Category Archives: Illustration

More Concept Art for VeggieTales

veggie-tales-littlehouse

Last year I did some work on the new VeggieTales DVD that’s just now hitting the shelves, called “The Little House That Stood” (Amazon link). My comp copy came in the mail today. It features two stories: The first combines the Three Little Pig with the biblical parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders. The second story is a goofy retelling of Humpty Dumpty.

I was hired to do a smattering of concept art for this episode: I roughed out some early costume concepts; illustrated a few pieces of texture art for some signage and misc. props; and designed a cartoon goose that Larry calls “Mother”.

First, here’s the turnarounds for the goose I designed and a screen shot of the final animation:

VeggieTales character design turnarounds by Cedric HohnstadtVeggieTales character design turnarounds by Cedric HohnstadtVeggieTales Screen Grab

In the first story Larry, Bob, and Mr. Lunt appear as construction workers. Here’s some quick, rough thumbnails I whipped up of possible costume ideas:

VeggieTales rough costume ideas by Cedric Hohnstadt

Finally, I created several pieces of texture art for the show. Here’s two of them: A backdrop for a weather forecast, and a fold-out map for use as a prop. (I slipped in a reference to the original “Superman” movie on the map. See if you can spot it.):

VeggieTales background texture illustration by Cedric Hohnstadt

VeggieTales texture art by Cedric Hohnstadt.

 

(Click to enlarge.)

You can order the DVD “The Little House That Stood” from Amazon or from your favorite Christian retailer.

 

Updated PDF Portfolios. Get ‘Em While They’re Hot!

Free PDF Portfolio Downloads from Cedric Hohnstadt Illustration

It’s been over a year since I last refreshed my PDF Portfolios. Since I just posted a brand spankin’ new logo, I thought it would be a good time to update them as well. The new portfolios come in four flavors: Character Design, Toy Design, Illustration, and FPO/Comp Art. Click the links to download or grab them off my Downloads page. They’re yours to keep so print them out, file them away, or share them with your friends.

Contact me if I can ever be of service and, as always, thanks for your interest in my work!

Coloring Page for Goldfish Swim School

Coloring Book Page from Cedric Hohnstadt Illustration

Last year I was hired by Goldfish Swim Schools to create a mascot for their company, a goldfish named “Bubbles”. They liked the mascot so much that they’ve since hired me to create a series of stick-on tattoos and coloring book pages for children featuring Bubbles in various costumes and themes. They’ll distribute one per month for an entire year. I recently completed the first coloring book page, with a pirate theme. More to come.

New Cartoon Gospel Tract

HeyKids-cover

Back in 2005 I illustrated a cartoon Gospel tract called “Are You A Good Person?”, based on a presentation by Christian author and speaker Ray Comfort for the ministry of Living Waters. To date they’ve distributed over five million copies of the tract and it has been translated into twenty languages. There’s even been an animated version produced (which I supervised) that has so far had almost 450,000 views on YouTube. By sheer numbers that little cartoon tract has been seen by more people than any other single project I’ve ever worked on.

Recently I illustrated another tract for their ministry, this time taking one of their oldest tracts and updating it with modern artwork. It’s called “Hey, Kids!”. There are eight pages total, and the last two pages are pictured below. You can read the entire thing and order copies from Living Waters here.

HeyKids-pages7-8

(Click to enlarge)

Gospel tracts often get a bad rap, and rightfully so. Often they tend to be tacky, silly, cheesy, or insulting. Living Waters is one of the few ministries I’ve seen that actually tries hard to create Christian literature that is attractive, intriguing, and sometimes even humorous. Their goal is to create things people would actually *want* to read. Obviously it’s impossible to create literature of any kind, religious or not, that will appeal to everyone and offend no one. But as Christian tracts go they try to keep the bar pretty high, and I feel grateful to have been able to help them out.

I’ve Been Given The Pewter Plate Award From Highlights Magazine

PewterPlateAward-IllustratorOfTheMonth

This afternoon I received a package from Highlights! magazine. Inside was a letter informing me I’ve been chosen to receive the Illustrator of the Month Pewter Plate Award, and a shiny silver plate with my name inscribed. Very classy. I’m surprised and very honored. Every issue of Highlights is full of wonderful artwork from several very charming illustrators. It’s a real treat just to be published among them, much less singled out.

The award was for a three-page comic strip story I illustrated for the current issue (January 2013) of Highlights for Children, titled “The Chicken-and-a-Million-Veggies Report”. I can’t publish the entire story here but I can show you a little snippet of the artwork:

Highlights Sample

(Click to enlarge.)

Merry Christmas!

Christmas illustration

I’ve been too busy to design, print, and mail an actual Christmas card this year. So once again I went the digital route and sent a Christmas email with the above image to everyone on my mailing list. (Click the image to enlarge).

