HOW TO MAKE FRAME-BY-FRAME ANIMATION A VIABLE OPTION.

I’ve long loved animation and I have a weird, rich history of not ever getting to do it. Like, really do it. This from the guy who, in dot-com’s infancy, was the ONLY ART DIRECTOR IN SAN FRANCISCO WHO KNEW HOW TO MAKE AN ANIMATED GIF. True story.

When I was studying marketing at the Art Center College of Design in the super late 80’s a Hollywood production company (in an hilariously Cohen-brother-style meeting on Sunset Blvd.) invited me to be a part of a breakthrough, episodic animation project for adults that eventually became some dumb show about a guy named Homer and his weird family who lived someplace called Springfield. If you ever run into me, ask me about this experience because it’s super funny (sometimes I think I dreamt it).

The very first animation I did for Kelly’s marriage book, Hey, I Love You…. The hardest part was building the end title with the book closing. I knew it would be, so I made it so I could swap out the art and use the base animation as a template for every video after.

Once I figured out the basics, it was time to play with more layers, masking and more complicated animations.

Eventually I added unique title art to the front of each new video and kept pushing myself to do more complex scenes.

With all the booty shaking, this was the most detail I put into one of these animated shorts. And the most adventurous transition (to the dropped penny) I’d attempted.

Since the brand calls for stylish simplicity, you’d have to really be paying attention to see that the clip that begins at 00:22 is the most complex frame-by-frame animation so far. Can you guess why?

Soon after, Dick Clark Productions (another funny story) asked me to turn a comic series I’d won an award for in LA into commercial bumpers for a season of American Bandstand. I gave them an enthusiastic “YES” despite not knowing at ALL how I’d actually fucking deliver (it was the late 80’s and we didn’t even have clamshell phones yet for God’s sake!). Shit, I was still in school and only 19, for crying out loud, but I was all about it! When they said it’d be a great unpaid project on my resume, I bounced.

I’ve actually been creeping up on real animation for a bit. In 2017 I created a polished series of successful animated videos for a tech startup by supplying layered illustration files to a talented, local After Effects animator. Then I started a series of time-lapse illustrations that I made for Mr. Dave’s Best. Drawn in real-time, all one take.

But my real opportunity came when I got to promote the marriage book my wife had been contracted to write for Hachett – Hey, I Love You… To research her concept, Kelly had been interviewing all kinds of couples to learn more about all kinds of marriage experiences – the good, the bad, and, yeah, the sometimes terrible. Since I’d designed and illustrated her book to be as unisex and inclusive as possible, Kelly had a cool idea to set those candid insights to stylistic animation that would be right on brand.

Once animations were done, they were easily converted to animated gifs. Like this endless sharing of Hey, I Love You…

SImple, yes. Pain in the ass, not really. What I love about conceptual animation is that your can do a lot with little when you put a little thought into it beforehand.

Simple, yes. Pain the ass, also yes. But I do love this tedious-to-execute animated gif of the endless search for love. This was a part of the puck to fill Giphy with our cute little animations.

This concept for this animation was pretty simple so it had to get juiced up with some slightly difficult renderings of the word bubbles and the chair bounce on the refresh. Not hard, but nice thinking, I think. haha.

Frame-by-frame, onion skinning, multiple layers, Procreate, and my left hand – all in one photo. But this is what goes into every sequence on this page (and more on the Hey, I Love You… Vimeo channel.

The process wasn’t much different than the video work I did on those earlier tech-startup videos. I’d discovered the Procreate illustration app for those and it was a short leap to teach myself how to use its ridiculously simple animation assist to onion-skin myself to frame-by-frame-glory. Trying to do a whole video in one file was technically impossible anyway due to file size limitations which is fine because it would also have been an unworkable hellscape of layers to deal with. So I animated all the scenes as short clips. Once I had a scene down, I exported it as an mp4 file thatI then pulled into Adobe Premiere. There I could loop, extend, or slow, depending on how the VO timing worked out. And if I ran into trouble, I’d just zip back to the iPad to quickly animate a filler sequence or fix bugs in the scenes. Easy squeezy. 

Soon we had over 40 short animations for Hey, I Love You… And there’s more in production. It’s funny to watch my progress as I became more comfortable through experience. And the best part is that since I did all the animations as individual sequences, now we can mix and match previous work to make new narratives in just minutes. Or animated gifs of those scenes. Despite having so many options to economically repurpose the work into the future, I still prefer animating new ideas since I figured out how to do it so easily!

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Fill a Warehouse with Story.

Being a strategist, designer, marketer, and illustrator means you never know what you’ll be working on next. Which I love. So when I got a call from the local dog care experts at Skipper, I knew the universe was throwing me a creative bone I could really chew on. (See what I did there?) Their plan was genius. Skipper was already giving pets a loving, rewarding day when their owners couldn’t be there to supply it in person. Skipper’s smartphone app lets dog owners share in their pet’s experience in real time with photos at walk-time, pics of drop-off and other fun activities. But now, they wanted to create an amazing “together experience”.

The bar would be the focal point of this enormous space. And once we nailed the concept, the bar almost designed itself. A pub-like structure (faux brick below, dark green wood up top), tall and open but visually complete thanks to the hanging windows. The bar served beer for dogs, as well, so of course the bar’s logo would be a water dish with a mug handle full of suds. Customers would order on an app and be notified when to FETCH their drinks. How fun is that?

Skipper bought a giant warehouse space in a neighborhood that’s about to be chock-o-block with upscale apartments because they wanted to make it the ultimate doggy bonding destination. A couple of dog bars already exist here, but they’re smelly, unkempt, and furnished with cheap tables and plastic chairs. Skipper wanted to create a mind-blowing, immersive EXPERIENCE. In addition to a bar, the building would also house a kennel, exercise yard, and a new HQ for Skipper’s operations (a super smart way to expand your office space needs, capabilities, and profit margin). Exciting on so many levels.

Even though the building was purchased and the architects were hired, the concept itself was still in exploratory mode. They knew generally where they wanted to go, but they wanted to see what was possible, if it was viable, and most importantly, if it was affordable. And it had to happen fast. So how do you make a giant, cavernous dog bar/kennel/tech biz a destination? We understood the existing audience and their needs. We knew plenty of Instagrammable destinations existed out there, but after one or two visits, they became tired thematically. What we needed was a good story. One that could freshly serve daily customers, frequent visitors, and out-of-town sightseers. One that was fun to work at every day. Oh, and one that would fit the brand. Easy.

Meet the competition. Yes, this is a dog bar in the same town. You can almost smell the urine.

