Great post over at Patrick’s blog about the annoying use of the word “virtual” to describe everything online.

This hit me recently when someone at work asked me to re-edit a document because it was “too Web-speak”. I thought about it for a little and realized what he probably meant was, “It’s too conversational, relaxed, and needs to be dressed up more.”

What he was calling “Web-speak” is actually just “People-speak”.

If you spoke to people the way advertisements speak to people, you would get punched in the face.
Hugh McLeod

And I’m learning more and more that writing for the Web is in fact just writing for people. Conversational, relaxed, clear - the way you would speak to someone if you bumped into them in a supermarket or at a pub.

It’s the old writing - the “writing for print” that was out of touch with reality.

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Hey, so now that I have a proper T-Shirt shop, I’m going to start filling it with T-shirts.

People have been asking for Ojingogo T-Shirts for years and now seems like a great time to do one. But I need your help…

Which colour is good?? (Please leave a comment below)

Blue

Orange

Grey

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I did a few spot illustrations last week for the Wall Street Journal. Here they are:

Peer to Peer Lending

Community Housing Loans

Projected Earnings Loans

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Experienced a bit of a hiccup there when my web host emailed me on Saturday and told me my site had crashed twice, so. they. deleted. it.

Yep. They deleted my site. Isn’t that great?

I’ve been with these guys for five years - referred them countless clients and I wake up one day to find they have absolutely no respect for me as a customer.

Regardless, I had a backup of my database and most of my image files. But it will be a while before everything is restored - if ever. I’ve lost the last month’s worth of posts and I may have lost two years worth of images.

Anyway, it starts to bug me and then I realize there are real problems in the world and I think, ‘who cares, it’s a blog.’

So it is, so let’s keep blogging…

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The above sketch is for Jenogo in Brooklyn! Who requested a “ghost-birds”-type sketch in their book.

Just sent out a big shipment of books and prints. Thanks to everyone for their patience. Every spare minute of the last month has gone into finishing the Ojingogo book which is very nearly done. I’m looking forward to putting it all online in the coming months.

Here’s a book sketch for Paul in Amsterdam:

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I did some concept art for a billboard last month. The ad agency was looking for a “Pixar-ish” version of a freshwater fish, like a trout.

The final art was rendered by artists at MomentFactory, the ad agency:

Here’s one that just popped up outside the Jean Talon subway station in Montreal (Thanks Aisling for the photo!).

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This is the MS Internet Explorer download page as seen using… MS Internet Explorer 7.0.

The white text (which you can barely read) says “You are using Internet Explorer 7″.

Too easy a target?

Just chucked it up on Digg.

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Another illustration for the spring issue of the McGill Alumni magazine. The illustration is for an article about a new award honouring books about historical figures.

Art director: Daniel McCabe.

I like the way Elizabeth turned out.

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Gearing up for a busy month of drawing. Settling into my new apartment and getting down to work…

Like a lot of people recently, Twitter seems to have become my number one social network. Especially while working alone on a lot of projects. Nice to have that “water-cooler” connection with people.

We’ve even set up a Twitter feed for Drawn! and one for the NFB.

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Julia from HelloNekko.com interviewed me last month for her blog.

I met Julia at Expozine last year. I love her fun illustrations. That awesome panda over there is her character.

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The first shipment of Bears and Beer Tshirts has gone out. Here’s a photo of Jonny from Boston, proudly showing off his Bears and Beer to the world.

If you’re still waiting for yours, it’s in the mail now. If you’ve already got one, please send me a photo so I can add it to the gallery.

We’re going to do one more print run, so you can order one here if you want to be in on that.

Here are some early reviews:

“LOVE it!”
-Ariella
Boston, MA

“Sweet!”
Rob Maguire
Montreal, QC

“A stranger came up and told me it was awesome!”
Julia Wertz
Brooklyn, NY

“A big hit!”
Luc Latulippe
Vancouver

Okay, they’re all my friends and I added the exclamation marks myself - but whatever - this Tshirt business is hard work, man!

Thanks to Jeff Rowland filling all the orders for me.

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This illustration is for an article about the health benefits of dragonboat racing in the new issue of the McGill University Alumni Magazine.

I wanted to get some dynamism in the figures; show them pushing forward against the odds.

Sepia ink on bristol.

And the final with photoshop textures and ink splatters.

The article talks about how all the research indicated that high levels of exercise were unwise for people battling cancer but dragonboat racers had higher remission rates than non-racers.

Should be out in the Spring issue.

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Hi-res textures come in handy on illustration and design jobs. Usually when you need them most - in the final stages of a job when you want to add some depth to your images in Photoshop - and you don’t have time to run out and shoot your own. So I collect these interesting textures while walking around the city in the summer.

I’ve had these textures available to download for free from my Flickr account for the last year, but I realized they might be more useful here on my blog.

Click on the image to get the hi-res version. Enjoy!

Continue reading

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I have a four-page comic in the March issue of chickaDEE magazine.

It’s a silent (pantomime) comic about a girl whose drawings come to life.

While drawing it, I kept thinking of those 80s television commercials where the characters on the cereal box would come alive. I tried to convey the horror that a child would actually feel if one of those cartoon characters invaded her dimension.

Art direction by the wonderful, Sarah Trusty.

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A sketch from a tech meeting a couple months ago fused with a woman from the Metro.

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