Very happy to put together an event logo for the Assault Care Center Extending Shelter & Support (ACCESS)‘s summer bike ride fundraiser: Break the Cycle.
A good friend is in his first year of teaching biology and commissioned me to interpret some classroom signage. We worked together to come up with the best imagery, colors and overall concept to best communicate the statements. Final product was eight 11×17″ posters.
Any opportunity I have to design for the classroom and to collaborate with passionate people is an opportunity I can’t miss!
Every year, Absit Omen puts on a holiday gift-exchange we call the Dobby Swap. Dobby the House Elf being a character of great friendship, bravery and generosity. (As well as an appreciator and giver of even the smallest gifts.) This year was our fourth year and each year more and more members join in, from all over the world, from all walks of life. WARMS MY HEART!
AO members come up with all kinds of free creative digital gifts. Polyvore sets, play lists, sets of avatars and signature images, drawings, fan fiction of their characters, video montages – it really is exciting to wait and see what someone made for you, the attention they must have paid to your characters.
I was paired to a member who’s fairly new – Aza. I drew him his character Warren. Aza, as of yet, hasn’t begun using an avatar, so I went on the physical description.
My big Christmas craft project was portraits of the eleven cats in my life – not all of them ended up being gifted (sorry to Knox, Pixie, Popper, Winston and Rajah). But here are the others!
Mose, who belongs to my brother and his wife. He’s a snuggly, shoe-sniffing sort of fellow.
Amelia, my other brother’s happy little rescue. Her tongue hangs out most of the time.
Little Ahab, my dad’s new three-legged kitten dude. He’s really really really cute.
Xena, my mother’s matriarch cat – she’s a 17-year-old Persian/Himalayan. Spry and bright as ever!
Myrtle, adopted sister of Mose. Sweet and quiet and likes to stay home.
Muezza, she with the biggest, widest eyes ever seen on a kitty! Adopted sister of Amelia.
Have you heard of Kongregate? My brothers and my work are woven into the online indie game world at the edges and I’ve been working with Kong on and off for a couple years now – really fun company, got to say. Anyway, I want to show you this cool thing that was sooo muuuuch fun to make!
It’s the KongBot. He’s a robot.
The best part was by far coming up with the different emotes/poses for him. Can’t wait to do more sometime.
A few things I tried to think about…
- Simple, bold silhouette
- Versatile
- Allow for cartoonish warping and exaggeration
- Make him easy to draw and recognize
About a year ago I was working on an illustration commission that contained, among other things, the heads of goats. Here are some sketches from that process.
Reference is your friend.
They’re real! The label illustrations I did for Keg Creek Brewery in Glenwood Iowa are officially on actual bottles filled with real beer.
That’s so fun.
First – this is the best Tumblr ever. Women Fighter In Reasonable Armor.
Second – this is work done specifically for the Prismatic Art Collection, which I’ve mentioned before. Prismatic Art is commissioning and collecting royalty-free, free-to-use fantasy artwork depicting characters who aren’t just buff white dudes (because we have plenty of those!). So characters that represent a broader range of genders, races, and body types and abilities. The work in the collection is supplied particularly for role-playing game sourcebooks, and stuff like that.
All © 2012 Sarah Carney, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license
You can get high resolution copies of these for your independent or commercial project at Prismatic Art.
My brother Joe The Animator asked me to do him a favor – draw this Naruto character for an animation he wants to do. I said, sure awesome, yes! What is a model sheet. And what is Naruto.
Up to speed now.
I’ve been illustrating beer labels for a local artisan brewery in Glenwood, Iowa – my hometown. A gig like this is kind of a dream gig. You have so much room for expression in a beer label, and hey – I happen to know a thing or two about beer, thanks to my husband Tim who does some home brewing.
Keg Creek Brewery really likes to connect to its local history, so the beers are named and themed after important local places and events. Like the Wabash Wheat, honoring the old Wabash Railroad. And now, a broad swath of it’s old tracks has been converted into a beautiful scenic bike trail.
The home base of the brewery is in this old building that has been many things, but when it was first built in the 1950s, it was Kizzier’s, a gas station and mechanic. So with a few reference photos I got to recreate the scene.
These are just the juicy parts of the label with the text and government nonsense layered out and cut off, just to show the good stuff.
It’s a really fun style to work in, and I have loved every minute of working on these. And probably more to come.
:
Illustration
Hand-drawn, digital or vector illustration focusing on character and movement.
Graphic Design
Logos, event and product promotion, apparel and signage.
Web Design
Web design and development-ready .psds, basic HTML, CSS and Wo...944 views
Dance Teachers Shape the Lindy Hop Community : In modern Lindy Hop, most people's entrance into the community is through a class. I think perhaps Back In The Day, you just got out on the floor and learned 'in the wild'. But Nowadays, instructors rule our world.
Good and bad, right? I think h...889 views
Free Steampunk Gears for Photoshop :
Download
A set of 10 free Photoshop custom shapes for any of your fine mechanical construction projects. Ideal for zeppelins, airships, gyroscopes and widgets. These gears are offered gratis, but don't go off trying to sell them.
Or perhaps y...870 views
Potterverse School Uniforms : Absit Omen is getting ready for the TetraWizard Tournament, which for our role-playing site is going to be a massive, probably years-long site-wide plot. It's probably the biggest project we've taken on and one of the things we wanted to sort out as...839 views
T-Shirt Mod Tutorial: Two Color Hipster Cowel Neck : I think t-shirt modding is one of my favorite craft projects because it's cheap and it really doesn't matter if you mess up - it's a $2.99 XL shirt from the Goodwill. I don't like t-shirt mods that are just a cut-job and you end up with a tattered ga...445 views
Old World Fantasy Map Tutorial : This tutorial takes you through how to create an inked effect for lines for something like a fantasy, or old-timey map. Uses Photoshop and takes advantage of an repeated Photoshop Action. The tutorial shows you how to create the Action, but you can...425 views- Steampunk Goggles Activate : Oh the days of steampunk. What happened to those simpler times where steam and clockworks powered everything, we were all zeppelin pilots, mechanics and inventors, and daily life for most folks necessitated goggles? (Was it all the alchemical motes ...365 views
Women Leading & Men Following : I've collected some YouTube clips of Lindy Hop partnerships where women are leading, and men are following. Some of them are social clips, others choreographed for competitions, and still others are improvised jam-style competitions. They are all o...344 views- The Discussion of Gender in Lindy Hop :
Reflections on Feminism & Follower-focused Events by Gina Helfrich (May 15, 2008)
Building an Inclusive Swing Dance Community by Rik Panganiban (December 20, 2009)
An entry of mine from later this month. I'd forgotten I'd written it: Leads...332 views
Jack’ing in the J&J : A couple weeks ago, I competed as a lead in a fun little Jack & Jill at the Omaha Jitterbugs' Christmas party. I say 'little' because well, there's probably no friendlier audience and lower stakes than that homey atmosphere surrounded by your home s...321 views