Now this. This is how you fill a space. I visited a LOT of big spaces when I was doing the advance thinking for our workshop. Lowe’s Foods not only filled their giant space, they did it with style and story and without a lot of expense. That structure to the right is in the wine section. You can pour a beer and sit in this little container fort and pretend you’re not hanging out in a grocery store.

In our brainstorming workshop I taped up a handful of “starter themes” that we could riff around. I also posted up sheets to keep up on task – areas we’d need to consider, amenities and services offered, company mission, etc. It’s funny, but we sort of sputtered and stumbled around until we got to what was originally the Dog Hotel theme (remember, it was a kennel, too, so it made sense). Once we turned it into a town, it came to life in front of our eyes. It’s was really exciting!

The whole place would be filled with gags and little surprises. I especially like how the Firehouse is siren-free. Those clouds up there? I thought it’d be nice to do some sound baffling in a way that helped the story. :-)

Remember, it’s a town built by dogs for dogs. So the entrance is the town’s Tourist Center. You just walk your dog up that ramp to check you both in (you’re his/her guest, after all).. Once you’re checked in, you’re in the town square (complete with a stature of the founding pooch). From here you have a commanding view of the town. Hungry, visit the indoor-outdoor market where you’ll find snacks for dogs and humans.

I toured the space with the CEO and listened to her describe every detail, every wish, hope, and desire regarding the vision. Then I spent a couple of days coming up with some jumping-off points that we could talk around in a brainstorming workshop. And despite it being the dead of winter, we spent a couple few hours hammering out ideas in an unheated, on-site conference room. We filled the walls with good, bad, and ugly ideas until it was clear we had a winner.

The idea was simple. Create a town, founded by dogs, built by dogs, and governed by dogs (with assistance from their human partners). The space, as I said, was huge. If it was only filled with tables and chairs, it’d be overpowered by space, echoey and lame. Scale was our enemy. So I planned to fill the space with town buildings that would serve as little “forts'' to hang out in. A firehouse. An art museum. A town Hall of Fame. Since the town was built by dogs, everything from the signage to the tiniest bit of extra credit would be misspelled hilariously in enthusiastically sincere “dogese”. The entrance where you (human) and your Master (dog) checked in was the town’s Welcome Center (and, of course, Gift Shop). There was even a dog’s Farmers Market where all kinds of treats were sold (along with a human food food truck right outside the roll up garage door). My favorite part was the bar with the pub facade. You’d order drinks (including legit dog beverages) through the app and, when ready, you’d get a text. Not to pick up your order, but to FETCH it. And all of this detail came about in that two hour workshop including all the other ideas.

Knowing your audience and your service to them is important. But the story. Ugh, the story is the difference between being another dog bar and being something on a whole different level.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Make the Most of an Hour.

There’s a story I love to tell, and I can’t remember who told me, but it goes like this – Pablo Picasso is walking through a park and a woman recognizes him and asks him to draw her portrait. He says, “Sure.” (Maybe in Spanish) and he starts sketching. A few minutes later, he hands her the drawing. It’s amazing. It captures the very essence of her character. Then he says, “That’ll be $5000, please.” The woman is dumbfounded. “$5,000!? But it only took you five minutes!”, she says. Picasso simply looks at her and says, “No, madam, it took me my whole life.”

Now, Pablo Picasso is known to have been kind of a jerk, and by most any definition, I’m no Picasso. Most creatives use this story to explain why experience should cost a lot. But I like to tell it to explain how quickly good work can be done by someone who knows what they’re doing. I typically work with clients in one of three ways – on retainer, on projects (short and long), and by the hour. And, unlike Picasso in that story, my hourly rate is not $60,000.

This is that dog bar thing I’m going to tell you about. The brainstorming workshop was so fun. We were just throwing out ideas and I was sketching them out like mad on a giant pad. At the end of a couple of hours the walls were FULL of these sheets and it was clear which one was the “winner”. A town for dogs, built by dogs. That’s why everything is spelled adorably wrong. On the right are my drawings for the architects and investors showing what “buildings” would occupy the enormous space.

My hourly rate is $120, which comes to $960 per day (8 hours). And, believe me, if I’m working hourly, I’m making the most of every minute. Truth be told, you’re not just buying just an hour of my attention because I’m not a robot who can turn off thinking about your challenge after 60 minutes. I love what I do, and I’m going to be thinking about your business while I’m at the gas station, while I’m in the shower (sorry, but it’s true), when I’m doing housework on the weekend, and when I’m sleeping. I’ve literally dreamt up solutions to projects before. How could I ever charge you for being interesting enough to not be able to think about!?

So what could I do for you in mere hours? Lots. I’m a bootstrapper’s delight. I had a client who wanted a theme for a dog bar and couldn’t afford much. I figured out that the most affordable way to go was to let me do a handful of hours of lead thinking and together we’d throw down for a couple of hours brainstorming ideas against that structure. In the end we nailed a direction with all the details, and for another handful of hours, I worked those details up into drawings and a presentation she could show her team, investors and architects. (Another benefit of being a strategist, designer, marketer, and illustrator). So those handfuls of hours resulted in the ability to fully explain and present an experience that didn’t exist before we started working together.

Another thing done in just a handful of hours. The designer knew he wanted a lawn chair and a cooler to represent a Day Off for Fall River Brewing. I threw some his way, he chose one, we refined it together (had to replace that angry lady in the background with an abandoned lawn mower), and a beautiful beer can was born! Go buy some!

Hey, look! More dog stuff! Same dog bar client, different thing. They wanted a new name and had a list of contenders but didn’t know how to proceed. Their budget didn’t allow for the process I apply to projects like this, so they bought a few hours to see what was possible. I sketched out a ton of possibilities that matched the nature of their business and offered some ideas they hadn’t thought of.

So what could you and I do in just one hour? Lots. Talk, for one. And by “talk” I mean YOU talk. I can listen to your hopes and dreams and recommend ways to get them into action. But I do more than listen well.

Strategy: Run your existing plan by me. Use me as a sounding board. Or tell me what your partners hate about your vision and I can advise you on a plan to compromise. Hire me to present your vision to the board. Or investors.

Design: Share challenges with product, packaging, sourcing, or sales materials. Hire me to design a poster or two for your event. Make your product instruction manual easier to follow. Clean up your brand identity a little. Make branded email signatures for everyone.

Advertising:  I can do some creative writing for you. Maybe punch up some existing copy. Help you set a social media content schedule that makes sense for your brand and audience. I could lay out a template for your print or digital ads to occupy. Come up with a handful of taglines to consider.

Illustration: I could draw up some product ideas you’ve been kicking around. Or maybe do a few illustrative cartoons for a presentation you’re giving. I could create one-off illustrations for packaging, your blog or website, or even social media.

