Chris Kawagiwa | sketchboy01

"That's Amore" e-card

2012-02-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

Puppies, Cats, and A-more!

Recently I did some background illustrations for an e-card for American Greetings. It features quite a cast of singing animals friends. See it HERE and share with whomever this Valentines season.

It features a dog gondolier with, dare I say, amazing acting ability. If he looks familiar, you might have seen this little pup auteur "Uggie" on the red carpet at the Golden Globes.

He was in the recently released and Oscar nominated silent movie "The Artist" and added adorable character to a great film.

The shots are pretty quick, but the backgrounds (watercolor with digital embellishments) are meant to evoke a dreamy evening in Venice.

Bridge Intro

A Dog-gone-Gondolier

Curious Cat

Enamored Poodle

aMoon Pug !

Woof!

Wounded Wampa Kit

2011-12-19T18:41:00.000-08:00

Wuv Your Wounded Wampa

A more comical take on the Star Wars universe, this is a tribute to all those model kits I built of X-wings & TIE fighters back in the day when they were the only SW 'toys' out there. I never found a Wampa kit, but imagine it might have looked something like this molded in plastic flash-- sans snowglobe and ice cream most likely.

Bonus points (and pack of buttons) goes to anyone that can name what the sign at the bottom right is from. Comment on my Facebook page--!

[EDIT: A belated Christmas variation for the holidays]

The design for MightyFine now available here.

One more Star Wars design has been approved and coming down the line very soon-- keep your helmet on~

The Millennium Zeppelin

2011-11-16T05:22:00.001-08:00

Less Than 12 Parsecs!

The ever-present peoplemover of the original Trilogy gets a Victorian/ Steampunk overhaul in this design for MightyFine. There are many a detail hidden in both wording and design--who knew Corellia had it's own logo?
Keen eyes might also spy some Aurebesh script. It's a very small detail, but y'know...size matters not.

Find the shirt here!

[EDIT: An added thanks to MightyFine for making me my own section in their shop! ]

I also created this process video as I concepted and drew out this one. It went through a few iterations while trying to consolidate a blimp look with the iconic starship shape.
[Music provided by dapper pal Digitalcasm] :

Jango Fett & Son

2011-10-31T04:37:00.000-07:00

Fett Family Business

This design was previewed in an earlier post-- now I can finally show the completed result!
Available as a t-shirt through MightyFine, check it out HERE (welovefine.com)

A Victorian ad influenced design, I thought it would be fun to conjure a promotional idea for the bounty hunting duo. The most treacherous of freelancers, I can't help but want to relate to their notorious business acumen... If only I could strike a good deal with the Caminoans-- a clone would come in handy during busy illustrating seasons~

There is one more similar Victorian influened design in the works along with a few more Star Wars designs--- stay tuned!

Taun Taun 2.0

I also made a process You Tube video of the previous Star Wars design I did for them, "Echo Station".

Long Beach Comic Con

2011-10-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

Ardee R & D

These are a couple process pics of the 'Ardee' model I'm building. He's the central character of my first comic and I'm finding myself oddly in the same role as the Inventor in my latest comic.
I've been having to research many an automata online to figure out how he'll work as a mini Zoltar-esque fortune telling machine...

If this contraption won't fly, at least I'll still have a reliable gumball/toy machine at the table!

Come find Victor Camba, me, and articulated Ardee at booth #1507 in Artist Alley at Long Beach Comic Con, this 29th and 30th !

"I guess I'll hang around for now..."

Fancy a Lift?

2011-10-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

Flights of Fancy

This is a design submission for MightyFine's STEAMPUNK themed contest.

Seeing as how there are several projects I work on that lean toward this re-imagined past/genre, the contest theme was a natural one to work in. I had two more design ideas in mind but ran out of time to finish.

This one is more simple and not much more than what you see~

Y'know...it's a rocket, with a mustache. The end.

Enjoy you fine fellows!

And please if you might, vote it up on their site HERE-- the contest concludes in less than a a week!

Frontier Legacy

2011-10-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

Final Frontier

No. 10 in the "Nouveau Robotica" series, this heavily Spaghetti Western inspired design "Frontier Legacy".
Akin to my previous 'cosmonaut' design, this was a slight style departure from the traditional Art Nouveau adapted for a more Western fare.
It was a also a chance to draw something uniquely "American". After reading the frightfully good "American Vampire" comic series, which opens on the Western landscape, I wanted to do a design that had just as much unique culture as the other European influenced robots. There's something to be said about the last frontier of Western expansion and our ideals as a country that were formed through it's founding.

The design itself hides clues from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" in a double tribute to Italian (Sergio Leone) and American (Clint Eastwood) tastes. Graphic symbols are nestled within like the six-shooter barrel, nooses, wagon wheel, poncho pattern, and + signs-turned-Civil War crosses.
One of the most dramatically and musically loaded scenes in cinema history, I wanted to depict that final scene in the movie transposed to a mechanical measurement.
An extra hidden detail is the pattern on Clint-bot's chestplate which is taken from the iron oven door trick that Marty McFly employs in his duel in "Back to the Future III"-- Itself a parody of "A Fistful of Dollars". A copy of a copy of a copy is new... right ?

The first print run made its debut at the Alternative Press Expo last weekend with strong appeal.

A xylene transfered and hand painted version was made for the previously posted art show at Catalyst artspace-- proudly owned by Jackson Root ! See his work here.

Cross Pollination

2011-09-23T01:43:00.000-07:00

For Hire!
[Preview shirt design]

A Little Fett Up?

If you like less words and more images (and general stuff I like), check out my Tumblr stream.

Time to get Conventional

2011-09-23T01:31:00.000-07:00

Rise of the Apes

This upcoming month will find me at a couple events. Exciting times~

First October 1st & 2nd will be APE (Alternative Press Expo) with Josh Kemble. I'll have copies of the full version of "The Tell" as well as another print run of "The Sunless Circus" for sale. I have a limited number of the "preview" hand-stapled/punched versions left over from the previous Mini-Comics Dump Truck on hand.

Inked Ardee pages

We will be at Booth #455, right next to the usual partners in crime of Ralphco Comics (Ralph Miranda) and Co.

View Larger Map

There will be one more addition to the Nouveau Robotica series, "Frontier Legacy" will be making its appearance here. A featured post about that print will be up soon and linked as well.

In case they're out of your size, I'll also have a few extra "Arabian Crescent" shirt designs on hand. Be sure to let Threadless to reprint your size if they're out here.

I'm looking forward to returning to APE this year with Josh since it was years gone by that I first stepped foot into the expo, played roadie at his table, and saw that there was such a great avenue for indie creators.

Josh (with printers accommodating) will have copies of the new book "Barbarians: A Handbook for Aspiring Savages" by Byron Clavicle, which features over a hundred of his skull-bashing barbarian illustrations (some of which I posed for!)
You can pre-order it on Amazon here-- but truly illustrious conquerors will demand it in person at our table.
Anybody dressed up as an authentic Barbarian will win a free... chest bump.

Going Long

[ EDIT: Table confirmed-- We'll be at Booth #1507 in Artist's Alley ! ]

Second will be the local Long Beach Comic Con, Oct 29-30 with tablemate Victor Camba and Patrick Sung.

[Table details pending on this venue] but we will be in Artist Alley under "C.K. Perfecto".

Victor will be debuting his book "You're Stuck Here", which goes like this:

The first semester of college! A time of promise, of leaving the nest and meeting new people, with your whole future ahead of you. That's the life that Bridget McKeen longs for. But Bridget, her twin brother Jeff, and their friend Chet are leaving Winchell High for their first semester of Cyprus COMMUNITY college, the educational equivalent of purgatory. Will Bridget make room for a social life at a school she hates? Can Jeff cope with life away from his high school sweetheart?
And why can't Chet get that fast food cashier-girl out of his head...

He will also have original lithograph prints of characters and art available.

By this time, I'll have a mini-diorama setup of my character Ardee (the Robot Acrobat as Fortune Teller) built and fully operational. I will double my efforts to construct it on schedule.
I'll be shooting to have screen prints by this time too.

At both venues, look for the red toy machine full of buttons I designed, trinkets I found, and a chance to win personalized artwork (Blue Caps are winners)!

Tauntaun at Echo Station

2011-09-08T01:43:00.000-07:00

It's Getting Hoth in Here...

Available at MightyFine here.

This design was a challenge and a fun one to do.

Growing up a huge fan of Star Wars (during the lowest point of it's popularity~), working on something stamped by Lucasfilm was a certain boyhood joy.

The idea behind the illustration was to incorporate the Galaxy far far way with the Steampunk genre. Adding a sort of Victorian inspired armour to this beast of burden was an interesting task-- trying to figure out if it could still move with so many accouterments. For the true fans, you can find small details like the silhouette of the Ion Cannon and the Shield Generator in the framing. Also even more scrutinous lookers would find the design decal on his retro looking gun and the accurate "Commander" ranking patch.

As for the subtitle, Wookiepedia take it away... Echo Station 3-8

It's pretty crazy how much detail has been amassed about the 'events' in the movies... I think actual engagements in real wars probably have less detailed accounts on them~

Hoth was also the 6th planet in the system and I wanted some excuse to put numbers after things.

