Cannibalistic Cacti

La Musica

2011-10-25T13:39:00.001-07:00

Here's my submission for the La Musica 26th International Chamber Music Festival.

Created in Illustrator CS5.

Bird's the word.

2011-10-08T22:52:00.001-07:00

Got the idea to actually keep my macbook and tablet on set while filming. Being an Art Director/Set Designer on set seems to go in waves of really busy, with streams of waiting around in between shots. That's when I decided I'd start doing stuff on the side inbetween shots. Painted this little bird in Illustrator in about 20-30mins. Pretty fun :]

ALL ABOARD THE SATURATION STATION

2011-10-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

Awwww Yeaaahhh! This is my book cover design for The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper. One of my favorite stories from my childhood. :]

Fashion Illustration

2011-09-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple pieces I did for a Fashion Ad assignment. First one was created in Photoshop CS5, the second one in Illustrator CS5. These were pretty fun to do. :]

Tricera Hi-tops

2011-08-26T22:03:00.001-07:00

This fellow is a triceratops

Who loves to wear high tops.

So if you see him, say hello.

Inspired by my nephew, who just looooooves wearing his high tops. :]

Bluegrass Dogs

2011-08-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

So here's my first assigment for senior year. The assignment was to do a spot illustration for music, and this was my interpretation. Enjoy!

Maplestory Pajamas

2011-08-04T02:50:00.001-07:00

So I decided to do some Fan art of Maplestory characters in the fashion of pajama print designs. :P They recently released a Facebook app version of it and I decided to check it out. It's originally an MMORPG I played way back in high school. I remembered how charming the characters were and was inspired to create this out of that. Hope you enjoy!

Characters are copyright of Nexon; they are not my own.

Cal Ripken

2011-07-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

Here was a painting of Cal Ripken I did for my Dad back on his birthday. Didn't get a chance to scan and upload it til now. My dad's always been a huge Orioles fan, and this guy was one of their greatest players of all time. We'll actually be seeing an O's game this Saturday. I'm sure I'll have fun sketching all sorts of people. :)

Animal Raincoats

2011-07-17T13:44:00.001-07:00

Here was a fun idea I had to design some raincoats with animal characters on them. Inspired by relatively recent rainy weather.

Future Son?

2011-07-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

So I guess all the babysitting I've been doing lately of my brothers' and sisters' kids I guess has got me subconsciously thinking of what my kids will look like one day.

I had this image stuck in my head late one night, and couldn't go to sleep until I finished painting it. I wonder if I'll ever have a son, and if he'll look anything like this. Can't wait to meet you one day.

Plein Air Paintings

2011-07-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

This was a painting I did around the square in New Oxford, PA.

The rest of these are Paintings I did during the Artist Colony for the Gettysburg Festival

Giant old church tower on Gettysburg College campus. Our instructor for most of these locations was a Painter by the name of Bill Schmidt who exhibits work around the Annapolis, MD area.
Outside the hotel on Gettysburg Square
Sack's Bridge in Gettysburg
A stoneway bridge on a farm outside of Gettysburg. This was the only one I did in watercolor, the rest were all in Oil.

These were small color key studies I did on top of a great big hill on a winery outside of Gettysburg. I got the idea from our workshop leader Cathy Mabius to try different sizes and compose with simple shapes of value. I had a lot of fun with these.

I have another painting that I haven't gotten a chance to upload because I donated it to the Festival for a showing. I got a picture of it before I submitted it, but unfortunately lost the USB cable to my camera. So I'll have to upload it whenever I get a chance.

St. Aehr's

2011-05-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

So here's one of the stories I wrote in my creative writing class this past semester. I was looking for a place to post it online since its just a lot of writing with no images, so I figured my blog would be a good spot even though this is mostly visual art.

“St. Aehr’s Academy”

As they ran through the halls of an old English-styled mansion, boys and girls in uniforms scattered towards the cafeteria. Chattering and clicking of forks and spoons ensued around the lunchroom tables as various conversations took place. Two boys enjoyed discussing the similarities and differences between their activities considering they’re a grade apart, Allen in 6^th grade and Roberto in 7^th. Allen in particular described the new activity he had this morning during his field day class. Allen’s class explored the outside surroundings and collected different plant and leaf samples for later usage in Science class. He and Roberto both enjoyed discovering new things.

Conversations continued in the cafeteria, as Allen’s friend Emily, another 6^th grader, walked over with her tray of food to sit down with them.

“Hey Emily! How was your class this morning?” Allen said with a smile.

“Hey Allen, hi Roberto” Emily smiled back, “Science class was pretty cool. That class is a breeze for me. How about you guys?”

“I had a field day today, which was pretty cool. We got to explore the outside and collect plant samples. What’d you guys do in Science class?” Allen replied.

Emily nodded, “Oh, that sounds fun. Well we started learning biology-type stuff. Kinda interesting.” Other kids in the lunchroom started stirring up. It was getting louder and more rambunctious.

“Yeah, I had a math class this morning”, Roberto interjected, “I’m not so good at that stuff.”

