About Malane Newman
Malane Newman is a professional freelance graphic designer, website designer, illustrator and cartoonist for hire. She began as a traditional artist doing graphic design, illustration and cartooning and still maintains her traditional drawing studio today. Although today she still sketches traditionally, she scans the images into her computer and does the finishing color work on computer using a variety of predominantly used graphic programs, and of course, her prized Wacom Cintiq! But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, let me share a little history…
Began Her Career as Traditional Graphic Designer
Malane Newman has worked as a graphic designer for a few decades; starting originally as a traditional graphic designer where she would cut and paste type, and use stat cameras to create the artwork! Most of her graphic design work was done as an employee in art or marketing departments for different businesses. All the while she worked client-direct as a freelance graphic designer on the weekends. As with most graphic designers, the work included logos, business cards, brochures, advertisements, newsletters, postcards, signs & posters, sales sheets, branding and so forth.
And now fast forward to today where graphic design work is created using computers and predominantly-used programs like InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and many of their predecessors. Malane Newman continued through her career studying advertising and marketing. All the while mastering her art as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist for hire.
Lead Illustrator – PS Magazine
Malane Newman eventually received an opportunity to be the Lead Illustrator for PS Magazine following similar footsteps of many great cartoonists like Murphy Anderson and Joe Kubert. PS Magazine is a 68-page all cartooned monthly magazine published by the US Army and distributed to the troops. Malane received a letter of commendation from the editors on her first issue and holds the distinction of being the “first and only” female Lead Illustrator in the magazine’s long history dating back to June 1951.
Computer Graphic Illustrator
Later, another opportunity to try computers came Malane’s way a couple of decades ago just prior to personal computers being offered to the public and she took to them like a duck to water. At that time there were no graphic programs in existence, just green screen and an employer’s proprietary application that allowed her to draw using ascii characters (typing a four-digit number per character space) and a choice between only 16 colors. Rather than draw one image, she would draw several images and ask the programmers to bring each one up sequentially as is done in traditional cell animation. The effect was not only graphics, but animation of graphics moving across the monitor which got an overwhelming response from her employer’s clients and other audiences.
Visual Communications Director – Andersen Consulting
Malane Newman was employed with Accenture Corporation (previously known as Andersen Consulting – a sister corporation but different from the now defunct Arthur Andersen). Malane began as a Lead Designer of Computer and Web-Based Training Programs and later websites for many of their Fortune 500 clients. All of these training programs were highly graphical and some included rich media like video and audio and flash animations. This is where Malane Newman’s interest and experience with the internet and the different evolving graphical and multimedia technologies began. Malane Newman stayed with Accenture for many years and was eventually promoted to Visual Communications Director where she supervised the art department and oversaw all the visual aspects of projects totaling $1.2 million dollars annually.
Started Malane Newman Design
Malane Newman found herself unemployed in December 2000 when Accenture closed their San Diego office. So she started Malane Newman Design in January 2001 and began working directly with clients all over the world from a home-based office. She has expanded her service offerings over the last 19+ years to include:
Cartoon Illustration • Children’s Book Illustration • Digital Illustration • Website Design & Development • Graphic Design Services
Freelance Cartoonist for Hire – Cartoon Illustrator
Malane Newman’s first love and passion is for cartoon illustration. Growing up and being an avid Disney animation fan, drawing cartoon characters as they raced across her television screen was the extent of the training available for cartoon illustration at that time. So being driven as she was, she taught herself how to cartoon by studying Disney, Hanna Barbera, Marvel and many others. To this day, she continues to study cartoon illustration and self train on many different styles of cartooning.
Freelance Children’s Book Illustrator
Along with cartoon illustration and character design services, Malane Newman offers freelance children’s book illustration. She has illustrated a number of children’s books and provides book layout services as well. She illustrates children’s books in many different appealing styles. She has extensive experience conceptualizing stories for different target audiences and illustrating them so they are more dramatic, bringing the story to life while helping the child understand the words, concepts and messages of the story.
Freelance Digital Illustrator – Photo Realistic Food Illustration
Throughout the years Malane Newman has continued mastering the art of illustration and eventually some opportunities came her way. Some recently completed projects include photo-realistic food illustrations; particularly illustrations of fruit arrangements that were commissioned for fruit juice packaging. They include Mango Juice, Guava Juice, Orange Juice and Mixed Fruit Juice. Other freelance digital illustrations for food packaging included farm landscapes that were commissioned for milk packaging; one milk package targeted towards adults and one milk package targeted towards children.
Website Designer and Developer
Malane Newman is a professional website designer whose experience designing and developing websites spans over 20 years designing for Fortune 500 companies. Malane taught herself how to write HTML and CSS (cascading style sheets) and now is a website designer for smaller businesses giving them the same credibility as the Fortune 500. With an extensive background as a website designer across multiple industries, she specializes in designing custom WordPress websites, content writing, Blog setup, search engine optimization, and website hosting services.
Freelance Graphic Designer
Professional freelance graphic designers for hire like Malane Newman know that it is not enough to make your marketing pieces look good, they need to be designed to speak to your target audience, designed with a clear marketing message, and graphically designed with a cohesive brand across all your marketing pieces. She gained extensive experience as an Art Director for Andersen Consulting and now helps smaller businesses gain fortune 500 credibility with their branding including logo design, business cards, post card design, brochures, sales sheets, leaflets, booklets, book layout and much more!
Teaching Credential
Malane Newman acquired a California teaching credential in Applications and Multimedia. She began teaching stand-up instruction in the evenings for a local high school. Classes included Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Website Design and Development. She later began teaching cartooning classes at a local art school in General Cartooning, Manga, and Famous Character Cartooning. Although today she no longer teaches these classes, she occasionally will give private lessons to students that show the same drive that has driven her throughout her career. For those budding artists that visit our site, we have Free Cartoon Drawing Lessons that include a variety of Disney Characters, Warner Bros Characters, and other famous characters.