Well, enjoy!

Chris9

[edit: added process GIF]

Namor Nouveau

2011-08-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

Undersea Tee

This Marvel design for MightFine available here.
The character's costume choice for this one is more like his recent versions in the X-Men books. It was just more fun to draw than only those green underoos--

I did a bit of catching up with the classic title and now really dig Dodson's work. Pulling my nose out of the indie books, there's some great work out there.

In drawing the first Marvel mutant, I wanted to incorporate both (his sailor father's) nautical motifs and Atlantean influences. Oceanic fun~

The Show with No Name

2011-06-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

Saddle Up!

This is an upcoming show at the Catalyst Art Space (where we had the "Prehistoric Show"previously), this time themed around Spaghetti Westerns. In case you didn't see the Community episode "A Fistful of Paintballs", westerns in a contemporary setting still rockin' something fierce!

To get several of the artists acclimated to tone of Westerns steeped in Spaghetti, I put together a DVD that we showed during early planning meetings. They featured clips, trailers, and posters from "The Good the Bad and the Ugly," "A Bullet for the General," "Once Upon a Time in the West," and "Navajo Joe" and others. The Italian directors of the time really established a unique and recognizable aesthetic that we hope to showcase in the show.

Something's strange is afoot.

Just as a teaser, we will have our resident makeup artist (who did the cavegirl makeup in the last show) apply her magic to make a select group of us all rugged (and possibly shot ;).

There will also be a olde-time photo-op space for folks with some Western themed ephemera to get a fancy photo-graph taken too!

Stay tuned through the invite on Facebook EVENT PAGE here and be ready for a fine roundup, July 9th at 7:00!

[edit: WANTED POSTERS of the Artists!]

"Captured"-- as in art form... get it~? :le sigh:

I hope Dog the Bounty Hunter (or Boba Fett) don't take these posters too seriously~

The Lawmen will get their metal.

[I'll post up previews of the piece I'll be contributing as updates in this post. It'll feature a mix of Tuco from "Good, Bad, Ugly" and the classic 8-bit game "Wild Gunman"]

[a Preview of artworks on display:]

by Christina Rincon

My old "Old Man and the Mountain"

Chris Houghton's "Reed Gunther"!

[Our increasing collection of Western accouterments:]

[Construction of our hitching post. Oversize pony riders please inform us beforehand ;]

And if you got the kind of pony tends to get lost easy, find the the gallery here:

View Larger Map

Tee Time

2011-06-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

(Marilyn ain't got nuthin' on this Monroe..!)

[6/18 updated T-shirt design info!]

Storm Front

Hot off the news presses and available in apparel form HERE through fantastic MighyFine tees-- it's everyone favorite weather goddess!!

The X-Men were the comic characters I grew up with as a young lad, so to add some Nouveau flair to one of these iconic characters was mighty fun! Her design is meant to incorporate some African influence to merge with the art movement of 1900s Europe and pay some homage to her Wakandan royalty.

By the power of the wind! ...wear this shirt to stay warm ;]

Belated Crescent

Also on my late newsfront is that the "Arabian Crescent" design for Threadless was chosen for print and is up for sale up their site. The winnings from it have provided a warm and steady stream of tees through these temperate Californian months~

(This shirt is perfect camouflage in wheat fields)

It's been supremely encouraging to join a part of their ranks and there'll certainly be more apparel design related news to spread in the coming weeks.

Thanks again to all who voted--!

O Do Tell

2011-06-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

Tell the Truth

Here are some previews and sketches for a short comic I'm working on for a group called the "Mini Comics Dump Truck".

Headed by one of the co-hosts of the "Art and Story"and "Big Illustration Party Timem" podcasts, Kevin Cross, this is part of the 'Supreme' membership group that makes a pledge to create a mini-comic to be mailed to all members.

I usually need self imposed deadlines to get personal projects done between freelance work so this creative group was a perfect motivator. Here are some pages at the penciled stage and a shot of some inks strewn on the lightbox. I don't want to give too much away, but generally, it follows the events previous to my first short story "The Sunless Circus".

My convention copies of "Sunless" are currently sold out but you can find the p.o.d. version available here. There were also some limited edition ones I made that included a sketch card and premium cover on the Collectors Society forum, which was pretty neat to see at this early stage~

It's been fun exploring this world in the story and reverse engineering ideas for characters and locations that I may or may not have subconsciously had in mind when making the first silent comic. This one has a more complicated story involving the inventor of Ardee the Acrobatic Robot Boy and the Ringmaster.
The text is still left out so there's some room for your imagination to tinker.

Free Comic Book Day!

2011-05-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

"The Ink Raven" hand carved stamp
FCBD FTW !

Many cheers to friendly neighborhood photographer Caitlyn of Comic Book Resources for the kind mention on their site. It's an honor to be named anywhere near the regal Richard Starkings.

As a youngin, I followed "Generation X" (which Starkings lettered) amd I mistakenly took the company

"Comicraft" to be some sort of magical lettering program. I can wholly appreciate the art of type and lettering now that I've attempted it myself and marveled at Comicraft's newer work in "Elephantmen".

Vol. 1 "Wounded Animals" was beautifully done.

One tough gang

The Raven leaves a Trail

There were events all over LA for Free Comic Book Day, but I decided the best place to be was the Comic Bug in Manhattan Beach. I made economy paper versions of my Ink Raven story (standard edition currently sold out :/) to give away at this event in exchange for being "inked".

This idea of the Raven leaving his ink-laden talon marks is actually part of the larger story in its universe. Generally, the idea in the story is that the mark is dynamic and rotates like a compass in the direction of your destiny. I'm itching to dive into it~

Pics from the Comic Bug:

Troopers take the streets!

Tyler Crook was super swell and drew me a Liz Sherman.
He definitely got a mini comic in return~

Mike raffles off prizes in style

The most leisurely paced Flash I'd ever seen

and one warm-blooded Wonder Woman

Comic and rhyming pals Ralph Miranda and Kathryn Renta

Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame

I also had a fantastic time getting to talk to Joe Benitez, whose "Lady Mechanika" is some great steampunk fare. Having run out of mini-comics, I gave him a copy of the "Sunless Circus" (sorta steampunk~). The second part of that story titled "The Tell" is more than half complete and I'll be posting previews soon--!

The Art of Artifiction

2011-03-28T20:37:00.001-07:00

A Brief Prehistory of Time

These are some photos from an art show I was in at Catalyst art space: "Prehistoric Artifictionn"

Ideally these pics would have been posted much earlier, but I was doing some up-to-the-minute hand building for the construction of a fullsize cave installation in the show.

The cave was constructed inside an adjacent room to the gallery made out of cardboard supported by easels, make-it-stone spray, expanding insulation foam, and live ferns.
The audio aspect of the installation, with help from Abel Stearns, featured a collection of "prehistoric" sounds (drips, echo, growls) provided by a hidden amp in the room. The lighting was partially recessed and angled to cast long shadows and illuminate higher areas of the cave and stalagmites.
Many thanks goes out to Jeremy Parsons and Jackson Root for helping me construct this crazy thing.

The postcard from the past at top was also something I digitally painted for the show. Something time travelers might appreciate~

Pre-set up photos:

Testing the Make-it-Stone Spray

Jeremy takes some process pics

The small room being prepped for "cave in"

The show also included live actors dressed as prehistoric people and music:

Make-up artist Tammie Rupe apply prosthetics to our Cavegirl.

A view after patrons contributed their cave paintings.

Prehistoric Picasso Tim leaves his mark

This dino's right on the money

The contemprary Venus of Willendorf is a bit more conservative

"Sssssimbaaaaa!"

A view facing out from the Cave

Josh Kemble adds a great piece where Deleks wipe out the Dinosaurs
Curator Corazones Christina's Caveman!

I saved this Universal Studios' Jurassic Park ID badge
from when i was 9, just for this purpose.

If you enjoy this type of interactive show, the next theme is going to "Spaghetti Western", so keep your eyes peeled pilgrims!

Patton Oswalt Poster and WonderCon

2011-03-17T03:54:00.000-07:00

A True Comedian of Comedy

This is a show poster I did for Patton Oswalt at his show coming up April 29th.
If you're anywhere near Tucson around this time you should definitely check it out! Details and ticket info can be found in the Events section on his site here.

Prints are available through my Etsy store. Get 'em while they're hot--!

Comics and Comics

So I had the lucky happenstance of meeting the swell funnyman at the Hammer Museum where he was moderator for an event promoting the release of the book "75 years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking." Jumping at the chance to see comics history and geekery elevated to such a classy locale, I joined some friends to see the entertaining discussion. The guests included the author and former president of DC, Paul Levitz, as well as creative giants Jim Lee and Geoff Johns.

During the Q & A, someone in the crowd asked a fairly general question about how to 'make it' in the comics biz, to which even the moderator jumped in. Talking about how one's got to just do your thing (with interwebs n' all)-- not wait to be picked up by some bigger imprint or get 'permission' to do what you love, it was totally heartening to hear words encouraging independent aspirations. I dug.