Allen looked over at Roberto, “I’m sure I could help you with it. I’ve got a pretty good handle on math”. Roberto looked over at another table where a tall stocky boy named Harold smeared sloppy Joe meat on some girl’s chair, and proceeded to laugh at her.

“Remember last week when he tried that on you, Allen?” mentioned Roberto.

“Yeah”, nodded Allen “Good thing I spotted it before he came back over. I cleaned it up before it created any conflict.” Allen’s sighing expression changed to shock as he saw a big glob of mashed potatoes fly toward Emily’s head. “Look out!” he yelled, as she turned around only to get slapped in the face by a heaping scoop of mashed potatoes. It squished right in her eyes and nose, and got stuck in her hair too.

“Eww, it’s gross, Get it out. Get it out!” Emily wailed. Normally Allen avoided any type of conflict, but he swelled with rage when they hit his friend Emily.

“Ha-ha, we got it in her stupid red hair. That’s what she gets for being good at Science. She IS a science project. Ha! Ha! Ha!” bellowed out Harold. He always picked on kids smaller than himself. He’s old enough to be in at least 8^th grade, yet he’s stuck in the same year as Allen and Emily. Harold’s bigger, tougher, and also dumber than most of the other 6^th graders. Allen got up out of his chair and grabbed the leftover pudding-filled pie off of his plate. He marched over to where Harold was, and looked up at him in disgust while Emily sulked behind them. Roberto watched from afar. He anticipated things going sour really soon.

Harold towered over Allen, “What are you gonna do about it, you skinny little runt? You gonna save your little girlfriend?”

Allen turned red with embarrassment and frustration, “She’s not my girlfriend…” Allen clenched the pudding pie in his fist, ready to smash it into Harold’s face. Just as he winded back to throw it, the school principal walked up behind them. Allen lunged in to smash the pie, until Harold tripped him. Allen fell backwards; the pie went into the air and landed right on Principal Lipton’s head instead.

“What is the meaning of all this?” he yelled at the boys.

“Aw, we were just havin’ some fun Mr. Lipton.” Harold whined.

“No excuses!” scowled Mr. Lipton, “Clean this mess up, and get to my office! Immediately!”

As the bell sounded, Allen looked around in disgust at the mess that was left of the cafeteria. All the other students were scooting off to class while he stayed with Harold to clean up the disaster left behind. Allen sighed as he proceeded to shuffle on over to the custodial closet. An old man was standing outside the closet with a mop.

“Guess you’ll be needin’ this.” he suggested as he handed the mop to Allen. “Thanks…” Allen replied as he sloshed right back to the mess. “Great. Could this day get any worse?”

“Maybe if you weren’t so lame and had to get us caught by Lipstick,” complained Harold.

Allen looked over questioningly, “Lipstick…?”

“Yeah”, said Harold “Lipton, his lips are always so bright red. Don’t you ever notice that shortstop?”

Allen rolled his eyes in disgust, “Can’t say that I have honestly.”. As he continued to mop up the mess, Allen felt a sticky wad of gum mesh to the bottom of his shoe. “Oh fantastic” he muttered, “You know, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if you just left people alone Harold.”

“What was that, Chicken-breath? You wanna come closer and say that?” mocked Harold.

Allen shrugged, “No, not really… Look. Can’t we just finish cleaning this up? We’re already late to class.”

Harold motioned a nonchalant hand gesture, “Whatever, like I give a crap about that stuff anyway.”

Allen sighed and continued to clean up the mess, “No, of course you wouldn’t.”

Two chairs sat across from the desk of the recently perturbed principal, as he sat there signing pink slips. The door opened as Allen and Harold proceeded into his office to sit down. They tried to scoot the chairs as far away from each other as possible within the confines of this small office.

“Well boys,” declared Principal Lipton as he continued to write, “This is not how we behave at St. Aehr’s. You need to respect the rules and treat others with respect. It sounds like detention is the adequate reprimanding for your little disaster earlier-“

Harold interrupted, “It was all Allen’s fault! I tried to stop him!”

Allen jumped in before Harold’s lies ruined his name, “But wasn’t cleaning the whole cafeteria punishment enough?”

Mr. Lipton intervened “That’s enough. I’m assigning you both to detention this afternoon.”

Allen gulped with nervousness. He never had detention before.

“Hah, this’ll be easy. I’ll be sure to keep Allen in line Mr. Lipton” snickered Harold. Allen rolled his eyes in disgust at Harold’s behavior.

“Easy, eh? “, glared Mr. Lipton as he raised his eyeglasses “Well then, I can always assign harsher punishment.”

Allen stuttered, “N-no. That’ll be fine.”

Allen shuffled his way out of the office and back to class late. He interrupted a reading session in his English class as he opened the door. The whole class stopped and gave him strange looks as he walked in.

“Allen, I’m surprised to see you so late. Would you care to explain?”, the brown curly-haired teacher addressed him as he walked in.

Allen nodded, “No Mrs. Brinkman, I’d rather not right now.”

