January 2010, North American Promo

Featuring projects with (from right to left): Chickadee Magazine, Scholastic, Oxford University Press, Highlights Magazine (via Hey Kids! Design), Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health & Reckitt Benckiser (Dettol Detergent). All copyrights apply.

Holiday Promo

With a towering stack of nearly three hundred layers and a series of inter-weaving selection paths, this holiday promotional image that I just finished, at moments, felt like a game of ‘jenga’ against my adversary: the imac processor. Obviously things worked out and I have an image that I’m proud to use in this years email promotion in both the UK (Meiklejohn Illustration) and the USA (John Brewster Creative Services). If you have time, there are lots of humorous details that are buried within this image; much easier to see if you double-click to enlarge.

If your path of clicking ended up here, and started from the promotional mailer itself, I’m glad. I wanted to provide a little more transparency with my working process with both this particular image, but with also all my other commissioned work. Obviously my goal here is to evoke a sense of repeated visitation to the website, also serving as a virtual diary for ongoing Sparklefish projects. On that note...I hope you come back often!

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"Ken Gamage takes a kid-in-a-candy-store approach to his Holiday promo image" -theIspot.com

Featured in today's theIspot.com 'Art News'

Highlights Magazine Cover

Although this image was ultimately not used to print, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Creative Director, Marta Ruliffson at 'Hey Kids!' on this cover image. Kids, a park, a one-kid band member and a spattering of random puzzle pieces ...all the usual wacky fixtures.

Hooked on Phonics - Itsy Bitsy Spider

Hooked on Phonics package includes DVD animation of the above illustrations and many others, Directed by Ed Wiseman of Onscreen Entertainment. The DVD is accompanied by a read along board book (a simplified version of the animation images) published and designed by Educate Products.

Dettol Detergent & The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health

This project was actually done quite some time ago (last December), but I wanted to let it sit with the client before I posted it publicly. The above character designs are to be used in television commercial animations in Saudi Arabia, with the purpose of educating children about hygiene and of course, implicitly market the Dettol Detergent brand. What is displayed here is merely a snapshot of the varied sketches and color designs that I provided for my client, Reckitt Benckiser (Dettol Detergent) & The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health. Special thanks to Alice at Meiklejohn Illustration in London for handling all the back and forth dialogue (over three different time zones!)

The unique challenge here was visually navigating through a cultural framework that is obviously different than what one would find in North America. For instance, because the color green is the symbolically the color of Islam, artwork created for the middle east must be highly sensitive to exactly what shade of green is used. It was a bit of a tightrope walk here, considering that I used quite a bit of green to depict the Dettol brand color, as well as to signify some of the germ villains that are the arch enemies of the muscle bound hero character.

Ooga-Booga-Man, Droopy Head King, Horn-Head-Weird-Arms...

Obviously, very, very different than the usual digital work that I do. These hand sculpted characters (from top to bottom: 'the droopy head king','ooga-booga-man', 'horn-head-weird-arms') were a fun little experiment that I did years ago when I was living in Vancouver. It's always healthy to breathe some new inspiration into your typical working discipline, through a not-so-usual medium. Lots of fun, maybe I'll do some more in time to come.

Purple Fish...Yellow Nose

Alright, are you ready? I've conceptually created the unimaginable. I've embarked on a modernist expedition through Freudian psychoanalysis and positivist-materialism.

...I drew a fish.

The Story of Grump (Cambridge University Press)

These still shots were developed for Cambridge University Press and were later animated in flash by a private firm. The end result was an interactive educational story for children. Although I usually work in photoshop, these images were created solely in Illustrator as vector images to accommodate the flash software.

The Amazing Dino Bus - Animation

A collaborative animation project with my talented animator friend, Paul Parvulescu at Loaf Heads Animation

Lemonade Stand Comic

Lemonade Stand is A comic that I illustrate off and on, when I have some spare time. Unfortunately, most of these have been collecting dust on my hard drive. Thought I'd give them some time to see the light of day.

Trace Broadcasting Concept Sketches

© Trace Broadcasting

Case of the Gasping Garbage (SRA/McGraw-Hill)

Backtracking a bit and retro-blogging some noteworthy projects. “Case of the Gasping Garbage,” commissioned by SRA/Mc-Graw-Hill, was one of my first full-length book commissions, compressed into a short production time line. I remember, really wanting to push my creative muscles in creating images that were dense ‘total environments’ for children to really get immersed into. By chance, the project’s timeline coincided with my planned move from Canada to the United Kingdom. So amidst packing and moving to another country, I was grappling with moving from the comfortable working environment of my Vancouver studio, to drawing at coffee shops, on the plane...wherever really. I always had a portable scanner and laptop in my backpack. I’ve inserted a few photos to contextualize my quickly changing working environment over the course of three month. Special thanks to Art Buyer (at Pronk & Associates) and personal friend, Thao Lam (Little T) for being so patient in dealing with my changing phone numbers and addresses!

Above: Preliminary book sketches . Completed from my Vancouver studio

Above: Secondary sketches created in Toronto, days before flying to the UK.

Above: Final Artwork created from my 'portable' London, UK studio.