I think some similar sentiments came though in his "Comedians of Comedy" movie, which follows "alternative comedians," Brian Posehn (another comic book aficionado!), Zach Galifinakis (awesome!), and Maria Bamford (even awesomer!) on tour.
Patton was a fantastic fit for the event and so I made it a point to tell him so after the show... and certainly glad I did~

Pictorial proof :

I strategically placed myself in the front row,

hoping to absorb some of their talent via spit/osmosis.

Comics pals Ralph and Jeremy were part of the cadre as we squinted our closest resemblence to the Man of Steel of the Golden Age...

Squinty McSquinterson

If you can draw fantastically, be a Publisher of DC, be very well spoken,

and not have to let go of a good beer all at the same time, your name might just be...

...Jim Lee!

We then proceeded to become zombies...

A Time to Wonder

I'm going to be a bit more timely with this post and make some noise about Wondercon this year. Celebrating it's 25th anniversary, the event will be held April 1-3 at the Moscone Center-- smack dab in the middle of San Francisco. This was one of the first events I ever tabled at and it's been great fun every time. I really enjoy its size, space, and audience. To me it feels like a fine balance between the cozy halls of APE and the rabble crowds of ComicCon. The city is also rad to boot.
Hope to see folks for the show~

Mark your calendars! :

Fri 4/1 Noon - 7pm
Sat 4/2 10am - 7pm
Sun 4/3 11am - 5pm

More info about the event is available on their official site.

I will be in attendance with aforementioned Ralph Miranda and Co. at table #AA-077

I'll have a the newest of my 'Nouvuea Robotica' posters on hand as well as some comics, stickers, and buttons.

One new addition this year will be unveiled in the form of some fashioned machinery--
a vintage vending contraption that'll dispense buttons and other fun goods.

There will be a limited quantity of capsules with the non-red caps that'll get patrons a free sketch!Bring your quarters! (or at least small bills I can break ;)

Here 'tis, still having it's kinks worked out--

Promised to be ready full of fun trinkets for the show~

[GumballmachineVenturetime is a joint operation

by myself and musician pal digitalcasm--

look for it at his performance too!]

An Arabian Crescent

2011-03-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

[ Click HERE to see the cratered details:]

Lunar Landings

I haven't submitted a design to this snazzy site in a while, but I had an idea that I had scribbled on a Post-it a while back that kept nudging me to get drawn. My sketchbook's starting to pile up with a few-- I just need to make time to flesh them out. Thanks to ole pal and shirt designer extraordinaire, 'polynothing'(Josh) for some advice on this design~

Drawing some inspiration from Treasure Planet, and some deeply geeky conversation about planetary orbits with an engineer friend, I wanted to depict an impossibly neat looking gravity situation. The crescent moon is prevalent throughout Middle Eastern design, so I thought some Agrabah-ish architecture would work.

Click on the link above to vote for me! Thank yous :]

.....

And now, a word from our process gif :

Kinda looks like an album...

Enlightened Filament

2011-02-10T21:17:00.001-08:00

250 Watts of Wisdom

This is the ninth addition to the Nouveau Robotica series and will be making it's first appearance this weekend at an art show at Sipology Cafe in Long Beach, CA. The show will also feature two other artist friends, Rodney Sellars and Will Koffman under the uniting theme of "Technophilia: Machines and the People Who Love Them." It's a fun and unique space in downtown LB.

For those tech savvy or just plain good at finding details, there is a QR code on the print. When scanned using most smartphone barcode apps, it'll bring you... well, right here!

The illustrative type in there is Tibetan, and translates to (I think...) "Ornament." Seeing as how the written form of the country has such ornate stylings, especially to Western eyes, I thought it fit. The lightbulb icon is pretty literal, but I wanted to play with the interior filament suggesting a face or some sort. The idea of spirituality in an artificial mind was a neat one explored in Battlestar Galactica, so I wanted to give it an Eastern spin. The robot floats above a lotus motif which hides the 'power' symbol with the the animated counterpart below to suggest some sort of 'transcendence' from one medium to another in a digital world.

Click on the Bulb for some ambiance~ :]

[Note: Since the code brings you here. there's likely a blank space above these words for you mobile viewers... Flash not playing well with a lot of smartphones and all--BELOW is an mp4 version!)]

Technophiliacs Anonymous

The show is happening this Saturday (at 7pm), with us artists doing some live painting to the tunes of several DJs including pal Digitalcasm and Calamari Beats. I'll have prints, a few mini-comics and buttons available~

Here's a flyer!

Here's another piece that will be on display. One of a few scenes in a series of digital paintings I've been working on of robots going about their day-to-day when they discover something weird going on. Here, it's playground octopi. Man, I hate when that happens....

"Beneath the Swings"

Pencil, Photoshop

Another Belated Christmas Album and Card

2010-12-25T16:25:00.000-08:00

So what would you like to have this Winter's Eve Light Celebration ?

Belated Like Broken Clockwork

It's Christmas time and my pal Digitalcasm Stearns ("Abel") put together another Holiday CD for this year: "Another Belated Christmas*." Featuring the golden voice talent of R.J. Hochmuth, this compilation of holiday tracks crosses all sorts of cultural and awesomeness boundaries!

"Sexy Kwanzaa," "Santa Baby," and the impressively auto-tuned "We're a Couple of Misfits" are some of my favorite tracks.

The ornamented CD face~

Last year's album (which includes a reading of the Polar Express in faux British accent + self-made foley sound FX), is availabile on the Bandcamp site here.

Tuning up the Reindeer (+ the Christmas Spirit)

Also for this time of year is my annual illustration promotional card. The reindeer is a callback from last year's card, but shows all the behind-the-scenes tinkering the Elves do to get a bionic buck airborne. Since I worked in layers in Photoshop, I'm also thinking about giving it some limited animation-- but like the cards themselves in the mail, this might take some time to arrive~

[Leave a comment/message if want to get on the mailing list :]

Merry Christmas and Sweet Soltice everyone!

The Ink Raven

2010-11-09T03:05:00.000-08:00

Lightboxes: They make everything more epic~

Don't Graphite, Just Ink About It

This story was my first mini-comic that serves as a intro to a longer 4 part story I'm working on. There is Norse mythology influence in this particular tale and is meant to ask questions about self fullfilling prophecies, the origin of folklore, and the power of belief. Yep, all that in 5 pages~

My first stab at making a mini comic came from much inspiration from the folks at Art & Story.

Much thanks for advice about materials from Mark Rudolph (whose "Echoes from Astroid X" I was using as a quality barometer). I planned to screenprint the band that wraps the mini that lines up with the image, but time constraints forced the monastic discipline of hand painting them in time for the Alternative Press Expo (APE).

[EDIT: for the Long Beach Comic Con, the bands were indeed screen printed!! For a process series, see the link at the bottom of this post]

And now, a story from colder skies:

"Where once there were three

two would remain

bound to the old keeper

of fury and spear.

Flown high from the Tree

to know a dire fate

born to escape

and chase a tale,

a new post--

a ghost. "

-old poem

....

All Part of the Process

In an effort to not overcrowd this blog space (and maybe hide my hodgepodge comics-making process~) I put the "making of" pictures for this minicomic on my Flickr. I thought I'd share this after one person at the Long Beach Con recognized that the band was indeed screened, not just colored paper-- the awesome n' talented Dustin Nguyen! I scored a beautiful sketchbook of his full of amazing watercolors and some of my favorite characters.

The inch strips were actually leftovers from the 11 x 17" single sheet trimmed to make the mini size divide evenly into 8 parts. They wrapped around perfectly, and some part of me wanted to feel like I was honorably using 'every part of the animal' which is paper.

Only some of these minis included a bonus "poster" on the reverse side, a collage of raven sketches I did leading up to writing the story. I think the process pictures can clarify the construction~

Here's a preview for those interested--

If you want more, just jaunt on over HERE!

Back to Triple-two

I will be having another show at this cool little clothing store in Huntington Beach, 222 Clothing. I'm excited to showcase my comic art specifically for this one. I'll have original pages and some new work on display with ole pal Digitalcasm debuting some new songs.

This happens with the monthly Huntington Beach Art Walk. Directions here!

[EDIT: I forgot to note a fun factoid: The 222 Store specializes in Scandinavian and Nordic Indie Brands of clothing-- a perfect perch for a Raven~]

Convention Peeks

2010-11-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

" Hey watch where you're goin'! "

Pictures from APE

Before going into the above image, I must say, I had a stellar time at the Alternative Press Expo-- even with the rainy Sunday! I just wish I had more opportunities to browse the other tables and pick up some indie comic gems. It was good to see Javier Hernandez and meet some of the other Cartoonistas there. Also 1/3 of the Art & Story hosting team, Kevin Cross was in attendance. Though far up North, I also met near home local artists like Kevin Woody, who had a small anthology of his work with some diverse stylings I really enjoyed.

I also got a couple of Jim Lujan's Ghettomation DVDs. A great collection, the interview "Conversatio," especially had me in stiches~

Our booth with the fierce and formidable Ralph Miranda ("Man Fighting Street")

Raul Aguirre Jr. ("Man vs. Art") on my right and Kevin Cross ("Art & Story") on my other right.