“Well then” she replied, “Go ahead and find a seat. Hopefully this won’t happen again.” Allen felt all the other kids in the class staring at him as he walked toward the back of the class to the only remaining seat. The other kids sat in the back rather disillusioned. They were too busy listening to their iPods to pay attention to the reading they were supposed to be doing. Allen shuffled through his backpack trying to find the book they were reading. He grabbed it out, leaned over at the kid next to him and asked,

“Hey, do you know what page we’re on?” The other kid just sat there and listened to his hidden headphones.

“No talking in class”, Mrs. Brinkman said aloud as Allen slinked back into his seat.

“How could she even see me from way up there?” he thought, “I can’t even read anything she wrote on the board from here…” For the remainder of the class, Mrs. Brinkman called on the kids that sat near the front. Allen kept raising his hand to answer questions, but she never even noticed him in the back. “Aw man” Allen shrugged with disappointment “I can’t even participate in a class I enjoy…”

Emily had her field day class later in the afternoon as well. Other girls teased her for missing passes during softball. Someone hit a homerun out of the outdoor grounds while she guarded 3^rd base. The ball flew above Emily’s head, way out beyond the grounds of St. Aehr’s. Emily reacted upon instinct to go look for it. She spent what seemed like forever looking for the ball, and had no luck finding it. One of the gym teachers spotted her from afar and called out, “What are you doing way out here? Not trying to leave school are ya?”

“No mam, I was just looking for a ball that got hit way out here.” Emily spoke up.

“Uh huh, sure you were. You do realize we have plenty of replacement balls available. There’s no reason for you to be out this far. Kids your age these days, there’s no telling what you could be up to out here” scolded the teacher.

“Ugh! That is such crap! I was only out here to get a stupid ball back I can’t even find. Why am I getting the third degree here?” Emily replied with disgust.

“That’s enough from your sassy mouth there young lady. You’ll be spending your after-school time in detention. Maybe that’ll teach you to stick around.”

Emily crossed her arms in disgust, “God, that’s so unfair.”

Bells rang again as all the kids left the classroom buildings of St. Aehr’s to return back to their dormitories. Emily walked down the empty halls towards a door marked Room 406. She opened the door, only to notice that Allen and Harold were already sitting in there as well.

“Allen! How’d you wind up in here?” Emily said with surprise.

Allen rolled his eyes towards Harold, “I could ask you the same thing, Emily.”

“Ahem. Silence. This is detention. I highly suggest you do something productive,” scolded the supervising teacher, “I have to step out momentarily. You are all to stay here for the duration.” He proceeded to walk out the classroom door.

Emily opened up her science book out of her backpack, “Well, I might as well get some reading done while I’m stuck here.”

“Good idea”, nodded Allen as he sat in a desk next to hers.

“Hey lemme see that!” Harold grabbed the book out of Emily’s hand and held it up in the air.

“Give it back Harold!” she cried out.

“What, this book here? Too bad nerd, I’m gonna use it for my cat’s litter box,” teased Harold.

“Just ignore him,” sighed Allen “Maybe he’ll leave us alone.”

Emily rolled her eyes in disgust.

“Here, we’ll use my book,” Allen suggested as he pulled his science book out for them to study from. Harold started ripping pages out of Emily’s science book and rolling them into tiny balls.
“You’re gonna have to replace that you jerk! I need it for class!” Emily yelled at him. Harold pulled a straw out of his backpack. Allen continued to flip through his Science book and hold it over for Emily to look at too. Splat! A huge ball of spit hit Allen in the back of the head.

“Knock it off Harold!” yelled Emily.

“Come on you pansy, aren’t you gonna do something about it?” agitated Harold. Strides of annoyance pumped through Allen’s veins as he continued to ignore Harold. “Come on, do something you wuss.” chanted Harold as he spit more wads at the back of Allen’s head until he was completely covered in them.

“Errgh! Knock it off Harold!” Allen finally snapped at Harold and threw the wads back at him. Harold got up out of his seat and behind Allen’s.

“Get up.” he yanked Allen out of his seat and pinned him up against the wall.

“Leave him alone, Harold!” Emily cried out as Harold punched Allen in the stomach.

“Atomic wedgie time!” he teased as he pulled Allen’s underwear out up over his head. “Ha-ha, oh man. He’s got whitey tighties! What a dork! Ha ha ha!” Harold continued to torment Allen.

“Please Harold! Just knock it off already. You’re hurting him!” Emily insisted.

Roberto happened to walk by the hall outside after basketball practice and overheard them. Allen tried to fight back with Harold, but he had him completely pinned down. Allen was completely red with frustration and embarrassment.

“Man,” Allen thought, “I can’t believe Emily saw my underwear.”

Roberto ran into the room and tackled Harold off of Allen, and the three of them managed to escape while Harold was knocked down. Allen, Roberto and Emily ran across the plaza towards their dormitories. They stopped to breathe once they felt they were out of sight.

“Well…” panted Emily “I guess this is where we part ways for now”, as she headed towards the girl’s dorms.

