Tag: Cartoon

Private commissions

February 2, 2021 by Geo Parkin

I’ve produced countless bespoke images over the years for birthdays, anniversaries, invitations, congratulations and the like. These have mostly been for friends and family but I’ve also had a number of private commissions for this sort of personalised illustration. Although by their nature they tend not to be the most lucrative jobs, they are frequently among the most enjoyable to work on, which I think comes across in the resulting artwork. If there’s anything you’d like to commemorate with a […]

Categories: Cartoon, Illustration, private commission • Tags: album cover art, anniversary, birthday cards, card design, Caricature, Cartoon, Digital artwork, Family, friends, Illustration, invitations, pastiche, personalised, poster art, private commission, vector illustration

Leave a comment

Recent Educational Illustrations: Food & Drink

November 17, 2020 by Geo Parkin

Self-explanatory, really. These were all produced for a recent series of English-language teaching books, published by OUP. Click on any of the images to enlarge.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Café, Cartoon, Character design, coffee shop, Cooking, eating, educational publishing, Food, girls, healthy, Holidays, Humour, Illustration, Lifestyle, Men, People, seafood, Shopping, supermarket, vector illustration, Women

Leave a comment

Kamba!

September 29, 2020 by Geo Parkin

In 2019 I worked with Go For It Games on a card game called Kamba. There are 52 cards in all, each with its own illustration depicting a three-word tongue-twister. The brief consisted of little more than the tongue-twisters themselves so it was a great opportunity to run with the madness and get surreal. A lengthy job but great fun! Here’s a selection of the illustrations used on the cards, with their accompanying tongue-twisters.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, art, autodesk sketchbook, Birds, bizarre, boys, Buildings, Café, card game, Cartoon, Character design, Children, Cooking, Costume, Drinks, Fantasy, Food, Games, girls, Holidays, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Landscape, Lettering, Lifestyle, Men, music, musical instruments, Packaging, Party, pastiche, Restaurant, surrealism, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, Wacom Cintiq, Women

Leave a comment

Vector artwork – figures and settings.

June 3, 2020 by Geo Parkin

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Buildings, Café, Cartoon, Character design, Cooking, Crowd, Family, Food, Games, girls, Holidays, Home, Hotel, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Landscape, Lifestyle, Men, music, musical instruments, Party, People, Transport, Travel, Uniform, Vector artwork, Women

Chilli Pickle rebrand – poster illustrations

December 13, 2018 by Geo Parkin

Earlier this year, in preparation for the opening of their second restaurant in Guildford, the Chilli Pickle had a branding makeover, overseen by Design LSM. The idea was to formalise the visual and environmental elements of the restaurant to enable brand consistency to be maintained across multiple locations. Up until this point, their visual identity had evolved in a piecemeal, organic manner, but had nevertheless proved very successful, so an important consideration during the project was not to lose sight […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, branding, Brighton, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Chilli Pickle Canteen, Cooking, Curry, Food, Guildford, halftone, Illustration, India, Men, monkey, musical instruments, Poster, Restaurant, sitar, snake, tiger, Vector artwork, Women

Leave a comment

The Strange Planet

June 12, 2018 by Geo Parkin

This is a publicity / poster image I created for the Somerset-based band The Strange Planet, featuring the utterly charming Judge Smith, who was a founder member of 60s experimental rock band Van Der Graaf Generator. I had a wonderfully free rein on this project, just the way I like it. Judge supplied reference photos and a couple of video clips of the band members, then pretty much left me to it. “You might want to put us in a […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, autodesk sketchbook, band, Cartoon, Digital artwork, Illustration, Lettering, music, musical instruments, Poster, poster art, The Strange Planet, vector illustration, Wacom Cintiq

More everyday people

May 22, 2017 by Geo Parkin

Here’s another selection of recent publishing illustrations in a similar vein to those in the last post. People, locations, and situations pretty much sums it up. Click on any of the images to enlarge.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, autodesk sketchbook, bicycle, books, boys, Buildings, business, Café, Cartoon, Character design, Children, Cooking, cycling, domestic scenes, Drinks, fire, fire engine, Food, girls, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, library, Lifestyle, Men, Party, Restaurant, sci-fi, traffic, Transport, Travel, urban scene, Vector artwork, video game, Women, workplace

Leave a comment

The Long Tall Texans: ‘Headless’.