Kevin Woody sports a fancy 'stache along with similarly themed fun comic ("Between Mars").

[The banner and title totally piqued my interest]

Rule #135: It's not really a Con unless you have last minute projects to finish

Pics from LBCC

Conventions only we apart! Pardon for the backlog but the times have been eventful~

To see more of these pics from Long Beach Comic Con, find my illustration page on Facebook or see some selections on my Flickr.

Each of these events seems to have a different appeal and it's always great to meet diverse crowds at these conventions. The "Soviet Space Simian" screenprints which got no love at APE (ironically~) were very popular at LBCC and are now sold out! I'll likely be trying my hand at more screen printing techniques in new work too. I'll be putting up some pics from my haphazard process in another post.

Our table setup featured the "INFECTED" Anthology,

prints, "Man Fighting Street", and an assortment of mini-comics

McFly! Caught gliding around the convention floor

When pint-size cuteness collides...

Frankie wants a hug!

Goofing around among greats: Dean Yeagle and Amanda Connor

The Sunday of the convention fell on Halloween, so there was an even larger surge of costumed characters-- many creators taking part too.

It was a great pleasure to meet the amazing cover artist for our "Infected" book, Dean Yeagle and one of my favorite comic artists out there, Amanda Connor (in full skunk regalia!).

Fun with Fotoshop

Part of the fun of the Con is getting to see some of the great costumes folks put together. I ran into a detachment from the 501st Stormtrooper Legion while waiting for my morning coffee...

The Imperials occupation of Seattle's Best

I got one of them to humor me this shot:

Which resulted in:

(Bluescreens not included)

...and just because I can:

'(Near-mint'/ 'Fair' condition)

Night of the Life Zombies

2010-10-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

Whoop... got your nose!

Staying in the Halloween-ish theme, here are some sketches from last Thursday's Zombie life drawing session at The Catalyst art space. They did a good job with make-up and got some folks to play victims too. I'm usually not much of a gore fan... but it would be an interesting exercise to employ some anatomy memory and draw exposed muscles and such too. eh.

Wish I knew about this impromptu session earlier-- I know a few aficionados of the zombie craze.

Drawing on toned paper's something I haven't done much of but I'm getting to appreciate it a bit more. White-out helps a bunch to make it kick... or bite.

Great expressions from the model and "victim"

Fun with watercolor travel kit and my new parallel pen. Great way to make thin lines and fill in blacks quick.

The guy w/ dapper 'stache dreaming about r2 wasn't there, just needed to fill sketchbook space~

Portraits of Melancholy Mansion

2010-10-07T02:41:00.000-07:00

I sea nothing wrong with my new pet...

Portrait of a Monster as a Hang Man

It's that time of year when all things wicked walk about-- Halloween! These were for AmericanGreetings as one of their new line of Halloween e-cards.

I did storyboards for another one which you can check out on the storyboard side of things here.

For this card, you can upload your own picture as part of a spooky hallway of creepy characters with a hint of misfortune ala. the Haunted Mansion. Moving to the tune of "The Addams Family" theme, the portraits animate to life to the ::snap, snap:: Try it out for yourself here !

The General: May he rest in hair piece

Lady Dashwood is a fan of sharp wit

One of them didn't make the cut and only passes by as a blur, but was one of my favorites...

...so here's a little spotlight on the painting process for the "Guillotine Twins":

You can see I referenced a combination of Thomas Gainsborough, Mark Ryden, and Asaf Hanuka-- one part classic and two parts contemporary~ The twin on the right actually loses his head in a step not because of any nod to the deadly contraption, but because I was trying to make them look alike ;]

Going back further in the design timeline and more process goodness, the above is an initial sketch of ideas done in one of my go-to mediums for art and drink: coffee

Hope everyone carves and paints themselves a fantastic Halloween~!

24 Hour Geeky People

2010-10-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

"24" (without Jack Bauer)

This zany event happens every year to test the wits and limits of comic creators everywhere. Challenged by sometime collaborator and sometime nemesis Ralph Miranda, I decided to join in to make a 24 page comic in 24 straight hours, even with a late start last Saturday.

Originally, I was planning to just be a 'spectator'-- even so far was calling the folks [admirable] nuts on the Twitters~ I was just going to hang around and work on other pending projects-- but being around that many people working so hard on comics, I couldn't help but at least try.

The event, started as a challenge by Scott McCloud, is now held all over at comic shops and venues throughout the world. I was at Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug, publishers of the Infected anthology I was in.

I also had the privilege of sitting near the original organizer of the day Nat Gertler, who had a copy of his soon to be published retrospective on Schultz's "Peanuts". A beauty of a book with lots of cool inserts and behind the scenes about the legendary catoonist.

Below are the first three pages from my story. The little narrative was cobbled together from random bits of funny thoughts over dinner with my girlfriend at Carney's Restaurant in Hollywood-- a diner built inside of an old Amtrak passenger car from the 1920's. [It's likely their website was built in the same era too... :P]

The story is called Dream Destinations and I'd summarize it as "like Inception: but for little kids!" The fantastical stuff comes later with rockets and hamsters and cat food... o my:

Though I wish it had more polish to it, I'm pretty satisfied that at least it's one complete story and actually spans the full 24 pages. There's a few more episodic adventures for the trio to go on in my head and I'd like to add some splashy color fitting for this all-ages genre. First things first though because it's nearing time for....

A.P.E. (without Monkeys)

This happens Oct 16-17 at the Concourse Center in San Francisco. I'll have all eight of the posters from the Nouveau Robotica series as well as one extra large set for the "Aceite Fino" design. I'll also have buttons, screenprints, a mini-comic, and the Infected anthology story too. This will be my third time attending, second time as an exhibitor so I'm really looking forward to seeing some familars and seeing and meeting some awesome indie talent.

Here's more info about the Expo. I'll be at table with #629 with Mirando Calrissian [Ralph], Yan Solo [Stephen], Grand Moff Parsons [Jeremy].

An All-American Astro Ape

2010-09-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

Chimps in the Mist

Now it's time to turn out attention to the good ole' US Space Program after the Soviet inspired stuff. I found an image online of this chimpanzee in the modern orange NASA Launch Entry Suit and wished there was a poster. I couldn't find one after many a Google search so decided to just paint it. It was started a couple years ago and forgotten until I recently dusted it off, gave it a coat of paint, threw it outside, and took a picture.

Seeing the similarities to the previous "Soviet Space Monkey," this just might be the start of another series. Whatever the name, it will likely need to end with

"... in SPACE !"

[A rare image of the Space Monkey in his more natural habitat...]

"American Astro Ape" 2010

22" x 28"Acrylic on Canvas in the Bushes

This will be on display along with many fine works in the theme of Portraits by the talented staff of Art Supply Warehouse this Sunday (9/12) . Their new counterpart creative space CATALYST, recently opened doors and is located in the same plaza. Find more about it and directions here.

I'll post up pics with less foliage from the show. If you're local to town, come check it out! The painting itself will feature a bonus little addendum piece at the gallery... You'll just have to come to see! (or... y'know, just wait for the pics :/).

Some other cool space monkeys:

- Apelad [A. Koford]! (his Twitter feed is more frequent and funnier than most comedians)

- "Space Chimp" video for World Wildlife Fund! (I still think of wrestling if I spell WWF)

- SpaceMonkey.NO ! ("No" for "No.rway"..! Art and Story contributor Kim Holm's chose-your-own-adventure comic strip)

- This old article on BoingBoing features the image which sparked my initial interest in space simians (appearing ever briefly in the Special Features section on the Borat DVD)

Ionic Asterion

2010-08-20T06:40:00.000-07:00

A-mazing Mechanical Bull !

Number 8 in "Nouveau Robotica" series was inspired after seeing the much acclaimed "Inception." Some people might have noticed slight nods to Greek myth with the names:

Ariadne [daughter of King Minos, the mythical king of Crete, believed location of the Labyrinth] and maybe even Arthur [Arthur Evans being the modern excavator of the historic site]. You can tell Mr. Nolan loves his puzzles. Unlike Ellen Page, this maze illustration took waaay longer than one minute to design-- maybe you can look at it for two minutes? :]

So in the myth we've got our Mino-taur = "the Bull of Minos" as the bastard child of Queen Pasiphae and cursed to live as a half man, half bull monster eventually defeated by the hero Theseus.

I had fun watching a few documentaries on the Greeks and reading a little bit about the mythology of the Minotaur. Turns out he has a name: Asterion or "Ruler of the stars" [See the asterisks in there? :P]

Here, instead of using Classical Greek, there is the Ionic Alphabet lettering more suited for ancient Minoan Crete. I really wanted to have an excuse to use the cool looking Omega symbol [or large/'mega'- "O"] or the Omicron [small/'micro'- "o"] but it kept looking like a fraternity logo... would've looked like ΑΣΤΕΡΙΩΝ. Alas, this bull ain't no frat boy-- more old school, so I opted for the older form of Greek. Only by coincidence does it look a little bit like the word "Inception" since R's looked like P's.