“Yeah.” wheezed Allen while he held his cramped sides, “I guess we’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good.” nodded Emily, “Thanks for your help earlier Roberto!”

“Anytime.” Replied Roberto, “That’s what friends are for.” He and Allen headed towards the boys’ dorms as they waved goodbye to Emily.

As Allen and Roberto went to bed that night, they talked about what all happened that day. Roberto eventually fell asleep, as Allen stayed awake staring at the ceiling and thinking “Why did my mom have to send me to this school? I just want to go home…”

The next morning Allen and Roberto were waiting for the bell to ring outside their homeroom class. Emily noticed them from afar and walked over to greet them.

“Good morning Allen, hey Roberto.” She smiled as she sipped her orange juice.

“Hey Emily.” Allen half-smiled as he rubbed his eyes.

“Did you sleep okay last night Allen?” Emily said with concern.

“Eh, I think he was still asleep when I went to bed” sighed Roberto.

“Yeah… I’m okay.” Nodded Allen.

Harold marched down the hallway to where the three of them were standing, “Well look who it is!” Harold chuckled, “If it isn’t Captain Whitey Tighties and his little crew!” Allen frowned with embarrassment.

“Cool it, Harold.” Roberto stared him down.

Harold pushed Allen into a locker and laughed, “Ha-ha, little wimp!” Allen fell down against the wall as Roberto yelled out “Hey, watch it!” Little did Harold know that Principal Lipton was hovering right behind him.

“I see what’s going on here.” The Principal looked down firmly at Harold, “You are to report to my office immediately mister.”

“Aw man,” shrugged Harold as Principal Lipton dragged him into his office. Emily helped Allen up off of his feet and brushed him off.

“Thanks for being so brave Allen.” She smiled as she leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. Allen felt a rush of joy overcome him. He couldn’t help but smile as he gently rubbed over his cheek with his hand.

“I’ll never wash this cheek again...” Allen smiled pleasantly as he walked hand-in-hand with Emily down the hallway while the bell rang. She looked over at him and smiled. “You know,” he said aloud “This place might not be so bad after all.”

Carter's!

2011-05-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

So I stopped by for a scheduled visit to Carter's on my way through Atlanta, Georgia. A lot of really nice people there. Great artists with a lot of creativity and personality into their work.

Here's some of the Animal Patterns I designed to show to them. :)

Figure Painting

2011-02-26T16:58:00.001-08:00

Here's two recent paintings from this semester. I've felt a lot of progress this year, (this semester especially) which is totally contributed to Hodges Soileau. He's easily one of the best instructors I've ever had. Oh, that and my new glasses. I couldn't believe the difference in observation after I got my new glasses. Both done in oils. :]

New Semester: New Stories, New Classes, New Glasses, and a New Smartphone that drives me crazy

2011-02-01T21:21:00.001-08:00

Here's a couple quick model sheets and layout sketches from my Storyboarding class this semester. That class is a total blast, easily my favorite this semester. I'm working on a beat sheet to start the boards for right now. The story and characters are inspired by old Gary Larson and Hank Ketchum comic strips. I'll be excited to post it all after we pitch and critique them. :]

Layouts: Quick stuff for now, I plan to explore the perspective more, (Point of view, caricatured, etc.) when I get to the boards.

I'll post some more Figure Painting and Illustration stuff soon too. I was rather pleased with the painting I finished in class last week. I'll have it up as soon as I can get a decent photo/scan of it.

Also, expect a story to show up here soon. Been working on another "episode" of my Boarding School story for my Creative Writing class. I think I may be doing more with that story in the future.

Visual Development process for The Giver

2010-11-29T21:43:00.000-08:00

So I've been pretty blessed with my finals for this semester. Both my Computer Illustration and Illustration finals have been left as open assignments. I'm choosing to do one as a sample image for a children's book, and the other as Visual Development for The Giver (a book I read in my Children's literature class that I thought would make for an interesting animated movie).

I kinda liked where this head shape was going for The Giver, although my 8 and 9 year-old nieces agreed that he looked like a combination between Megamind and Abraham Lincoln, haha. Not sure if this will be the definite design for him, as I'm still working out the main characters. Thought that was kind of funny though.

Painter Still Life

2010-11-29T13:00:00.001-08:00

Here's a digital painting of a still life I just finished for Computer Illustration using Corel Painter 11.

Pulp Cover

2010-11-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Here's the Pulp cover I finished for Computer Illustration. Expect to see a few new things in the very near future. Current project is pitching an idea for a game, as well as another Book Cover.

Stay tuned!

Rooster Boy

2010-11-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

First update in a while. Junior year's been so super busy it's hard to regularly update stuff. Here's the Rooster Boy I designed for a Computer Illustration assignment.

Expect a lot more to come soon. I'll be updating some more Figure Painting and Illustrative things. :] Stay tuned!

WELCOME TO EARTH

2010-09-26T22:30:00.001-07:00

Yup. Some vectoring fun for Computer Illustration.

