Design Showcase: Moxie Sozo

Ok doesn't seem logical to make a post promoting other people's artwork but when I've TWICE bought a product based on how the package looks alone, then I gotta talk about it. At least to show other people some cool artwork.

Moxie Sozo is a Design Company from Bolder Colorado. 1st product I bought of theirs is Late July, which was a rather tasty brand of chips.

Finding high quality images of the products is rather hard, but look at the color combinations, the font, and the vector graphics which have the right level of gradients because if you go too far with gradients, then it looks cheesy (cheesy here meaning not good). There is a very wholesome appeal to this packaging that does lure you into the product. The sweet potato one is the one I've had and it's as good as it looks.  

Late July Website.  Moxie's Late July Portfolio

 So Today I picked up a box of Snackle Mouth Granola Nut Clusters.

 The patterns, the gradients, the font details, and the deep rich colors: each box has a different design to show off their ingredients, like the men on the boxes are kings or ring masters of some sort of fruit and nut kingdom. Their circus/ cracker jack like designs have so much detail and yet they're very nightmareish. Most certainly the Bacon and Maple box, which has a man with a pig nose. They stand out like a sore thumb say at a Safeway or Walmart, but one of the local markets in my town had them and I was drawn to them like a magnet.
Moxie's Portfolio for Snackle Mouth.


While I've never tried the fallowing products I can only say that these are worth a try just based on the wonderful graphic work alone. How ever I'm not very impressed with some of the more, commercial work featured in their portfolio, there are obviously different teams that tackle certain products. However, there is someone with great skill at that company, and I could just stare at these packages for hours looking at how they did it all. Great work!

Fruta Del Diablo

Probar

 

 Leap Organics

 

Jade Monk Beverage Co.

 

Left Hand Brewing Co.

  

Spooky Postcards for Sale

That's right I designed a whole new set of post cards that I plan on selling around. Once again I used Moo.com to print these out, as I've just enjoyed using their set up and their company for their other products. These postcards have a photo glossy finish and the opposite side is empty which allows you to write or draw something of your own when you go to mail it.

As for price I'm still not sure. I can send you two for 3.00$ which covers shipping to you personally (prices may change over time). You get two designs that you choose to keep as just art cards or actually use to send through the post. I do like to consider these as art cards more then post cards, but really do what you like. I will be selling these in person as well, like at shows and events that I'm attending...If I CAN, I'll find a shop in my home town that I can sell for me. Either way, just showing you all what I got. Enjoy. 

Cute Monster Contest Entries on Devianart- Voteing Ends March 6th; Click images to go to voteing page

I'm in the DA cute monster contest with these two entries and I would love anyone who would whore these things around their blogs and social networking sites. If you can't vote on DA because you're not a member, then become a member! OR still just show these around to your friends.

SOME info about these designs:
When I did a large sketch dump of different monsters to draw up and submit for this contest, MOST people asked for this girl. I was going to have a whole line up of cute monster girls but I had to work with only the 7 colors, so it was more simple just to do the one. I guess she's scared that she's seeing PEOPLE look at her, "OMG you have two eyes! How can you see with that?"

The cute little Kappa monsters are Japanese Frog/Turtle sea folk, who are known to lurk at the edge of the waters, trying to kidnap children who get to close and fall in. If you carry a cucumber with you, they'll eat that instead. They also need to keep the tops of their heads wet so they can't ever really leave the waters. Here are two being helpful friends.

Thanks yall!

Graphic Inspiration from Star Wars

I have to detract from a series of original posts to blog about just good design. Taken from this blog post here an inspirational look at some star wars posters. Seeing Sky City make up Boba-Fett's eyes is a genius decision. FYI; I didn't make these but I enjoy them.

Working on Buisness Cards

So I found a website called Moo.com, and they have some neat deals on some really nice business cards and mini cards. I'll explain more later but here are some drawings that I want to include on them.

Last of the Hippie BS

So here are the last three for the school project I have to do. The best part is that I can name these files "Hippie BS" because she won't see the names of the files. The project is to set a goal for your 6 elements of Health. The teacher, being the pro-active bimbo she is, asked me what I liked to do, thus making this project more personal to me. I said drawing and that gives her the assumption that I'm gonna ad pictures to my project. If I DIDN'T add pictures to the project, I don't think I'd get an A.

The teacher is a huge soap-boxer and often played a guilt trip when it came to the Psychical health section. While she had you learn how to take your resting heart and stuff important to a good exercise routine, she was so spontaneous and random that you really didn't know what to expect by the end of the class and I'm sure some people ate up her words like a low fat yogurt. I mean this was a woman who calls Pizza evil, and eating it is KILLING your body. There was no forgiving of any kind when it came to occasionally snacking on junk or eating one hamburger at all...you can't quit food cold turkey lady. After a month of staying food healthy, I'm ready for the class to be over and I've reverted back to old ways.