I’ll be honest here, most creatives with my experience don’t do hourly. But I love it because it’s the first step to great projects. Not for me, for you! Every hour we work together will get you closer to realizing the big goals you’re trying to achieve. And you don’t need Picasso for that. 

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Know I'm the Right Person to Work With.

Weird for a marketing guy to say, but I’ve never been comfortable promoting myself or my work. Because to me, the most interesting part of what I do has always been identifying and solving the core challenges of my client partners. It’s kind of like how your favorite movie is your favorite movie because of the story and not because of who the executive producer was. So I’ll rip off the band-aid and tell you as quickly as I can why I’m uniquely qualified to work on your business. 

For starters, I have more than a decade of experience working at, for, and with, advertising agencies – from the impossibly huge conglomerates to the adorably tiny boutiques. (I was even a managing partner at an agency in San Francisco for a number of years). Then I quit agency life to start a business of my own. Designing all kinds of products, sourcing manufacturing overseas, expensive trade shows, private label manufacturing for department stores...the whole shebang. It became incredibly popular from the get-go, and stayed profitable for more than 20 years. (It still is, actually.) Through that business I wrote and illustrated a little book about parenting that became a perennial best seller, a globally recognized meme, and the first-born of a number of other publishing projects (There’s a new one launching October 2021). And while I was doing all of that, I began working directly with clients of all sizes, on projects ranging from event posters to multi-million dollar corporate rebrandings. I even served client side as a full-time CMO for two years. 

This is a really simple exercise I sometimes share in presentations. Which place would you go for fresh eggs? How about skydiving lessons? This, in a shell, is why my portfolio is so full of vastly different visual and verbal communication. I’m always working toward the perfect solution to every individual challenge.

Ok, I’m glad that part’s done. Because now I can get to my favorite part – how all of that history benefits you. I’ve got a lot of experience at being more than a creative. And the lessons of those broad experiences inform the solutions I bring to you. Look, a lot of people can generate fun, creative ideas. But it takes years of broader experience to be sure those ideas check all the boxes required for the best chance of success. Does the solution fit the budget? Does it make business sense? Is it embraceable by your employees? Is it sellable by your sales team? There are so many considerations, which is why I self-edit most solutions before they ever make it to a presentation.

While my process is the same for every project, it’s also wildly different for every project. That probably doesn’t make sense, but I can explain. Each project, client, business, and challenge is unique. I never, ever, ever, give anyone a #43. So here are the process tenants I apply to every project I work on:

Understand a client's business, professional aspirations, personality, and audience, as quickly and completely as possible

This is something I loved about working at/with/for ad agencies.You had to get smart about every business you worked on...FAST. From NFL teams to really complicated tech. It helps to be a quick study, but also a good listener who asks the right questions.

Boil down the challenge to a single, simple action item

You can’t find a solution until you succinctly identify the problem. While this is a lot of what I learned working in advertising, it took being a business owner myself to truly understand which questions identified the elements of a problem (or hidden solutions to it). Once we all agree on the actual challenge, only then can we work together to solve it.

Concept multiple disparate approaches to the specific challenge that can be executed within the project parameters

There are a thousand ways to skin a cat. And this is my favorite part of the process. You’ll get an array of vastly different, smart, creative, and affordable solutions to every challenge. And if you aren’t currently getting this treatment, you’re going to love this part as much as I do.

Execute quickly and efficiently

This is where the rubber hits the road. And it’s where my love of checklists reigns supreme. Good planning and being organized is the only way to avoid costly surprises so we can stay within your budget.

Capitalize gains. Adjust when necessary

Being a fellow business owner, I know (believe me) nothing is assured. You have to be flexible and always ready to capitalize on the best outcomes, but be completely prepared for the worst. That’s probably the most vital aspect of my being so uniquely qualified to help you. I see your business as my business.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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HOW TO DRAW OVER 300 ILLUSTRATIONS FOR A 258 PAGE BOOK THAT'S NOT EVEN A PICTURE BOOK.

My wife wrote a book called, Hey, I Love You… and she asked me to design it. Then she asked me to illustrate it. It’s in the contract with our publisher. They paid me in the advance to do 50 illustrations for the book. Well, they paid Kelly to have me do the work. Hahaha. Anyhoo, you know how many illustrations I did for the book? Over 100. And that’s why I like being a strategic designer who can draw. I didn’t HAVE to overdeliver because it’s my wife’s project. I did it because it simply HAD to be done. I’ll explain.

Hey, I Love You… by Kelly Sopp. Illustrations (so many illustrations) by me, Dave Sopp. This is an early drawing I made for the Hey, I Love You… website because we didn’t have an actual copy of the book to show off. Hey, we still don’t!

Kelly’s book is beautiful. Hey, I Love You… gives couples practical marriage wisdom, and an effortless way to exchange heartfelt words that need to be said, or unsaid, or aren’t said often enough. It’s so unique. Not just because of the way you use it or how anyone who’s married can find incredible value in it. It’s unique in the space of Relationships and Marriage. Have you ever looked in that section? It’s D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-N-G. It’s mostly for people trying to fix what’s very broke or, in the dustier lower shelves, trying to teach people how to NOT get into that situation in the first place. Kelly’s book tackles all that (and more) handily and expertly, but in such a refreshingly positive way. This is starting to sound like I’m the president of her fan club (I am, but I’m also the president of every businesses fan club on this site), but it’s important because when you illustrate a book, it’s not about your talents. It’s all about the content.

Didn’t I just say that I don’t have a sample of the book? I don’t. So I did that Illustration to use while I made my own dummy! I’m like that. Anyhoo, now you get to see what the book design looks like. Super airy and light. That yellow is so bright and happy and positive (just like the writing.). Below are some illustrations of how the book works – “it puts the bookmark in the book.” (Sorry, Silence of the Lambs joke).

I’ve collected my favorites (but not all my favorites) to share. The book is so light and bright and airy, so the illustrations really needed to just be seasoning for the words Kelly wrote. I chose a loose style using the colors we already established in designing the book together. The drawings are cute and happy, but still rough around the edges and almost sketchy, just like my marriage. Kidding! Just seeing if you’re paying attention.

I tried to keep everything as simple as possible at every level. I use three brushes: Rough Crayon, Tight Crayon (for any type), and Messy Dotted. There are only three colors: White, Yellow, and Black. Even conceptually I tried to be super simple without being lazy. I mention that the Life Preserver was an easy out, but I tried to at least make it look really interesting. And it turned out to be one of my favs.

