Royal Artist

Comic an Hour Day - Comic Number 7

2012-02-01T18:00:00.000-08:00

Workin'

This is what I imagine my monitor sees all day.

Comic an Hour Day - Comic Number 6

2012-02-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

Coffee!

Comic an Hour Day - Comic Number 5

2012-02-01T16:00:00.000-08:00

View from my desk.

Comic an Hour Day - Comic Number 4

2012-02-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

Soup spoon from Whole Foods cut my lip.

I was not a fan.

Comic an Hour Day - Comic Number 3

2012-02-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

You are what you eat.

I had soup for lunch.

Comic an Hour Day - Comic Number 2

2012-02-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

Lunch Time... I think it's lunch time.

I think I need to figure out something more fun or all of these will be me sitting at my desk.

Comic an Hour Day - Comic Number 1

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Going to try and do a quick little comic or drawing every hour today... because it is Comic an Hour Day!

Got a Philz and cupcake this morning

EPIC WIN!

Wyella "Beard Cutter"

2012-01-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

Wyella "Beard Cutter"

She has made it her life's quest to steal the power of all the wizards, which as we all know is held with in their beards. It is quiet an accomplishment to sneak up upon a wizard and hack off their beard.

I have been really into the artist Sam Bosma who does all of these black and white character designs from pop culture stuff and D&D games he plays. I find them really fun and I wanted to start posting some more fun fantasy characters and do some silly and fun works. I want to try and do these quick and have them be Black and Grey (tattoo terminology). This didn't come out exactly how I wanted I feel like I was trying to keep it too tight and I want to try and be looser. Though I might just need to try and draw her like 5 time in the same amount of time.

Laura Portrait 2012 2

2012-01-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

I was not really happy with the last portrait that I did last time so I decided to make another one today. I think this one turned out much cuter.

Laura Portrait 2012

2012-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

My awesome girlfriend!

2012 Selfportrait

2012-01-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

I am trying to start making art early in the morning, and I am usually dressed and look kinda like this. This Year I have resolved to post art more regularly on my blog and I though that the new year required a new portrait. Also in an effort to make art more regularly I am going to try and do some 30 minute or Less digital paintings in the hopes of being faster and having the bar for completing art being lowered so I get more done.

Christmas Card 2011 Mr. Royal and the Electric Mayhem Christmas

2011-12-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone!
Well this year I just barely made it under the wire for the getting the Christmas Card done "on time" this year as in I got the card done before Christmas.
This year no one really had any ideas on what should be going on in the card. Then Laura, Alex, Uncle Ricjard, Nathan and I saw the Muppet movie for Thanksgiving so my mom threw out the idea that we should all be Muppets in this years card. So I drew us all as our own Muppets.

(Rough Sketch with us as Muppets)

I also had the idea to make us into Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the Muppet Show band.

I decided to ink this version and make it clearer what was going on.

Every one liked the Dr. Teeth version better so I went ahead and worked on that version. I found it really hard to find time to devote to working on the card this year with school, work and being a procrastinator.

I wish I had thought out the layout better, but over all I am really happy with how the card turned out.

My Skyrim Character

2011-12-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I have posted here... or anywhere on the internet, life has gotten busy and overwhelming in a hurry. But I have a free day and I have been lusting to make art for fun and for frivolity. I thought I would come back with something that I've been excited about, SKYRIM, it is awesome and I wake up early most days to play it. So far I have a Nord character named Graphthor, he like big axes and dislike bandits and draug. When fighting dragons he finds a bow to be a waste of time and just stands at their mouth getting burned with fire while he wails on them with his axe. He wants to a thief, but he isn't very good right now.

AM Q5 ASN2 Dialogue Week 4

2011-10-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

This week is the start of a new assignment. This Assignment I will have until the end of the quarter, this one will be two character dialogue scene.

Here are my audio clips, the first one is from Serenity, the second one is from Office Space and the last one is from Planet of the Apes, I didn't list the source in the video because I got kinda chewed out for being excited about clips because of their sources. I picked these 3 clips out of a total of 12 that I found and showed to people and probably twice that many that didn't work for one reason or another.

This is my character description and scene description, hopefully you can read this if not well you'll get the feeling for it from the pictures and from the later animation I will do.

Based on what I can do with Bishop 2.0, I created these sketches for my potential characters and sets.

I have already hear from my mentor on this assignment and I got and A, which is awesome because those are hard to come by, and he was impressed with my drawings which was also a feather in my cap seeing as he was an old school animator for Disney. He really liked number 1 and number 2, those were my favorites as well, I am kinda leaning towards number 2, I have a better idea on what I want to do and what it is going to be.