February 23, 2017 by Geo Parkin

There are some jobs you simply have to do. I was contacted recently by Mark Carew, the perma-grinning slap-bass player from local rockabilly legends, The Long Tall Texans, about creating a cover for their forthcoming 10″ vinyl release, ‘Headless’. It was great to learn that they’re still going strong, and I was more than happy to get involved. I did a number of record covers and t-shirt designs for the band back in the early-90s, so it was great to […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Brighton, Cartoon, girls, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Long Tall Texans, Men, music, Packaging, psychobilly, record cover, Rockabilly, sci-fi, Science-fiction, scientist, Vector artwork, Women

Happy Families / Go Fish!

January 24, 2016 by Geo Parkin

In 2013 I worked with a small London-based games company, Go For It Games, on the packaging design for their Games With Names card game. The job went well, and subsequently led to us working together on a significantly more ambitious project in 2015, re-imagining and combining the classic card games Happy Families and its US equivalent Go Fish, for surname-specific target audiences. This was to involve not only the pack design (and multiple variations thereof), but also 52 individual card designs. As I say, […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Animals, boys, Cartoon, Character design, Children, Christmas, Cooking, Costume, Design, Easter, Families, Family, Food, Games, girls, Go Fish!, Halloween, Happy Families, Holidays, Illustration, Interiors, Lifestyle, Men, Packaging, Women

Leave a comment

Gentrification and the Hipster Breakfast; illustration for latest Square Meal magazine.

November 10, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Illustration to accompany an item on restaurants and cafés as an instrument of gentrification, for Square Meal magazine. The image is inspired by the recent, high-profile case of Shoreditch breakfast joint Cereal Killer being targeted by Class War demonstrators, which is referred to in the article. Great fun doing this one, and creating alternative versions of Snap, Crackle and Pop. It occupies a full page of the magazine and, at first glance, could easily be mistaken for an ad. Although emphatically NOT […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, breakfast, Café, Cartoon, Cereal, Character design, Cooking, Food, Humour, Illustration, Lettering, Lifestyle, London, Packaging, Restaurant, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Animals

September 8, 2015 by Geo Parkin

A selection of animal images created for various clients and mostly aimed at a younger audience. Wrap-around label design for a hanging bird-feeder:

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Animals, Birds, boys, Cartoon, Dinosaur, Farm, Fish, girls, Humour, Insects, Jungle, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Character design

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

There is, of course, some element of character design involved in any figurative illustration. For characters that will be used multiple times, from different angles and in different situations however, special attention needs to be paid to aspects such as recognisability, consistency, distinctness, etc. I’ve had lots of experience of this sort of thing. Sample vector-style character designs for ELT educational title. My line-drawing & colour style was eventually chosen for this project as these samples were considered too different […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Animals, Birds, boys, Brighton, Buildings, Cartoon, Character design, Drinks, Fashion, Food, Games, girls, Holidays, Humour, Men, music, musical instruments, Poster, Students, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, Women

Leave a comment

Party City

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

These three maps, created for the US store Party City, were used on their website in 2009 as interactive guides to their themed products in the run up to Halloween. Party City is a big store and Halloween is one of the key dates on their calendar, so there was a lot to squeeze into these images while still leaving enough breathing space between the ‘locations’ to enable on-screen navigation. Click on them to expand and have a closer look at the detail.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Buildings, Cartoon, Fantasy, Halloween, Horror, Landscape, Lifestyle, Maps, Party City, Science-fiction, Transport, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Chilli Pickle 2014 Awards poster

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Poster design for the Chilli Pickle restaurant highlighting the take-away service plus latest of many awards. And taking huge liberties with the Hindu God Lakshmi.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Chilli Pickle Canteen, Costume, Curry, Food, India, Lakshmi, Pattern, Poster, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Games With Names

