It gives me very great joy to share this video – the first animation I have ever  produced independently for a client!

Ebenezer Droplet and his sister, Florence, travel from the clouds above the Snowy Mountains, along the Murrumbidgee River and all the way to the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area to help the community, animals and the environment.

I was contacted by Ian from Murrumbidgee Irrigation in regional New South Wales last year about creating a cartoon for their educational programs, and working on it while living in California these past many months has provided a lovely reminder of Australia: through both the local flora and fauna in the story, and the accents of Eb and Flo, whose voices – and the whole soundtrack – were provided by fantastic Adelaide musicians, The Giggly Kids!

Beginning with the client’s concept, this project was a long haul of character design; script writing; environmental research for scenery reference; commissioning the soundtrack; hand-drawing, water-coloring and scanning all the character and scenic art, and of course animation and editing. And all the while liasing online from across the Pacific! My client was very enthusiastic, flexible and committed, and for a commissioned piece I was able to enjoy a high degree of influence and creative freedom. It has been a massive learning curve, but peppered with much delight along the way.

Click on an image to enlarge!

One reason for my tardiness in updating my site this year has been my blossoming involvement in the glorious yet time-gobbling world of ROLLER DERBY! I drew these fierce and colourful fictional ladies during my Fresh Meat training with the wonderful Adelaide Roller Derby while I was learning basic skills, and the oft-spoken-of derby obsession was only starting to take hold. They are sketchy scribbles, dashed off in the flush of enthusiasm but much as I might itch to re-draw this wonky wheel or that disproportionately-long limb, instead I present them to you here in all their imperfect, excited glory – much like new derby skaters at their first scrimmage! Enjoy – my first derby-related art post, but very unlikely to be my last.

Another card, this time for my lovely, one-of-a-kind buddy Bonnie on the occasion of her intrepid solo bike tour around New Zealand following Adelaide Roller Derby’s visit with (and victorious bout against) Auckland’s Pirate City Rollers last year. She’s an adventuress and no doubt about it!

I particularly enjoyed drawing all the different elf-kids and the various Woodland hanger-onners of their tree. I have it on good authority that rather than rudely separate all the critters from their stubbornly-defended lodgings, the elves just decorated around them!

The little grey cat was a constant attendant to proceedings …

This will be the first of a relentless slew of long-overdue updates! A couple of caricature commissions for birthday cards, for some particularly excellent personages about town. The first was for a Fashion Disaster / Op Shop themed birthday. The second, well, who can say, sometimes you take a brief in a new direction and that direction is RECEIVED WITH MUCH JOY AND HILARITY BY THE CLIENT!

The birds are above and the bees are a-buzzin’ … Spring is here! The Bicycle Institute of South Australia gave me free reign on this poster for their second annual Spring Ride, and it ended up a cavalcade of colour and new life. It was more of an excursion into watercolour than I’ve braved before, and I’m very happy with the freshness of this big birdy and how she holds her own without the black lines I usually use.

The Spring Ride itself looks set to be an excellent event, I can’t wait! A couple of the organisers are the masterminds of past Ready Set Ride outings and I reckon anything they’re associated with is guaranteed to be heaps of fun. If you live in Adelaide, come along! This Sunday, from 10:30 at Victoria Park. There’s more information here and here …

DOGS! I’m a bit obsessed with ‘em. In pencil, watercolour, ink and pen, I’ve been busy doodling woofers all over the place. Here are a few of my recent canine creations in a variety of styles. Lovely little fellas.

Yaaargh! Avast! Trim the mainsails! Shiver me blasted blue-barnacle-encrusted, jolly-rum-do timberoonies!

Who says no good comes of reading glossy, gossipy magazines? If I hadn’t been perusing the celebrity rumour-rags one fine day recently, I wouldn’t have been inspired by a certain pint-sized tomboy Jolie-Pitt and her pirate-themed birthday party hijinks! The fuss these magazines make of a little girl choosing natty vests instead of frilly dresses is just absurd, but I say she always looks like she’s having far more fun than little what’s-her-name Holmes-Cruise in the pointy high-heels. With a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of OJ!

Kids these days! Using the internet like they were born to it … which, I guess, some of them were. This was a commission to illustrate a scenario for an internet-decision-making resource for primary school children. The teacher would show the image and read out the scenario to their class: in this case, Maddy has already tried all the games on a ‘safe’ kids’ website, and is trying to decide whether to search for a new site without asking her Mum. After hearing the scenario the kids would discuss what they might do in Maddy’s shoes, and why. This illustration was hand-drawn and coloured with a tablet using Photoshop.