This week is going to be pretty busy for me on the home front. Getting ready to visit my brother for the weekend. So Monster Cutie will be back next Monday with some portfolio strategies that will help you put your best foot forward on the internet and increase your chances at landing awesome work! Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

If you’re going to draw for a living, drawing faster will certainly make things easier. If you can draw faster you can draw more. Drawing more means you can work more. Working more equals more money. Draw faster, earn more money. Can it be so simple? Let’s find out. Read more »

Say you’re working on a piece of 11×17 bristol, you’ve just finished your line work, and you’re ready to scan it into photoshop to sex it up with some digital painting. Small problem. You’re scanner only takes 8.5×11, 8.5×13 at the max, paper. You’re going to have to scan in halves and then re-assemble them in Photoshop. Here’s a quick method to line up the halves, also known as “halving.” Read more »

You’re waiting for your friend on a crowded street because you’re going to get some tasty katsu curry at your favorite Japanese diner. You look up and way in the distance, you see your friend. You wave, she waves back, and you head off to a tasty lunch. How did you pick her out in such a big crowd? Your brain catalogs the overall shape and movement of your friends which helps you instantly pick your friends out of a crowd. We can use this principle when designing characters for animation, comics, and games. Read more »

Career advice should always be taken with many grains of salt, especially advice from a blog. What may work for one may or may not work for you. And although I’ve been working as an illustrator in some form for the past eight or so years, I still have a lot to learn. Having said that, I will impart what I’ve learned so far in the hopes that some of it will help others discover their own path to full-time illustration. This will be a developing series with multiple parts as they are written. Read more »

When drawing people, it’s easy to get lost in the little details that make up the form. Unless you’re working on character design sheets which usually call for neutral poses, you want your illustration to tell a story. Shifting your focus from details to gesture will greatly improve the readability of your character making for stronger illustrations. This week, we focus on the gesture. Read more »