Sanjay

Tad

Bonnie

Caveman

Ever wonder how I make my living? Ever wonder what I do with my days when I am not crying and shooting smack? Well, I am gonna tell you anyway. I design such lovable characters as the ones you see above. Sometimes I even move them around through the magic of ‘flash animation’ as well.  Such the life for me.

Dig it! Here’s a new commissioned drawing of my beautiful English pals and all-around-lovely couple, Ruth Sneddon and Alex Noodle. Also pictured is their canine companion Kidd.

Apparently, Pixar came out with a movie that has a passing resemblance to this image. I have never heard of it, but it seems to be up for an Oscar.

Remember, like the Beatles, I am for sale. Want me to draw something for you? I’ll do it no matter how stupid the idea. The important thing here, is that you give me money.

That’s right, suckers. MORE leftovers.

This scene was cut on the account of the angry eyes. Apparently, hooded eyes frightens children, or so I was told many times. What? the same wee ones that are spray painting graffiti behind my house, or the fat tikes at home playing violent video games? Well, I guess kids in after school chess programs might be part of the upper crust and have more delicate sensibilities. I wouldn’t know, I don’t play chess.

Mistake No.1 Uh, oh. “Dot eyes”. I don’t know why I bother with them. Clients ALWAYS hate them. ALWAYS.

Mistake No.2 I made a black guy look black. When a client says they want a”multi-cultural cast,” what they really man is “Draw Caucasians and color them brown.”

For some kooky, goofy reason, this background was changed to green. Yes, everything fell apart after that.

As you no doubt have already guessed, The Indian robot turns into a house and the Italian ‘bot turns into the Leaning Tower Of Pisa AND the Effel Tower, of course(?)

I don’t remember anything about this one. I kinda like it. Painter is good for sponge effects.

This one looked really jagged and pixelated on the screen. Gotta keep those outlines, I guess.

New stuff to come, I promise.

(click to see ‘em big and without black background)

Here’s a generous helping of vector drawings from a few years ago for instructional chess videos. Yeah, so these are exactly new, but I never posted them here. Hey, at least I am trying here.

I contemplated suicide today, but decided that I didn’t want my last piece of “art” to be an animated short about braces shaped like chess pieces.

Enjoy!

chick here for ch*ssm*le animation

It’s been a busy time, here at Lattaland. I’ve been pushing a lot of pixels and punching a lot of walls.

As you no doubt noticed, I’ve been posting less frequently as of late. Truth be told, friends, most of the work I’ve been doing would bore the pants off the lot of you, or, in some cases, bore the pants back on you.

This doesn’t apply to you, whatever current client that just-so-happens to be reading this!

Anyway, here’s screen caps and designs for some flash animation that the client would prefer (and rightfully so) that I didn’t post here.

What else? I guess that’s it for now. Hang tight, true believers!

Chocolate and peanut butter.

Flowers and bees.

Chess and hip-hop.

Some things were made to be together.

The directive for this one: make a King and a Rook look like rappers. Not unlike Tupac, this rapper was shot down for being too edgy.

Hmm, How do you make  a rapper more family friendly? Why going back in time when rappers rapped about having a good time and nothing else, that’s what you do!

I went for a vintage, I mean “old school”, look.  Of course the powers that be ( I mean, the “man”) shot this down on the grounds that kids won’t “get” the reference to the 80’s. Personally, I disagree. That’s like saying I wouldn’t have recognized a hippie as a child, because that, too, was 20 years before my time.  Jeez, I’m old.

Speaking of being old and out of touch, I was instructed to give them modern rap duds. Oh, and I was told not to make the pants too baggy, after all schools are having a problem with that.

So there you go. Rapping chess pieces.

Hello all my imaginary friends out there in blogville U.S.A!

It’s your ol’ pal Josh Latta here at Lattaland and I’m gonna tell all you peons what it’s like to be a real life professional artist!  Don’t get the wrong idea, though. It’s not all bud lites, goodwill trousers and shiny 97 corollas. Yes sir, sometimes this chosen field can be a little less than glamorous.

Case in point: Here’s how art gets watered down and given to you, dear readers, for your consumption.

Usually, I get a call from some poor sap at some boring company that, chances are, you’ve never heard of and never will.  Anyway, if I’m sober and or/don’t have the business end of a shotgun in my mouth, I answer and we discuss the art “needed” - and by “needed”, I mean begrudging commissioned on the whim of some muckety muck higher-up.

Once I have a little more of an idea of what hypothetical company is looking for, I roll up my sleeves and hit the drawing board and come up with some concept sketches to show ‘em.

This is usually the point where I hear the word “cartoony” as a derogatory description.  (Fortunately, not in the instance I’ll show you today. These guys actually wanted *gasp* a cartoon character!)

Once I find a design we can agree on, I finish up a concept sketch and send it to whatever cog I’m dealing with in the machine. The said cog sends the image to a middleman who, then proceeds to rip it to shreds. After all, how do middlemen prove their worth without poo-pooing the first draft, right?

Oh oh! I made a mistake. I used a UPA inspired “flat” graphic style. We gotta have more detail than that, right? Where’s the buttons? Where’s the brow sweat? After all, they’re paying the big bucks, they wanna see their money’s worth!  More lines they want, and more lines they’ll get.

Hmm, better- here we have more detail, however, we all know skin isn’t yellow and eyes aren’t pink. We gotta fix that. Oh, and why does he look so goofy? This Professor is supposed to be cool! I have to cool him up by 67%. Did I mention the logo on his lapel is way to small?  We need a giant logo that stands out more. The bigger the better when it comes to brand identity!

Well, if the yellow skin isn’t doing it for them, I’ll try every tasteful color combo in and outside of nature.

See one you like?
NO?

This is when the client ( who is, of course, always right) picks the color combos buffet style.

My client wanted a good ol’ safe caucasian and and a tasteful gray suit. We don’t want anyone to think it’s a lab coat, after all, it’s not!

…and there we have it!

This little guy will be helping folks learn Spanish by standing off on the corner of a page at a quarter inch high!