This whole series is based on explorations about language, code, and symbols, so going back to such old writing made for some fun exploration. Here's more if you want to dig deeper--

An idea about threes: Here, the character is 1/3 bull, 1/3 man, 1/3 mechanical (wouldn't be much of a 'Robotica' without it~) And he is simultaneously the cursed beast, the designer of the maze [as the inventor Dedalus] and Ariadne [the provider of the thread that kept Theseus from getting lost.] The thread also leads to the spool on the double-sided ax or "labrys" from which the name "Labyrinth" originates. Yay, full circle.

So much vocabulary traces back to the Greek... that dad from that wedding movie was soo right~

Well.. that was a lot to read. If you made it this far, here-- watch a funny video about minotaurs to unwind: Minotaur is Cruel and Unusual!

O the Onion goodness~

"The Sunless Circus"

2010-07-27T15:57:00.003-07:00

The Circus is in Town

Finally online, this is my first foray into comic storytelling (at least as a complete story). It's a short story about a robot acrobat boy who wants to run away from the circus-- and become an accountant.

The comic is now available as part of an anthology released through local Manhattan Beach comic store, The Comic Bug under the title, "INFECTED!". It was pleasure to work with Mike Wellman, Jun, and Adam to get this out and great to have a creative group to be surrounded and motivated by.

Every month, we creators would meet like addicts, introduce ourselves and talk about our ideas or share progress. It's a really cool shop and a great place to connect writers looking for artists and vice versa. I had a few of these to share at Comic Con and will have them on hand at APE in October.

Look for this cover!

It was a surprise honor to have legendary cartoonist Dean Yeagle draw the cover. Other pals whose stories were a part include Ralph Miranda's "An Afternoon Read" and Evan Ferrel's "Passing the Bogle". There were quite a few diverse ideas churned out in keeping with the title theme-- many opting for a metaphorical infection rather than an biological one.

A thanks also goes to the folks at Art and Story who got me thinking more about comics as an artform and providing great company at the cartoonist's artdesk.

This image at the very top is for a minicomic version of just the circus story. I had painted this fake circus poster for an art show and wanted to stretch it's usefulness. These copies also have initial concept sketches and perforated circus tickets that you can tear out [and redeem for a sketch at any convention appearances~]

And without further ado:

[cue circus music, it's a silent comic...]

Time for Tripletwo

2010-07-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

It's Always Sunny in Surf City

[EDIT: Added pictures from the show below! And for more photos from this event and another appearance at the Patchwork Indie Crafts Fair Long Beach, check out the iHeartsAndCrafts blog!]

"Soviet Space Monkey" 2010

[Screenprint on stone slab]

This is a fashionably late posting about a show I'm in--- tonight! If you're in the Huntington Beach area, come check out some new work of mine at this, my first almost solo show! Character sculpture artist Brad Teaford will also have his work on display in this Marvel team up.

The show space is a Nordic indie clothing store (i know another one~) called "222 Gallery". Their site is under construction, but click on it to find the address or if you like looking at a guy scratching his head... Here's more useful info about the HB Art Walk in general. The show is from 6-9 pm. Drinks and appetizers will be served and an afterparty at the snazzy Shorebreak Hotel to follow.

This store is little gem, and was a chance find since it's one block over from the busier Main Street (on 5th). Full of unique designs and great deals, check them out sometime if you're a Huntington Beach bum even if you can't make it to the show eh.

In addition to prints from the "Nouveau Robotica" series, my first ever real run of original screen prints will be available. Come check them out in all their mis-registered glory! [Keeping with my current trend toward astronauts and Russia-- the print is a Soviet space monkey~]

Well, things have been veryvery busy these past few weeks leading up to Comic Con (:D!). I'll be sure to post up pics from the show and new work as soon as they're released!

Here are them pics:

the "Nouveau Robotica" prints

World's smiliest gallery patron :D

"Soviet Space Monkey" screen prints

Digitalcasm in the flesh with amazing pointing powers!

"Sunless Circus" acrylic transfer painting

[+ two tix to the "show"~]

Digitalcasm show poster

2010-06-30T17:23:00.000-07:00

"On strange steeples, I stare at the silent square stars and moon.."

My ole creative cohort Abel Steans (aka 'Digitalcasm') will be having a show at a local coffeehouse in Long Beach called Viento y Agua. It's a smaller venue, but a great place for indie artists with a real cozy vibe. I've found musical talents I never would have heard of through the performances they have here. Great ice-blended coffees served in nifty jars too! Makes me want to catch fireflies (if only there were real...)

Aboot the poster:

One of my go-to artistic inspiration bookmarks I have on my browser is for Drawn.ca. I first saw this awesome little animated short on there called "MARS!" by Joe Bichard. I really dug the analog sounds and simple designs they used. 'Digitalcasm' has a decidedly 8-bit influence so I imagined there would be no better fitting shape than a square pixel hanging in the sky. And of course another short, "PIXELS", (which I heard is going to turn into a feature?) has made quite the splash. These are some neat ideas to play with now that our sophisticated machines can produce pretty much any type of graphics, we look backwards to remember fondly our bygone roots~

[EDIT: added the initial sketches!]

I decided not to pretty-up this scan and leave the sketchbook page as is... I've seen a few artists do this and thought it looked neat-- a certain honesty to it. Plus showing these will make me more mindful of composition on an analog page (as opposed to endless tweaking on Photoshop~)

I came up with these at a coffeeshop if you can't tell and the sketch of the guy did start off from an authentic, accidental spill.

The show is Fri. July 9th. Abel will astound with his amazing business card/sample track CDs and I'll have 11x17" prints of the poster available!

2010: a Toy Odyssey

2010-06-21T16:15:00.001-07:00

"I'm sorry Buzz. I'm afraid I can't do that..."

So I keep hearing through the Twitters and Facebooks that Toy Story 3 is quite excellent and also a tear jerker. I wondered if anyone had done this mash-up before-- my bad if it has! Here's my version of a toy coming face to face with something so epic and sublime as the origin it's creation... and the HAL 9000.

Plus it's funny how the Pixar director's name rhymes with "Kubrich"..

This was done for the weekly art jam on the Art Jumble blog. Lots of great talent on there to stay inspired and challenged!

Below is a process gif animation of how this came about:

By the looks of that initial scan, apparently I was considering having Buzz say "Que?", as a nod to his newfound language skills in the movie. Seems like I'm keeping in theme with polygot astronauts in my posts :]

Oh and btw this was Post #100 !

Yay.

Siberian Pine and Wine

2010-06-08T22:19:00.001-07:00

Calling all Cosmonauts!

#7 in the "Nouveau Robotica" series. This is a slight departure in style from the more organic forms in the previous pieces (though if you look hard enough you can still find them). This became much closer to the Soviet propaganda poster style, but hopefully still fits in the series. It was a bit of an experiment using a limited color palette and a challenge to not render the heck out of it. As mentioned in my post with the Soviet sketches, I ended up taking a short cultural/educational tour working on this piece.

The title is a Romanization of the Russian word for 'Cosmonaut' and "кедр" ('cedar' or 'Siberian Pine'), which was the the callsign for the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. I threw in some Sputnik-inspired satellites in this poster for an alternate history where sentient robots could be national heroes too... maybe one day.

Distress patterns in illustrations remind me of that pre-worn look a lot of new jeans have... I can tear and rough up my clothes all by my clumsy self thanksverymuch~ I can't wait to get these printed without the 'fake distress', throw them around recklessly, and add some genuine character.

Fun factoids, when in space:

Americans= Astronaut.

Russians= Cosmonaut

Chinese= Taikonaut

French= Spationaut

Makaysian= Angkasawan

Vino!

This was a sketch I did in wine... a fine glass of Campo di Borgia, 2008 to be exact (I just read the label, I don't have a sophisticated nose). This was at a place in Fullerton called the 'Twisted Vine', which had just enough candlelight to draw by.

Maybe this could be a start to a series-- an inebriated counterpart to the coffee stain sketches I posted up before.

They would probably be less frenetic, possibly a bit sloppy. We'll see :]

Hey you Kids!

2010-06-05T18:27:00.001-07:00

Get off my lawn! ...and go read a Comic!

I can't make it to this event until they perfect teleportation technology, but if you're in the Dearborn, Michigan area, you should really check this out! Running from June 12-13 and supported by the folks at 'Art and Story'. It's a free event and a really great place to foster interest in the comics medium for the next generation ['cause otherwise we'd totally die out :( ]. Cheers to sustainability! There'll be workshops and panels for both patrons and creators/educators alike.

It looks really fun. If you go, take pictures for me won'tcha :]

Shortest Post Ever...

It's been good n' busy, will post up some new works and sketches soon (including a short comic and a new Nouveau Robotica) !

Building a Birdman

2010-05-10T17:28:00.001-07:00

Going Gizawatt

[Scroll to bottom if you don't wanna read/see an animated .gif !]

