It's officially summer. At least that's what we've been told anyways. Join in the fun by grabbing our new Splash 'N Squirt and Happy Birthday Gift Cards. Many thanks to our awesome A.D.'s: Brian Holt, Ted Halbur & Aaron Muther!
Filtering by Category: Toys,Just Plain Bad Ass
Awesome. Done by Louie Figueroa at Rube’s Tattoo.
Thanks to Josh for the heads up.
We're honored that we could help out with Target's 7 cube win the other night at AIGA Minnesota's annual Design Show. Go Bullseye.
The IC toy elves have been busy. Meet this summer's dynamic duo: Salvatore and George - the lovable mascots we created for Sasquatch! Music Festival's 10 year anniversary. Salvatore stands 4" tall while George packs a TON of detail into an impressive 2". The two characters come as a set and will be available in person (along with a few limited-edition prints) on May 19th at Velocity Art & Design here in Seattle. Can't make it on the 19th? Don't fret - you can pre-order NOW. Sorry, you're on your own for miniature marshmallows.
Extra special thanks to our beloved clients Adam & Lynn for making this happen. And a round of applause for Frank at Super7 for bringing these guys to life.
A mighty big thanks to everyone who came out to our Full Circle show/Leroy C. launch party at Super7 on Saturday night. We had a blast. And as you can see above, Leroy did too.
If you find yourself in SF anytime soon, the show will be up for a few more weeks.
Photos courtesy of Zac Schwiet, Kaiju Chronicle and Toybot Studios.
Get him while you can ...
He's alive! Metallic silver, white and dark red spray on red vinyl. Available at 6PM on 4/23 at Super7 in conjunction with our Full Circle show. Come on out!
Available online the following Monday, 4/25.
Our buddy Josh surprised us with a nice little gift last Saturday in San Diego. Killer engraving by Garrett Patz.
We're excited to announce that we'll be showing a collection of work at the Super7 store in San Francisco, opening on April 23rd at 6PM. We'll also be debuting the first colorway of Leroy C., the newest member of the IC family! Super7 will have a limited amount on hand to take home.
We'll be sharing a collection of 20+ posters and prints, including a number of illustrations from our late grandfather, Alfred Paulsen. As someone who influenced our work tremendously and spent much of his young adult life in the bay area, we thought it would be fitting to include some of his work in the show.
We'll also have a few new limited Leroy C. prints available. Come out and say hi!
Here's a great little 
Awesome custom Leroy C. by D-Lux.
Well, he departs tomorrow AM. Big thanks to everyone who picked up an unpainted Leroy C. Adios!
We often get asked what our process is like. While we have multiple ways of conceptualizing and pitching ideas, the 3-step process that I'm going to outline below is pretty standard fare for us, as I'm sure it is with many illustrators. Sketch, sketch some more, sketch again, then on to final. 'Final' for us, usually means we hop into Illustrator and block out shapes. Once we have our shapes dialed and approved, we move on to lining and shading in Photoshop. There are many times when we start and finish in Photoshop as well, but a typical project like this will begin as vector art. I thought it might be fun to break down the evolution of an illustrated project, specifically a Gift Card for Target. Let us begin ...
With the majority of art direction already fleshed out by the wonderful team at Target, we're given the project and asked to create sketches based on their initial ideas. Since their initial ideas are always completely awesome, it's a joy to build off of them. The name of this particular card is 'Glow-In-The Dark Space Maze'. In this case, it's a card that doubles as a glow-in-the-dark space maze that doubles as a spaceship. Wait, is that triples as? ... Nevermind.
The first task is the game itself. The manufacturer needs to get started on producing these suckers, so the game dieline is first priority. After a few sketches, we dial it down and come up with our shape.
After the basic game shape is a wrap, we get to the fun part - figuring out the maze! After heading to the store to pick up a few similar maze games, we play, throw down to the floor and curse at said maze games. Once we think we know what we're doing, we start to sketch out our walls. To make it easier, we're given the ball diameter and wall thickness before we begin. After a zillion attempts, the sketch below is the winning configuration - which means anyone under the age of 5 can conquer the game in under 1 minute while the rest of us need about an hour.
After the sketch is approved (and tweaked a little), we move to final vector art for the manufacturer. Bada-bing:
After the game material is off being made, it's time to move into final art. With the nature of this card being glow-in-the-dark, the client asks that we use bright colors. Done. Here are a few colors we pitched:
... as well as this color scheme, which ultimately gets chosen.
