First live digital caricature with my Wacom Cintiq

I have just completed the Morgan Stanley job in the morning.
Have some free time. First thing is to try out my new toy - Wacom Cintiq.
My 'makan kaki' - Eddie Quek was here.
Inevitably, he will be my first victiom. Hahaha.....

He is also asking for brithday present from me. Just nice....kekeke.... both ends meet.
I am quite satisfied with the result!
More practice coming........

Group caricatures for Morgan Stanley, APB, F&N and Heineken

Big job usually comes with long brief:-
"Hi Jit,

We would like to prepare a caricature picture with a theme something like the one you prepared for Lenka on Temasek.......

In terms of timing, looking for the final product by 10-11 April. Would like to see some rough sketches in the next 2-3 days.

If you can let me know the charges and who to address the cheque, I can deposit the advance amount today.

For the theme, we had the following in mind: 2 parties sitting across a table, there is a map of Asia Pacific laid on the table. The parties are negotiating on which territory belongs to whom. Place a flag for party 1 (Heineken) on India and party 2 (APB) on Indonesia and New Caledonia (an island in Pacific). Then there are other parties watching on the sideline. Have put together a rough sketch of the theme I have in mind

we have around 29 faces to incorporate as follow:

APB
Roland Pirmez (Key)
Vivek Chhabra (Key)
Philip Lam
Sze Khim
Geraldine (Key)
Karen
Adrian
Boey (Key)
Weng Hong

(Geraldine, karen and Adrian with lots of papers and files; Boey with a calculator)

Heineken
- Marc koster
- Siep
- Kenneth
- Steve (Can we show him doing some sort of theatrics - banging the table etc)
- Ernst

F&N
Koh Poh Tiong
Simon Israel
Anthony Cheung
Peng Seng

APB's Advisors
David (Key)
Peter (Key)
Johan (Key)
Gaurav
Eric
Sonali
Ibu tuti
Steven Lo

(Can we show Eric working on a computer and Gaurav and Sonali looking over his shoulders kind of supervising him; Ibu Tuti on a Phone; Steven Lo with files and papers)

Heineken's Advisors
David
Arfat
Ramiro

Let me know if 29 face are a bit too much and we can discuss....

These are the best pictures I could get, so please do the best you can with these. Understand for some faces this may not give best results but this is all I could get......"



This could be my toughest job, till date.
Not the biggest group. (I have done 87 pax for Coca Cola, 52 pax for Philip Morris), but I was provided many low resolution photos. That was bad enough. To make it worse, many of the photos are either looking down, hand covering mouth, three quarter back (not front) view etc. This is not the client's fault, as he also requested and waited for weeks for better photos, but we don't have much luck.

I told the client that we may lose the resemblance on some of them, given such photos. He understood. I came up with the above draft, based on his brief.

Feedback from the client:-
"Some minor comments on the caricature:

1. Can you make the people sitting on the table relatively bigger and the people in background a bit smaller to emphasize on people sitting on the table
2. Among APB advisor - David Aronovitch, Johan Dulat and Peter Chang should be more prominent than Gaurav jain, Sonali Johari and Eric Gnock Fah
3. Will send you photograph of David Serre later this afternoon
4. Move Sonali Johari from the left side to the APB advisor group side. You can have either David Aronovitch or Peter Chang shaking hands with David Serre
5. Please also show one APB flag on Indonesia and another APB flag on New Caledonia. New Caledonia is a small island on the right side of Australia (see attached picture)

Rest is good, thanks"


After relocation of these people, I started with this detail pencil sketch.


The inking.


And the colouring. Looks easy? No no. See the pain I went through on my Facebook.


(This is the high resolution scan-in of the original artwork vs those camera taken snapshots on top. See the difference in sharpness and colour.)
The background was added in the balance the whole drawing. The APB has more people on the right. F&N people needed to be in the centre, according to the brief. The Heineken people has lesser people, even with 1 APB guy shaking hand with them. I can't shift the APB guys over. While colouring them, I thought of having buildings in the background to balance them. So I drew in a window with Singapore skyline including landmarks like Merlion, Singapore Flyer, Suntec City, OCBC building etc. The curtain and carpet were added in to fill up the white space.
Looked pretty balance now. Do you think so?

Group caricatures for Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs & Temasek Holdings

Client's brief:-
"Dear Jit,

I am in charge of putting together a caricature as a small gift for our client. My colleague in Hong Kong, Hui Ling Poon, told me about your drawing skills and highly recommended you for the job. I saw some of your past cartoons and liked them a lot.....

The caricature will be just one page (not a story) and the situation you should be trying to portray is basically an all-women team, hardworking, serious, very focused.
We don't have any particular theme/setting in mind, so we leave it to your imagination. It would be nice if it was a bit funny in some way, but not too much - i.e., it should please the client, possibly ellicit some smiles, but not make fun of them.

The main person of those 9 is Leong Wai Leng, so if you could somehow make that apparent.....the caricature will be a gift to the client for the occasion of closing of a transaction...

if you could somehow draw a theme depicted as "building a curve". It is a financial term and the curve basically means a line in a financial chart - if you could think of a theme that resembles that and the team of women symbolically 'building' the curve somehow, that would be perfect."