And I've been trying to teach myself Matte painting too, for the .. *drum roll* Production Design club/elective thats going to be starting soon! Art for the Film majors anyone? Hells to the YES!

Perez pointed out a good tutorial to the guy that was sitting next to me in the labs. (I was sitting in on his Zbrush class working on vectoring the above Will Smith when he pointed it out). I've been wanting to learn matte painting for a while now, and so I figured I'd try this. Plus with the new Production Design stuff going on (another meeting tomorrow night, this time the juniors are pitching their stories and we get to choose what we want to work on, So Exciting!) I figured what better opportunity, right? Not to mention I already signed up to Storyboard one of my friends' scripts. Let's just say I enjoy this stuff infinitely better than Freelance Editorial/Advertising Illustration. Now I'll scoot off to work on some figure painting~ Expect updates from that soon too.

Some recent designs and sketches

2010-09-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

So I've had some new sketches and designs, some were from designing ideas for the icons assignment for Computer Illustration, and some other character explorations.

Here's some process:

I changed my idea for my icons last night. My original idea was to do fruity music instruments, but I felt like the shapes of the fruits were dictating the shapes of the instruments too much, so I decided to stick with just instruments. This way I figured I could follow the advice of Nate Wragg, and play more with shape and size variations.

The instruments I chose to vector were Cello/violin, Keyboard, and a Drum/Djembe/Congo

I tried different shapes, lengths, thin/thick, straight/curved ones. I think I'm going with the bottom right one.

Keyboards, probably going with that bottom one that goes thick-thin-thick and curvy.

Drums: I was originally going with this one ^ and started vectoring it. However my Comp. Ill professor told me the shape of it was too broken from the structure of a drum, and it looked more like a pregnant woman than a drum. Whoops, well he told me my other sketches below were better designs, so I'll probably go with one of those tall skinny ones in the middle. He also told me my drawing style reminded him of a guy he worked with that's also a Ringling Alum, Tim Rogerson.

Here's some more random characters too, some were process for illustration or other potential ideas for icons, but mostly just to loosen up.

Also, here's a compositional study for an idea I had after waking up from a nap the other day, and random quick silhouettes done with a marker

These make me wanna do lighting/composition studies from movies with a marker. :] I've wanted to do that regularly since Film Language freshmen year, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I should set it as a sooner goal.

I did the little girl one first and figured I might as well do the rest of the Oz characters, just a shape exploration exercise. Probably not going any further with this one, especially cause one of my friends is already doing Oz characters as his icons. xP

Also, Scott Wright has been helpful in terms of reminding me to keep line of action and values in mind.

All of this advice so far has been extremely helpful and inspirational, although I know for fact I need to work at it a LOT more if I expect to be professional. Junior year is becoming quite a year of new challenges, and a new degree of focus for me as well.

Influence Map

2010-09-06T00:56:00.000-07:00

So I've seen a lot of people doing this Influence Map meme. I figured I'd give it a try.

Here's mine:

Current Influences (Right to left, bottom to top): Mary GrandPre, Nico Marlet, David Colman, Tomer Hanuka, A.B. Frost, The art from Legend of Zelda: Windwaker, The album artwork for Asian Kung-Fu Generation (Sol-Fa album shown), Shane Prigmore, and E. Tiemens. =]

The Influence Map template is courtesy of Fox-orian on DeviantArt.

Been working on a poem about growing up for Illustration class, as well as designing some icons for Computer Ill. Can't wait to post 'em on here when they're finished.

Start of the new school year: Orientation and New classes.

2010-09-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

So Orientation was a blast again this year. I was on media crew again, so we got to make videos for all the new students. My friend Mauroof uploaded the video on facebook, I'll have to see if I can get it from him sometime in the near future. In the meantime here's some pictures and some new stuff. The volunteer event I signed up for this year was ZimKids, an organization that makes toys to sell to benefit kids in Zimbabwe. We had a really awesome turnout, and I decided to make one too. :] It's a wonderful organization, and I'd like to continue to do stuff with ZimKids in the future.

^ This guy I named El Bandito, because he steals away children's nightmares. :] I hope he gets sold, so that the proceeds can benefit children in Zimbabwe.

This here was a first exercise for Computer Illustration. Right now we're doing Illustrator, so we had to do a practice inking of a cartoon character. I chose to do Wakko, of course because he's my favorite. :] Original character is property of Warner Bros.

I need to practice variety of linework more too, this was a rather challenging effort on my part. Vectored images have such a nice clean look to them though, its worth getting better at it.

I'll be posting some Figure Painting, and more Illustration and digital stuff in the near future, so stay tuned!

Summer Sketchin' Part Deux

2010-09-01T19:06:00.001-07:00

This was another sort of short sketch. I kept going back to it to render it every now and then. This was the first concept of the Boy & his bug. The traditional/digital test of him earlier in this post was a second idea done about a month later. I might do something with this story, not sure.

Spent some small amount of my summer seeing what kind of cartoons are being aired on television these days, and drawing from them. Also watching some of my movies, as well as the special features/art vaults on them and drawing from them as well. :]

This was a sketch at the coffee shop in New Oxford with my brother.