This week I also had to make another face, I really like doing these assignments. I bought two books all about people making faces a reference for artists, one was all adults and one was babies to teens. These books are great references for people making faces, I could do with out the images of people using them to make art, those seem kinda dumb and make it seem more like a joke then actual reference book. Great books though and I recommend them.

Failed Portrait of My Brother Alex

2011-10-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

My brother Alex asked me to do a portrait for him for his sound engineering demo, until recently I have been super busy. I found a free night to work on he portrait.

He didn't like it.
Kinda makes me want to do a series of failed portraits... But how can I be assured that they will fail. More to come later.

AM Q5 ASN1 Dialogue Week 3

2011-10-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Here is the final version of my Tombstone shot. I am pretty happy with it. I can't wait to do more I know they will only get better.

This week I also got to make more faces. I hope we get to do even more later in the quarter.

Angry Baby

Scared

Pathetic Death Day 2011

2011-10-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

Four years ago today my best friend Patrick died.

In honor of his memory, and because I didn't have a chance to make a portrait on his birthday, I made a portrait of him today. I painted him Dia De Los Muertos because that holiday is coming up soon and it is a day to remember and talk to the dead, which I wish I could do today.

AM Q5 ASN1 Dialogue Week 2

2011-10-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

I got some great feed back from my mentor this week and it helped me to create a better look for the animation that was more consistent with the feel I was going for. I still have one more week I think it still needs a little TLC and then I could have a piece that I really like.

This week we had the additional assignment to copy faces that we found in "magazines" I took magazines to mean the internet. This assignment was really fun. I love playing with faces. I hope we get to do a couple more of these.

Giddy

Confused

AM Q5 ASN1 Dialogue Week 1

2011-10-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

New quarter and a new mentor, the mentor I have this quarter is old school, Jay Jackson, who learned from the Nine Old Men and who worked on films with Tim Burton. I am very excited to learn from a mentor
"No school, like the old school."
-Frank Thomas The Incredibles

This week I kinda worked out of order, I did start with my reference but my reference didn't really capture what I wanted. Though I feel I need to look at it more and taker note of the times where I do extenuate the words and find more small things to add to sweeten what I have. I also need to do a pass where it is just my mouth. Need to make sure I brush before that one.

After shooting reference and kind of ignoring it I went into the animation, I don't know why, I think I just wanted to play around and then I just couldn't stop. I ended up with something that I am actually kind of happy with. It helped me to tighten up the body in some parts and to better know what to accent with the body. I kinda needed the face to know the body. Even when I draw I start with the head and all things lead from that.

After the animation I did some of the worst planning drawings I have done yet . I know I can do better and I think I will do better next week. Need to figure out a time of day to start doing animation every day.

I am looking forward to next week and getting some feed back and just making the shot better step by step.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week12 Progress Reel

2011-09-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Another quarter under my belt. Here you can see all the progress I have made. I was too tried to make a new header so I reused the old one. I've learned so much I hope I remember all of it for when I get to start a new scene. I hope that during my break I make some time to keep working on my shot. I think I plan on knocking out a couple of sections and cleaning them up. Until next quarter, I think I will game it up for a while, I got Dead Island waiting at home

FAF: Spider-man Drinking Tea for Laura

2011-09-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

Spider-man Drinking Tea

Zombie Pandark

2011-09-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Zombie Stuffed Panda

Zombie Rick-O

2011-09-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

AM Q4 ASN2 Week11 Dialogue The Sweet Shop

2011-09-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Aaaaand Done. Well done until next quarter where I unlock the face and get to do the lip synch.

Well I think I find my self where I usually find my self at the end of the quarter, understanding the all the lessons at the end and wanting to start over because I now see what that shot could be. But that is how I learn, there are a lot of parts that I am happy with, but mostly all I can see are the flaws. From what I understand that never goes away.
I don't really like the beginning any more, it feels like it's there for the sake of animation not to explain who this guy is. I think after the quarter is done I will get rid of the swooping look up and have him fingering the jar more and then having a curt look up and then reavealing that he is happy to see Johnny Ringo. I would have incorporated it this week, but I didn't realize that until it was too late. Oh well, that is enough for this quarter, maybe one more cleaning pass before I turn in my reel.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week 10 Dialogue The Sweet Shop

2011-09-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Two steps forward two steps back seems to be the way that I animate. Here is hoping that that isn't true this week.