If you didn’t get one, you are welcome to sign up over to the right of this blog post, or on the Contact page of my website. About every 6-8 weeks I send out a brief email update on my latest project(s), and sometimes include links to interesting blog posts.

Either way, I appreciate your taking time to swing by and I’m deeply grateful for your interest in my work. So to all of you, have a very merry Christmas! I hope your year ahead is a very pleasant and prosperous one.

Themed Costumes For Goldfish Swim School Mascot

Goldfish Mascot Themes

Earlier this year I was hired by a chain of swimming schools in Wisconsin to design a mascot for their company, Goldfish Swim Schools. You can see a few of the initial sketches here. They named the mascot “Bubbles”, and they liked him/her/it so much that they asked me to create themed variations for use on calendars, removable tattoos, etc. They gave me a list of themes, and the above image is what I came up with.

I recently completed a second batch of themed costumes that I hope I can show soon, and now I’m doing some coloring book art for them featuring Bubbles. If you’ve got company or brand that could use a mascot, drop me a line. I’d love to chat about how I can help you out. You might also want to read my blog post, The Power Of A Mascot.

Comic Strip Illustrations for “Highlights For Children”

Highlights for Children is a classic kids magazine that’s been around for a long time. I have fond childhood memories of pouring over copies in the waiting rooms of my local eye doctor and dentist, way back when the Superfriends and Schoolhouse Rock ruled the Saturday morning airwaves. It was always great fun to read and made those marathon waiting room sessions fly by much faster. So it was a real treat to have the people at Highlights ask me to illustrate a three-page comic strip story for their upcoming January 2013 issue.

I just received my promo copies of the printed magazine in the mail, so I assume that if copies aren’t already being mailed out to subscribers they will be very soon, and therefore it’s OK for me to show a bit of the work I did. The story is called “The Chicken-and-a-Million-Veggietables Report” and is told as if a young boy is making a video documentary about a mysterious upcoming meal, so all of the illustrations were composed as if viewing them through the lens of a home movie camera. I obviously can’t publish the entire three-page story here on my blog, but I do want to show a sneak peak:

Highlights Sample

(Click to enlarge.)

The above image is snipped from the bottom half of the first page. The white boxes were left open for text. (I might have preferred word balloons but this was the way the client wanted it laid out). You can read the entire three-page story in the January 2013 issue of Highlights for Children.

VeggieTales Costumes and Props

Last year I was hired by Big Idea to design some costumes and props for a VeggieTales compilation DVD called “God Loves You Very Much” (Amazon link). The DVD contains three previously published VeggieTales stories (“The Ballad of Little Joe”, “Gideon: Tuba Warrior” and “Rack Shack and Benny”) but new countertop segments were created to weave the stories together. My work was used in those kitchen comedy bits.

Veggietales-LarryVeggietales-BobVeggieTales-EaselThe script called for a few of the characters to create paintings during the countertop segments. Here’s a couple of the prop paintings I created:

VeggieTales-paintings

“God Loves You Very Much” can be purchased from Amazon. (Full disclosure: If you click and then buy, Amazon will drop a few coins into my piggy bank.)

EDIT: Here’s a screen grab showing how it all turned out:

VeggieTales screen grab

This and That 6/11/12

A few tidbits from around the webisphere:

• VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer is coming to a pair of headphones near you with The Phil Vischer Podcast. He discusses pop culture, theology, and Christian living with equal parts insight and silliness. I listened to Episode 2 today at the gym. It took a couple of minutes to get going but there was some really great stuff. Highly recommended.

• If anyone has a handle on storytelling it’s the folks at Pixar. Here’s a list of 22 Rules of Storytelling from Pixar artist Emma Coats.

• Illustrator and all-around-nice-guy Bob Ostrom is looking for artists, writers, publisher, art directors, designers and anyone else involved in children’s publishing to feature on his blog. If that’s you, let him know. I don’t know what his selection criteria is but you never know unless you try. While you’re there, check out Bob’s recent blog post, “How To Illustrate Children’s Books – A Backstage Pass”.

• FreelanceSwitch.com has a list of 12 Breeds Of Clients And How To Work With Them. An oldie but a goodie, full of great advice for the creative professional.

• Recently I updated my list of Recommended Resources on Amazon.com. (Full disclosure: If you click and then buy, Amazon will drop a few coins into my piggy bank).

• Finally, a short montage of characters created by the great Orson Welles. Good inspiration for character design sketching:

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cedric@cedricstudio.com

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My name is Cedric Hohnstadt. I own an illustration studio where I specialize in designing appealing characters and products. My clients tell me I'm reliable, professional, and bring fresh ideas to the table. More info...

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Are You A Good Person?

I illustrated this popular cartoon gospel tract. Over 5 million copies have been printed in twenty languages. Read it here:
freecartoontract.com

...or watch the animated version I produced:

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