My latest piece of artwork is a cartoon done for a Flickr friend of mine, and was one of those things that came about because of a joke (his wife called him a 'big baboon'). It's nice to get an excuse to do some cartoon type stuff, this might inspire me to do a series of cartoon character based airsoft/military badges!

I love doing cartoon illustrations most of all, but rarely get the time to expend on doing them because of other commitments. My friend - MilPic - came up with the idea for a badge based on the tag 'Baboon Army' and it was such an amusing idea I couldn't resist following it through.

Badges and patches are quite a big industry, not only in airsoft but for the real military. American units, in particular, seem to enjoy designing unofficial patches and some - like the 'Trunk Monkey' and 'Pork Eater' - have become rather famous and are used widely by military personnel and airsofters alike.

I have dabbled with the idea in the past of starting a small personalized badge business on the side to supply this market - particularly on the airsoft side where teams like to have their own patches. But the outlay for a machine for embroidering the patches precludes this.

Above: One of the things I like about designing using Adobe Illustrator is that once complete you can easily re-utilize design elements again and again quite easily. Here I have slightly modified the 'Baboon Army' concept as a cartoon patch for the British RAF Regiment unit - their nickname is the 'Rock Apes'.

Be sure to check out MilPic's Flickr gallery - he has some really sweet loadouts and kit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/milpic/