In this case, the content is composed of two parts. The first is an introduction to the book to explain it (it’s that unique) and give you an entertaining breakdown of tried and true marriage best practices. The second part is the bulk of the book - bookmarkable spreads that convey your romantic thoughts, encouraging words, mild concerns, deepest worries, and your most sincere apologies. That’s a lot of emotional content, right? Sound kind of heavy? Well, it IT IS! And that was what made it so tricky.

The Hey, I Love You… bookmarkables are divided into five categories. The first two, Romance and Encouragement, were super easy and fun. Then it started getting challenging. I feel like such a baby even writing that because you honestly, have NO idea how much thought and research went into the writing of this book. For example, consider this spread: I’m Worried About You. / It seems like you might be having a tough time right now. Want to talk about it? While the sentiment is clear, it’s also intentionally vague. Because this bookmark may be appropriate for someone who’s going through a really hard project at work as well as someone who might be suffering from deep depression. The overall tone of the book is upbeat, but it’s not tone deaf. As a person who identifies as “married for more than 25 years”, I’ve (we’ve) experienced a lot of the experiences in this book. So what would you illustrate to represent that bookmarkable message?

For every message in the book, I had to put myself in the shoes of the bookmarker AND the recipient in both the most mild of circumstance AND the most dire. All the while I had to keep with the book’s upbeat voice and palette. For example,“I’m Worried About You.”. For this I illustrated a door outlined in white in a very dark room. Under the door there’s a bright yellow light showing from the other side. From other side comes a bright, hopeful love note that travels a playful path into the room. Fine for anyone who’s just sort of shut off emotionally from their loved one and open to interpretation by the recipient to speak to just how dark that room is that they’re holed up in. See what I mean?

Of course, not everything in the book called for something this heavy. Even in the serious parts. If you know me, you know I can’t stand an easy way out. But for a small part of this assignment, the easy way out led to more time and effort to tackle the harder stuff. “Maybe We Can Learn a Lesson in This.” = Graduation cap. “I Will Never Give Up on You.” = Life Preserver. Not lazy. Just accurate, appropriate, and efficient to tackle the harder spreads. Besides, remember what I said about the book not being about the illustrations? It’s true. They were always meant to be seasoning for the content.

At this writing, I’m still making more and more drawings. Once we sent the final files to our publisher, there was the website and all the marketing materials to produce. Right now I’m at over 300 unique illustrations for this project. This isn’t even counting the animated book trailers and animated gifs viewed by over 3 million on GIPHY. I hope there’s even more to add to this story when the book is available October 5. If you want to be in the loop, subscribe to the Hey, I Love You…Newsletter. If you preorder the book before October 5, you’ll get a cool little Sneak Preview Gift. from Kelly and I :-)

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Go Big in Iceland.

I’d never done a mural before. After my successful project teaching Icelanders how to ride a bus safely and not-insanely, I was asked to do four (FOUR!) giant murals inside Strætó’s Reykjavík headquarters. I was ecstatic and terrified, but mostly curious. Their ad agency handled the public reception room and it was nice. Typical Reykjavík skyline in modern thin lines, and stuff like that. The four murals they wanted would be in places only employees can see – the marketing/PR office, the tire shop, the dispatch office, and a very long wall in the company cafeteria. There wasn’t a creative direction other than, “what would you do?”

This is the cafeteria and, in a nutshell, the whole process of the project. My client sent me multiple photos of each wall, which I turned into panoramas (top). Then I turned those into a digital canvas and used those to make measurement guides. This wall was fairly easy with only those few vents. Wait until you see the dispatch room and tire center. I drew everything in pieces in Procreate, then put them all together in Illustrator. Then I popped the whole thing into my panoramas for client approval (bottom).

I started by doing what I always do for any project – consider the challenge I’ve been asked to solve and the what the intended audience would appreciate, then offer a range of solutions. It was seemingly simple. De-dullify some big, blank walls and lighten up the everyday lives of employees. If it was one wall, no prob. But this was four interior walls that employees would encounter multiple times a day. It really felt like it needed a theme to tie them all together. 

My wife asked me why I was stressing so much over a wall decorating project. But to me it was so much more. It was a chance to celebrate the people who worked hard at a public service job that is typically unappreciated by its benefactors. The real challenge was helping those employees feel proud of what they do, and reminding them they matter greatly to their community. I believe every marketing or creative opportunity is a chance to do so much more than asked.

From the outset I had a direction I knew I wanted to go in. Bring the bus into the only place it doesn’t go in Iceland – INSIDE THE HQ.

I started with a litmus test to plumb the tone of the project. Serious? Funny? Fantastical? After all, there were no rules. But being 3,000 miles away from Iceland, I had no way of walking around to check the atmosphere of each department. My clients were my guide, and in the end, they went with what I hoped they’d choose. As I set out to bring the bus into the HQ, I thought, why not bring along the passengers, too?

This is what I presented in the first round - four different themes. I wasn’t sure what level of whimsy they wanted to bring in so I kept the spread pretty broad. 1. This was the one they’d eventually pick to bring the buses and their riders into the building. 2. This was based on something that my client had told me when I was working up the Riding Tips. He said people leave some crazy shit on the bus. So that’s what I had represented for the cafeteria. All the stuff left on buses. Yes, even a prosthetic arm! 3. I don’t even know where this came from. I’m glad they didn’t choose this because it looks like a pediatricians waiting room. 4. This was my second favorite theme - buses running the bus company! Every wall would represent the work going on there, only by buses! Hilarious.

The idea would feature Icelanders interacting with one another while riding and eagerly waiting for the bus. It was a great way to show a slice of Icelandic life, just doing the things that Icelanders do when they use Strætó. Early conversations about the Safe Bus Riding Tips revealed that people often do bizarre things on the bus. I thought there was a fun opportunity to make the murals a sort of “Where’s Waldo” of truths and funny inside jokes for the employees. It would also be a great way to create a story that could connect the murals in each department, converging in an “in bus” experience where all the employees come together - the cafeteria.

Final - Marketing/PR Office (top) My client told me that there are these really aggressive geese that are all over the place bullying people for handouts. They even get on the buses sometimes! So of course we had to add that in. As well as other feathered sights you’d see at a bus stop. That blank spot on the bus? That’s where a whiteboard is glued to the wall. I had to work around a ton of stuff in the dispatch office.

Final - Dispatch Room (top) Oh, man. So many windows! And a giant beam that divided the wall right in the middle. But we cleverly designed worked around it all by incorporating it into the drawing.

Final - Tire Center (top) The tall skinny gray boxes are support beams we had to work around. The other two boxes? This is the best - they’re bathroom doors!!! The men’s room is on the right, where the dudes are hanging out and the women’s restroom is at the front of the bus. Hilarious.