Building a curve??!! I can't find any relevant financial curve online.
Upon discussion with the client, she suggested a literal curve.
I proposed a curve table, with 2 axis - vertical and horizontal.

Her feedback:-
"here is the brief summary of our comments on the first draft:

1. Please show Lena Chia with lots of documents/files in front of her (she's the legal person taking care of all the docs)

2. Show two markers on the curve for "10year" and "30year"

3. Make the curve upward sloping

4. Add 3 neutral figures with identical clothes and faces building the curve with their hands and worker tools. The figures should have a tag on their back, one saying "MS", second one "DB", and third one saying "GS"

5. Add an empty text bubble coming from Lena - we will add a particular phrase later"


Another draft:-

Her feedback:-
"We have a few last comments to the layout:

1. Please add a text bubble to Wai Leng
2. Please make the 3 DB, MS, GS figures smaller, maybe 50% of current size, and spread out along the curve, not clustered together
3. There are more files in front of Lena Chia now, which is good, but half of them look like as if they were in front of the person next to her, not exactly in front of her -> please shift them a bit so that a big pile of files is in front of Lena Chia
4. Move the 10year and 30year away from the beginning- and end-points of the curve towards the middle part of the curve
5. Please take out the boxes/houses in the background. Maybe we could have some graphical representation of the Temasek Holdings logo or just have a neutral background
6. Let's try to make the curve look a bit less like a table by reducing the "height" of the table (=make the curve less thick)
7. Please, make the 10year and 30year into the form of a table name tag or a small flag with the 10year/30year inscription instead of just "10years/30years" words floating there
8. Lastly, please note the following "sitting order" of the people: Middle front - Wai Leng (you currently have it correctly done). On the left side of the picture, please put Lena Chia, Theodora, Joanne and Jamie, starting with Lena Chia closest to Wai Leng, Jamie furthest on the left. On the right side of the picture, please have Alyssa right next to Wai Leng, then Grace, Hui Min and Bey Fen as the last one on the right. All people sitting, only Wai Leng standing in front. Basically, Lena Chia and Alyssa are two key people (right after Wai Leng), so we want to put them next to Wai Leng to make them more visible. "


Last draft.


The client added in a guy when was doing the pencil sketch.


Adding in the colours to the inked caricatures.


Done.


The client requested to add in another lady, when everything was done. Thank goodness there's still space left.

Her reaction upon seeing this caricature:-
"Wow!"

Subsequent email from her:-
"Hi Jit,

I wanted to thank you for the caricature you made. We gave it to the client yesterday and everyone was very pleased. Their whole team kept looking at it for a long time talking about how well it is done :)
So, thank you!"

Caricatures for Morgan Stanley - part 6

Last piece of this job.

Client's draft.


My draft.
Her feedback:-
"- let's shrink yavar's thought bubble so the focus is on the sign, and make the sign bigger
- please show saul from chin up only (no need body), from the lower left corner. so it looks as if he is peeping out from the corner. great expression! (he looks like that ALL the time.)
- let's draw a couple more balloons so the picture is more colourful

thank you! this is shaping up wonderfully!"

Didn't really take into considerations of the resemblance for all the drafts. In fact, I told her to ignore on the resemblance in the drafts, but seemed like the expressions in the drafts were well-received by her.


Pencil sketch.


Inked version.


Finally all done!!!

Received an email from the client:-
"Jit,

Just showed our big boss Kate, the head of Investment Banking in Asia Pacific, your drawings. BIG thumbs up, she liked them very, very much (keep in mind she can be a challenging one to please). She especially liked your drawings of George, Syed and Yavar.

Thank you for meeting our deadline without compromising in the slightest on your work quality.

Grateful,
Hui Ling"

What can be more rewarding than this?!:D
By the way, Kate was the Lara Croft in the second drawing.:)

Caricature theme - wedding on grand piano

This job came in before the Morgan Stanley (MS) job.
Thus, I have to finished it on time, even though the MS job was not finished yet.

Client's brief:-
"we would like the two characters to sit on top of the piano holding hands facing the front. The bride will also hold a bouquet on the other hand. Hope this can be done.

Another thing is for the wording part. I think we will do some simplication. We just want the following chinese characters 共结莲李 and date of wedding 12月6日 at the bottom and at the top of the portrait will be our names as seen from attached (our names on top of portrait):李勇辉 陈秋莲 .

For these wordings at the bottom,

共结莲李
12月6日

1) Can we have the 5 musical lines on these wordings ? If it is not nice, can we have some musical notes around the characters if it is appriopriate ?
2) These wordings need not be too big which might "destroy" the drawing, just of appropriate size.
The 共结莲李 bigger than the date, 12月6日.....

Beneath the piano is the seawaters...."


After discussing with the client, the above brief was the revised version, as his initial brief was not really workable or won't turn out nice, in this hand-drawn caricatures. It would be possible if all these were done digitally. However, he can't provide high resolution of those logo and fonts he requested for.

