Robot Alphabet

Once again, I’m running late, but it is still the right week. Here is letter E, for Eat. This one is actually inspired by a vintage poster (the original can be seen here). I’m not really sure of the original’s history, or even it’s artist, but it was posted by the always amazing Bob Staake.

If anyone’s been keeping score, then you’ll realize that I’m a week behind on my robot-of-the-week project. That’s because last week my entire family (myself included) were all laid up with a nasty case of the flu. Well, I’m back from death’s door. Now here’s what would have been week four: D is for Dive.

This isn’t exactly ABC book-related, but I thought it was pretty cool nonetheless. Recently, The New Yorker magazine began a contest to redesign their uber-famous first issue illustration of Eustace Tilley. What you see here is my entry, my tribute to the late, great Charles Schulz. From what I hear, they sent out the announcements to the winners and I wasn’t one of them. Oh well.  So today I’m looking through Newsarama, one of the best comic book news sites on the interweb, and lo and behold what do I see, but my very own illustration!  That’s a pretty sweet concilation prize, if you ask me.

Well, here we are again. This week’s addition to my ABC book is C is for Cook. I had some debate with my wife on what sort of cook I should be doing. I even briefly flirted with the idea of changing the letter C to Chop and doing a robot sushi chef, but then I started thinking about depicting the idea that “hey, kids, it’s fun to play with knives!” And then I decided to go back to scratch.

Week 2, and here’s the letter B, for Blast-Off! I’ll be posting sketches and other stuff later on, but I hope you enjoy this one. I really like how it turned out.

One of the more difficult, but important, things to learn in Illustrator (or in the late lamented Freehand) is how to draw the perfect curve to give your artwork a truly professional look. I’ll let you in on a little secret: before you go reaching for your pen tool–DON’T! Knowing how to work the pen is a vital skill for the vector artist to learn, but it’s also not always necessary to obtain the look you desire. Oftentimes the best way to create a perfect curve is by using one of the simplest drawing tools: the circle. Here are the steps I took to create the boy’s head on my “A is for Awaken” illustration.

First things first, whenever I start a new illustration, I don’t begin right on the computer; I start with pencil on paper. There are some artists I know who dive right in on the computer without any sort of guide to follow. I’m not one of them. I need to work out most of the details on paper first, then scan my sketch and place it on its own layer. You’ll notice my sketch differs in a few ways from the final art. That’s because I do allow myself the freedom to improvise along the way if I think of a better way of doing things while I’m working. Read more

Hi there! Welcome to my first post. I’m working on illustrating my first children’s book titled (of course) Robot Alphabet. Each week I plan on posting a new robot illustration for each letter of the alphabet. This is quite literally a work of love for me, because the whole project began when my three-year-old Lucas asked me to make him a book about robots. So, mission in hand, I decided I was going to make Lucas a book showing him what robots do (it’s also my sneaky way of teaching him to read). I hope you check back often. Along with my weekly illustrations I plan on posting sketches, doodles and tutorials on what I’m doing to piece this whole thing together. When I’m all done 26 weeks from now I plan on publishing it through Amazon’s BookSurge.

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