Final - Cafeteria (top) This is my favorite wall. I mentioned hiding little bus-life details before. One of those is a nod to weird giant things people try and bring on the bus. And I love the guys going to a soccer game in the front. See those two lost in their books? Notice how similar they look? The girl’s book is titled, “How to Find Your Perfect Match”.

Afterwards I noticed that all murals are signed and I didn’t sign any of these! But in the cafeteria mural, if you look hard enough, you can spot me gazing out the window at the beautiful Icelandic countryside. I can’t wait to go and see these in person!

While the walls were super long, the actual office spaces were pretty tight. Anything colorful or too aggressive would have been way to jarring to live with every day. So we decided to go with line art in a medium gray that would fill the space, but not fry the mind. From a production standpoint it was…interesting. I’ve written about how detail crazy I am, especially about physical space. But since I couldn’t measure it myself, my client photographed each wall the best he could, and I made a measurement guide from those photos. They accounted for every vent, pipe, beam, window, and any other possible obstruction. It’s was pretty damned detailed. He kindly confirmed the measurements in my detailed guide without cursing me (as far as I know). Then I drew the elements of the murals (piece by piece) and assembled them onto templates I made from the measurements. After that, I made Photoshop mock-ups to scale of how each mural would look after installation. Oh, and no one had to paint all this! They went with printed wall wraps. Smart.

In the end it was WAY more illustrating than I had originally planned on. What will all the passengers and all, but it was so much fun. Each figure was independent of everything else in the mural, so we could move any passenger wherever we liked in order to get the best composition. I’m told the reception by employees was really, really positive. I can’t wait to hop on a Strætó bus to HQ one day, and have a look for myself.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Make the Most of an Important Opportunity.

I’m a dad. And I love it. When I had my first and only child, I changed my whole career to cater to those who felt the same, just so I could end my horrible ad biz hours. I figured, why spend all my family time building someone else’s fortune when I could be trying to build my own? More about that somewhere else. The point here is, there’s a funny thing I hadn’t really considered. Babies, they grow up. The little guy we dragged to the big gift shows (like NY Now, Atlanta Gift Show, ABC Show in Vegas, and more) eventually became a teen. And, while still game, he was NOT super stoked to be in a trade show booth for weeks. I have no qualms about declaring myself the King of Distraction for kids. I can make a game out of anything, any time. Ask anyone who knows me. So it was a slow day at NY Now, and Kelly was off doing store visits when I decided to gamify our boredom. In my notebook, I outlined a page of cartoon panels. Then I drew in the first panel. No words, just a character talking. Then I passed it over to my extra-bored 14-year old son and said, “Write what he’s saying.” In the second panel, I drew another character and I let him name them. That was the beginning of Wilbur & Milimur. So there you go for your first question, “WTF with names like Wilbur and Milimur!?” To this day, I don’t know where he got those names.

Look, these get inappropriate real fast. But keep in mind who starts it. I draw the first panel, my then 14-year old boy writes it’s copy. Then I draw the next panel for him to fill the words into. Two dudes messing around trying to throw each other off balance and CRYING LAUGHING for hours.

We kept at it. Back and forth, back and forth. I’d draw a panel, he’d write it. When we got to the end of a page, we agreed the whole story had to resolve. We finished the first one and then it got really interesting. And also, kind of inappropriate. Since he had the hang of it, I started drawing curve-balls to see how he’d write himself out of it. He, of course, started doing the same thing right back, writing really weird stuff to throw me off. And then it got even weirder. We were in absolute hysterics. It was so hilarious we forgot we were in the Javits Center, in the middle of a big trade show, in Manhattan. As we drew the fourth panel, both of us in tears from laughter, we were 100% shocked to look up and see a buyer in our booth, standing there, literally, open-mouthed. Apparently she’d been there for a bit. Old, white, cranky. It turned out she was the buyer for the NY Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and she was decidedly put off by our indifference to her status. She was super shitty to us both (yes, both me and a 14-year old), and she left abruptly without order anything. I often think back on that lost opportunity. And I always come to the same conclusion – that I didn’t miss an opportunity. When you own your own business and you put as much into it as we all do/did, sometimes there are more important things to gain from a trade show than a momentary sale. I had a much more valuable experience with my boy that day than any buyer could lavish on my business, any day. Priorities and perspective, friends. Priorities and perspective.

A little before and after for ‘ya. I kept the original drawings and, when I got home from that trade show, cleaned them up in Photoshop. The boy asked me to re-type his hand writing, but I kept it in places (like the sign on Baxter’s Happy Place and below when Wilbur attacks). This one is still on of my favorites and we still use the final punchline together.

Note: Wilbur and Milimur both die frequently in these. And I hate to be that guy, but remember it’s a 14-year old who wrote all these. At this writing he’s 19, a college student at a respected institution, and not in jail or an asylum. The square gag was a joke we shared about playing Grand Theft Auto on Playstation. I think you can figure it out.

I grouped the most depressing one with the most inappropriate one so you could be twice as appalled at our bored juvenility.

The fun was in the fact that neither of us knew where each story would go. These two ended with my favorite copy and art twists.

The one on the left doesn’t have much copy because it was near the end of the day and the boy was getting bored with the game. We did try and keep the comic going when we got home from that trade show, but it didn’t have the magic of our initial bored spontaneity. We finished a three-part series of Wilbur and Milimur entering something in their county fair. And, for some reason, we brought them to ancient Rome in a time machine. I think the boy was studying Roman history or something and it was my last chance to try and keep him engaged. Hahaha.

Yes. I made Moo cards with links to the complete Wilbur & Milimur collection on Tumblr.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Be Hilarious In a Language You Don't Understand.

Ahhhh…Safe Baby Handling Tips. The onesie illustrations that became the 2005 board book I co-authored with my wife, Kelly, which launched a bazillion social media posts that don’t credit us as authors or me as the illustrator. Sigh. But once in a long while, someone will use a cool, free tool called “Google” and they’ll see that these funny Tips actually came from a real person. And then they work with that person to make new, funny things! Dude! That totally happened to me!

If you have a minute, you can read how this super fun project for Iceland’s public bus network, Strætó, came about. And, how bananas successful it was (over half of Iceland’s entire population was reached organically). True story! Basically, Strætó wanted to educate their riders on bus etiquette. It wasn’t my idea (it was theirs), but I wish it was (so badly), because it’s the perfect use for the Tips format.

Of course the baby one is my favorite of the series. And thank God I’ve never seen THIS happen on the bus. The tea set one? All those dudes are my brother. And yes, he really had that amazing mustache.

My Handling Tips formula is hard to nail, even though it’s pretty straightforward. Have a simple base instruction, and a victim. I’ve expanded the Handling Tips format into non-baby topics before, and that’s what really sort of brought this formula to light. I happened to have spent 15 years riding the bus in San Francisco, and let me tell you…I’ve seen some shit. So to me, there were PLENTY of victim opportunities to exploit for some juicy Bus Riding Tips.