This is feeling closer and closer. I know it still needs some more polish and I need to track some arcs, but I feel that this is well on it's way to being a complete piece.

Pen and Ink Skull Self-Portrait

2011-08-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

I know I already posted something like this that I did digitally, however, I really like it and want to make more of them. Here is an inked version from my watercolor moleskine, that I still plan to paint.

Bearded Skull Study

2011-08-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

For some reason for a while I had been obsessed with the idea of doing a series of painting with skulls with mustaches and beards, I had done several sketches of celebrity skulls. I want to get back to the idea someday, but this is the first one that I did, it could use some more TLC but it's a good start.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week9 Dialogue The Sweet Shop

2011-08-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

Splines have been kicking my ass and once I have everything moving smoothly I can see what is and what isn't working. Looking forward to a good crit so I can get it to a nice clean space. I still have 2 weeks to make it all spiffy. I think I can do it!

Giant's Head

2011-08-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

I dislike selling paintings, they feel like they need to be something more then what my hands can make. However they needed work for the auction and I think I usually am underwhelmed by what I make because I see what it is not instead of what it is. Though I am excited for a severed Giants Head to be in a silent auctio0n at Arts Benicia. Usually the show is filled with flowers, landscapes and abstract pieces, so I am interested to see if any one makes a bid on my strange piece.
The origin of this piece had to do with a threadless design competition for Adventure Time I was drawing Finn the human slaying a giant and I drew a few really cool severed giant's heads. It was really fun I kinda want to do some more and really develop something here.

Moleskine Self-portrait painting

2011-08-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

I start all of my sketch books with a self-portrait and that includes my water color Moleskine. Laura thinks this portrait is creepy.

Giant's Head Study

2011-08-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

I am working on a painting for Arts Benicia's Annual Benefit Auction and before I started working on the larger final piece I decided to do a color study of the work first. I busted out my water color Moleskine, which I had been neglecting. I am really happy with it and I plan on doing the big one tonight, because it appears to be due tomorrow.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week8 The Sweet Shop Blocking

2011-08-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Yay, for the most part my mentor really liked what I did. After a couple of weeks of less then being with pleased with my assignments I turned one in that I was happy with and my mentor liked. It is nice. She gave me some great notes on how to improve the motion. I really like everything that I have going on in it now. Just need to finish cleaning it up so I can start adding some and flourishes.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week7 Dialogue The Sweet Shop

2011-08-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

I chose Clip number 2 with Val Kilmer playing Doc Holiday from "Tombstone" I feel that it has some more fun and subtle face animation to play with and I am more excited to try and do a creepy character.

I was disappointed to find out that the Bishop rig that I got for this assignment has next to no face controls, just eyes, eyelids and jaw. I was all gungho for playing with a face and a lot of what i have planed for this shot and that I want to do with this shot has everything to do with the face. Oh well, it can wait, I will get the body down and then have whole weeks to play with his face. This blocking pass was meant to just get all of the body movements going in the right place so I can start smoothing those out as soon as possible. I want to mostly play with hands and the face in this exercise so I am trying to keep his body movements as simple as possible.
Though I do love working with Bishop he seems to be pretty easy to pose in appealing poses and his head is a reasonable size, so far he is the best model that I have worked with. I look forward to bishop 2.0 when I really get to play with the face.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week6 Dialogue

2011-08-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

YAY! I finally get to animated a character with a face, I love drawing faces and I love working with animation face rigs.

I shot reference for this assignment however, for some reason I was feeling really self conscious and out of my element having to shoot it on vacation, so I really didn't like what I did and didn't find them useful (so I am not going to bother to post it like I usually do). So when I went into planning I decided to just ignore it and try and do something better. This actually led to how I want to plan animation from now on. Before the way that animation mentor kinda taught me was to film reference first and then do sketches and now I want to do sketches and then film reference and change the sketches to fit the reference. I still need to re-shoot reference for these shots but I think it should make things a lot faster this time around.

SHOT 1: the idea is that this a high ranking knight (I have been reading "A Game of Thrones") is sending his lacky squire to go retrieve something for him, the knight is preoccupied with something else in the room playing the squire little mind.
SHOT 2: a creepy, vicious and soft spoken sweet shop owner who has a malicious relationship with his customers sees a regular who loves a particular candy that he buys exclusively and the sweet shop own is out of the candy and takes great pleasure in pointing out to thus man that he is out of the candy.
SHOT3: a father playing with his daughter who is a selfish who always wants more, he is fed up with her materialistic attitude. He can not take any more when she was complaining about how the couch she just bought her was wrong and she wanted the nicer one.