Another drawing from my 8-year old neice. :]

Trying to construct more characters with interesting shapes, and studying the way Pixar does it too...

Quick storyboard I made to go with a sketch of this guy aptly named "Jeff".

Little redhead kid practicing stretch exercises. I think I drew this one on a day when I was feeling really worn out..

Another quick 4-panel storyboard

Teaching my niece about different colors: warms, cools, and neutrals.

Above was sketches for a project I did with the kids. I found these cardboard shapes that were packed inside glass end tables at work that looked kinda like ghosts. I decided to take them to my sister's house (old apartment before they moved) with the kids and let them paint monsters of their imagination on them. That turned out pretty well.

More doodles and a quick sunset painting. Watercolor pencils were a great asset to me this summer. Drawing and coloring everywhere I go! <3

^ Strange people from work on the left, and a Bee and other things on the right. Buzz buzz.

My nephew at his baseball game. Gotta love the way he was dawdling around playing with his mit. xD

Quick turnaround just to flesh out a design for thumbnails I was doing. 3 of the 15 or so thumbnails I did for a project are below. I never finished the illustration though. :\ I should sometime...

^ That was a guy I knew in high school. I saw him at a pizza shop with some new girlfriend. She had a rather.. "pleasant" attitude.

Sketchy sketch. A mouse and a fish.

UPDATE TIME: Summer Sketchin'

2010-09-01T16:10:00.001-07:00

I apologize for the lack of updates this Summer. I think I tried to update it once or twice but the upload connection wouldn't work sometimes from my home network. So I figured I'd update now while I can since school's back in session. Anyway, over the Summer I managed to fill pretty much a whole moleskine and then some. Also are some digital examples that I did to try and prepare for Computer Illustration this semester. I've been trying to get digital stuff to look like my traditional work, and also had interesting conversations about traditional/digital work with my friend Charles who went to the Illustration Academy this Summer.

Anyway, here goes:

This kid is based off of my sister's nephew in Alabama, Jameson.

I did some alternate colors for mold boy, (a character I made in Concept 1 last year). I thought he was kinda funny since most of the kids I draw are cute little cartoons, so this one was a little different. I decided to go back and do these alternate color studies of him, thus aptly named (from left to right, top to bottom) Mold boy, "trying to be human" boy, Zombie boy, Swamp Boy, Volcano Boy, "Mommy put too much makeup on me" boy, Trapped-in-Jello Boy, Blueberry Boy, and "I think I'm gonna be sick..." boy. :P

This one's ^ being used as my profile picture on facebook.

This one here was a quick sketch I did one day on a scrap piece of Illustration board. I scanned it in before I did the traditional rendering in watercolor/ watercolor pencil and a bit of pastel. Below is the digital version done in Photoshop to try and look the same.

Above and below are drawings that I mastercopied out of my artbook for How to Train Your Dragon, which were originally drawn by Nico Marlet, and are copyright of Dreamworks Animation. Nico is one of my favorite Character Designers. He's really among the best of the best. I figured I could learn from observing and studying some of his work.

Above is a caricature of my brother from when we were camping out all day before a Dave Matthews Band concert up in Hershey.

And of course I let my nieces and nephews draw in my sketchbook too. :P Love those kids.

Above is my brother-in-law, father of the 8-year old that drew the previous image. He's a hardworking dad with two jobs.

The guy above here is a friend of my brother's that we got to see play at a bar/grill. He's working on an album, and he told me I could do some artwork for it as well. :D

Brothers Grimm and figure stuff

2010-04-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

Finally finished the Brother's Grimm illustration for the short Brother & Sister. Fixed revisions on it at least three times. Every crit I've asked for kept finding more and more things to fix. O:! So this is finally it.

I got quite a bit of process work for this one, as per usual. I really enjoy this media method too though. Started off with a watercolor wash to control the base temperature and point of focus with a gradient of cool to warm. Then did a gouache underpainting with some pastel and acrylic over top in certain areas.

Here's a bunch of various figure stuff from over the last month, listed from most recent to oldest. The first one was done today, second one's from last week, so on and so on up to the last one that is from a month ago.

These were all done in either pastel or charcoal.

Paint paint paint

2010-04-05T19:05:00.001-07:00

Oil stuff I haven't put up yet. a still life from the beginning of the semester, and some downtown paintings that were done in a day each. one of them was two days though.

Introducing the Content-Aware Fill tool!

2010-03-30T01:49:00.000-07:00

So this is my result of a rather bad day. There are so many things demanding my attention lately, that it's rather difficult to find time for all of them. Fortunately, Adobe has developed a new tool built into Photoshop CS5 that eliminates such problems!

Thus was result of a bad day I had the other week. One of these days Ringling is going to let me take Storyboarding. ]:

Some Things I Forgot

2010-03-02T20:41:00.000-08:00

Yeah I need to keep better updated on this thing. There's a lot of stuff I realized I haven't uploaded! Lolewhoops.

