all due respect say that he was a great athlete.

RIP Mika

Caricature of Kimi Räikkönen - crashes a downhill car

As an illustrator I've always been especially fascinated by caricatures. Most probably I'm not alone. During my illustrator career I've had some caricaturing jobs, but I have never had it on my to-do list to really practice my caricaturing skill to professional level. Also, what I have been unhappy about, is that I never seem to have time to do so called "just for fun" illustrations. Some time last summer I finally realized that the problem is merely my attitude than my schedule.

Anyway, after having such a remarkable insight I finally decided to illustrate something "just for fun", and as caricatures are so fun (and challenging) to do, why not doing one. But who to choose? I wanted him/her to be a finnish person, one that is also known abroad. They are not that many :) And I ended up choosing Kimi Räikkönen, the former F1 world champion driver. He is an interesting person, and I also thought that he would neither be too easy nor too difficult to make a caricature of.

I first started to make sketches in Adobe Illustrator. As I'm not a pro caricaturist, I really liked the possibility to move individual face parts little by little trying to find the right place for them. It's also nice to take duplicates of different steps of work. Comparing these steps helped me to find out which way to go.



In the end it turned out not to be a comfortable way for me to work and I dug up my pens and sketch pad. That way it was much faster to work, and I finally started to realize what's the clue of Kimi's face, the worrying eyes and the pointy nose.



Back to digital, and now it was easier to put everything together. Unfortunately at this stage I suddenly got too much other stuff to do and I had to put the fun aside to wait for better days...



Finally, couple of months ago, I was able to get back to this project. Now that I already had the face, it was time to sketch the rest of the caricature. In normal situation this would have been the first stage. To make him drive a car was quite an obvious resolution.





It was only because of an interesting composition that I chose to illustrate him having a car crash. And the downhill car was more fun and less serious to have a car crash with.



It wasn't easy and it took time, but it was fun and I'm quite happy with it. Let's see who's the next victim...

Captain America seen entering a hipster cafe in Lower East Side?

Even though my vacation in NYC is over, and I'm adapting myself back to my normal daily routines, there is still one photo from my trip, that is worth showing. One day I was wandering back and forth in Lower East Side - Manhattan, when I suddenly saw a peculiar sight. There was a man wearing an extraordinary outfit and some kind of shield. I hate myself being such a paparazzi, but I couldn't help myself and I snapped a photo.



At that moment I didn't realize who that fellow was, but later that day I saw a movie poster... Captain America!!! Well, what a lucky guy I am. It's not every day that one gets to see such a celebrity.

But what really makes me confused, is that this happened in L.E.S. (Lower East Side), which is (according to the travel guide) an area ruled by hipsters. Yes, it could have been a coincidence... unless... mr America was also just about to enter a cafe called Brown, which is (once again according to the travel guide) THE PLACE for every little hipster on earth.

I hardly dare to toss this question... but could it be so, that Captain America is a hipster by his heart?

Dudes of New York # 3

This duo do know some cooperation.