2011- Now what?

Happy New Year! It's been quite a while since I updated this blog, or for that matter, any of my homes on the internet (more on that later). While I haven't purposely stayed away, I haven't made any real effort to push my online presence lately either. After spending roughly the last two years laying out most of the details of my life online, I guess I've just needed a break from writing. I've been in a sort of rebuilding limbo, and have been trying to sort out my life, my career, and pretty much every other aspect of my world. I'm pleased to say, that after the traumas of the past couple of years, I finally feel as if I've found some equilibrium, and am now ready for the next big challenges.

So, now what? That's what I keep asking myself. I've worked very sporadically over the past couple of years, and most who have stopped by here know why. For those who haven't, a quick recap: my wife Traci died in 2009, after a 13 month battle with cancer. I have a little boy, and have focused much of the past year on spending time with him, and making sure he (and I) are making the adjustments necessary to go on. I've done a few client projects here and there, but have mainly been dealing with my private life. So, now, it's time to jump back into my career.

To that end, and to help further the purpose of this forum, as an illustration journal, I'd like to present a project I recently completed for my client, The LightStream Group. I was asked to produce their holiday card, after doing another interesting project for them in the fall. I'll probably show that one here at a later date, but they were very happy with the way it turned out, so they decided that they wanted me to do the card. I was given a concept and asked to present some roughs. What they were looking for was an image featuring an elf decorating their logo with holiday regalia.After a couple of rounds of roughs, it was decided that we'd go with a Rankin/Bass style. This is the first time I ever did something like this. I drew everything digitally, on my Wacom tablet, and really tried to emulate that specific stop motion puppet style. Here is the end result (and just in time ::ahem:: for the holiday season!):

The last image is to give you an idea of what the images of the elf at a larger size. Click on each of the images for a larger version. You can see the textures much better that way.

I had a great time working on this, and the client was fantastic. I'm hoping to get a chance to do more cards like this in the future. I might decide to do another blog entry on this one to show the process in creating the artwork. As this was my fist fully digital illustration (I do a lot of digital editing in my work, but this was the first ever fully digital rendering), it might be interesting to explore the process here. I'll give that one some thought.

In the meantime, thanks for checking this out. I'm going to try to keep the blog more regularly from here on, so please stop back soon. I have a lot of unseen artwork to share in the coming weeks, so hopefully, that will keep you guys coming back for more!

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One last note: I have a number of other places I can be found on the internet.

If you're on Facebook, you can find me at  http://www.facebook.com/rich.faber.illustrator

You can also find the Facebook page for Comic Book Diner, the podcast on comics and graphic novels that I do with my buddies Jamar and John here: http://www.facebook.com/comicbookdiner

I'm also now on Twitter, so you can follow me here: @Rich_Faber

Thanks for stopping by. I'll be back soon!

Best,
Rich