Blog break- be back in June.

After sixty consecutive posts I'm taking a well deserved break from blogging for the rest of May.

Meanwhile feel free to browse the blog and it's many features. I'll be back soon with more blog entries and loads of new art to show.

I'll see you all in June.

-Chris Wahl

Sosh

Sosh is the lovechild of creator Sharon O'Shea. I've been working on and off, with Sharon and the Sosh project for over 10 years now. It originally started off as a basketball orientated comic strip which was picked up by 'One on One' magazine for a number of issues. These days Sharon still passionately pursues success for her cast of characters and is currently in negotiations with animation and merchandise companies to secure her and Sosh's plans for worldwide domination.

Here are a couple of strips from the 'One on One' issues. They were originally in colour, but here are the black and white versions.

Redhead

Playtime with Photoshop from a while back.

On a different subject, I've created a FAQ section where I'll share info and answer any art related questions. If you have any questions you would like answered, leave your suggestions in the comments section of the CWFAQ blog.

What I do for a crust Pt4- Character design

Character design is another part of what I do for a living. Basically, after receiving a brief from the client I produce a couple of pages of different designs for the character. This eventually gets dwindled down to the look the client is after.


Axel was designed as the mascot for Sony Xplod's car stereo systems here in Australia. He eventually was used throughout print ad campaigns, on their website, made into stickers and a 10ft inflatable figure (based on the centre pose in the pic) for a car show.




These girls were for 'Flirt', a line of young teenage girl's haircare products for Sunbeam. As mentioned in the outline above, the girl's designs went through a few stages before we arrived at the final look.



The sheikh character design was for a juice company over in Saudi Arabia. One of the client's requests was that we weren't allowed to see his belly button, which must be a bit taboo over there. The pencils at the top was the initial design, but we eventually went for a more cartoony approach.

What's in a name...?

So, what do these people have in common?

Well...they all have the same name. To be more precise they all have MY name. All of these people are named Chris Wahl!

We have doctors, animators, principals, coaches, real estate agents...we all seem to have done pretty well for ourselves.


I've actually met the long haired fellow, back when I worked at Disney. He's a head animator on such Disney features as Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin (actually my Austrian relatives thought it was me on the film credits for a while, until my father set them straight, much to their disappointment). We had a brief introduction one day, back when the U.S. were scoping out Australia to do some straight-to-video feature films. You could tell my boss was wetting himself in anticipation, when he brought Mr. Wahl around to my desk-

Boss: Chris Wahl meet Chris Wahl!!!>snigger<
CW1: So...your name's Chris Wahl?
CW2: Yep.
CW1: Cool.
CW1: So how do you pronounce your surname?
CW2: Wahl.
CW1: Cool, me too. (awkward silence)
CW2: Well, see ya!

Somewhere across space and time, an alternate universe imploded from the sheer magnitude of our meeting.

Aussie comic character sketches

Some sketches I've done over recent years of fellow Aussie comic creator's characters.




1. Finch from Craig Phillips' comic of the same name.









2. Terinu from Peta Hewitt's comic of the same name.







3. Billy from Hayden Fryer's comic, 'Billy: Demon Slayer'







4. One of the lead characters from Matt Bayliss' comic, 'Cosmic Corsairs'.

Go get 'em, tiger!

This was a bizarre job. A Disney style piece done believe it or not for...Viagra! Their slogan was, 'Go get 'em, Tiger!', so they wanted the tiger representing Viagra and their competitors represented by the monkey and the hyena. Quite an odd pairing of style to product, if you ask me. But it was fun to do.

Sketching playtime

When I'm trying to wind down after a job, I like to just flip through a magazine and sketch any interesting faces I come across. With some faces I like to push them to extreme proportions to see if I can find a breaking point. These faces were taken from a copy of 'Rolling Stone'.

Cars and girls

This was a promotional piece for Australian born, internationally famous and revolutionary designer Marc Newson.

I can't remember exactly where, why and how the piece was used as it was so long ago. I think it was for an exhibition of Marc's work at The Powerhouse Museum, as this artwork was on display next to the real life version of his Ford concept car.

The woman in the pic was based on his current girlfriend at the time, Norico who was a Japanese pop star.

Viva Las Pizza

A four-pager done for Damien Shanahan's Pizzaman comic from a few years back. Lot's of fun to do. Damien did a fantastic job of colouring it for the comic but since I use a lot of blacks in my comic work, I think it works just as well if not better in black and white.

Dwarfs or dwarves?

A digital painting done for a juice company's print campaign in New Zealand. I researched background paintings from 'Snow White' to get an authentic feel to the painting.

That's my boy...

A sketch of my son and special little guy, Alexander.



...and yes, he's as cheeky as he looks.



I've added Alex to Illustration Friday's current topic, 'Angels and Devils'. As with all kids, most of the time he's the perfect little angel but he definitely has his devilish moments.

On a different note, this is my 50th blog entry, 50 days in row. Hope you're all enjoying the ride.

What I do for a crust Pt3- Storyboards

Commercial storyboards take up about three-quarters of my workload. These boards are used by ad agencies to pitch potential television advertisements to clients and test audiences. Some get made into commercials, some don't.

Here are some single frame samples taken from different storyboard sets. All five of these were made into television commercials.



1. This was for Pizza Hut and their new mascot, Pizza Mutt.





2.Originally this was a Visa ad starring Valentino Rossi, but eventually the idea evolved into a James Bond-style ad starring Pierce Brosnan.




3. A more stylish drawing style was required for this ad.





4. A fun bunch of storyboards for a muesli product. The storyboards where I can play around with expressions are usually the most enjoyable.


5. These frames required a more polished look and finished colouring style. Done for Panasonic.

Hey, hey, hey! It's Faaaat Alfred!

This is my cover art from a past Australian MAD Superspecial, which I've submitted for this week's Illustration Friday topic: Fat.

Storyboard cover art

A tri-fold cover and also some interior art from Drawing Book's Storyboard book from a few years ago. The book showcased storyboards of different artists (including myself) from Drawing Book Studios. The art you see here is entirely digital- inked and coloured in Photoshop.

Face Tattoo

A digital painting done for fun a few years ago after visiting New Zealand.

I was inspired by famous New Zealand artist, Charles Goldie (1870-1947). He did some amazing portraits of Maori people, mostly elders with face tattoos.

X-men convention poster

This was done for 1998's Ozcon comic convention which took place here in Sydney, Australia. This was before my computer colouring days, so it's coloured traditionally with colour markers and airbrush over a black and white photocopy.



Looking at it now there are a few wonky bits- Storm's got no neck, and her breast's are too high and Wolverine's leg positioning looks a bit odd, but I'd be worried if I didn't see any errors in my work after eight years of trying to improve.

Soldier girl experiment

A little experiment trying to integrate 2D and 3D elements. The helmet was modelled and rendered in Zbrush, the girl in Photoshop. I've been influenced by the Gorillaz music clips where they do a similar thing.
I think my pic almost works. Next time it might be a case of just simplifying the details on the 3D elements a bit more.

The Pizzaman cometh...and goeth

An unpublished wraparound cover for Aussie comic character Pizzaman created by Damien Shanahan, done over (yikes) ten years ago.


The design was Influenced by the 'Official Guide to the Marvel Universe' wraparound covers by John Byrne (a big early influence of mine) from the 80's.