When I did what I did for Safe Baby Handling Tips, I roughed out scenarios, then shot some scrap to work from for final. It was 2005, so I drew all the images on paper, scanned them in, cleaned them up in Photoshop before bringing them into Illustrator for layout. But now, I’m all Procreate on a first gen iPad Pro. For the Strætó project, I drew each part of each scenario in Procreate, exported the PSD to my desktop to clean it up, imported to Illustrator, and vectorized. Each Tip became its own layered Illustrator file so it could be scaled to meet any need Strætó might have for it (social media posts, bus shelter posters, etc.).

Hi, I’m Dave! World’s worst photographer! I like to shoot my own scrap to reference for the drawings because it makes it go faster. You’d think I’d enjoy that part the most - drawing it all. But the real fun is in placing the drawings in the template. Because that’s how you find out if what you thought was funny actually is funny. And most of the time it’s not. Hahaha. I have to redraw stuff more than you’d think so that everything works together like it’s supposed to.

We had such a fun time working together so I was made an honorary Strætó bus rider with my own pass and everything! I can’t wait to go visit and use the new bus riding skills I learned. I even got my own Icelandic last name. Did you know that they use your fathers name and then add “son” or “daughter” (dóttir) to the end. Yes, my dad’s name really is Clyde.

A lot of the characters in Strætó’s riding tips are my family members. My brother and his wife were visiting from California when I was working on this, so they ended up being in a LOT of the drawings. My son was home from college and made a cameo in a few, alongside Kelly, my wife. Of course, my clients were also drawn in. Hahaha. Guðmundur, whose awesome idea this was, appears as a driver while his teammate, Camila, appears as a passenger. We handled the title translations in the end because Icelandic is Greek to me (see what I did there?). I love that no matter what language they were in, these drawings could work anywhere in the world. Because idiots on buses is so universal. 

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Be a Whole Bunch of Different Illustrators.

Illustration > Stuf

OMG this was fun. But how can illustrating art toys, not be? I’ve written about how this brand was created (and why), and you can see how Stuf’s design process went. From an illustrative standpoint, I wanted to try some things I’d never done before: like try out a really minimalist modern style; or experiment with different materials. The idea was to make each Stuf theme seem like it was from a different artist, but what you see here is all me. :-)

ILLUSTRATION: Some of the concepts I drew up for the plush project, Stuf. All based on real birds and darned if I can remember who that cute fella in the bottom middle is. Anyhoo, the idea with Bird Stuf was that it’d be super modern in the style of Charley Harper.

ILLUSTRATION: Circus Stuf was probably the most challenging and the most fun because of it. I really wish I did the acrobat. I threw the Ringmaster doll photo in so you can see how the flat illustrations translate to the Stuf dolls. And below is a fake Photoshop job I did to test a two color version of the Big Stuf Elephant.

ILLUSTRATION: The march to the final Big Stuf Robot. I didn’t think anyone would remember punch cards. So sad. Hahaha.

ILLUSTRATION: This was a round I considered for International Stuf. With, of course, each figure representing a country. I couldn’t help but think of Mary Blair when doing these.

ILLUSTRATION: Pirate Stuf was entirely different from all that other mod stuff. It begged to be rough and sea-faring. And the back of each was an hilarious character trait. The guy with the mutton chops is Curly Pete and he was the only one “who knows where the treasure’s hid”.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Not Really Animate Something.

Illustration > Mr. Dave’s Best

When I was a student at Art Center, a producer for Dick Clark Productions somehow got my number and called me up with a gig (I still don’t know how that even happened). He asked me if I could do some animation titles for American Bandstand. I said, “Yes, absolutely” (as I’m want to do) and of course I’d never animated anything before in my life. Luckily I had an out when he said he didn’t have any money to pay me but I’d be in the end credits. No. Thanks.

Anyway, I never did learn how to animate. I’ve come close by doing some TV spots in San Francisco with talented animation studios. I even sort of animated some low budget stuff for VersaMe and Continuum, but those weren’t the same as the real deal. But then I found that Procreate, my favorite tablet drawing app, had a feature that recorded your pen strokes while you drew! So when your drawing was done you’d have a time-lapse animation of your drawing...well, drawing itself. I know what you’re saying. “That’s not real animation either!” I know, but it’s closer? Hahaha.

Anyway it was fun to take that app feature and figure out how to use it in a unique way. I mean, you could just record yourself drawing a character or something, but in the end you just have that finished character or something. So I had the idea of doing a slow reveal. Where you really didn’t know what the drawing would be until the very end. Or maybe you’d know what it was, but you didn’t know why I drew it until the end.

I’d been putting a lot of creative energy into my Mr. Dave’s Best brand and I’d been sharing one theme a week on Mr. Dave’s Best Instagram account. I made these little videos the “Saturday Night Mystery Movie”, where I challenged viewers to try and guess the video topic before it was revealed at the end. Fun, right?

I’m sharing here a collection of my most favorite Mr. Dave videos. I don’t think any of these represent my best illustration work. Not at all. The whole thing was more of a conceptual piece. My challenge to myself was to get through each of these drawings quickly. I didn’t want the videos to be too long or illustrate themselves too fast. I also did each drawing in one take. Maybe this was just user error, but if you screw up a lot (like I do), it’ll totally mess up your video. And I was working with no previous sketch or practice at all. I was just banging them out. I exported the videos from Procreate to my Mac, where I’d pop them into Adobe Premiere for a quick edit and some title additions. The music is all SUPER public domain from a website I found filled with all kinds of terrible, scratchy, atrocities. Mostly a bunch of recordings of Edison (yeah, Thomas), recorded by Edison, telling terrible jokes. Anyway, I thought the clunky antique music fit well with my retro brand and bounced hard against my decidedly non-traditional themes. How many video topics can you guess before they end?

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Draw Yourself Out of Trouble.

Illustration > VersaMe

Being able to draw gets you out of a lot of sticky design situations. Maybe I lean on it too much, but if I need a technical illustration of a product I’m doing a brochure for, it’s easier for me to just whip one out myself without having to go find someone to do it, get an estimate, get an ok to spend the money, wait for them to fuck it up a couple of times before I like it and then get back to work. Who’s got time for that?

CHEATING: Yep. This is my animation cheat. Same head, different mouths. This is what I gave my talented After Effects friend so he could do the fake animations for our video.

CHEATING: Same with this. I gave him a ton of different mouths for both characters so they’d look like they were blabbing.