Here's a process post about the making of this Thadius Gizawatt, galaxy renowned space explorer from Mark Rudolph's "Mulligan's Run". Mark does a microcast "Mark of the Beast" as part of the Art & Story Supreme content and posed some questions about the process. It did so happen that I saved some images while working on this piece, so here's how it all went down! :

I usually start with a pencil sketch that I scan in-- but I went rogue this time. An idea for the painting was in my head pretty early on, so I worked out the pose straight into the computer using my Intuos tablet. No special brushes at this point, just good ole Round, with pressure sensitivity turned on.

I realized I needed better reference for Mr. Gizawatt to familiarize myself his costume, proportions, and see which parts of him are anthropomorphized. I would later use the bird photo reference to put in subtle feather textures on him.

I kept this nice image of him being choked (I know, how cruel) as I laid out some of his environment. I pictured him as being a reflective kind of guy and wanted him to rest his chin on his fist, but hadn't figured out where his elbow would go at this point.

The spaceship consoles were actually desiged around him to fit as I added in more background. Once I knew just about where things would go, I separated him onto another layer and began to define his silhouette. My favorite brush for this part was from a Chris Oatley's set of custom ones: "Soft Oil Tapered 88" and a modified Calligraphy Oval set to Pressure sensitive.

For the most part, I paint at about 70-90% opacity.

Here I started to add a strong light source. I wanted something bright and saturated so went with a red glow from a radar screen or something. I wanted to keep with a very colorful palette and also a compliment to his green suit.

I shrank his feet [thanks Transfom tool!] to better match his small stature. I also cut out the metal box onto another layer so I could compose it as a foreground element later.

At this point, you start to see more form being described as I darkened the figure using Multiply in my Brush options. Using the same or slighter lighter color in multiply seems to keep it from getting too muddy. I try to sample color [alt/option] while using the brush tool to stay within a decided color palette and use HSB sliders in my Color selection window so I can see both value and saturation.

The paint challenges at this stage feel like a mix between Acrylic and Watercolor so I treat a bit like Gouache. I used less opacity for laying down darks and higher opacity for lights (Something I read from Paul Lasaine's blog-- an exceedingly amazing Dreamworks artist who's very generous in sharing his knowledge and methods)

A lot of the background was very angular and geometric so I used a lot of Shift-click and turned off Pressure sensitivity to draw in the spaceship interior. Once the forms were in there, I used Magic Wand to select planes of shapes and added in some 'painterly' strokes to give it a bit more lived-in look. I used the Burn/Dodge tool to do the same and punch it up. The floor was a photo texture Transformed with Perspective/Skew to fit.

The Nebula was added in to give it the second rim light source (putting multiple light sources throws a form in the round real quick). He's actually lit by three (the third one at his feet shining his boots...maybe coming from somewhere behind the box) just to stage it bit more 'theatrically'.

I could have taken the easy route and just found a pic from NASA.com, but decided to draw the the spacescape from scratch. Here's a how to build your own universe:

Galaxy Quest

Draw a simple starburst pattern from the center using the Polygonal Lasso tool, then
[Filter > Distort > Twirl]

[Edit > Free Transform] to manipulate it into the right perspective.

Start to add some brush texture. I used a combination of Spatter Brush and a custom Oatley's "Feathers" Brush while adjusting Scatter in the Brush Presets. The custom brush creates that speckle pattern if you don't drag the stylus, just dab like a real-life sponge and let Size Jitter from the Presets do the work for you.

It kind of jumps here... I must've got too excited about creating new life and forgot to save a step (it happens ie: Cambrian Explosion~). I selected a bluish/purple hue with a slighted cool white and alternated between them painting the spiral arms. I tried to finish with the lighter stars opaque on top. For the galactic core, I used the brightest white.

The interior core was a white with an orange [Outer Glow] set in [Layer Styles]. I played around by duplicating and using a combination of Blending Modes.

To create just a few billion (well technically...) more wayward stars, I duplicated on another layer, set the blending mode to Screen, reduced Opacity, and scaled it it to haze out the edges.

Eat your Heart out Hubble

That lonely black needed some colorful nebulae (nebulas? nebuali~?), so here's how that came about:

There's tons of ways to draw a star field I'm sure, but I used the Photoshop trick of [Filter > Noise > Add Noise]. Check Monochromatic, play with the sliders, and watch a black canvas turn into deep space. I selected a swatch of the dots, duplicated, and Transformed them larger to make bigger stars-- Screen Blending in Layers to see all of them.

On two Layers, bottom one black and second one a saturated color, select top color and [Filter > Render > Clouds] and repeat the filter until you get some clouds you fancy. I took a piece and blew it up to the size I liked.

Repeat the process using another color. You can see where I Lasso'd the shape of the other one. While selected, going to [Select > Feather> ~15 pixels or so] softens the shape nicely. Use Blending Mode Screen to see them both.

Combine that earlier star field with on a Screen layer to get something like this. Use these two layers to move/rotate/scale them around till you get something like the startup screen on a Mac.

Voila--!

I drew in the larger stars with a standard Round Brush and duplicated to add some variety. As an afterthought, I kind of wish I had spelled out something clever in the constellations.. o well, you can do that.

Choosy Moms Choose GIF

(It's the poor man's process vid !)

Soviet Scribbles and Sin City Sketches

2010-05-05T05:44:00.000-07:00

Soviet Scribbles

I found this book at a Barnes & Noble, "Red Star over Russia". Skimming through the pages to find poster reference for a new "Nouveau Robotica" piece, I ended up reading a lot of it-- turned into a mini history lesson...

Also coincidentally timed in my Netflix queue's arrival was a movie called "Russian Ark" by director Alexander Sokurov. It's an epic tour of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg presented in a grand theatrical scale with over 2000 costumed actors. Elaborate portrayal both visually and metaphorically of the country's history and identity with European culture--presented all in one take. Quite a feat with very unique effect in a full length feature.

Sin City Sketches

If you can't afford a plane ticket to Europe, here's an option for you! The Romans copied the Greeks, and so Las Vegans copied the Romans (and Paris and Venice and Egypt and Rio and..) with varying levels of hokeyness. Keep off the beer goggles and look hard enough and you can find some pretty decent copies~

In the sketches: a view from from our hotel of 'Paris', 'The David' at Ceasar's Palace, and a juggler at 'The Venetian'.

Cool performer costumes in the indoor mall made to look like St. Mark's Square in Venzia... much less pigeons here.

I also drew one of the human statue guys. Really cool drapery, and the stillest model you could ask for. We need more of these guys in our cities...

Too bad the photo's blurry, but I gave him the sketch-- got a wink in return.

We Have a Winner!

2010-04-18T01:59:00.000-07:00

The Zaku MS-06S

So posted above is the finished prize for David Torres , one of the winners of the mini-sweepstakes I ran at Wonder Con in San Fransisco couple weeks ago. I hope the awesome people who bought a poster checked the number on the wax sealed paper band because--

There is one more winner floating around out there! (probably somewhere around Northern Californa..)

The winner opted for the custom color robot sketch (which turned out more like a finished watercolor piece~) from the Gundam Wing series. I admittedly had to bone up a bit on their design since it's been while since seeing any of the series. A lobster+ stormtrooper+ cyclops+ spikey Mario Bros turtle + badass gun!

Hope he likes the result-- The original's in the mail!

The texture in the watercolor for this piece was made using table salt--which happened to be at...

Drink & Draw Social Club

This is a really cool group I recently discovered that gets together in downtown L.A. every Thursday night at Casey's Irish Pub. I ran into an old co-worker the first time I stumbled in--fun times and actually getting some drawing done at the same time! A real inviting and inspiring bunch of creatives gather here every week. Shout outs all around to local pals who want to join in!

Here's a sketch on recycled toned paper I did there--

Nouveau Robotica 'sweepstakes'

2010-04-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

01CKT-65B-4919

Did you find this code on a poster? Thanks for stopping by at WonderCon Booth #AA070 !

Your prize, should you choose to accept it...

e-mail me and I'll send you:

1) your choice of any of the other Nouveau Robotica posters.

2) a custom original color sketch of a robot character (just trying to stay within a theme ;])

An original character, or Robocop, or a Cylon, a Terminator, Al Gore, you name it!

If this doesn't make any sense...

that's understandable! The picture above is the wax seal I used to wrap the "Nouveau Robotica" series of mini-posters I am/was selling at WonderCon (April 2-4). Each of these had a code and a lucky few were marked with the alpha-numeric above.

I'll post the result when finished with the winner's approval~

I'm also in the process of setting up an online store for these posters and hopefully other works as well. Stay tuned on here, Twitter, or the newly created Facebook page !

(winner: Please allow at least 2 weeks for delivery! Cheers for checking out the blog to all ya'll)

Monkey Mod Punch!

2010-03-29T23:10:00.000-07:00

Monkeying around

(I was pretty surprised while typing this... "monkeying" passes spellcheck! People must engage in this verb a lot... )

This is fan art for Kevin Cross' slick comic, Monkey Mod-- the mod rockstar simian superhero!

He's got a cool animated trailer to go along with the webcomic too. (Aw "webcomic" does not pass spellcheck :[ ) I checked out the preview mini comic "Monkey Mod Unmasked" and really dug the production value (screenprinted cover/ hand stiched) put into it. It's raised the bar to do the same for what I'm working on too... aiming to have it ready for WonderCon.