Caricatures for Morgan Stanley - part 5

Client's draft.


My draft.
Her feedback:-
"- please draw more bags behind faridah, and remove the chanel handbag completely (you can place both arms on her hips instead)
- please remove "moan", just "groan" is fine" - i like the squiggle you drew on top of their heads! please include the speech bubble on top of all their heads "uh... briyani??"


Forgot to snap a shot of the pencil sketch. Here's the ink version.


Coloured version. Obviously, those shopping bags were the most time-consuming ones, besides teh cartoon characters.

Caricatures for Morgan Stanley - part 4

Initial draft by the client.


Her revised draft, after her boss saw her first draft.


My draft.
Her feedback:-
"- haha this is GREAT i love shahzad's pose, the sun... everyone's posture and expression is perfectly fitting (especially syed! he looks so spaced out haha)
- please place the individuals in a diagonal (not straight) line so it looks like they are climbing up a hill.
- please add a speech bubble for wanzul: "tolong.... it's ok, keep smiling!"
- possible to add a small set of animal bones in the lower right corner? can you make the palm tree on the left side look wilted, as if it is dying? it looks a bit like a holiday if the palm tree looks so healthy!"


Pencil sketch, adjusted according to her feedback.


Inked in.


Coloured up.
Then, I received a call from the client, saying that her Caucasian boss doesn't know about Muslim culture. It is not appropriate for Wanzul to carry Faridah, but to have them standing/walking instead
We don't have time to redraw everything.
Hence, I proposed to the client to draw two of them on another new pece of paper, scanned in and do some digital editing. Since the hardcopy is not very important to them. Eventually, the softcopies are what they need to use in their presentation, and printing them into a big poster.
It saved time on both parties, and eventually lower the amount of money they need to pay for this additional work.
She agreed

The new artwork.


And now, the old version of Wanzul carrying Faridah was removed from the original softcopy, and I pasted in the new version, paint in some of the background. Looked like an animation strip.:D

Caricature for Asia Pacific Brewery (APB)

Very urgent job! It came in this afternoon, and need to collect on Thursday morning, with it frame up! If I didn't finish part of the Morgan Stanley job ahead of my schedule, I wouldn't be able to take in this job.

This is a farewell gift for this guy who cycles to work everyday.
The client requested him to cycle and holding a ABC Stout in his hand, with the APB building in the background.

Feedback from the client via email:-
"Hi Jit
Thanks for rushing the caricature, my boss love it!"

Caricatures for Morgan Stanley - part 3

This draft was split and amended from the previous draft of the client.


My draft.

Her feedback:-
"- can we enlarge the claridges sign and pillar so amit takes more of a centre stage. OK to shrink the 3 ladies a little bit if necessary.
- please draw a few more shirts, and an arrow and text pointing to the shirts reading "shirts-in-hiding"
- the women have great expressions!"


Pencil sketch with inking....


Inked and brushed in.


Done!

Caricatures for Morgan Stanley - part 2

Client's draft.


She decided to split the first draft into 2 scenes.
This was the first scene.


My draft.

Her feedback:-
"- please make "WORK..." more prominent. perhaps larger font, bolder. same placement and size for all drawings please.
- great if we can make kate and amit more prominent in the picture. please draw kate full body (her outfit here: http://www.themovieness.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/lara_croft.jpg) to take up the same space as amit, and place both kate and amit directly beside george on a pedestal (small circular platform beneath the feet, like they are models) and place sooi lin / thomas by the sides. i really like sooi lin and thomas' poses!
- please show george pointing at kate, as if he is selecting kate (not amit).
- let's give amit a thought bubble: "boy, those gym sessions sure are paying off."
- let's be sure to draw a nice chair (perhaps make it dark red so it looks like velvet) and table (dark wood with some very minor trimmings if possible) / draw a carpet under the table so the settings match the chandelier. "


Pencil sketch. I like the 'Lara Croft' posture. Didn't know I can draw such sexy and stylo posture.:D


....in ink and brush.
€

Finished off with the rendering.

Caricatures for Morgan Stanley - part 1

This was a series of 6 caricature illustrations, used for the client's presentation, and later compiled them into a big poster. (This was the job which stressed me out, as soon as they confirmed the job. I have to squeeze in this order among my current scheduled workload)
The client requested these 6 hand-drawn hardcopies to be subsequently scanned in high resolution, upload to my server, for her to download in Hong Kong. Power of internet!

This was the sketch done by the client.


Revised sketch to the caption.


My draft.
Feedback from the client:-
"- excellent!! let's make george and wanzul just large heads (like gods), not much body necessary."


Pencil sketch for the actual artwork.


Inking in.....


Colouring done. The cartoon characters took me some time to ink and colour in.
Certain level of details is needed, as I think that I can't possibly draw in the round head without features as in the draft. Just too wishy-washy job for me. Not acceptable to me at all.
Looking at it upon completion, I think it is worth the time and effort. Looked colourful and crowded, and the subjects stand out amongst the crowd.