CHEATING: Same here. Below is all this cheating in action. :-)

Being an illustrator also comes in handy getting ideas across. Fast. When I was working with VersaMe (they made the Starling early education wearable), I had LOTS of opportunities to put my drawings to work. I’d had to make a series of YouTube videos, from scratch, in about a week. So I figured out an idea that would work, populated the spots as much as I could with stock photos and then filled in the gaps by hand. The spots were heavy on After Effects (lots of stuff zooming in and out and such) so the drawings had to have a little extra something something to spice things up.

Oh, I’m no animator. I mean, I’d love to be, but I don’t have the time. So I faked it. I drew out tons of key frames and handed them over to my After Effects editor to do his magic with ‘em.

There were also a lot of technical drawings to be used in gif animations I’d end up building for onboarding tutorials. But the really fun stuff, personally, was concepting story ideas for an educational gaming app we were developing to tie into the Starling. We had a handful of story ideas that we wanted to test via Facebook ads. Really shoestring market research – the ad with the most clicks for more info was the theme that won. I’m a big fan of those old Bell Science Films, and I wished and wished that the child-brain-cross-section idea was the winner. It totally wasn’t. Mad Face Emoji!

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Give the People What They Want.

Illustration > Mysterio Predicts

I’m not Mysterio. Well, sometimes I had to be at trade shows. But I originally drew Mysterio with no thought of him being me. Some people also go to Zoltar, the mechanical mystic from the movie, Big. Nope. It’s funny that our collective image of exotic mentalists are all kinda the same guy. I’ve got that big, beautiful Taschen book of Magic and when you look through the history of magician-types, those guys are all doing the same look! For the branding work I did for Continuum (a communications company), I talk about avoiding cliches. But, honestly, sometimes you have to give the people what they expect if you want them to understand something. Oh, sorry, if you don’t know, Mysterio is a mystic who predicts your baby’s future on a little t-shirt. See? Totally appropriate and no way around it. I toyed with using a top hat instead of a turban, but he looked too Fred Astaire. Like he’d take your baby tap dancing.

FINAL: Mysterio…such a jerk. But being serious makes him believable. I didn’t really have a lot of reason to draw him outside his logo, but once in a while I needed him to have a body. You may say “lazy” but I thought it was funny to keep his logo head exactly the same in any scenario. He’s so INTENSE! hahahah.

SKETCHES: In 2006 I started trying to figure out what Mysterio was going to look like. I distinctly remembering being bored in a trade show booth in San Francisco, so that’s why the three stacked sketches are so shitty. But that last one really seemed to be the one, no? I remember I didn’t do that many before heading in that direction. The strip of heads up top was me working my way toward finish (far right). I’d never done shading like Mysterio seemed to demand (the etching style). It’s hard! Anyhoo, once I got to a finish I did there little extras for the packaging. In the beginning I softened Mysterio by saying he also sewed all the shirts himself.

EXTRAS: Once I got comfortable drawing in the Mysterio style, I started doing little extras here and there for customers. Here’s an early version of Mysterio’s origin story that I did as a free comic download. To the right are the Spirit Animals from Mysterio’s free downloadable Cootie Catcher.

SKETCHES: Some early rough pencil sketches for Mysterio’s children’s book, A Future Just for You!

FINAL: Illustrated spreads from Mysterio’s picture book, A Future Just for You.

As the Joker once said, “Why so serious?” After all, it’s for a BABY. Exactly. I wanted Mysterio to look intense to add some gravitas to the thing. Look, imagine if he was some happy winking cartoon dude, it’d ruin the whole thing. The way he’s STARING, part of you has to wonder...will this prediction really come true? Also, this was made to be a baby shower gift. So it’s all theater when it’s opened in front of a party. Looks serious, ends up being ridiculous. Get it?

Still I had ideas on how to soften him up a bit. I had a whole backstory planned for him, like how he sewed the shirts himself and somehow imprinted the shirts with a blast from his eyes, but I never played it up. I once made a comic book about his origin story. It was an extra credit free download for a while at wrybaby.com. And, of course, I illustrated a children’s picture book about Mysterio’s powers. That really softened him up. I even brought him to life on Instagram for a while! Hahaha. In the end, I think I prefer him looking like his tagline description: Uncanny! Almost Scary!

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Make Fun of the Helpless.

Illustration > Safe Baby Handling Tips

Fun fact about my book, Safe Baby Handling Tips: That’s me and Kelly in all those drawings! We were living in SF and I was doing a rockabilly thing with vintage red tab Levis and no handlebar mustache. You can see Kelly go through a couple of hair styles between Safe Baby Handling Tips and its prequel follow-up, Safe Pregnancy Handling Tips. I’ve written about how we came up with the idea, but the intention of the drawings was to mimic instructions for power tools. Not airline emergency instructions. Not IKEA assembly instructions. There’s actually an important distinction here.

FINAL: The first edition of the book in question – Safe Baby Handling Tips circa 2005. Look at that handsome rockabilly devil, will ya?

FINAL: Like painters in all the cartoons who paint live models, illustrators use photos for reference.. We call it “scrap”. Before computers, I knew illustrators who had rooms full of file cabinets packed with torn out magazine pages, photos, all kinds of scrap (see!?) paper with stuff they could reference in their work. I like this photo because of the baby laying on the ground behind me. Looks like I totally missed!

FINAL: A couple of my favorite panels. It takes people a while to see what’s so wrong about Shopping with Baby, which is fun to watch. Drying Baby is so moronic and mean it never fails to crack me up. Same with the Lifting Baby detail (what a grip!). Oh, and a little something from Nursing Baby to keep you up at night. Yep, that’s me. I’ll spare you the scrap I shot for it.

FINAL: Another true life adventure in scrap shooting (courtesy of Bonding with Baby). And two of my favorite Kelly panels. She cut her hair short in the middle of the project and I kept it accurate. So when you read through the book you can tell what was done first and what was done later. Don’t ask me why all our furniture was labeled.

My dad and my granddad always taught me that you have to respect your tools. You understand their power and never forget that you need to be mindful when using them. Let your mind wander, and bad things can happen. That’s what I thought about when we had our baby. As long as you stay mindful and not be a moron, no one will get hurt. It’s a weird twist, but you follow me, right?

If you read about the strategy behind Safe Baby Handling Tips, you know I didn’t have a lot of time to mess around drawing these. They’re simple, but they had to be realistic enough to need scrap for me to work from. Because what I’d do if I had time is take photos of people recreating the actions and then draw from that. I did that, but then traced the images in a stylistic way so I could scan them, clean them up in Photoshop, turn into vectors in Illustrator, and then pop them into frames fast. The stuff I couldn’t shoot, I just drew freehand which turned out to be pretty efficient.

