VANDOR LLC / Creative Director

A few things have been happening in my life that have made it a little hard to keep up with Blogging. I found the love of my life, had a baby, bought a new home, helped buy a business and became Creative Director at Vandor LLC in Downtown Salt Lake City, Ut. At Vandor we work with some of the biggest licenses in the entertainment world. Some of our licensors are Marvel, Star Wars, Disney, Pixar, Star Trek, Dr. Who, Hello Kitty, Dr. Suess, Saban, The Beatles, Peanuts just to name a few. Our client list has some of the biggest companies in America such as Wal-Mart, Target, and some of the GEEKIEST such as LOOTCRATE, Game Stop, Entertainment Earth, and Think Geek. Here are a few of the most recent designs and creations I have directed at Vandor.

Utah Arts Festival T-Shirt Design

 This year the Utah Arts Festival is having a design competition for their T-Shirt.  You can only have 3 colors in the design and it has to be 12" x 12". I have created a design that i think is fun and artistic, I have submitted and I hope I WIN!

BEAU First Official Comic Book

The first official comic book  came out from BEAU this week.

I am so very excited about this... This is the first comic book I ever produced and it turned out brilliantly!

I built the comic under a new title of DEAN Comics and I am Editor in chief (of course). I have never put together a comic book and was so excited to get it completed!

The art comes from the "12 x12 A Comic Book Competition" that we put on last year in coop fashion with the Salt Lake Comic Con. It has great art from the public and from the students at BEAU.

If you would like to purchase one please let me know, they are only a dollar and all proceeds go to an event to help the students.

I'm an editor!

Homework #4 Returned

Here is my homework assignments with notes form the instructor.

Joe Kubert himself used to correct my work, but since he has passed I had another instructor critique my work.

Homework Number #4

Well I have finally wrapped all my course of studies at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. I received my certificate in the mail and I'm on my way to bigger and brighter projects in the realm of comics. Here is the 2 final Homework assignments I never posted on this blog.

Homework Number 3

This assignent was about character development.

You had to create a male and female character and then illustrate the panels on the right.

I really liked doing this assignment, the last assignment was by far the most challenging, but this one let me lay out large scale characters.

Other Tattoo Commission

I have never been asked to do a half sleeve, I have designed smaller tattoos before even one that went across the entire back of a woman.. but this was the first tattoo that took up the upper half of someones arm.

This was option number one - The client wanted aspects of african american tribal, theater, music (piano) and the Holy Trinity

After showing the first design I was able to brainstorm on the size and the imagery.

This was the final design but everything had to be drawn out in very specific dimensions, which I did.

I can't wait to see the final product.

Character Design for a Mascot

Not all freelance jobs are comic book jobs.

I have been hired to create a mascot for a local water softener company, I was asked to do something fun and adventurous. I just finished the first round of fun sketches for the client which they really liked.

I will keep you all up to date as to which one they choose and I will show the final product.

Buddhist Priest! Threadless design

I am at it again!! I am trying one more time to get my design printed on threadless.com, it is my goal!

This submission is a funny little idea and a couple of cute illustrations, it is a mashup of the classic Heavy Metal band Judas Priest and a couple of religious people.

Here is the original logo for the Heavy Metal band

Here are my sketches of my two religious people

And here is the final product!!!

I did the logo and finished Illustrations in Adobe Illustrator and the sketches on paper with graphite.

I have submitted it and now I hope it gets approved!!

Wish me luck, Namaste!

Willy Juan-Cah' the Candy Bandito

I think my white whale will be to get a shirt selected by threadless.com.... I have a new goal.

Threadless gets thousands upon thousands of submissions and very few make to completion of printed T-Shirts, my goal is to be one of those select few.

This is my third attempt at getting printed, it is called "Willy Juan-Cah' the Candy Bandito"

please go to the link above and underneath the two drawings and vote for my t-shirt, the more votes and the higher the rating, the closer I am to capturing my white whale...

I really loved creating this design and getting to completion. I had several design friends of mine give me input until I felt it was just right.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

THANK YOU EVERYONE!!