FROG TENNIS
• FROG TENNIS
This was a great job. Imagine how chuffed I was to be asked to do the artwork for a game involving frogs! Even though the poor little croaker is being batted across a pond, it’s still good fun, and the sounds are hilarious.
I’m particularly pleased with the art for the pond mat. As ever it was all brought together using Form Z and Photoshop.
Please click on an image to see the giant version and remember that they are all strictly copyright.
TRIFLE
• TRIFLE
Maybe I should have a studio rename.
I was thinking FAT PIG GRAPHICS. I know it doesn’t sound as sexy as Hot Frog, but I think it might just reflect how I’ve conducted myself recently. This is sounding like a confession, but I guess that’s the tradition of the real blogger, get it all out in the open.
My name is Paul Morton I recently ate three trifles, a whole madeira cake, a bowl of custard with jam and topped the whole lot off with a dollop of whipped cream.
Not my normal breakfast, but consumed in the duty of illustrating this trifle for a popular supermarket chain.
The product samples I received looked about as appetising as roadkill, so I set about constructing the ‘perfect’ trifle, or rather a seductive looking trifle that would make it disappear from the shelves but ultimately disappoint the shopper as soon as they took it out of my wonderful wrapper and discovered the truth!
Please click on the custard to supersize it but remember that trifle cannot really be eaten as part of a calorie controlled diet. Oh yes, and it’s copyright. : )
GAMEBOARD
• GAMEBOARD
My first posting on this blog was the artwork for the boxed game Hotel Las Vegas. Since then I have illustrated somewhere around eight or nine games and I thoroughly enjoy each one. I can show you details from this current job, but the whole image and package is still under wraps, so no more details at this time.
Created using a devilish blend of form Z 3d work with photoshop magic and some photo textures thrown in for good measure.
Feel free to click on an image to supersize it, but remember that they are all strictly copyright ©.
FOUR LITTLE GHOSTS
• FOUR LITTLE GHOSTS
Only three shown here and they are from a game that sounds incredibly similar to Frustration.
I guess it’s still under wraps so no more detail than that at the moment.
Right now I am working on another game, which involves the artwork for the game board which I’m enjoying.
As soon as that is signed off i’ll post it up here.
Meanwhile, feel free to click on an image to supersize it and remember just how copywrit they all are!!
STRAWBERRY PIXELS
• STRAWBERRY PIXELS
I have this theory, well a fascination really. Imagine a computer, Mac of course, that could calculate every possible permutation of pixel arrangements on its screen. Every possible placement of its millions of colours would be calculated and presented in a vast slideshow.
THAT IS A LOT OF SCREENS I know, I did ask my mathematically gifted brother to work it out but there wasn’t enough space on the calculator. However it IS a finite number and one day I guess it could be achieved.
Well, within all the gobbledegook of abstract shapes and colours there is bound to be perfectly formed and recognisable images. If every possible permutation CAN be shown then there will be mugshots of every person on the planet, as well as every person who has ever lived, or for that matter, who will ever live.
Think about it for a while, and you’ll realise that there’ll be a pics of say, Shakespeare, dressed in blue, holding every species of flower against backdrops of every picture postcard location on earth, then he’ll be joined by Nelson Mandela and Wayne Rooney!!
It’s mind boggling (isn’t it Julie) but just about imaginable.
If it was controllable and searchable – Google would orchestrate here – it would mean that whenever someone telephones me and asks for a plastic Santa skiing on ice cream, or a logo sculpted from granite for example, it would already have been completed, with hundreds of variations, and the final image would be sat waiting in a folder on the desktop, for me to deliver the perfect illustration.
So when a client ring me to say that unfortunately they had paid for a high res photograph of a strawberry which turned out to be the wrong variety (it should have been Jubileee), then I needn’t spend two or three days re-illustrating it, I could simply pull out half a dozen different varieties and say, there you, take your pick!
I wonder if I’d be able to afford the software!
The original shot is at the top, then underneath is my reworking of the photograph, turning it into the more heart-shaped Jubilee varietal.
Please double click the Stawberries to supersize them and remember they are strictly copyright©.
MOBILE WALLPAPER DOWNLOADS
• MOBILE WALLPAPER DOWNLOADS
Imagine reading this just ten yesrs ago. You’d have people thinking along the lines of door to door decorating deliveries!
Things have quietened off a little here at Hot Frog towers.
All those juicy jobs I had to turn down over the crazy summer are now just distant possibilities.