COMPS: of course there were a lot of ideas that didn’t make the book for one reason of another. When we did the 10th Anniversary update/expansion we had to nix some panels because technology made them obsolete. They just don’t make TVs like that anymore and we didn’t feel like a flat panel would be as funny. And somethings our editor at Running Press nixed to save us from ourselves. Co-Sleeping is too scary and real a problem, for example. And even though we have a booze related panel (Calming Baby) it was not recommended where this one we flipped it to be the YES. Bad. And I added some that were just shitty for fun. That’s a string of firecrackers I’m lighting over there for the unpublished, Teaching Baby to Crawl.

FINAL: New directions for Safe Baby Handling Tips. Clockwise from top left: 1. If dogs are the new children, a Safe Dog Handling Tip series seemed appropriate. 2. We played with the idea of offering our Handling Tips on adult apparel, canvas totes, and even pillowcases, so we made some useful usage tips for those fine products. 3. I picked something at random to see if the formula would hold up. HI-YA! It did. 4. This was the big NO on how to use a SBHT coffee mug.

I later tried my hand at expanding the Handling Tips concept to other things to see if the idea had legs. Karate, Dog Ownership, that kind of stuff. I think the baby is the best foil just because of the original power tool reference. For some gross reason it’s funniest when the person who could get so seriously hurt is the small helpless person who least deserves it.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Draw in the Future.

Illustration > Mr. Dave’s Best

I sure like to draw. But I don’t really have a set style. At least, I don’t think I do. I guess I just never really found a niche interesting enough to gnash on. I’ve spent my career using my drawings to help get concepts across to creatives and clients, and to decorate the products I’ve made myself. So being really versatile was great for that. Heck, for a while I was getting freelance jobs in San Francisco just to draw other peoples ideas for them. This page of weird drawings was part of a personal project I started to get my head out of a really busy time and to stretch my illustrative muscles a bit and let loose.

FINAL: Mr. Dave’s Best Stickers really let me go to town in whatever direction I felt like. And Procreate let me choose the best digital tool for each topic. For example, I liked the rough charcoal feel for these poor chickens.

I’m a terrible painter. Watercolor, acrylic, oil...oh, I suck so bad at that. I came up in the world drawing with markers. Especially the bullet point Design Markers (my blood is 80% xylene). I’d eventually do all my drawings on paper, scan them on a big HP flatbed I had, and then color and manipulate them on my desktop. I illustrated Safe Baby Handling Tips that way. In the end I’m glad I have all the original drawings on paper as a tactile keepsake, but what a pain it was. I’d had a small Wacom tablet, but it was always too awkward to draw while looking at your screen and not your hand. Kinda like rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time. Then I really invested in one of those Wacom tablets that mirror your desktop. Better, but all the giant cords and transformers…still not ideal. Procreate on the iPad? Oh yeah, that’s the ticket. So convenient. So powerful. So easy. It made me want to draw again.

FINAL: A little mishmash of Unicorn Poop and People Not Getting Well Soon.

FINAL: I produced a few Mr. Dave’s Best Posters. This one I made for an elementary school silent auction. I made another poster at the same time that would have been…inappropriate.

Everything here was done digitally over a span of about a month and a half, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had drawing. It didn’t hurt that I did a lot of it in the quiet moments during a long trip through Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest, and Austria. Imagine sitting on a wood bench in the shade alongside a canal in Amsterdam, drinking a cold beer, pantsless, drawing away on your iPad. That was totally me. Except with pants. I added that last part to see if you were paying attention. But seriously, that’s what’s so great about being an illustrator who lives in the future – you have a complete art studio that fits flat in your daypack. All in all, I did over 150 drawings on various topics that would eventually become sheets of stickers sold under the banner, Mr. Dave’s Best.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Illustrate for Illustrators.

Illustration > American Greetings

I got to illustrate this my own concept for a big department of American Greetings. A department full of artists way way way more talented than me. No pressure, right? OMG. It was so stressful and so fun. I had a lot of branding concepts we’d presented them, and this one was the most illustration heavy. I’d started with marker sketches, and once we got approval, I had to do it for reals. I did it all in Illustrator and layered the HELL out of the thing so I could move everything around. And the reason I went vector at the beginning was because I was starting in the aspect ratio of the website we would redesign. I’d already figured out how the functionality of the site would work, but once that was in development, I knew i’d have to blow up the final illustration to dress a giant trade show booth wall, as well as shrink it tiny for PowerPoint templates. The hardest part of the whole thing was getting the characters right. We had to change them without really changing them. Get it? They had to be different and modern, but recognizable. Oh man, we burned so much time on those before we got to the stylized silhouettes in the final. Oh hey, did you notice that the island is in the shape of American Greetings’ rose logo? Corny? Sure, maybe – but I still love that.

FINAL: Woof. I was happy with where we ended up together, but man, what a ton of work! Hahaha. All of it fun, tho.

WORK IN PROGRESS: I presented a whole bunch of ideas and the winner was the loosest sketch in that presentation. Clockwise from the upper left: 1. That’s that doodle that helped sell the approved idea. 2. This is my rough of how the island would work when shaped like the American Greetings rose (and how everyone might fit on it). 3. You can see how we refined the thing a little tighter so we could eventually get to tighter still 4. Even tighter still, this file was labeled home_07 and the last one I’d do before fine tuning would be labeled home_14. Yeah. 14 full island revisions.

OPTIONS: Like the logo part of this project, I had to modernize all the characters (I KNOW, I GOT TO DO MY OWN INTERPRETATION OF CARE BEARS!), without actually changing them. On the left is some early work I presented, taking the characters from original, to slightly modified, to really modified. I drew and built the whole thing in Adobe Illustrator, so everything was it’s own vector piece of something. I even gave lots of options to AGP for the banner styling that would identify the characters on the island. Fussy much?

OTHER IDEAS AND FINAL CHARACTERS: So aside from the final product (the map website) there were all kinds of incidental elements leading up to the final. There were a ton of webpage designs that were presented as fully illustrated. Because once we sort of nailed the map look and feel, you could apply it to anything. Up top is an unused bit of title work for the website. Below that, and this is so me, a topographical side view of the AGP island and where all the characters are located on it. It was another way to handle website navigation in a visual way (yeah, the icons were links). Lastly, you can see where we ended up with the characters and see how they compared to the originals.

There were so many layers to this, as I mentioned before. I spent forever meticulously labeling each element so that when it came time to readjust the map to fit different aspect ratios, it was super easy and fast to make adjustments, big or small (like moving the boats and sea elements in, or pulling them out further from the island). Even each of the waves was labeled. It sucks to do it, but ALWAYS take the time to label your layers right. You’ll never be sorry you did.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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