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

So, to kill two birds with one stone, I decided to use this week’s Illustration Friday theme to create a new website header. My header has been like Christmas lights that you forget to take down… and in a year, they become useful again ;) Time to change that.

A box of crayons symbolizes a cocoon, where there’s something beautiful inside just waiting to get out and show the world. It’s wonderful to watch a child with a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons and see what they come up with.

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.

This cute little bear character is a man-eating machine, can’t you tell? Just try and rub his tummy and see where you end up.

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.

My 8 year old daughter has just created an organization for the benefit of the brain. No, not the lab rat… OUR brains. Won’t you join her and back up a cause that we all could benefit from? Heaven knows we all need more brain.