This has given me time to catch up on some self promotion, some serious planning for my next picture book idea and to add to my collection of graphics that can be downloaded to your mobile (mainly in the States).
I probably have something like 60 designs flitting around in the aether (shows my age), and each time that one lands on the pink, sparkly mobile screen of some celeb obsessed teenage girl in Massachusetts, it registers a cent or two into my coffers. I like the idea of the pixels leaving my computer and beaming down, Star Trek like, to some other place on the planet.
Here you see eight graphics featuring cosmic chickens, cosmic chimps and rainbow giraffes.
I’d like to see one on the new Apple iPhones, that would be something.
Please click on an image to supersize it and remember that all images are strictly copyright :© )
VELVET SAFARI
• VELVET SAFARI
Quick job this. Turned round in under a week, but nonetheless enjoyable.
Sometimes a urgent deadline helps concentrate the effort but other times it can spoil a job as you just have to ‘go for it’ first time and hope that you’ve ht the mark.
Without the product shots and text in place you’re not going to have a clue what this is for.
Well, it’s for velvet toilet tissues and continues their recent marketing campaigns using children in typically adult roles.
Please remember that all images are strictly copyright © but you may click on the image to enlarge it.
Go on, no harm done.
Actually I’m going to leave this text running along side the image (in Safari) on this post, to see if it looks perfect in Windows – there’s some mysterious formatting issue here that I cannot understand.
FURTHER PICTURE BOOKS
• FURTHER PICTURE BOOKS
Shapes and Colours are two more of the mini titles to be published as magnet books by Softplay Inc.
Like the ABC set the mini book blocks can be snapped together edge to edge to spell out words.
Very soon I’ll bring you the numbers set too, which were fun to do as they are all animals.
Please click on any image to supersize it and remember that all images are xtrictly copyright ©.
MINI PICTURE BOOKS – ABC
• MINI PICTURE BOOKS – ABC
For the last few months I’ve been working on a mammoth set of mini picture books.
OK, I acknowledge that four pages plus one cover doesn’t sound a heap of work. But considering there are 52 books in total, I can assure you that it took a supreme effort of concentration, skill, ingenuity and many hours in front of the screen to deliver them on time.
This is going to sound like a Bafta awards winner’s speech, but there are a number of people that I just couldn’t have done it without!
If it hadn’t been for Stephen Fry’s wonderful reading of Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix, unabridged on CD, and the astounding Philip Pullman’s trilogy – His dark materials, read by the author, I could not have sat at the Mac for up to 16 hours per day.
Not forgetting Hancock on Radio 7, along with Sherlock Holmes, Old Harry’s game and Eddie Izzard, they all, unknowingly, helped me through.
© These images are strictly copyrighted to the publisher. To view a larger version simply click on an image.
ICE CREAM MOUNTAIN
• ICE CREAM MOUNTAIN
Commissioned by Storm Brands in Elland, this illustration of an ice cream fudge topping sauce was a great little job to do.
It followed the months I spent on the ABC books and was a satisfying relief to be able to wrap a job up in a couple of days.
Didn’t get any samples of this one though!
Please click on an image to supersize it and remember that those copyright police will be out looking for you if the rights are infringed.
Incidentally, if you’re wondering why there are some big spaces before the text starts (after the pictures) – it must be some kind of browser anomaly. In Safari, where I create the blog, the text follows immediately after the images, but I notiiced that this is not always the case on other browsers. I don’t know enough html to correct this, sorry.
CHAMELEON CHARACTER
• CHAMELEON CHARACTER
Following hot on the buttons of the telephone character comes this colourful chameleon.
Actually I’ve been working on and off with this job since March – never had such a generous span of time in which to develop and complete an illustration.
He will appear on a selection of drinks cartons across the west coast of America. As soon as the packs hit the shelves I’ll try and get hold of a copy so that I can display the full effect.
Meanwhile I am almost through the full set of 260 pages and covers for those mini picture books. A mammoth job and the reason that I was totally absent in May.
But then there’s probably no-one out there reading this anyway, is there? Thought not.
Please feel free to supersize an image by clicking on it and rememebr that they are all strictly copyright ©.
TELEPHONE CHARACTER
•TELEPHONE CHARACTER
At last I can post some new work up here.
It’s been frustrating to say the least having to wait for embargoes to clear on recent jobs.
But here at last is a little character I created for Asdas new mobile telephone services.
He didn’t have a name at the time of delivery but my pet name for him was talkie.
Created with the help of Form Z of course and then finessed in Photoshop.
Click on an image to supersize it but please remember that all images are strictly copyright ©.