Carl Mitchell

08 Dec 2011, 8:11 pm No Comments

Last month I went to a comic book convention, meeting several nice folk and purchasing merch. Just opposite from Matt Dyson of Mookeo fame (who I knew a little before his success), and down from the smiley Philippa Rice of My Cardboard Life, stood Timothy Winchester from People I Know.

I've only met him twice, but he's such a lovely person we're like friends. After buying some badges (sadly lost on the train ride home), he extolled the virtues of Angela Lansbury, an actress remembered for Murder, She Wrote but star of many more works. He asked for my help on something.

For a couple of years, Tim has dedicated a whole week to this woman, with various guest artists providing drawings to his blog. That week is now, and today my entry landed - The pirate maid Ruth from the Pirates of Penzance movie!

There's been a whole bunch of fine drawings through the week, from various talented and/or enthusiastic people. This link will line up all the days on one page for ya!

27 Oct 2011, 6:42 pm No Comments

Hi. So, how are you keeping? Around exchanging time for money, i've been doing these odds and ends.

One picture, based on a scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was mothballed in 2009 after reasonable progress but unsatisfactory results. Now it's being reworked – The characters have been re-drawn, while the background and border are next. Quick preview:

I also have a new typography piece based on Minecraft, uploaded to DeviantArt here. A black background looks fine but boring, whereas dark green makes it all a bit muddy. It currently lives in anticipation of a better solution being cooked up.

An ongoing thing has been the branding for games-and-comics news site Final Boss Fight. It turns out i've mentioned this before, but now the site's running properly and i've made additional images. I even helped out with the camera work / logistics at the Manchester MCM Expo, which was nice.
The earlier examples have at last been added to the Illustrations page, along with a pic from my Puffin Digital Prize entry (see this post).

The second tick-over is again Minecraft-related (play it, it's fun): A texture pack.
The textures default at 16x16, so it teaches pixel art & "economising" at the best of times. In addition, the pack i've been updating is in the style of the original Game Boy handheld: This means working in 4 colours. Some of the textures are taken from Game Boy games – some are modified from the defaults – some are completely new. Anywho, it is called CraftBoy, and this is where it lives.

Finally, this site's seen a slight header update, code fixes and item shuffling, as always.

That's it for now. In case I don't see ya...!

21 May 2011, 8:16 pm No Comments

I have been working hard... in an office. It's going well, but beyond a few doodles, no artistry has been done. So why is this blog post?

Last night I received an email, reporting that my Ackbarpography design can be bought for $23.94 here on RedBubble, an online art community / shop.

I didn't put it there.

I generally use a simple non-commercial attribution license: Marvel all you like, if you share mention me, don't modify, personal use only. Still, someone crudely lifting my work and slapping their own name on is bad. Add onto that that I sold the commercial rights for it to online clothing company SplitReason.com. They're being nicked from too.

RedBubble have a handy DMCA reporting link on every page, so gathering my evidence and flinging them an email was a piece of cake. I've also sent a heads-up to SplitReason. Acknowledgment have been received, and I await the hammer to fall.

A big crude watermark is now plastered over Ackbarpography here and on DeviantArt, but i'm not fully convinced by this action. It was covered on several blogs, so several smaller but unobscured pictures exist. The copy I exhibit on Flickr is also currently free as a bird. It could still be pilfered from those places, and the art's very origin will appear as the most unattractive of all Google Images results.

There may still be clones out there, on tiny outlet sites i've never heard of. It's not all about ol' fish head either - My other works could have been nabbed. So what's a guy to do?
Well, I guess it comes down to vigilance. If you see a design somewhere, then, erm, somewhere else, figure out how free it's allowed to be. Trace the origin. Let the starving artist / fancy business know!

02 Apr 2011, 11:47 am No Comments

As covered in previous posts (and highlighted on the right), i've been heading a 2-part project to create a children's mascot for Keighley's Cliffe Castle Museum. Well, the second half of Cliffe the Caterpillar finally came to pass in March.

This chapter required more complicated / exciting imagery than the first. There was also a tighter deadline this time round, but it was still brought in on time!
Below are two of the five images made:

As I was working on the above, a second freelance project came in. An upstart called Nexus Education wants some branding and promotional material creating, and I started off by providing a logo:

Then freelance disaster struck - I was offered one of these things called "a job"!
No, it's not in a design studio, and it's temp ongoing, but I grabbed it with both hands!

So here's the rub: Now i've had to put my involvement in the Nexus project on hold, and can no longer help the 3D group mentioned last time (not for a while at least). Shame.

I can, however, afford to buy more than food now, and it's not a bad place. Onwards for a wage!