Xmas Cheer

Hope everyone's holidays are going well; may your new Xmas swag bring you joy into the new year. This is an illustration for a card.








Until Next Time.

Not Polar Bears, ICE Bears

I saw The Golden Compass this weekend and was inspired by one if its subtle scenes. It's got two bears grappling amongst a circle of spectator bears...and they're wearing armor. Bear armor.











Until Next Time.

Curly Girly

Intimidating Hair








Until Next Time.

More Undersea Happiness

Found some more drawings I like. They both seem to involve some kind of undersea creature. Hmm...


















Until Next Time.

Uh Oh, Penguins

Had an impulse to try something in Flash. Followed the impulse. Created silly little clip. Oh, how I love you Flash.

TV Drawings

Occasionally, I'll sketch while watching TV. Doing this offers some inspiration, even if it comes in a very subconscious format. Not the most glowing compliment for the shows I watch.






















Until Next Time.

Halloween and ANNOUNCEMENT

Just a simple piece, clearly inspired by a certain approaching holiday.
I wish this was my costume.








Also!

Don't forget to join us for The Spelling Bee screening at the
Chicago International Children's Film Festival!
It's playing at Facets Cinema under the Personal Best block of films. How appropriate.

11:00 am, Saturday, October 27th!! See you there!









Until Next Time.

Why Not? More Monsters.

Actually it's just more drawings of the main character. You remember, he was the one with the scrawny wings and the ample buttocks. Enjoy.

Oh yeah, and there's the ox at the computer. Almost forgot.

Until Next Time.

Prehistoric MONSTERSSS!!!!!

On assignment for some character sketches, I came up with a busload of ideas. A few of the sketches I liked I cleaned up all fancy.

Prehistoric Mole with feet too tiny to dig.
:(

Fretful, overweight Hindu Ox.

Prehistoric hippo/pterodactyl creature. His large butt and tiny wings keep him mostly on the ground.

In The Year 2000...

I predict...




















Until Next Time.

Carte Rouge

I was commissioned to create a business card and given pretty free reign over how it looked. The only stipulation was that it had to somehow incorporate The Bride of Frankenstein. Fine by me :)

One of my references, and possibly the coolest photo ever. It's just so darn sophisticated.

The favored sketch from the bunch.

Final card design. Info removed to protect the innocent.

Until Next Time.

Sketch-O-Matic

A few more between the finishing touches on the cowgirl animation.

Some kind of superhero, might be Robin's homely cousin.
I don't know what the "T" stands for.

This was, I assume, inspired subconsciously by BioShock.

This is easily the LEAST practical underwater suit ever.

Until Next Time.

Playing Dress-Up

Scanned a mediocre drawing and attempted to fix it in Flash. One thing led to another, and before I could say "sleep" I was experimenting with colors and such.

What really appealed to me were the endless color combinations. I may try different combos in the future...especially if someone REQUESTS a specific palette. With enough different palette requests I could combine them and make a mega pop art print thingy!!!

I'm a shill.

Here's the progression.




















Until Next Time.

Vacation Sketches

Even though my vacation was like a month ago, I never really got around to scanning my coffeehouse/airplane drawings.

Consequently, I hate drawing on airplanes because it feels like all the anxieties from being strapped to a rough cushion for 12,000 hours show through in my sketches.

Anxious drawings make me more anxious.

Ironically, this one wasn't drawn on the plane.

Until Next Time.

More Flash Traces

I found a small pencil drawing I had done and decided it might be fun to trace and color. I was curious to see if I could take a quick sketch and turn it into something presentable. Eh, maybe. It was a blast to do.















Until Next Time.

Some Flash Backgrounds

Just some samples from the short I'm contributing to. Enjoy the simplistic Western theme.

That's Horse poo, by the way

Until Next Time.

The Triumphant Return

So after yet another LOOONNNNGG hiatus, I'm back. There's a bevy of new things to post (how wonderful).

I'll start with a video for the first time in eons. This is the rough test of my dinosaur ball roll. The animation is where it needs to be I feel, but as you can see there's a lot of cleanup that needs to be finished. Enjoy!









Until Next Time.

More Conceptual Concepts

So for the other project I'm working on I was also required to pass through the gauntlet of character design. This time I'm simply pseudo-caricaturing two regular peoples. This was a really fun process, not to mention I got my brain around their designs fairly quickly. It's clear I had more fun with these than the cowgirl from earlier.


















Until Next Time.

I'm a Tracer

I've been trying to hone my skills in the Flash cleanup/color department. As practice I used that shark drawing that was posted eons ago. I'd like to make more of these so I eliminate as much of the guesswork in the process as possible.

He's surly cause his fin is incomplete.

You'd think he'd be less surly now that he has a complete fin. You thought wrong.

Cleanest of the Roughs

Sometimes I get into a drawing and I just keep working at it beyond a rough sketch. It gets pseudo-complete (as far as my sketchbook standards are), but it's surrounded by other drawings that I was doing before. Those warm-up drawings invariably acted as blockades to my better ones. Too bad for them; I've got Photoshop.

I want to get better at drawing cartoony ladies. Mastering that technique seems like a small rite of passage into animation-dom.

This was done on a marbleized notecard. Curse my lack of foresight.

Until Next Time.

Moleskinnia

Dug out some more of the drawings in my most petite of sketchbooks. Drawing in the moleskine makes you feel so much more officially artsy. Or, at least that's how you may appear to certain people on the train.

Must've been talking about cicadas...and crippled dogs :(

Sometimes the drawings that take 2/10ths of a second are better than something you labor away on for 20 minutes. As far as my standards go, this is one of them.

Until Next Time.

More Cowgirls

So after reviewing the drawings I'd done on my first pass I decided they could really be worked over a great deal more. I pushed the boundaries of how cartoony she could look...and they were sometimes frightening. Luckily I think I'm finding a good balance between cartoony and too realistic and boring.

I had no idea how easy it was to get trapped in that GI Joe style of cartooning. It's hard to break out of because you still want the cartoon to actually look like the person you're caricaturing.

Without going on too much of a rant here, this does look incredibly boring.

Fearing the GI Joe trap, I went in a totally opposite direction. Too much?

What I consider to be a nice balance of the 2 styles. Now she's a Real American Hero in my eyes.

Until Next Time.

Cowgirl Power

So I've been lucky enough to contribute some fantasy segments to a short film about an actress living in Los Angeles. My first task was to nail down a working, competent version of the main character in animated form. The fantasy thing involves a lot of western themes, so I get to make her into an awesome cowgirl. Yay!!

Thanks to a wonderful crash course in caricature from Joe M, (http://www.joeseats.blogspot.com/)
I was off and running. Here's a compilation of a few ideas.
More on this as it develops.






















Until Next Time.