Better than Pizza!

I feel it my duty to make some noise about the newly minted Art and Story SUPREME here too. The premium content counterpart to possibly the most helpful and inspirational cartooning podcast out there. The content I've seen and heard is really worth it-- especially the process videos. Kevin's microcast is called "High Adventure Daily" and it does deliver. I feel like punching barbarians to punk rock after every listen...

Wienerschnitzel and Wondercon

2010-03-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

Wienerschnitzel promo for Adville USA

This is a promotion going on right now for Wienerschnitzel's corndogs at Wienercash.com

Not sure if the corn dog rapper's name is mentioned on the site, but his moniker's been dubbed "C-Dogg" :]
You can enter into the sweepstakes by entering the code on the sticks of them tasty snacks and have a chance to win $10,000!

I did the character and environment designs as well as take a leap into a less familiar challenge: Animation--! I hope a lot of people enter the sweepstakes because you only get to see the first segment of the animation before entering the code and it takes you to the Eating Machine (which took time to design :P)

The project sure built an appreciation for the craft of animation and nudged the possibility of applying it to some of my personal projects. I've seen some limited animation techniques like Jim Luhan's one-man "ghettomation" shorts that show it's totally possible even with limited time and resources.
There was a bit of research that had to be done with my very limited knowledge of rap and hip hop... I ended up taking some queues from Justin Timberlake's skit on SNL and a segment of from the Cleavland Show... fun stuff!

The character went through quite a few iterations-- above are some of them that turned into the e-bytes versions. I liked the Kanye glasses, but I think it took away some expressive qualities...
Among the different challenges, I learned quite a bit from looking at Chris Oatley's work samples that had characters making different phoneme mouth movements for lip-synching and making silly faces on my isight camera...
Check out my storyboard specific blog post to see the full development boards for the animation. Oftentimes my storyboards get turned into animatics, so it serves well to add it to a skillset and add some extra panache~

Wandering to Wondercon

I'll be at this convention in San Francisco at booth AA070 with my friends at Ralphco Comics (Ralph Miranda, Jeremy Parsons, Stephen Yan). I had a fun and positive experience at APE last year and hope I get to meet more fellow creators and enthusiasts. I'm looking forward to checking out this con for the first time, plus the city's a fantastic backdrop for the event.

I'll have prints of the Nouveau Robotica series, buttons, and some other goodies to share-- stop by if you're in town!

Faces and Creatures

2010-03-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

"Questo e il mio Faccia // This is My Face"

Model 006 [Italian import] in the Nouveau Robotica series. An homage to the "Absinthe Robette" poster by Henri-Privat Livemont-- my robotic interpretation of how we put on our 'faces' on ole Facebook.

[Bonus points and an original ink sketch for anyone that knows where I got the title!]

I may try to elaborate more on the symbolism I've attempted to incorporate into this one and the series as a whole, but I'd love to hear other theories and opinions as well.

I scribbled in a sheet of sketches to stick to making a series and have since planned on making enough robots for a calendar, so 12 all together. Half way there~!

"Heavenly Creatures"

This is a show that's going on tonight at Pehrspace in Echo Park with artist Karin Jancuk. Yes, very last minute-- as in right after I click 'Publish Post', I'm delivering my piece to the curator. Indeed a good thing she's a friend. I have a piece that's acrylic paint on acrylic sheeting-- a style and medium that's a departure from my usual, but a fun exploration with a Rilo Kiley inspired title.

If you're on Facebook, put on your best face, add, and check out the invite here !

'Daily' Sketches and Demo

2010-03-04T01:22:00.001-08:00

"Daily" sketches:

I purposely left those quote marks as a sort of disclaimer that I'll do my best to keep up! These inks are a means to practice using some good ole analog tools, namely brushes, nibs, and pens. A great way to warm up the hand before doing more heady illustration, I've taken a cue from the talented GoGoIllustration sketch blog. They sure seem to be upping the ante as a group-- their work getting more polished with backgrounds/color!

In trying to keep these pretty casual and to stay interested, I wanted to pull inspiration from the things I liked most as a kid-- the stuff that reminds you why you wanted to draw all day in the first place... So I decided to start with characters that I've dressed up as during Halloween and other events in my childhood and some *ahem* more recently. Except for Yoda, I've donned some home made fabrication of these characters at one time or another. Maybe on my 900th birthday, I'll give the good old Yoda ears a whirl...

I think I'd like to keep the 'Dalies' in a separate sphere from this blog for now, but if you'd like to see them so far, check out the Flickr photo set. I update when I post a new one on the Twitter as well.

My buddy Ralph who I worked with on the drawing female space cadets has also been inspired enough to start his own blog with daily ink sketches as well (he's been more dedicated, no quotes around the 'daily' in his title or practice~) See his inks here: www.ralphious.blogspot.com

'Creatives Gone Wild' during Arty Gras:

This Saturday I'll be doing a watercolor demonstration for Grumbacher watercolors at a local art store. There's a ton of activities to choose from during Art Supply Warehouse's annual Arty Gras Sale (3/5 - 3/7) in sunny Orange County (err..rain or shine). Check out their schedule of demos and 'make-and-take's on their Facebook page. It's 25% off pretty much everything in the store so if you're in need of any art materials, now is the time to load up :] Learn about some new techniques and tools out there too!

There's also a show opening featuring the local talent from ASW in a gallery in the same plaza. I'll have a piece in there as well which relates to the comic anthology story I mentioned a couple posts ago. It's the first time in a long while to do some 'real' painting so I was glad to have the opportunity. The gallery event has a very fun theme: "Sideshow"-- which interestingly enough, it certainly is, next to the big sale events.

I hope they have a clown.. preferably robot.

Digital Painting Process: "Opal"

2010-02-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

Opalescent Descent:

I've been watching a lot of time lapse videos of the art making process lately. It's been really interesting to see people's processes. I haven't actually looked into how to record one of those myself, but I do make it habit to save frequently and so we have this here--!

This a short process post about making this digital painting of a character called Opal in the comic "The Front" by Jerzy Drozd.

The author is of course is one of the hosts on "Art & Story", a podcast that explores the deep ideas within the craft of cartooning. I originally read the comic to better understand the references made in the show about considerations for character development, panel layout, dialogue, themes, pacing... it goes on. Like mentioned, the podcast digs really deep!

As most of the comics I've been reading lately have been more for grown-ups, the book was a surprisingly entertaining read as all-ages content. It hammered a good point: "All-ages" doesn't mean "For kids only"! Solid storytelling with compelling characters and a lot fun, find it on Indy Planet here.

The podcast is also on my most-recommended list not just for cartoonists, not just writers-- but any folks out there with some curious spark in them. A musician friend of mine and I have can rap and relate about some of the creative topics covered.

Further thanks goes out to another podcaster and prolifically cool artist, Chris Oatley. This drawing was done to test out a set of Photoshop brushes that he offers on his site. It's also chock full of other great resources and tutorials. "Chris Oately's Artcast" has great insight presented in a really down to earth way. Great accompaniment during long nights drawing at the art table!

Now on to the Process! :

1. Drawin' it out loose

I like sketching pretty small for thumbnails-- often on a post it note or similar size. I use a bunch of these to figure out which ones work best without being hampered too much with detail before drawing out a blueline at final size.

If I like one of the loose thumbnail sketches enough though, I'll scan it in, blow up the image, and use a lightbox to draw over it. In this case, I used the iSight camera on my laptop. This little device has more uses than just making silly faces in PhotoBooth (which I do plenty of too..;)

2. Addin' some color

Import the picture into Photoshop. This was using CS3.

I used a reference image from the character profiles on "The Front" website to keep on model and started laying down some color on a separate layer from the sketched linework using Multiply in the Blending Mode. I do this often so I have an Action set to do this with one stroke of a Function key. Shortcut key here will be in []. These little seconds saved add up and really speed up the workflow for me~

3. Start turnin' the 'drawing' into a 'painting'

I'll often try to keep a bit of the linework showing through--There's often more geture captured in those initial lines. Making those extemporaneous lines doesn't happen for me as much on a tablet versus good ole pencil. I imagine the Cintiq has much more mark making possibilites.

Using Hue & Saturation [cntrl-U] and clicking the Colorize box, I changed the linework into blue lines to match with his base color.

4. Renderin' out the forms

At this point, I've merged the layers into one above the neutral gray. I pushed around some of the sketched blue lines using the Smudge tool [R], and started using one of the brushes in the Oatley tool preset: "A_Sketch Pen_50". I like how it responds to pressure, even on my inexpensive Wacom Bamboo (my tool of choice on the go).

My challenge with this character was trying to show some parts of him as traslucent, like real opals.

...not sure how his circulatory system works or how he puts a shirt on over his Popeye arms in the morning, but I think it's okay cause he looks cool~

5. Checkn' the tones

I turned down the saturation [cntrl+U] to see the grayscale values and see what parts of the drawing fell flat. I check the levels balance [cntrl+L] to move the sliders around to get a some good contrast. For other parts that still needed tweaking, I used the burn tool and dodge tools [O] to punch up darks or lights, respectively.

