Maxime is a Gobelins graduate based in Paris, France. He’s a visual developer and character designer with a beautiful European style. You may remember us posting his brilliant student group project ‘Who’s Afraid of Mr. Greedy?’ Well, for more fantastic work visit his blog here, or his portfolio here. There is also an interview you can read with Maxime on the Character Design Blog.

Zar is based in North Hollywood, California. She is a Calarts ’09 graduate currently working as a character designer for Pixar. She creates some stunning ‘wood burning’ paintings, which you can find on her blog along with loads of other interesting visual knick-knacks. Well worth a visit. Oh, and for a little giggle check out her rant about wearing 3D glasses!

Zar has also been interviewed on the Chracter Design Blog, for those who’d like a little more insight.

Lorenzo is an Italian illustrator currently living and working in The Netherlands. Although he has a broad range of styles (as many creative people working in animation do), his passion seems to be 1950s style animated characters. In the 50s, the animation industry threw out the rule book and creative employees were king over their employers. This creative freedom lead to several great shows such as ‘Gerald McBoingBoing’, ‘Mister Magoo’ and ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ It’s always great to see illustrators today keeping this style alive and giving it their own personal touch. Lorenzo also works in 3D and graphic design. You can find this and more on his website.

German street artist Flying Fortress began his street art journey in the early 90s as a classic graffiti artist, but soon changed his approach to something more iconic. He created the Teddy Solider, with the idea that, the more he put his solider around Munich, the larger his army will grow telling a much wider story. The more his troops took over, the more popular he became allowing him to move into different directions, not just constrained to a wall. Flying Fortress has since worked in toys, posters, skateboards, and clothing with his vinyl Teddy Troops toys proving extremely popular.

As a big fan of French culture, I found this fascinating and extremely amusing! It’s by French animator Cedric Villain, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Bryan Ballinger creates illustrations in both 2D and 3D, whilst maintaining his own style in both mediums. Does his style look familiar? Remember the award winning CD-ROM encyclopedia ‘Encarta’? Bryan was the lead illustrator on that project. He has also worked for five years as the 3D Design Lead for Big Idea Productions and as a professor of Digital Media Arts at Huntington University in Indiana. Buthat’s not all; visit Bryan’s website to find out more! Thanks for getting in touch Bryan.

Last month to promote the new illustrated children’s book “My Monster Burrufu” by Alberto Corral we gave away a free copy to one of our very lucky readers.

Thanks to all those who entered! The winner was Ellen Fanning with the genius idea for the monster: “Fuffadelia”. She will be receiving a free copy of the book shortly. We also liked the idea of her monster so much that Mr Kyri Kyprianou of The Lounge created an illustration based the character. See above.

However if you are one of the people who entered but unfortunately didn’t win, don’t despair, We have another book to give away this month. Please try your luck again and win this fantastic illustrated book “Wally’s World”!