So now that the game itself is done, time to start sketching the actual card backer - which is always a big chunk of the fun. We sent the client a few options, with this particular idea taking home the trophy ...
So now what's next? You guessed it. A few tweaks, then on to Illustrator. That's when we start blocking out shapes and finalizing color schemes. After a few rounds of small revisions, we have our final ready for shading ...
And there you have it ... a finished Gift Card. That was fun, right? Now it's your turn.
See it a bit larger in our portfolio. Now go grab one and keep the cursing to a minimum please.
Hayley Rader sent us this amazing charcoal drawing of Ryan. I thought it was great and had to share. Don't tell my brother.
Well, that was fast. Our unpainted Leroy C. figure sold out in 24 minutes. If you weren't able to grab one today, have no fear: we'll have plenty of the colored version in April. Thanks to everyone for grabbing them today.
Could there be more IC toys in the future? We'll have to wait and see ...
Meet Leroy C. He's 4.25" tall, extremely friendly, loves children and is 100% house trained. Before he arrives in full color, we've got 30 all-black prototype's ready for adoption. In the shop (complete with photos) on Monday, February 7th at 10:00PST. $30 + shipping.
We'll never forget that day in 1983 that our mom brought home a bag of Legos the size of a small car. She had picked it up at a garage sale (who sells Legos?) for $8. From that point on, we were hooked. For obvious reasons, Legos ended up being our favorite toy for years to come - and as with most things in parenting life, it's come full circle and is now my son's favorite toy. Like many folks, those bricks have been a big part of our family.
So as you can imagine, I wish I could hop in one of these to go back and tell my 8-year-old self about our newest project for Target, the Lego Build A Bullseye! Gift Card. We've been fortunate to work on many cool projects over the years, but this one was sorta special. We actually wrapped this up in May, so it's fun to finally see it in stores for the holidays.
Below are some shots of the carrier on press a few months back:
And here is the endcap fixture at the store. They were sold out at noon today, so I'm guessing there are other human beings that like Lego as well.
Thanks to our (always) amazing art director Ted for the brains behind this project, and the fine folks at LEGO for giving us the green light.
Oh, and check out the cool little animation below:
So, instead of trying to explain what happened today ... my good friends at Eight Hour Day have already tackled it. Let's just say we met and shook hands (and had a quick little chit-chat about rainbow sprinkled doughnuts) with the leader of the free world today, all by chance. Because the 3 of us were so in shock and giddy like the Double Rainbow guy, we didn't manage to capture any of us shaking hands with the dude. If anyone out there has photos or video, please contact us! What a surreal day, and a great start to the EHD tour.
Photos by Nathan Strandberg.
Well, thanks to you guys - our Lil' Happy Invisible Creature S.A.S.E. Club was a success. We are still counting envelopes, but it looks like we received 200+ submissions. We can honestly say that you guys made our trip to the post office something to actually look forward to (and subsequently brought smiles and fun comments from USPS employees - which usually isn't the norm), so our mission has officially been accomplished. Now it's time for us to return the favor. Since we received so many envelopes (and the shop has been busy), we're running a tad later than we had planned. But like we said when we launched this, have patience. It will arrive.
Since this was so fun, we'll be making this an annual tradition each summer. Thanks again, everyone.
I first met Nate Wragg shortly after I stumbled upon his brilliant work for the film Ratatouille. Namely the 'Your Friend The Rat' short and his great books that were inspired by the film. Many of you are familiar with his fun illustrations and epic character work for Pixar and now DreamWorks. We began chatting as we seemed to share an obvious affinity for all kinds of misc. critters. Namely Sasquatch and the elusive Yeti. It was only natural that a trade was in order.
It took me weeks to nail down an idea, but decided that a 'biker Yeti' may be a funny prospect. I quickly started sketching and 'Freddy Mushyeti' was born. He may look a bit menacing, but I guarantee he's harmless. As for the rest of the 'Mushyeti's' crew, I can't exactly say the same.
Nate had the idea that we'd just surprise each other with the Yeti's and ship off the framed pieces without a clue as to what we'd be receiving. It was a great idea and I can't tell you how cool it was to unwrap. I think I may have even injured the UPS man as I ripped it out of his hands. I absolutely love it.
Next year: Swap Of The Sasquatch.
Nate's Yeti: 'A Break from the Snow' / 10" x 16" / Acrylic & Paper Collage / 2010 My Yeti: 'Freddy Mushyeti' / 17" x 23" / Digital / 2010
