Character Design for ‘Deseble Rising’: Xaisen & The ‘design a Minkee’ competition winner

We’ve been lucky enough to have been asked by author Mark Saint (who has one of the coolest voices in the world!) to illustrate the character designs for his upcoming book “Deseble Rising”. Although we’ve got to keep quiet on the specifics, we are allowed to show you the very alluring Xaisen. Keep an eye out for more character designs showing up soon.

In other news, talented illustrator Louise Holden aka Minkee recently held a competition to design what sort of animal a Minkee actually is. It’s always nice to have a purpose when I draw my warm up image of the day so I couldn’t resist entering, and I won. We’re now the proud owners of a Limited edition Minkee Print that will adorn our soon to arrive baby’s newly decorated nursery. Go take a look at her site and get one of your own.

Have fun,
David
Twitter.com/DavidCousens

"The Monstrum Dichrous - a Photoshop CS5 tutorial for PSDTuts+" PLUS an interview for "Gamers Dig Art" and Get "Bitten" for Charity!

Prepare yourself for a big blog post.  For those of you with short attention spans, I've put the key points in bold writing for you.  I'm awesome, I know.

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We were happy to be asked by the people running PSDTuts+ to write a tutorial that specifically covered Photoshop CS5's Mixer brush to create a fantasy painting.  

Here we have "The Monstrum Dichrous" (loosely translated from Latin as "the Omen of 2 distinct colours") which is a bit of a spiritual successor to "Lovebirds".  It seems we have a running theme of 2 spirits (one red and one blue) that take form of various animals that are mysteriously always present at times of destruction.  The question is why are they always there?  Are they merely observers or are they somehow responsible for the chaos around them...

To see how we made this image, go and see the tutorial on PSDTuts+ now!

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When you're done with that you should go and visit Gamers Dig Art where I was interviewed by the excellent Ramel Hill. The interview is loads of fun and covers all manner of things including "How I'm going to survive to upcoming Zombie Apocalypse!".  Read the Gamers Dig Art interview here

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Now for something much more selfless, good friend of Cool Surface Tigz Rice (who we're making a book with btw) has an excellent new book out called "Bitten" which you can win by simply donating just £1 to Cancer Research UK.  Here's more from Tigzy's site:

"Following the success of 'Wonderland' in 2009, this August sees the release of 'Bitten', a new picture book for adults from London based illustrator and photographer Tigz Rice. Adapted from the well-known classic 'Snow White', the book follows the story of a mistress so desperate to keep her beauty she will do anything to save them, including harming her own family. But is she really the one to blame?
The book features an all star cast including cabaret star Joe Black, model and The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts' student Emily Marshall, Burlesque performer Lily Belle as well as alternative models Kristina Frenchum and Sally Parkinson. 
Printed by Ripe Digital, the book retails at £18 - however to say a massive thank you to Cancer Research Orpington for helping provide costumes for the book, Tigz will be holding a charity raffle to win a copy of Bitten, with the proceeds being donated to Cancer Research UK. 
How to enter? Simply follow the link in the bar above to donate £1 to Cancer Research UK. You can enter as many times as you like to improve your chances of winning. One lucky donator will be named on August 14th 2010."

Right I'm off to donate now,
Have fun,
David
http://twitter.com/DavidCousens

Competition winner: The new Topless Robot banner

The top site for "nerd news, humour and self-loathing" Topless robot held a competition to redesign their banner.  Being big fans of the site we felt compelled to enter and as the more astute of you may have guessed from the subject line, we won!  The best part is that the prize money can only be spent on geeky stuff which gives me the perfect excuse to buy some graphic novels and games!

Have fun,

David

Margaret Thatcher - The Iron Lady

Back in July, we announced a competition that we were holding with "Do You Remember?" where one lucky winner would end up with their very own extremely limited edition Cool Surface artwork created just for them! As you can see the winner went with a very definitive (albeit unexpected) icon from the 80's, UK Prime minister Margaret Thatcher. It was a bit of a different topic from Superted, He-Man or Barbie as we expected, but proved to be interesting subject matter nonetheless.

PS. Apologies for not updating the blog last week, we were relocating to our new home. Don't worry though, we're settled into the brand new Cool Surface towers and normal service has been resumed!

Win some Cool Surface Art at "Do You Remember.co.uk"!

Who wants some art for free? (Actually, I do, but nobody ever sends me any...*sniff*) Enough about my lack of free stuff, this is all about free stuff for you!

Our good friends at "Do You Remember?" (probably the world's number one retro website for everything that was cool in the the 70's and 80's) are currently holding a competition for one lucky winner to have their very own extremely limited edition Cool Surface artwork created just for them! Now, this could go to anyone on the site, but we'd like it even more if somebody who regularly views this blog wins, so go enter now!

All you have to do is let them know which 80's character you would most like to adorn your wall - this could be anything from Transformers to Barbie or even Spotty and Superted! Sarah wants Superted, but personally, I'm thinking that "Blues" here looks pretty good, nudge nudge...