Avius: trite wit

"I twitter"

Number 5 in the "Nouveau Robotica" assembly line-- based on the ubiquitous micro-blogging site. New sidelinks for the possibly prosaic, but so very up-to-the-minute happenings are up!

The design of the robot was based on household wares like tin soupcans and string-- a most classic analog communication~ The bird there is singing his song in Spanish. There are so many different onomatopoeia for birds and other animals are in different languages-- check some out:

Bulgarian: piu-piu, chik-chirik
Czech: píp píp
Dutch: tjielp tjielpEnglish: chirp, tweet
French: pit pit
Indonesian: ciap ciap
Japanese: chun chun
Korean: jek jek
Montenegrin: ciju ciju
Polish: cwir

Is it me or do birds in Poland sure sound like they're confused..? "Cwir??"

It's 2010: Where is my hovercar?

Also HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

Hope all ushered in a new year with great fun and safety--

Yes, safety.. quite important. An update @sketchboy01 details such things~

yarrr... ;]

More Holiday pieces

'Tis the Season

Happy holidays out there! Here's an illustration for a couple good friends, R.J. Hochmuth and Abel Stearns [of Digital Sarcasm and the Thought Police] for a (slightly wacky) CD idea. Not quite a musical compilation, not quite spoken word-- but RJ's got a really great voice that I think just has to be exploited/shared with the world. Think, the voice on that automated Moviefone or... maybe a real dapper sounding baritone GPS navigation voice.
"Turn left, Turn left, Turn left!"

A bunch of American Greetings

Several cards I worked on for AmericanGreetings.com have gone live. To see some development storyboards, check out my other blog.

I was playing around with the iphones on display at the Apple store and found one of my works on the AG app-- yay! I still have a bit of trouble working with what feel like chubby fingers typing on those shiny gadgets though. Takes me about a minute per word still...

Screenshots and links--!

A Holiday Wishing Star card for use thru email/ Facebook/ Twitter featuring this adorable lil' owl. [storyboards]

"I'm too Festive" parody song for "I'm too Sexy" [storyboards]

Card for Aretha Franklin's "Winter Wonderland" [characters/background design, storyboards] Animated wonderfully by Heather Dunn.

"Christmas Magic" card with classically cute critters [character design]

Copyright ©AG.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

Joyeux Noel

Rudolph 2.0

Number 4 in the Nouveau Robotica series. Who wouldn't a GPS navigated, halogen nosed, mechanical reindeer for Christmas? There's a bit of French in there (just as Mucha would have been familiar) so bonus points if my translation(s) need correcting~

I was a torn between a couple ideas for this year's Christmas card. At one point in my brainstorming stage though, I found myself hit with multiple 'suggestions' from different sources.

One was an old claymation show on T.V. about the famous rednosed friend. Another was the podcast I was listening to: "Art & Story" with Jerzy Drozd and Mark Rudolph. And finally my Netflix DVD came in the mail: Away We Go, starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. Seemingly unrelated but I took them as signs~

On the Sets of CSI: Miami & Iron Man 2

Lurking in the Background

Some people may know, but on occasion I double as a background actor. It's always an interesting time being behind the scenes and I love seeing the proccess as well as getting to talk to people. Once in a long while, when schedules permit, I'll get to do dual roles for a project as Storyboard Artist and Extra like I did for "The Fray" music video.
There are some long hours waiting around while the crew preps so I'm always armed with a sketchbook to make good use of my time.

Below are some sketches on set from a couple productions "CSI: Miami" and "Iron Man 2"-- sketched on site, color/tone in Photoshop.


CSI: Miami (is actually in sunny Long Beach CA)

This is actually the second time I've been on this show. The role I played this time was "Asian Gangster/clubgoer". My friends insisting I don't look anything of the sort, it required a lot of scowling and by the end of day my face kinda hurt.
Originally, I had answered the call for someone with knowledge in Kendo and I was looking forwad to getting to wear my traditional garb and put my dusty bamboo sword to use but unfortunately the scene was cut. Luckily though, I did get to be a bodyguard to the main Yakuza boss deftly played by Roger Yuan.

There were also some scenes where I'm in the back when David Caruso and Eddie Cibrian's characters confront their suspect-- when I sketched the detective and one of the suspects played by an actor named Luis (top).

Links to the episodes online or perhaps screenshots to follow when they air!! (Jan 2010)

Ever-cool Horatio CaineSome extras got tattoos painted to up their street cred...Detective Eddie and Mob boss Roger

Iron Man 2 !

This was a huge cattle call for background actors as part of a crowd scene. Cameras and recording devices were strictly prohibited but pen, paper, and memory weren't. Very brief images of Tony Starks's stage dancers showed up in the trailer premiering at ComicCon this summer. Here are some sketches of the talented performers, the "Ironettes". Also are some of the hero himself Robert Downey Jr. and some detail studies of the practical suit--I'm sure it will be CGI'd to glossy perfection in post.Along with the rest of the world, really excited to see this film.