Reza (Amir) Riahi

Not Charblarg's beloved Rezatron, but another very talented Reza indeed. Young character designer Reza Riahi is from Tehran, Iran. His characters are super fun, especially those oil wrestlers (gigglemania status). Good stuff!

Mailys Vallade

Mailys is more of a visual development artist/illustrator than a hardcore character designer who definitely understands shape and leans on that aspect of design for his style. More importantly, his characters also have the kind of weight and believability that separates his work from shapes with no emotion and puts him into the real character design zone. I dig it.

Abhishek Singh

Once I saw the tigers, I knew I had to post the work of the Indian illustartor Abhishek Singh. It seems like most of his illustrations are derived from his country's myths and literature, and the fact that they're story based makes his deliciously textured pieces stronger/more interesting.

Sean Gordon Murphy

Again... The kind of art that makes me want to quit trying. Check out that nose!
So you can totally check out his website http://www.seangordonmurphy.com/, but also google brings up a lot of goodies. And if you're a fan of sequential - his current book Joe the Barbarian is pretty effin lovely.

Rubber House

The Big Winner from Rubber House on Vimeo.

The Big Winner is the brain child of Rubber House Studios The main "big" character is nicely done, kinda reminds me of Joel Trussel. I wish they would have done one wide shot to show his relative size, but you can't win em all.

Colin Jack

Canadian character designer/illustrator Colin Jack's work is very colorful and quirky, and his defined shape language makes these little guys even more interesting!

Pouch Junior

Yet another French maniac designer, Pouch Junior. The designs can at times be very crude and rough, but I find a lot of charm in the crudeness and those tend to be my favorites of the bunch.

Skull Squid

Art Center illustrator Troy Galluzzi has a specific way of portraying his characters which I enjoy a lot. He has this super sharp line quality which makes these characters feel so natural right off the bat, but coolest bit is that they all have a certain attitude.
Although he seems to do more editorial work than character design, his characters still keep their personalities intact when removed from the rest of the frame. Kudos.

Andrew Shek

I recently came across the talented Canadian character designer, Andrew Shek's blog. He mostly posts animal drawings and photos (dude definitely loves elephants), and his love of animals seems to have paid off, given his solid clientele...