We like the humour that James Burlinson, aka Burlisaurus injects into his illustrations. The loudness of the fun in his characters is matched by the strong colours he uses, which makes his work full of energy and always enjoyable. In some examples here, he takes inspiration from a couple of his favourite games, including an open-minded and slightly trippy Mario.
For his Zelda project, James compacted scenes and events from the game, along with some cool baddies, into narrative typography. The compositions of the letters are cleverly worked out, with movement of the different elements constructing the majority of the letter forms.
We think that the ‘Z’ made completely out of the reflection of light against Zelda’s shield was a particularly inspired moment. James describes the process in making his witty character work.
I’m an Illustrator and designer, leaning heavily towards a specialisation in character design but I predominantly just focus on making character-centric illustrations with hopefully a pinch of energy, a dash of humour and a glug of funk.
My illustration process usually starts with sketches in blue pencil, this way I can scan them in, blow them up and ink over them before removing the blue stuff in Photoshop. I ink with a brush pen to get a nice diversity of thickness and an element of spontaneity, which comes with the lack of complete control.
Finally, I scan in my inked lines and use Photoshop for my layout, painting, colouring and texturing needs, I like to scan my own textures in, usually found on strange paper stocks, as unique as possible. My design processes are cleaner, for logo and branding work especially, I generally begin with sketches, which I then scan into Illustrator where I work on the rest of the process to a polished conclusion.
© James Burlinson, 2012