Though I think these tools really help in expediency, they do take out a lot of the control of painting using a palette of colors and traditional painting methods, so be aware~

Using about 80% Opacity for the brush, I paint over more parts. Once I have a general set of colors I'm liking, I'll sample from other parts of the images using the eyedropper tool [I].

6. Addn' a background

And finally here we go. I went through a few iterations for the background... many didn't work for the lighting on him since I hadn't considered where he was before finishing. I got a bit to caught up in the pose. I ended up referencing some panels in the comic for the tech-inspired background and make some sense of the rim lighting on his pants.

A lesson re-enforced-- think about the environment before getting too wrapped up in rendering bells and whistles of a character!

I have some ideas for my next one to keep this point in mind. More to come, hope you enjoyed :]

Pencil Sketches

2010-02-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

Clown College

I've been working on a short comic--inspired enough from the Art & Story podcast, finally giving my go at making a short. So far, I'll just say that it involves a robot boy that performs in a circus and the story itself will rely heavily on pantomime (like the first part of "Wall-E").

Also check out exciting developments for independent cartoonists with the UP! Fair going on in November! There's some time maybe to save up for a plane ticket~

I also found this little sketch of a "Mad House"--

Sketches for a sketchblog

2010-01-23T14:05:00.000-08:00

Gentleman Beard

Just a short post here-- a watercolor sketch from a drawing session at CSULB a little while back. I thought this model had a really great look, full of character.

I'll have to clean up and post some digital drawings from a Dr. Sketchy's too.

Avius: trite wit

2009-12-27T16:28:00.000-08:00

"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 tjielp
English: 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

2009-12-15T19:30:00.000-08:00

'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

2009-12-15T17:28:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-07T17:15:00.000-08:00

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.

CbugX and Hadrian

2009-11-28T17:26:00.000-08:00

Wacom Work:

A couple new sketches. See the process GIFs for both of these on my Flickr page: "CbugX" and "Guard Hadrian". I think naming characters is real fun part of design, gives them more personality.
I always thought the stock symbol cbugx had a funny sound...
I wanted the guard to have some regality to him so why not a wall-building Roman emperor...

Hit a bit of misfortune recently in getting my laptop stolen. A good reminder to back up files and be ever alert. I've since been spending some more quality time at the desktop though. The Intuos 3 definitely has it's pressure sensitivity advantages compared to the Bamboo Fun (if the name didn't give it's 'hobby' level functionality).
I haven't tried out the the newest Intuoses, but trying out the Cintiq, sure makes an investment in a Modbook more attactive.

Jedi Knight training/drawing process

2009-11-24T16:06:00.001-08:00

Kalik Vrosh:

'Cause every Star Wars character needs a cool name. This was done for CGHub's bi-weekly 2D drawing jam. A wealth of talent on there with enthusiastic creatives to keep me motivated.
There was another sketch of a duel I started after first reading about this irresistible theme that I'll post soon-- just a few more things to tweak.

I've found that most of my favorite characters develop out of teeny tiny thumbnails that cross out the option of too much detail.
Expect more gamer-ly art done in this method to be added in the next few weeks~

More Coffee Sketches

2009-10-27T15:03:00.001-07:00

Going Postal:

This is the most recent spread for a project Postal Sketches, where several artist friends mail a sketchbook between each other, drawing up some inspiration from the previous pages. I had forgotten to link to the blog this whole time! Be sure to check it out though. Great fun to see what develops in the sketchbook and keep in contact in such an old school way-- go snail mail!

I decided to stick to using ink and coffee for this spread since I've been using it as my medium of choice in my own sketchbook these days. Check out below some recent doodles from a trip to San Fransisco's Alternative Press Expo (APE) and around my own town's coffee shops.

... subsequent sketches to come in more frequent posts :]

Comics and Coffeestains

2009-10-10T16:12:00.001-07:00

Attention Space Cadets:

I recently teamed up with old college pal Ralph Miranda to submit pages for this contest put up by Frank Cho and Doug Murray. Essentially a pencil and ink test, 6 pages of script were provided by Murray and character designs by Cho. The winner would score a contract to do the series published through Image Comics.
Thanks to nuggets of wisdom imparted from Art and Story and a fellow comic buddy at my side, we were able to submit all the pages in just about a weeks time.
Finalists will be chosen at Baltimore Comic-Con on 10/11 and winner 21 days after. To see all six pages of our entry, check it out here.

Clumsy Coffee

As frequenter of coffee and tea shops, I found myself without my watercolor kit one day-- but found a great alternative! I later found a series that superstar illustrator Christoph Niemann did on napkins and later some more by digital matte artist Mitchel Stuart . It's sparked some ideas to do a sort of meta-aware story of characters that live in a coffestained sketchbook world. I think something many creative types might relate to well with our addic-- err love, for the drink~

Ravens and Workshops

2009-09-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

"Corvus Moon"

"A murder of crows
one finds a fanciful perch
almost haiku ..."

I have a new Threadless t-shirt submission in the running! Won'tcha please vote (high :]) and perhaps leave a comment?? Chances significantly improve with public support and i'd be much obliged with yours!
Based on one of many ideas involving ravens/crows I've been tinkering with-- I feel like bird motifs seem more popular in design these days. Hopefully I can ride a hip wave or... glide on a favorable wind~

Walsers Workshop

This Saturday (9/26), I will be doing a drawing and painting lecture demo at Walser's Art Supplies and Digital Printing. I will be talking about Grumbacher brushes and ink techniques and how these can be applied to the commercial illustration field. I'll be touching on both development and technical use of the mediums. There will be four sessions throughout the day between 10AM - 4PM. Seating is free but limited. You can also score some free product samples too! Click on the image to see the PDF details :]

Medicus Rex

2009-09-12T06:01:00.000-07:00

NouveauBots/Robotica

The third installment in this series of Alphonse Mucha inspired peices. I've got several more themes I've been wanting to take a crack at-- just a matter of carving out the time. I love playing around with and bringing together dissimilar concepts like mechanical things with very organic or plant like ones. I found a beautiful book on Mucha on the bargain shelf at Barnes & Noble and couldn't resist trying apply the plantlike forms to a new age. The book's also a fascinating biography of how he made it as both an illustrator and fine artist throughout his career.

I'm also looking to see how old and dead languages can relate to technology. Both Latin and binary are pretty vital to our language and communication, but we don't really pay much attention and they run in the backgrounds of our daily lives.

In the previous ones in this series I used tech symbols without much intention... I'm inclined to switch them out for things that make more sense to them now~ For this one, finding the origins and use of the caduceus medical symbol was an interesting read. My next one is looking to be a bit more topical... which means I better jump on that soon in case it turns out to be a fad~

[about the title: he just looked like a "Rex" to me... maybe he's operating on his own motherboard? eeew gross~:P ]

Divingbell Behemoth

2009-09-08T02:07:00.000-07:00

Movers and Shakers

"I have seen landscapes...which, under a particular light,
made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge.
Nature has that in her which compels us to invent giants:
and only giants will do."

--- C.S. Lewis

I found this quote on Charles Vess' site and thought it fitting. I'm working on a series of watercolors of local beaches and marinas that are destined to have giants in them. The above monster was one designed to fit into one of these paintings of Huntington Beach Pier but found it's way into this old postcard look instead. Now I just might want to do olde tyme postcards instead~

Costumed in Characters

2009-08-27T01:41:00.000-07:00

O Drawing nights...

...they are just so much more fun with an enthusiastic model--especially one equipped with a wide array of costumes and props. Starting at the top we have Mei, twin to ole pal Mai who instantly became original living characters with hats and swords on hand. We also have our favorite shoe-gazer rock star Rodney. A marker drawing of one of his four cats soaked through the opposite page... We're surrounded by felines during these sessions, so felt fit to keep it. Drawing nights set to good tunes-- a great way to keep hand skills familiar in my often digital world.

I like this one because something about the addition of the nerf gun made her feel like part of the Serenity/Firely universe.
Other Characters

My posts on here haven't been as frequent as I like. I had to glance at my own blog header to remind myself to let some sketches loose up on here. And so...

A masochistic fighter; taking delight in inflicting pain in battle as much as receiving it.
--a little on the darker side, but a concept spurred by conversations with a friend who had an idea for an animated fight sequence. In talking about the choreography, my mind kept wandering to the why and how-comes of a fighter's particular history... a fun way to brainstorm character ideas.
A character for a story where a magical weapon comes into play. The oversized glove might have something to do with being able to wield it.. the sword needs some more work, to be influenced by fountain pen nibs.

More Nouveau Robotica

2009-08-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

Smells like Machine Spirit

Continuing with the series of Art Nouveau interwined with technology-- This one is a sort of advertisement for fine machine oils. I have another in the works that is 'medical' related. I have a few other themes in mind that I'm looking forward to doing that will use some original robot designs. This one has a lot influence from the cool Cunningham Bjork androids and the "I, Robot" styles.

Sketch up

A sketch of the current one in progress:
and here we have the Canadian Javanaut.
Not sure quite what to make of him but he does love his coffee... eh!?