Now I just don't give a shit about what SHE thinks and I'm gonna do what I feel is best to my health they way I need to. I don't want to be a junk food slob, or eat fast food five days a week, I've gone beyond the point of finding that type of diet appetizing anymore. But I don't need her HIPPIE BS. By the end of the semester now that things are rapping up she's getting into a better state of mind.

One thing I would've LOVED to get out of this class, other then the clichéd "eat healthy and exercise" babble health people love to spew, are more tips about being Socially and Spiritually healthy. I get environmental and mental health, two things that aren't hard to do, but what I'm really lacking in is social health. I'm not good at meeting new people, or being friendly to just anyone. I'm always conflicted with a fear of non-acceptance when it comes to meeting people in person, and being able to communicate basic things like my name to fellow classmates is hard for me.

So in the end I don't feel like I learned anything that I couldn't find on-line or I didn't already know. Got to take the class to graduate though...only reason I stuck to it. guess in the end I can say I came out stronger.

More Back up Characters.

Sigh, been a while with a new post, but everytime I've wanted to post something new I've been at someone elses computer, where I wasn't able to upload new images. I'm gonna talk about as many cahracters as I see important on these pages.

ON this page you can see the 1st drawings of my Batman and his boy XD. I just noticed I gave him a pocket protector which I didn't draw on any of the other drawings. The big robot is one failed attempt to create a body design for Rokko's Mob boss that I've been talking about. I turned it into a robot because I wanted a robot detecitve, or something. The idea of having a robot as a friend/ally for Rokko was a neat idea but I didn't want one as tall as him, so I made the little one at top. I'm still not sure if I like that design.
I love Joe's Apartment, so I started just doodling some roach designs, that would be equils to Crikkit's friends and random background roaches. The human on this page was another attempt at drawing the mob boss (I swear I tried to draw this villan many times before I came up with something I like and I still don't think it's the best design...you'll see it later). I was looking for a the scaryness of Micheal Corleone, seeing how he started wanting to be out of the 'family business' but soon became scary and dangerous. Now I'm thinking that guy would make an interesting human Crikkit.

Here's some characters that we've mostly seen already. Here is the pencil version of that group drinking picture that I finished a couple of days ago. You can see how the lineart gets cleaned up. The top picture of Rokko and the Rabbit is an intersting one but I love the expressions and senerio. Rokko is aware that he is an old cartoon and his creator has died. Old cartoons tend to get in a rut and forget why they do the things they do because they don't have anybody reinventing thierpersonalities and meaning. Normally Rokko and Rabbit would be at each other throats Kill Bill style, but that's not always the caise. One night Rokko explains this phenomion to Ginger and says that the other night while picking up tampons and a pregnacy tester at 1 AM he ran into him picking up some condoms himself (coming from a party with girls in his car). While the hatred was still there, the effort was not. It was out of context, like if they broke out into fists of furry then, what was the point, nobody was watching. It's an odd feeling to be a cartoon, because you never know what's being filmed and what's just a normal, butt scratching type of day.

Rokko is also swipping Gilbur's penis hat. I still havn't drawn the expression he has when Rokko calls it that but I just don't draw the character enough.

Now Rokko's life during the 50's-90s (while he was away from Ginger) was another one of those just living moments. It was the most depressing time of his life but to him he was equally sharing the pain that his creator was having while he was locked away in a mental asylem (Lon Borax was his creator, for those of you who didn't know). Rokko learned during that time that he couldn't die. Every method used to try to kill himself just failed and he soon just wanted to go away. He did remarry a couple of times but non of those women were right for him. The dog lady (not the flapper girl) was one of those women, but he didn't want to marry her, she just said you're my husban now and that was it. FaFa was a minor background character in a MGM cartoon, just as a young puppy back then, but then her design was moved to advertise Dog Food for a small chain and her work consisted of quick commercial shots and packaging labels. Because of that small money though she was able to become a rich lady who bought husbans for her amusement. Rokko was her husban in californina, who he shared a house with another one of her husbands who couldn't speak english. Rokko himself didn't care enough to object to her paligamist fantasies, but he never got sexual with her because of his feelings for Ginger. FaFa didn't care weather he really liked her or not, but the idea of having a sexy arm candy like him was enough, and she felt sorry for his story. She only divroced him because her official husban was starting to find out about these other men she collected. She gave tearful kisses good bye and said he could come back to her when ever he needed.

