Little Tings - Fun Little Monsters

by Nate Croft

Apparently, my inner child is alive and well and has found himself some crayons. I have always liked to doodle and draw silly things and creatures with all manner of objects coming out of their heads, but lately I have taken this pastime and mixed in a little of the ol’ graphic design creative juice and have found my own special blend of little monster love. I call them Little Tings.

These Little Tings started to come to life in the little notebook I keep on my desk, scooted over just to the right of my mouse. This notebook was originally a way for me to stop using the mail and little slivers of paper to write important things on, but it has come to contain all manner of ideas. If I were a mad scientist, this would be my secret notebook that holds all my plans to take over the world!

Instead of plotting world domination, I draw monsters. Friendly monsters. With bad teeth.

You can see this picture of “Henry” in his notebook beginnings. It’s just as simple as it can be. Pen on paper. But a few years ago I started toying around with coloring drawings in Photoshop. After a little trial and error, I found a particular method that suited me and the style I was going for. It was a good start, but it still need something else, but I didn’t discover what that something else was until about three months ago.

One night when I couldn’t sleep, I got up and came into the office. I remembered I had scanned a few of these sketches and thought I might color them. I gave them my usual color treatment and thought it looked pretty good. Then in some corner of my sleep deprived brain an idea was planted, textures. Hmmm… This could be interesting. We’ve been doing this very sort of thing for our websites for a couple years now, yet somehow I hadn’t put the two ideas together. So I did. And I thought it was the business.

So this sketch of “Mr. Wellington” went from this:

To this:

So expect to see more of these Little Tings popping up from time to time.