Since before summer this year, I’ve been on a reading initiative committee (comprised of people from KSL TV, Deseret News, Deseret Book, Deseret Digital Media and Temple Square Hospitality) to encourage kids to read regularly during the summer in the state of Utah. To do this, we created Read Today to help kids track their reading minutes, and get rewards for doing so.

ReadToday.com which I designed (sans the logo) and had some brilliant developers who made it all work wonderfully!

Some kids were reading thousands of minutes (!!) and won prizes from Lagoon Park passes to KSL5 helicopter rides! At the end of the summer we held the KSL Book Festival at the University of Utah to celebrate what every child accomplished. It was a great success!

While planning the festival, we discovered that Deseret Book had a mouse costume that we thought would be fun to have someone wear and walk around greeting the children. My cartoonist mind started buzzing, and I proposed the idea of creating a cartoon character based off the costume (the cart before the horse, in a way), and feature him on the website and on all the literature, so that the kids would recognize him at the festival. After that idea was accepted enthusiastically (woohoo!), I was feeling a bit encouraged and pitched a book idea about this mouse character. This too was accepted (double woohoo!) and within three-week’s time, I had written and illustrated a small book called The Adventures of Isaac (5×7″, 8 pages) that we gave to each child that came to the festival. Deseret Book printed the book.

I walked around with Isaac all day and helped hand out the book to the young children. What a treat that was to be able to hand out my own book! When some of the younger children were terrified of a giant rodent trying to give them hi-fives, I would just hand them a book, and they would warm up a little and allow Isaac to sign it. :)

Now that the festival is over, we’ll start a new season of reading initiatives and start planning for next year’s festival! I can’t wait! Maybe another Isaac book?

The KSL Book Festival logo I designed.

This poster features an Isaac illustration that was used on fliers, ads (TV and newspaper), volunteers' TShirts, and merchandise.

Festival and Isaac branded book bags for sale.

Bookmarks for the kids to color.

A box filled with thousands of The Adventures of Isaac book!

Isaac, me, and my children. Isaac was grounded for forgetting his glasses at home.

The reading area where we featured celebrity readings.

By the end of the day, they were desperate for readers so they downgraded the "celebrity readers" rule and had me read The Adventures of Isaac. Isaac was there to sign the books and keep the kids entertained!

I had to speed through this one to make the Illustration Friday deadline, so you’ll notice it’s quites sketchy. It’s a play off another illustration I did quite some time ago: Momentum

I ran out of time for a completed illustration this week, so a sketch’ll haveta do ya!

Anyone who has kids who can speak know that it’s near impossible to keep ahead with finances.

Family dynamics are always fun to illustrate. Growing up with 6 sisters and 1 brother gives me lots of fodder for humorous banter.

Did you know that over a hundred tiny Praying Mantises spill out of one egg case when they hatch? It’s quite spectacular, and then you need to quickly release all but one or two into the wild. These little guys are carnivorous and very hungry. If you don’t give all of them all plenty to eat, they’ll feast on each other. Hey, a little sibling rivalry never hurt anyone, right?

The Praying Mantis Pagoda, obvious by its name, was to have an oriental flair. So I used a Buddhist temple, or tower, as inspiration for the logo, and created a custom font.

The Japanese writing on the base of the logo says “Praying Mantis Pagoda” repeatedly… how original.

At the same time I was working on the packaging, I was to create the look of the product itself. This needed to be done quickly so that it could be manufactured while I worked on everything else. I designed the base of the habitat, the pattern for the frame, and a little oriental lantern that would hang in the center of the habitat to hold the egg case while waiting for it to hatch.

I then had to create the illustrations for the Pagoda instructions.

Put it all together with a cute kid photo shot, some illustrated mantises, the essential legal mumbo-jumbo, and you’ve got yourself a bona fide product with packaging that fits well with the Insect Lore look.

Insect Lore’s UK division is able to sell living walking sticks while it’s illegal to sell them in the US. The reason being that walking sticks are a common pest. Strange, since the US division can sell mealworms/darkling beetles with no restrictions. Ok, this is totally beside the point… the point being I was given the challenge of updating their antiquated logo and packaging.

Aging Living Twig packaging

Ack! Those walking stick characters look like poo with legs. The challenge here was to align it with our unified Insect Lore look, and make it friendly for 10 languages. This looks like a job for illustration!

First off, I created illustrations to show how the kit worked, independent of any copy:

Next came the logo. 

Sometimes I get on a kick and create the whole logo with textures and all, and realize that I’ve been going the wrong way the whole time. Although this logo has some punch, other than reading “Living Twig”, it says nothing. Back to the drawing board.

Ok, this idea had some merit. It was approved by the powers-that-be, so I finished it up:

As you can see, I stayed pretty true to the hand drawn look of the lettering, but modified the leaf “shield” behind to help it sit on any colored background and look good.

The children on the front are from two separate photos, and we didn’t have a shot of a habitat with walking sticks crawling around in it, so that took a bit of photoshopping to get what we needed. I added the obligatory choking hazard label, odds and ends, a little fizz, and there you have it, a fresh updated look to a very cool live insect kit!

Not available in the US, but you can get it in the UK here.

Little warm-up sketches of some strange trees.

Musical Birds came from a sketch I did a while ago that I felt had some merit to complete. It doubles as a Mother’s Day gift for my mom, being a bird collector. I know I’m a little late, but I think she’ll enjoy it nonetheless.

This is a newer technique for me, more of a loose and playful look, and I’m rather enjoying it. I make myself use a larger brush than will fit in smaller areas so that I don’t get so tied up with the details. It’s much quicker for me too!

Inspired by the Book of Mormon scripture Alma 32:30.

Here’s something I did a while ago that matches this week’s Illustration Friday theme perfectly: