Illustrating Clean Jimmy Sheen

Last week I released a children's book called Clean Jimmy Sheen, and a lot have people have been asking me about how I created the illustrations. This book has been a passion project of mine for many, many years and the look of it has evolved quite a bit over that time. I wrote it back when I was in college, and originally illustrated the book with very simple black and white ink drawings that looked like this:

A few years ago, I began to re-imagine the book with more of a claymation aesthetic.

I ran out, bought a bunch of Roma Plastilina clay and armature wire, and set to work building 6 -12" models of my characters.

Once all the characters were sculpted, I posed and photographed them, colored them using Photoshop, and then composited in background images that I found on Creative Commons.

Here are a few "Before and After" shots for your viewing pleasure!