I totally forgot to put up my model sheet and maquette from my Final For Concept/Character/Environment I from last semester!

Illustration UPDATE

2010-03-02T20:03:00.001-08:00

So this was the illustration project I just finished. The assignment was to remake an old Master's painting keeping only 30% of it. So I took a good ol' Raphael painting of a Knight riding a horse slaying a dragon. I kept the horse and changed it to my friend David riding the horse, which is now a unicorn, and fending off zombies in the Swiss Alps with A Rickenbacker.

Yup.

Following is the project we finished before that. The playing God assignment was to design a creature by fusing 3-5 existing creatures. Meet my moosquitobee, Half moose, half mosquito, half bee. 3/2 complete badass. ;] You sure wouldn't want this guy to land on you.

FIrst Figure Master Copy of the Semester

2010-01-20T21:25:00.001-08:00

So it's been over a month since I've updated this blog. Hopefully I'll try to keep it more regularly updated this semester. I should probably start photographing my work after I finish it. Otherwise I'll have to wait however long before I can post it. Then I tend to forget to upload it after I get it back.. Anyway, here's the first figure assignment for this second semester of Custode's class!

It's a master copy Steven Assael's work on toned paper using charcoal pencils and heightened with white charcoal pencil.

End of the semester Fall '09

2009-12-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

I'll be putting up bits and pieces from all the stuff that's kept me super busy this semester.

First off is illustration

These were from our last assignment that we spent about the last week and a half of the semester on. Three postcards from a place of our choice, I chose a theme park. :]

All of these were done in Watercolor and Gouache. :D I really enjoy using watercolor to create atmospheric perspective with gouache for opaque foreground elements.

Even though this was the last project of the semester, the project before it felt like more of a final, because we spent over a month on it. This is the Day in the Life project.

Everyone spent so long working out the compositions and stuff for this assignment, since we had to have multiple parts of our day included within the illustration. I decided to depict mine as a sort of storyboard/graphic novel page. All done in pen and ink and zippotone. Everyone else's from my class, as well as the students at Sint Lucas in Antwerp, Belgium that did this assignment has work posted on a collaborative Ill Vorum blog.

The project before that was to design a poster for a music festival for a particular genre without using any obvious elements of the genre such as musical instruments.

I decided to choose Folk music.

This one was done with Gouache, Acrylic, and a little bit of collage. This was the project where we actually got Andrew Hem to give some input on way back during the thumbnail part of it. At some point, I think I'll post the process work for this piece so everyone can see how we go about things in Illustration.

Next is a digital painting of the boat boy character for the Drama assignment. I went back and redid it after I got a better handle on digital painting. This is how it turned out.

More Update!

2009-10-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

So here's the finished Ferret Dragonfly and Elephant bulldozer character designs. Although I adore how the winged little ferret critter came out, he doesn't have a very clear reading silhouette. I should re-pose him at some point, and possibly subtract some limbs. It makes him look less cute though. D: I am pleased with Elephant Bulldozer though, that was just a badass pair to begin with. xD

I also re-drew the characters from the previous assignments, keeping the critique in mind and hoping for a better grade. Still gotta do way better than this!

The music boat boy is probably my favorite/coolest looking one. I'm working on a digital painting of him currently for that class. =D

Oh, and for some reason, I realized I never uploaded my first media assignment on here either, my koi fish.

Update time

2009-10-08T23:34:00.000-07:00

So here's some things that need to be updated.

First illustration project, self portait composed of at least one flat shape, one rendered shape and one pattern.

Silhouette cutout assignment. Something new Brandes started doing this year cause it makes an easier bridge to watercolors. Same principles of separating shapes of value.

Second assignment for illustration, story of my still life. Had to have a still life of five personal things that revealed something about us as an individual.

And watercolors for media. Having a lot of fun with these, even though they're kind of tricky to pull off sometimes. Although Brandes's vespa was probably the best one I did so far!

Concept/Character/Environment - Nemesis project

2009-09-19T23:39:00.001-07:00

Okay, so this is the class I've been dying for since I started here. I mean, I get to design characters for homework, how freaking cool is that? Anyway, the first part involved doing 100 silhouettes and 50 scribbles and deriving characters out of them.

And then we had to chose the best three and make explorations of them.

Then we had to take the best variation from each one and take it to final rendering.

Dominic really liked my silhouettes and scribbles. In fact, he said the way I drew my scribbles was the perfect way to do it. The only problem though was my final renderings. As much as I liked coloring them, it didn't really help them at all. Dominic kept reinstating that its more important to break away from the silhouette and re-draw the character with a more dynamic line of action. I wasn't aware we could get too far away from the silhouette though. I think there's a limit to it, like you can use it to inspire the design of the character, but give it a more dynamic gesture.

Here's Part II, where we had to take pictures of atleast 30 different clouds and textures of things and draw characters out of the best five.

