Some lovely friends again commissioned me to illustrate their Christmas cards this year. The first time I designed their cards from scratch they had one Finnish lapphund in their family. The second time they had two and this time they have added an adorable baby to their brood! If this keeps up there won't be any room for everyone on the cards in a few years!
They had me work up a discarded concept from last year (when they did not have a baby). As you can see, I had to rejig it a bit to fit bub in as well - but if you've got a new baby you can't have personalised cards that only feature your dogs, am I right? Plus, he's just too cute to leave off!
(yes, yes I know. My concept sketches are really ugly)
We had them printed at Moo, and they did a lovely job, as usual. I initially did two colour-ways with this design, to take advantage of Moo's Printfinity capabilities.
However, my friends are great gamers, and when they saw the finished images (before print) they thought it would be fun if baby Alastair had a hat like Link in the Legend of Zelda games. So I put together a tweaked design that they could send to their gamer friends (who will hopefully get the joke). I don't play the games, but I was inspired by the Wind Waker games, as they have wall decals from that in the nursery, and when I made them a needlefelted baby mobile, I took that as my theme. Anyway, I already had clouds so it seemed apt. And I went a bit further than just updating the hat:
I used references, of course, piecing Korra and Esther together from a number of reference photos so that I could get the poses I wanted while still very definitely drawing them, and also using several references for Alastair.
I think they look quite striking all together. Three cards with the same design, but vastly differing moods:
Design done in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2 and a Wacom Intuos pro.
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