characters

My World of Warcraft character. Because why not. Gogo girltank!

Here’re some things that aren’t exactly brand spanking new, but I’m going to show them to you anyway.

First: A new shirt up at Threadless! It ought to look at least mildly familiar, as it’s a somewhat rearranged version of my Perfectionist piece; the kid’s now gender nonspecific (or that was the intention; it kinda just looks like a boy, really) and the colours are, well, something more shirt-friendly.

Help me out with a vote!

Second, for the people not following my daily site, here’s a couple I’ve done recently that I like a lot.

Hey kids, I’m still alive, still making art, still unable to blog most of what I’ve been doing. I am, however, still updating the Monthly Daily, my daily artblog, quite religiously. I finished the first month – history! – and am now on to a new theme. Check it out! Here’s a few of my favourites from January:

That’s right kids, it’s a whole new blog! I’ll be making a valiant attempt at posting a new image every single day, on a different theme each month. Check it out, pretty please? The more people who follow it the more terrified I’ll be of failing so publicly. For January, the theme is Stuck In The Past, i.e. clothing and styles from history. Here’s a couple of my favourites thus far.

kimsokol.com/daily – Go go go!

Another day, another artdump! Another story illustrated for Rubicon Publishing. This one’s about a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) kid, his birthday, his favourite meal, and his grandmother.

And speaking of children’s illustration, check out the work of Julia Denos, an illustrator who I found yesterday through Stumbleupon, of all things, and spent my evening fawning over. Love her blog. Her stuff is all kinds of adorable.

CHECK OUT THE COMIC

This past weekend, I participated in 24 Hour Comics Day at the fabulous Kingston comic store 4 Colour 8 Bit. I was down there anyhow, for my very own art show at this very same store – it was great fun, and thanks a ton to Kevin for putting it together, and Nick for allowing me to spend entirely too much time in his store despite the fact I don’t think I bought anything but Pac Man power pellet candy.

I forgot my camera for the opening, but look, art!

24 Hour Comic Day BEGINS

I suppose it was something of a cheat, since my comic was a collaboration with m’dear friend Aggy. The story came from both of us – we couldn’t decide what on earth to do a comic about, so we just decided to do EVERYTHING, and base it on our stupid conversations. She did the lettering, erasing pencils, and filling in large black areas, not to mention writing the old-man rants, which was a task in itself. (And the Cleavager is her fault. I will take no credit for that one.) So while the art is basically all mine, I couldn’t have done it without her, not to mention having somebody to yell at me to stay awake. When she was awake.

A sleepy Aggy sometime in the last few hours

Other adventures included drawing at Denny’s in the middle of the night, being interviewed for the Queen’s University TV channel… all in all, a crazy weekend! God, I love Kingston.

I recently completed these illustrations for an educational kids’ story for Rubicon Publishing. Fun project, and a real challenge, too. (The composition may look weird on a couple of these, because I was working around text that’s obviously not included here.)

Aaaand back to work. Man, I knew freelancing was feast and famine, but it’s one thing to hear it and another to actually experience a couple of months of absolutely nothing followed by sudden work!panic. But whatever, wouldn’t trade this for anything!

I’m going to be at Toronto Fan Expo this weekend, with a gaggle of friends, selling art and the like. Here’s two new pieces (of fanart) that’ll be on sale:

Dr Horrible vs Captain Hammer

Death of Sandman

Yes, I still seem to suffer from some bizarre stylistic schizophrenia. This blog looks like it’s kept by 18 different people, not one girl who cannot make up her mind. It’s not that I CAN’T keep to one style, it’s just that there’s so many fun ones out there to play with…

Also, you may notice a slight facelift to the blog… my portfolio has also got a proper redesign! Check it out!

For some reason all I want to do right now is draw adorable children. What’s up with that?

Was planning to (and still will, I think) do this in my usual inky style, but for some reason, I decided to do this up as a digital painting, and throw it up for Illustration Friday. She oughta look a little familiar. Been playing with her as a character. Her name is Penelope or Penny or something, and she is obsessed with aliens and ghosts and things, all in an effort to discover why the hell her pigtails hover.

After nearly a year of waiting for publication, I can finally post what I did for my co-op last summer!

I did the character illustrations for two children’s travel guides for Junior Jetsetters – Paris and Amsterdam. (The background illustrations were done by artists living in the cities themselves.) Mike did the other two – Chicago and Lisbon. Here’re just a few of the 200-300 images done for these books. (There were about 150 “frames”, but many of them contained several separate character images.)

My first job was to design the local animal guides of the two travelling children.

Amsterdam Character Designs

Paris Character Designs

The images themselves were intended for insertion into photographs. I only have a few examples of that, in cases where it would have been difficult for them to add the characters after the fact. (The two kids, Keira and Jordi, are not my creation; they’re copyright to the Junior Jetsetters guys.)

Paris La Defense

Musee Grevin

Rembrandthuis

The rest of the images only exist in their free-floating, character-only state. Some of these were intended to go in photos, some not, and frankly I can’t remember which were which.

Nothing says Amsterdam like Bollywood

Cooking

Sports, with kiddie versions of our bosses Pedro and Slawko

Amsterdam Roots Festival

Picnic

X-Ray

Paris style

A badger riding a horse?

Beachtime!

Fun with perspective

A TREE

My one regret is that there was so much to do in so little time – near the end, I was doing maybe ten a day, and this was after school had started – so the shading had to be done in a very quick, loose style, and looking at it now I can’t say I like it. But it was a good time, and I learned a lot. Thanks to Pedro and Slawko for the opportunity.