Other characters on this page include the flapper girl, who is one of Rokko's 1910 friends who I drew an older version for. I'm still working on her personality but she never really had a big thing for Rokko, just a friend. She does fall in love with the human character I have as one of Rokko's friends. The guy in the white suit at the bottom is another character Rokko met during the 70's. He's like a chipmunk reject, because he's kinda like Alvin and the Chipmunks semi human character designs, but not human or animal enough. He's codeanmed QueBall because he's got an 8 ball for an eye and his eye was pushed to the back of his head. The other eye he went blind in but he can see perfectly out the eye in the back of his head. He's got massive kung-fu skills a great underground resorce for Rokko. A couple of the characters on this page are jsut background characters. The cops are still work in progress but they are old versions of two cops that were constanly after Rokko.

That's it for now. Any other questions?

Transcreation

This is quite an interesting concept that I've been working on for quite a while but I didn't think there was a perfect term to discribe it.

This article from the Wall Street Journal brings up a great point in character designing. Cartoon CharactersGet Big MakeoverFor Overseas Fans Read this before you read the rest of my article please. (Note; If this article get deleted by Wall Street without my knowing, I really can't fix it for you, so hopefully it'll last a long while.)


Now some of these "Transcreations" we've known about for a while (I have anyway), Sesame Street has been using different characters in thier forien shows for many years, Brazilian SS having more sexual untertones (as paroded by Simpsons) and an African version introducing an HIV positive character (I don't know if he's a puppet or a real kid though.) Minnie's Hello Kitty make over is something I'm surprised Disney hasn't done already, being ones of little creativity. In an anime store in my mall, the Mickey and Minnie stuff they sell is the Two Toned versions of them. Not saying that they don't make the 1950s Mickey in japan but you can't hardly find any Mickey and Minnie stuff at the Disney store on the opposite side of the mall, let alone the 1930s versions. And well all know asians love to rape little girls (sarcasim), so the PPG makeover is not surprising, but one thing that confused me was that didn't they show the original PPG in japan? Otherwise they wouldn't have gotten the idea to make an anime version at all.
I'd say the Indians seem to fuck up our characters the most. With Ballywood being able to produce movies faster then the porn industry, there is a lack of quality control in thier market. One of the reasons the US edits forien cartoons is because their subject matter is to far fetched and doesn't make since if not either stated in an exposistion or remade with a theme americans are familiar with. The Ring is a good excample of the US remaking an Asian movie. Must've been that american's wouldn't understand that being scared to death is a logical and scarier method of dieing, so they rewrote the scene so the girl looks more digital then an acaul person coming out of the screen, and then having it so the guys face has been melted off. The Indians must rewrite origin stories or change the characters so that it matches the relgious and social trends of teh culture and not seem to bizzare (Why would a spider bite cause Peter Parker to turn into a spider, all animales are sacred in hinduism right?)Well reglardless of what the US does here's some Indian mackoffs.


India needs quality control.

Just in time for Halloween

Here's a great Mickey Mouse transcreation. Not Indian but still really messed up.

This is not something that's new to our own culture. If there is anybody guilty of distroying cartoons from a different country, it's the US. Back in the 90s (and to this day) anime's are torn apart limb from limb and all traces of it's origin's were stripped away. I remember watching Sailor Moon and being currious as to why they called those white triangle things (riceballs) Dohnuts. Those arn't dohnuts, and is this cartoon supposed to be in Japan or the US? All the words are in english and the characters clearly look american, but they talk about Tokyo and other sorts of weird japaness culture traits added in there.
Pokemon was a huge butcher by having all the japaness pokemon names stripped and given english versions. This was an improovement because there are some really awkward pokemon that would tack forever to pronouce right for a little 6 year old. I still don't know how to say Lugia right, but some names they should've kept (Like Stunky was Skunkapu, that sounds cuter). The anime was butchered as well, having the japaness characters stripped from the backgrounds, the japaness theme songs rewriten, and japaness culture showdowed and unexplained. There were a couple of episodes deleted because of cencorship issues (One with James having double D size boobs, and a Trigger happy warden), but episodes that were about japaness holidays like Kid's Day and Women's Day were at risk of being deleted because they were not US holidays. IMO they should be US holiday's, we have secritary's day, why not Kid's day?
Sonic the Hedghog might be the most fucked up and saddest story out there (that I can express here). A japaness character, baised off of Mikey Mouse, comes to the US and given two separate and completely different cartoons that don't relate to the games original storyline. The Game's storyline had been edited to fit an american audiance as well, making Sonic from another planet and forgetting details like where he was born and making up that his powers come from his shoes. Well we know how messed up the fandom has gotten because of this, I don't think I need t go into it.

Next time I write a blog I'll go into into this a little more, and talk about how americans 'Transcreate' their own shows with time.