Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: It’s been a good month since I last posted some new ‘commercial’ work as everything is in production right now, so to keep the site updated and keep my regulars entertained, I’ve been playing in my sketch pad on pretty much daily basis...and here’s the latest incarnation...the Rabid Rabbit. I recently bought Michael Gagne’s (www.gagneint.com) awesome art book ‘Insanely Twisted Rabbits’ and fell totally in love with whole idea of him and his mate trying to out-do each other with who could create the most twisted bunny...so I figured, what the hell, I’ll take a pop too...and here he is...looks pretty twisted to me.

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: It was a boring Sunday afternoon...it was thundering (I love thunder), raining, and generally, one of those ‘don’t know what to do Sundays’...so I drew a Puffer fish???? I don’t know why, I just started sketching and he appeared out the end of my pencil. Lots of you email me asking how I create my characters, so I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to show you, so here you can see the four main steps that I go through, sketch, basic vector lines, varied stroke thicknesses, then colour...now that’s your lot, I aint giving away any more secrets ;)

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: Awesome, I love big characters with big guns, grrrrr :) I’ve got some really exciting new illustration jobs on the way and simply wanted to ‘have a play’ so this is purely experimental and for sheer personal enjoyment. I wanted to create a slightly new style for myself. Its based on the ‘Warrior’ character style from further down, but with a slightly grittier edge and much more texture. You’re probably going to see more of this style coming up as I really enjoy it :) Feel free to drop me a mail to tell me what you think, feedback is always welcome.

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: Yey, a little more character development. I have some great new work starting soon, so I wanted to take some time to play around with some style development. Don't ask where the idea came from, I was just sat down watching some TV with my sketch pad playing with some lines...and boom, he appeared. Kinda Batman inspired I guess with a mix of other superheroes. I really like the clean line, Tartakovsky style simplicity of this character, I must keep exploring!!

Client: Crealy Adventure Parks

Overview: Mooooooo. This little job was such fun! Simple brief, create a handful of cute and friendly farm animals. Awesome, I love jobs like this ;) I wanted to keep within my usual style but also wanted to start exploring some new shapes, so as you can see, the basic outline shape is the same on both the cow and pig…a great way of creating a new ‘family’ style. I want to make more silly animals.

Client: Snerk

Overview: This was a fab little branding job! I was asked to create a cheeky devil character for a new site due to be launched this year. The brief was to keep him devilish, cheeky and fun, with a little edge too. It was nice to have a play with a character that has a ‘dark’ background, as most of my characters are usually happy, smiling little bundles of fun, this dude has a daaaaark side…oooooohhhhhh.

Client: Trevor Saint

Overview: This little dude was a small request from fellow designer Trevor Saint to accompany his new re-design for 2008. A really fun short little job to illustrate a little funky frog...and here he is.

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: After creating that scruffy looking combat droid below I was inspired. New style, new burst of enthusiasm, so hold on tight, there's gonna be looooooads more of this style coming soon. I LOVE DRAWING, its great to be back doing what I love best...and best of all, its all for meeee. No client brief, no restrictions, just unadulterated freedom. Wonderful!

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: Its official, I'm back to my spending every spare waking moment drawing again, its been ages since I've been glued to my sketch pad. I recently bought some of the awesome Revoltech robots, from Patlabor and Macross, which got me all excited and made me want to re-explore my old Combat Droid (see bottom of this section). I reeeeeeally wanna create this bad boy in Max...just need the damn time!

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: Just warming up the skills again. As mentioned elsewhere on the site, I don’t get to do as much illustration as I’d like these days so I have decided to start working for a new client…ME :) Your going to lots more of this stuff from now on, so keep your eyes peeled! Best bit about working for yourself….the brief, its always perfect ;)

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: This was a personal project to explore a new range of characters that had been wandering around my mind for way to long. Also it had been a while since I last put pencil to paper, so I grabbed my pad and started scratching!

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: As I've mentioned in numerous places on the site, I don't get to illustrate much these days since joining Lightmaker and being all managementy, so I like to play when I get the chance, so here's my latest dude...Why? Why not?

Client: Heinemann

Overview: Boo, I never got to finish this one. It was the begging of my last project before I left 3T. I created this scene and the characters to form the style for the project. I had to leave my new creations all on their own. I was gutted, I wanted it to be my next Sonica (Read further down, coolest project ever!).

Client: Michael Heald - Fully Illustrated

Overview: This guy spearheaded my old brand and hosted my old site, I though it time to renew him and give him a face lift for 2007, check out the 3D section to see the old one.

Client: DfES

Overview: This was a gigantic project. Initially I was tasked with creating a Spanish Family for a new e-learning package. Over the next 12 months I was challenged with creating the world and characters to sit within 250 flash games!!! This has been my most valued project in my history of design and illustration.

Client: DfES

Overview: One of my favourite parts of the Sonica package, the castle...oooooooh spooky! This formed a large part of the story watch the video in the snippet above.

Client: DfES

Overview: This was a sample for a potential 'other language' version of Sonica. This was for the proposed Sonica Mandarin. The brief was to keep the Sonica style that I created for the Spanish package but introduce an oriental/manga influence. I really liked these ones.

Client: National Archives + Victoria and Albert Museum

Overview: This was one of my favorite little project from a while ago. This was yet another e-learning game to help teach kids about the period of the Tudors. This was a short flash game based around a handful of characters created around pieces of armour in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Client: RM

Overview: Following is a collection of characters and screenshots from a just a few of the characters created for the Discover alive project. There were 100's of activities for many different subjects. These characters helped the kids stay entertained throughout ;)

Client: 3T Productions

Overview: This character was created as a bit of an experiment. I had taken a great amount of inspiration from the great Genndy Tartakovsky and wanted to create a new character in his style. I went on to create many more characters over time utilising many of the techniques gained during this exercise. Simplicity and clean lines.

Client: 3T Productions

Overview: As I had been illustrating for about 3-4 years for 3T productions they asked me to create a 4ft long print containing as many characters as I could find that I had created during this time. This piece still hangs in the entrance hall to the second floor.

Client: Azurri Computer Systems

Overview: OH MY GOD, my first EVER commercial illustration from 2000! I found him recently and thought it wrong not to feature him. This dude was the catalyst to drive me forward in wanting to become an illustrator. He still looks ok I think...if not a little dated :)

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: Take it or leave it, Fantasy art is a love or a hate thing...and being completely devoid of taste...I LOVE THE STUFF :) Dragons, monsters, barbarians you name it, it all rocks. So I've tried my hand at it a few times and this was the first reasonable success. I still like this one to this day.

Client: Fully Illustrated - Michael Heald

Overview: Combat Droid. Yeah its cheesy, but so is this type of art. I sketched out this bad boy in a meeting one day and decided that he was to be my first '100% digitally painted' piece of art. Not a bad start.