Well, unless you pay NO attention to my social media streams whatsoever, you’ve probably read somewhere that the book I illustrated last year (Petunia Pepper’s Picture Day) has been made into apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPad. What you don’t get from iTunes, though, is a way to see how the app looks & feels in action.

Well, today is your lucky day. I made a little video run-through of the iPhone version to give you a taste of some of the features. The vid is a little blurry (sorry ’bout that = low light + too close), but you can get the idea. Take a look!

And for $1.99 and $2.99, you can take Petunia Pepper with you wherever you go.

Petunia Pepper for iPhone

Petunia Pepper for iPad (HD)

In honor of my Tigers getting ready to rough up the Yanks, here’s a little history lesson for you.

History of the D

Created by: Online Masters Degree

Update: 9/22/2011 — This idea got nixed, but I kinda liked the background.

Update: 9/15/2011

Trying to get characters nailed down for an upcoming project.

Lion for Tina Houser’s Children’s Ministry Encounter Conference

All kinds of dudes are now on Google+, and I’m one of ‘em. Just go to http://plus.christianelden.com to connect with me.

You might remember the Black History portraits I finished up a while back…. Well, in addition to the calendar they were originally commissioned for, Warner Press decided to use a few of them for their new batch of bulletin designs. Here’s a quick pic of the designs after a press check print (making sure colors are correct):

Always cool to see it in print!

Just in case you haven’t seen this around the interwebs yet…. (Anyone else gonna ask for a stand-up desk?)

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

When you revisit a project after stepping away from it for a while, you inevitably see things you would probably do differently a 2nd time around. I often take breaks from stuff I’m working on just to get it out of my head for a while, then come back and look at it with a fresh pair of eyes. It’s a helpful exercise to make sure you’re not taking the project in a direction you don’t want to.

In going back through the Petunia Pepper’s Picture Day artwork and formatting it for iPad/iPhone, there are a few minor things I’d probably tweak given another go at it, but I’m still pretty pleased with how it turned out, being my first book project. One thing that I wouldn’t change, though, is this guy:

Hot Dog Vendor from Petunia Pepper's Picture Day

Usually, character development takes some time, with the sketching/revising/sketching/revising, but this guy went pretty quickly. I just imagined what I thought a big-city hot dog vendor (or cabbie, or pizzeria owner, etc.) would look like, and then subconsciously added a hint of Super Mario (my childhood poking through, I guess). In this particular shot, he’s not quite sure what he’s looking at… or what’s about to hit him. Still feels good.

Here’s a portrait I was asked to do for my brother-in-law’s girlfriend — he gave it to her for Valentine’s Day this year. 1… 2… 3… AWWWWWW.

She said it was the “Most AMAZING Valentine’s gift ever!” I guess that means it was a hit. Happy Valentine’s Day, lovebirds.