Again, as much as I liked coloring them, it wasn't really necessary as it's more important to draw the characters with a more dynamic line of action. I need to break out of that habit and re-draw these characters before I turn them in for a grade at the end of the semester. I'll be keeping it in mind while I'm working on Part III of this assignment. Right now we're force fitting an animal with an insect, and and animal with a vehicle. I drew Ferret/Green Darner Dragonfly out of a hat, as well as Elephant/Bulldozer. We have to have 10 thumbnails of each by next class, and needless to say I'm having fun with it so far. Here's the work in progress of it

The whole purpose of this assignment is to build a reservoir of characters to use when we get into the drama painting assignments in this class, so that we have characters to put in our environments. :D

Boredom with Apples

2009-03-18T19:12:00.001-07:00

So yeah I had a lot of free time over Spring Break, and yeah, thus result.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrRH_7qz4p8

It took about an hour to take the 200+ photos in photobooth. Then another 2 hours to slap everything together in After Effects. Although After I finished it I realized I was zoomed in the entire time. I noticed after it was done that my frames weren't consistently lined up. Oops. Oh well, this was just a test to see how well I could use the After Effects interface. Maybe I can pass it off and say I did it on purpose to simulate an old school Charlie Chaplain film... Yeah.. that'll work. >>; Well the video doesn't want to upload to Blogger for whatever reason. So I uploaded it to youtube.

Also since I didn't have to do any homework really (no observation/memory drawing, boo) I decided to do one anyone, without really planning it. "Hey, this apple looks good. No wait, I think I'll paint it before I eat it."

Yup. Did the actual apple itself in Painter X in about an hour. The rest was added in later in photoshop and painter.

And here's some memory ones.

Fun doodles are fun. Strange fruits are courtesy of Corel Painter X.

Figure

2009-03-02T22:57:00.001-08:00

Here's some gestures the first ones are 1 minute gestures from class. The rest are 2-5 mins from FEWS using either charcoal or ink with bamboo brushes. Inkwash gestures are a lot of fun, but its harder to pull them off. They don't realistically look as well done, but I love the effect that layered ink gives.

I'll post some of my long poses and anatomy studies when I get my portfolio back.

Paintings

2009-03-02T22:36:00.001-08:00

Here's some stuff from my Observational Color class. Albeit it was rather tedious at first, I'm having fun painting now. Starting from the bottom is a self portrait. The next three are various still lifes of complementary colored fruit schemes. The apple being a stage 1, lemon is stage 2, and the pear is more of a stage 3. The one on top was one of the homework assignments. Again we had to stick to complementary color schemes, but the subject matter and medium were open. I decided to paint a near-by landscape using yellow and violet instead of the actual colors of the trees and whatnot. Oh the joys of painting.

Massive Update Time

2009-03-02T21:34:00.000-08:00

Whew, time to make a major update to this thing. It's been a while since I posted anything. Here's the illustrations I did so far in my Intro to Illustration class. I wouldn't really call either of them a success, but I'm here to learn.

The bottom one depicting children playing in a ball pit full of eyes was my first piece. Although there are some major issues with it (contrast, composition, scale, etc.) I had a lot of fun with it. Primarily the fun was with coming up with concepts of how to stylize the characters. Gee, can't tell I want to be a Visual Dev artist. >>; The above piece is supposed to show Tension. Somehow it didn't convey it in the way I wanted it too though. It's supposed to be from the point of view of someone climbing up a cliff as a boulder is about to tumble down. Somehow people didn't get it from that though. Rendering fail. At least I got a better grade on that one, as well as spent more time on it...

I spent a lot of time putting together process books and portfolios for midterms. So I figure I'd take time out to post the stuff on here.

Seurat Master Copy

2009-01-20T22:07:00.000-08:00

First assignment for my Observational Color class. Rather easy and straightforward although ironic...

2008-11-18T22:07:00.000-08:00

Birdhouses in My Soul
Drawing done in Inkwash illustrating Gravity and balance between dark and light
Drawing in graphite illustrating direction and dark dominating light
Drawing in graphite illustrating congested space and light dominating dark

So I just finished up the third drawing of my 3-week/3 drawing project for my Drawing class. It's quite befitting considering its my turn for Artist of the Week in my dorm. So I figured I'd post on here what I put on display on my dorm's bulletin board. :]

Moar Stuff

2008-10-16T23:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a few things I worked on so far. Some are sketches and there's some other pieces as well.

This one's the final composition from my first project in my Communication Design class. We had to basically hybridize two cultures together.

These two are just a couple sketches. The first is an animal fusion creature from the Concept & Ideas club I'm attending. Yes, behold the Mandrigator. The second one is from a DMX video. Some things are humorous even without mocking them.

Old high school stuff

2008-10-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

So I figured I'd finally decide to make myself an art blog. Here's a few old pieces from high school, each about a year or two old.

The first one is oil paint. Second one: subject matter is oil paint, background is newspaper clippings covered in matte medium with acrylic. Third one is a sheet drawing. Fourth one is a recreation of I believe a Bob Ross piece. The original was oil paint, but I re-did it in oil pastel to see what it'd be like.

Bleh.