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

A packaging design job for the small London-based games company Go For It Games. The brief was to produce twenty-four unique but visually unified pack designs for a name-specific card game, Games With Names. I created a basic template common to every design, then six separate character-led layouts, each in four different colour-schemes, providing an individual pack design for each of the twenty-four names. Here are some of the card characters that were grouped together for the final layouts, plus an example of the […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Cartoon, Character design, Games, Humour, Packaging, Playing cards, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Christmas Cards

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

The following is a selection of Christmas card designs I’ve produced over recent years to send to friends and family in both print and electronic form. I could do the same for you. This one actually worked for anyone with the time and patience (and curious lack of anything better to do) to cut it out: The cut-out Santa and Fairy designs below were intended to be made into tree decorations; if you would like free, print-ready pdf copies to […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Animals, animated gif, Buildings, can-can, Cartoon, Christmas, Christmas cards, Comic strip, devils on horseback, Drinks, gif, grim reaper, Holidays, Home, Humour, Men, pantomime horse, Party, Santa, sketchbook, Surreal, tree decorations, Vector artwork, Wacom Cintiq, Women

Leave a comment

Dinosaur wall stickers

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Selected images from a Dinosaur-themed large wall-sticker pack commissioned by FunToSee

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Animals, Cartoon, Children, Creatures, Dinosaur, Humour, Wall stickers

Leave a comment

Mermaid wall stickers

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Selected images from a mermaid-themed large wall-sticker pack commissioned by FunToSee

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Animals, Cartoon, Character design, Children, Fantasy, Fish, girls, Mermaid, Sea, Seaside, Wall stickers

Leave a comment

Football wall stickers

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Selected images from a football-themed large wall-sticker pack commissioned by FunToSee

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: boys, Buildings, Cartoon, Children, football, Humour, sport, Wall stickers

Leave a comment

Art Galleries

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

These art gallery icons acted as digital portals to three separate image collections on my previous website. Great fun, inventing imaginary buildings.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: architecture, Buildings, Cartoon, Stylised, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Square Meal Magazine

August 26, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Full-page illustrations for editorial / opinion pieces in Square Meal magazine. This Dick-Whittington-inspired image accompanied an item on the rise of high-end restaurant chains in West London to the detriment of smaller, independent operators: Image to sit alongside outraged opinion piece on Government proposals to include calorie-counts on restaurant dessert menus: Formal vs informal service in restaurants; the evolution of ‘fine dining’: Not all about the food; restaurants with a welcoming ambience: Illustration to accompany an item on restaurants and cafés […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Cartoon, Cat, Character design, Dick Whittington, Drinks, Families, Food, girls, Humour, Interiors, Lifestyle, Line drawing, London, Men, Neon signs, Restaurant, Surreal, Vector artwork, Women

Leave a comment

The Chilli Pickle Canteen webstrip

August 26, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Website comic-strip for the Chilli Pickle restaurant. Armed with just a few scribbled notes made during my meeting with the owners Alun and Dawn, I was tasked with creating a comic-strip account of the long-debated decision to add a takeaway service to their successful restaurant business. It ended up running to nine quite busy horizontal panels and can still be found on their ‘Canteen’ website. The first commission of what has gone on to become a most enjoyable and creatively fruitful […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Buildings, Car, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Comic strip, Cooking, Drinks, Food, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Lifestyle, Railway, Restaurant, Transport, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Chilli Pickle labels

August 25, 2015 by Geo Parkin

A selection of labels designed and illustrated for the Chilli Pickle Restaurant’s range of Chutneys, Pickles and condiments. More are in the pipeline. If you’re ever in the vicinity, treat yourself to a jar of the Garlic Pickle. You won’t be sorry.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Buildings, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Chilli Pickle Canteen, Cooking, Curry, Food, Fruit, Illustration, India, Kitchen, Lettering, Packaging, Restaurant, Travel, Vector artwork, Vegetables