Mr. Alzheimer's Goes To Toyland

It's not what you know, it's who (whom?). Last year, a good friend of mine passed my details on to his mother Joy, who is very active in raising awareness of the infamous neurodegenereative disease, Alzheimer's as well as being afflicted herself. Looking for someone to redesign a character, yours truly was drafted in.

One of my original interpretations

of Joy's funky yellow character.

Since then it's been a gloriously wild ride at Paul Loudon Illustration, with postcards, a children's school book and an activity pack to work on. The opportunity to collaborate with Emma Smith (age UK Salford) and Dr. Joy Watson has been a true highlight of my career, culminating in a book launch in which I felt like a minor celebrity. Kids from local schools were there and did a great job entertaining the crowd with shadow puppets. LINK

The book cover. Carbon Creative

worked their magic on one of my

interior illustrations, I like it! 

Furthermore my illustrations for the book were passed on to Carbon Creative LINK, who did a grand old job compiling the thing and making it look proper. So, a shout out to them. 

One of the more complex images, shows "Mr. A"

looking a bit lost and confused, before a young girl 

asks him where he's going. ...Mr Alzheimer's turns

blue when in distress. 

Book launch!

More images to follow...

How I got Started in Illustration - Part 3

I'm gonna make this post really short...because life is short; less talking, more doing I say! My first real commission was a children's book entitled Matthew and the Money tree. It can still be found on such websites as Amazon ---> right here.

The cover is still the most epic aspect about the book.

I got the job through a site called "Elance" ...it's one of those bid-for-projects sites in which talented people under-cut each other ensuring that few people get paid what they're worth and where non-discerning clients get said work very cheaply. Those were dark times and I usually begrudge such sites even though I am in the unfortunate position of crawling back to them once more despite bigger projects since my first commission. Odesk is another such site. You "could" say they are useful for those starting out, at a push. As an artist with moderate success, I find such sites a pain in the arse; whereas students from the Philippines probably have some financial success out of them. Suffice to say, my fee for Matthew and the Money Tree was small.

This is one of the better pages.

The work was fraught with other problems too, namely a lack of consistency in my drawings. I remember that after finishing the book, I had to go back and visit each page and create new heads for "Matthew" because he looked different from page to page. This was a lack of experience on my part in creating anything sequential. What I should have done was create "style sheets" from which to draw reference.

One such page I had to re-visit for head-swapping.

Despite my problems with inexperience and the sheer disheartening workload of the book, I am glad I did it. Better things were to come... by which I do not entirely mean nightclub flyers such as this one:

Apparently they all died of scurvy. 

I was also in a design "collective." ...I did that drawing of women in a boat whilst someone else did the design work. I will always be eternally grateful for such opportunities but boy does the drawing make me cringe.