Tag: Character design

Recent Educational Illustrations: People & Places

November 17, 2020 by Geo Parkin

Character-based vector illustrations depicting activities or situations in specific locations. Indoors, outdoors, rural, urban, cars, bikes and spaceships. Youngsters, oldsters and in-betweeners, at work, rest and play. All (well quite a lot) of human life is here. 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, autodesk sketchbook, bicycle, boys, Character design, college, computers, education, educational publishing, girls, Holidays, Home, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, laptop, Lifestyle, Locations, Men, mobile phone, Party, People, robots, sci-fi, Science-fiction, Situations, Travel, university, Vector artwork, vector illustration, Women

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Everyday people

May 21, 2017 by Geo Parkin

The following is a selection of recent vector-style book illustrations, created for a series of educational publishing titles. The images I’m commissioned to produce usually involve figures in specific settings or situations. The subject matter can be pretty prosaic, but I managed to keep this project engaging from my own point of view by trying out a slightly different technical and stylistic approach to the final artwork. Experimental, but not radically so. It was also very well received by the […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, boys, Buildings, Café, cars, Character design, Children, Cooking, Costume, Drinks, education, Food, girls, Humour, illness, Illustration, Interiors, Lifestyle, Men, music, Packaging, Publishing, Restaurant, Shopping, sport, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, vector illustration, weather, Women

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Chilli Pickle Kids’ poster

February 14, 2017 by Geo Parkin

My latest poster for the Chilli Pickle restaurant, advertising their fab Kids’ menu. The kids in the image have been named Abheek (boy) and Baani (girl) – as chosen by the chefs, apparently. If you’re in the area, swing by and have a look!

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, boys, Character design, Children, Chilli Pickle, Cooking, Curry, elephant, Food, girls, Illustration, India, kids, Lettering, Poster, Restaurant, Travel

Honey Kasundi label

December 27, 2016 by Geo Parkin

My label design for a recently-launched new product now available from the Chilli Pickle restaurant.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, bees, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Cooking, Costume, Food, honey, Illustration, India, label design, Lettering, Packaging, Restaurant, Vector artwork, Women

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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O2 – who wnts 2 no?

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

This was a slightly unusual but very enjoyable project done in collaboration with the wonderful authorial team of The Two Steves – Barlow and Skidmore, who I’d worked with prior to this on a number of their children’s fiction titles. It was commissioned by O2 telecoms in collaboration with Childnet International as an entertaining means of highlighting to young people the need for vigilance and safe practice when using the internet, and distributed free to schools and libraries. The Steves came up […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Aliens, Black & White artwork, boys, Character design, Children, girls, Publishing, Science-fiction, Technology, The Two Steves

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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

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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

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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