Ionic Asterion

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"

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

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

"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

"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

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!

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

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

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.