Graphics Archives | Freelance cartoonist and illustrator

Shark Logo

I’ve recently completed the design of a shark logo for a client who runs a fishing channel, The Lawless Tide!

The brief

My brief was to create a dynamic and eye-catching shark logo for a fishing channel. The shark needed to be leaping out of the waves, pulling a fishing rod behind him – snatched from a shoreline fisherman!

Sketches and ideas

As always, my first port of call is a few quick sketches to get a feel for the piece. I’ve drawn several cartoon sharks in the past so already had a feel for how he might look.

I wanted to make sure he looked very energetic and mischievous, with lots of emphasis on his sharp teeth! I had to ensure that the fishing rod was also very easy and clear to see, being such a slender object.

There was also the requirement for some waves that the shark was ploughing through.

Experimenting with composition

Once I had a look for my shark logo and an idea of the composition, I experimented with the placement of the elements.

As this was to be used as a channel logo/avatar I also needed to ensure it would fit within a square. I also toyed with the idea of whether the waves would be contained within the circle, or spilling out.

Creating the shark logo

Once the pencil sketches and composition were approved by the client, it was time to digitise the outlines.

This was all done in Illustrator as a vector artwork – the main advantage to this being the artwork can be easily amended. It also has the advantage of being able to be scaled to any size without any loss of quality.

Once all outlines were completed, base colours were added, followed by all shading and highlights.

Shark logo text

As with the existing videos on The Lawless Tide channel, I needed a typeface that would suit the feel of the logo.

This needed to be fairly loose and relaxed, but also bold enough to be viewed at a small size. The request was that it would also need to be yellow to match the existing channel lettering.

Once I’d played with the letterforms and arranged them into a looser format, I bulked up their appearance. After that, more wave-like shapes were added behind to help give more impact to the text against the busy shark.

Updating my homepage

My new website has been up for a few months now and originally had a large slider on the homepage, showcasing some of my cartoon work as a little taster for initial visitors.

So what’s wrong with my homepage?

The main issue with this is the gallery slider that I was using was a little on the ‘chunky’ side and therefore resulted in the homepage taking longer to load and that visitors may only be seeing one or possibly two cartoons when they visit the homepage.

So, to overcome this, I thought what about a whole snapshot of the sort of cartoon crazies that I create and have them all together in one place?

Given that my website is made to look like it’s made from pieces of card and paper, I thought about having them all tearing forth out of a large piece of paper.

Stock imagery

So the first thing I had to do was find a suitable image. Now, there are plenty of websites out there offering ‘free images’, but I wanted to get myself a good one from a stock library – that way it’s a great quality image and also I have the freedom to use it as I wish.

I’m a big fan of the Envato marketplace website, so this was my first port of call – and as always, I found exactly what I was looking for.

This perfect image not only had the paper tearing outward, with several edges for characters to sit on, but also had a nice blue background behind, which ties in perfectly with my primary site colour.

Adding my cartoon characters

So now I have my image, I can begin working on a composition for all of the characters.

I had a couple of ideas in my head as to what I wanted to include, and if possible have them all interacting with each other in some way.

So as a focal point I began with a cartoon dinosaur, as I’m a big fan of dinosaurs and feel they always look great in cartoon form. So none better to go with than a Tyrannosaurus!

And seeing as a tyrannosaurus is always on the lookout for something to eat, I thought he couple be chasing an aircraft. But then, from a cartoonist’s viewpoint, what could be better than an aircraft? An alien spaceship of course!

So we’ve got ourselves a little green, bug-eyed alien zooming off in his flying saucer – complete with oversized drive engines!

Cartoon pirates anyone?

Ok so we know I’ve drawn a few cartoon pirates in my time and as they’re so much fun, I needed to have at least one tucked into this composition.

Then I thought, what if we had the pirate locked in an epic battle with a giant squid? Keeps with a nautical theme then and also that squid would have lots of long arms to interact with the other characters.

Other cartoon characters

So with these two focal points in place, almost like ‘bookends’ I began filling in the space in the middle and mixing up some of my other favourite themes.

There was a lot of space above the squid on the right, and initially was going to fill this with a long necked dinosaur of some kind, but then as we already have a dinosaur, we needed something different – a giraffe!

So with part of our jungle contingent in place, I thought it best to couple the giraffe with a cheeky monkey hanging on his neck, throwing a banana at a poor unsuspecting member of the illustration.

In this case, the banana is bouncing off of the shield of a cartoon knight! Not something I’d drawn before, but certainly something I wanted to add to my portfolio at some point, with his shiny armour and enormous feather his helmet.

But surely the knight would require a steed of some description I hear you say? Well, that’s where we come around full circle and have him mounted upon the Tyrannosaurus Rex!

A few creepy monster cartoons

Being as I’m a big fan of creepy Halloween characters, I’ve added in a few for good measure – we’ve a spooky ghost that has crept in the top of the composition to scare the pants off of the gallant knight!

We’ve also a bloodsucking vampire at centre stage, alongside a mad professor, who’s drunk something a little potent and become a fly! He’s accompanied by a couple of mischievous gremlins, who are just itching to get out and cause some havoc!

We’ve also an Egyptian mummy cartoon, swathed in ancient bandages and accompanied by a venomous cobra, wrapped around his ankh-le (see what I did there folks)!

Final composition

Ok, so now we’ve got a good selection of cartoon characters in place for my homepage, it’s time to start digitising all of he outlines.

The main advantage to this stage is I can perfect all of the outlines and get them how I’d like and also adjust the composition, so if any of the elements need resizing or repositioning I can do so at this stage.

Designing a badger beer clip…

A surprise opportunity sprang my way tonight, as a local pub in Salisbury requires a design for a beer clip and decided to run a quick competition.

So, being a fan of both beer and cartoons, I thought I’d spring into action with my sketchpad!

This particular pub, The Winchester Gate, is a popular pub in Salisbury for it’s live music and I know it well.

I also know that the landlord is very into badgers (after all, his band is named after them), so used this as my starting point, adding a flat cap on him too (not that it’s a likeness, but just adds to the character of the pub).

Finally, I added a large glass of fresh, frothy pint in his hand – perfect for a very thirsty badger! This was also fun to do, as I needed to make the pint look not only appealing, but add some depth to it too (plus some bubbles).

The beer clip concept

Being that the purpose of this design is a beer clip for the front of the pump, I figured this design would also need a shield behind the cartoon of some description.

So had the idea of having our slightly inebriated badger leaning on top of a banner, which will contain the name of the beer, and behind him a hexagonal wooden shield.

This will allow him to have some backing and to draw the eye in towards the cartoon character, plus will make it easier to display on the pump front.

In terms of colour, I’ve gone for some earthy brown and golden tones – keeps it fresh and rural and also aids in making the badger stand out!

The result

Well, I’m very impressed with how the final design came out considering the tight time constraints.

The final decision for whether this design will be used will be made on Thursday night – wish me luck!