My buddy Rich recently designed and developed a small web site for Disney. They liked it so much that they gave him another. They not only wanted a total redesign but also a full Flash site. He called me to do the backgrounds so he could animate them in Flash.

Below is what I’ve got so far. This would be the intro frame. Once the site is up and running I’ll post the link.

(click on image to enlarge)

My wife and I have been fans of Crazy Shirts since we came across one of their stores while looking for a wedding location in Sarasota. We were walking at St. Armand’s Circle one morning and we noticed the store. We loved what they had displayed on the windows so we went in.

We bought a few shirts of course. At the counter I asked the clerk if they hired freelancers. Luckily she was well informed and told me about the artist program.

I set up a web page customized for them on my site with some examples and a quick bio about how we love Crazy Shirts and Hawai’i (they’re based out of Hawai’i) in order to get into the program. It worked.

I was then added to their mailing list. Every 2 months they send out requests to their freelancers to come up with specific concepts for shirt designs. I’ve been getting these emails for a while now.

You start off with some clean pencils of your concepts and as each week goes by they let you know if they like your design or not. If you’re lucky enough to get through the all the prelim reviews and get your design to final boards, there’s a chance they’ll buy your work. But there are no guarantees.

For the first time, I’ve reached final boards. I’m reeeealy hoping they’ll buy both designs I’ve drawn up. If they do, my work will finally be on some Crazy Shirts. Plus, it’s $1,000 for each design which isn’t bad.

Below are the designs I’ve come up with with some art direction from them. Although there are 3 images, 2 are just a variation on a theme. Click on each to enlarge.

Like I said, since the FWC aren’t going to use any of the first 4 prelims I did for their logo, I will be painting the turtles instead.

Here’s the first of 4. This is still a work in progress. Click to enlarge.

I’m happy to announce that the logo I illustrated and designed last year for the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission was received so well that they’ve asked me to do next year’s logo. So of course I’m stoked.

Here are the 5 turtle illustrations that I will be working with. The 5th is actually the only concept that is much more fully developed, although it still needs some refining. Each turtle will have several variations but one from each core concept will be chosen. Basically they’ll end up with 5 choices from the plethora of ideas my head has spit out.

Once I have the 5 fleshed out logo concepts, I’ll post them and of course I will post the final logo as well.

Click on any of the images below to enlarge.

Update: I won’t be working on 5 concepts. They’ve already chosen to go with concept 5.  It’s the only logo where I’ve applied the theme, which will be disclosed later on. As for the other 4 drawings, I’m going to turn them into paintings.

This was drawn in my Moleskine, scanned and finished in Photoshop and Painter.