AM Q4 ASN1 Week5 Redux No More Milk Refining

2011-08-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

I went on vacation to Maui with Laura's Family when this was due and during that week before I had zero time to spend on this assignment. However, I was able to get my blocking to a better spot and I was able to simplify the actions and adding parts where the character thinks. This is the very first pass of clean up. It still needs a lot of work I am hoping that I can work on it some more. I think once I get back into regular hours I will try and spend my mornings working on this.

Only One EP

2011-07-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

My best friend in Kindergarten John Yuen approached me about doing a project with him. He wanted an album cover for the rapper Only One self titled album. I was more then happy to take up the project, I really enjoy getting to do album art and working with other creative people.
Logo
I started by making a logo for John in Illustrator he wanted the logo to look similar to the Alfred E. Newmen style logo from the Soundpeople Music, except he wanted it to look like him. I really like getting to make logos and working in Illustrator though the really cool part is he will probably keep using it and I think he has talked about making shirts with the design on it and I am a total sucker for that.Single
I probably should have posted this a couple of months ago when it came out but here is the single for the album. But it didn't really show off too many of my skills beyond some graphic design, figured it would be best to just wait until everything was going out.
Cover
Back
The back cover was a bit of a bastard for me. I had to make some revisions on it later and I had lost all of the original work files, my old computer died and then my back up hard drive fell off a table and doesn't work. So I had to take an old Jpeg and do some edits on the back titles. This led to me having to erase some of the back bridge, which turned out to look kinda cool so not the worst revision. Though it was just frustrating having to deal with the memory of all my lost data.
Check out the promotional video for Duet.
You can get the album here.

AM Q4 ASN1 Week4 Redux No More Milk Spline Pass 1

2011-07-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

Blocking for 3 weeks in a row, but the end goal is to have a good piece of animation and if that is what it takes then that is what it takes. My not from my mentor was to keep it simple so I eliminated a lot of business at the end. I think it is a stronger piece now. It still needs some work, but I feel like all the pieces are there now and after a few small tweaks I should be able to get into splines next week without too much pain.

Gunnar

2011-07-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

This is something that I have been doodling at work and wanted to do something more complete. Sorry every one who is waiting on things from me, need to do something just for me.

Grandpa Swede Portrait 02

2011-07-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Zombie Hipster

2011-07-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

AM Q4 ASN1 Week3 Redux No More Milk Blocking Part2

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

So last week, my mind was all about working on the part where the character was tired, I am not sure why. I think it was different from what I have been doing, but that is not where the entertainment is or where the point of the scene is. So I kinda needed to go back to the drawing board and needed some new ideas for the ending. I decided to go back to planning. I started by going to facebook and asking people what I should do, after my mentor that we should consult with more people and that it doesn't matter where an idea comes from. Facebook quickly devolved into something unhelpful and very internet like, it was not the most focused feed back. Though it had some cool ideas and helped me to actually think of what I wanted to do that would not be cliche. After I figured out what I wanted to do I filmed more reference, where I broke a bowl trying out my new idea, for that reason I only shot it once, but I was able to get everything that I wanted from it.
Revised page 1
This is very similar to the last planning or more it has the most repeated drawings from my last planning. My mentor said to nix him turning to the fridge it didn't add emotion and it just wasted time. This was great and gave me a lot more time for the tired part to be slow and for there to be more ideas in the angry part.
Revised page 2
Here are all the new ideas that I had for the little tantrum that the character has, I have him slam the empty jug down, throw the bottle cap and then shove the bowl of cereal back into the box. I know when i discover there is no milk when I have already poured a bowl of cereal I put the cereal back. With that in my i figured this character was so mad that he wanted to do that but was too angry to simply do that and just shoved the cereal bowl into the box. I also like the idea because it leads to lost of big fast movements to be a counter point to the minimal movements of the tired part.

Revised blocking for this week
I feel like it could still use some fine tuning, I didn't have the best time management skills this weekend and could have spent more time on it, but I feel like I have all the ideas there now and that I could move into splines and refine as I go. I am looking forward to my critique and I want to try and show it to more people and get more feed back so I can be doing splines all week.

Zombie Captain Cadaver 100 days

2011-07-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

AM Q4 ASN1 Week2 Redux No More Milk

2011-07-10T12:00:00.001-07:00

It feels great getting back into blocking, it is my favorite part. I wish I could just hand it to some one else to clean up now. But Right now I know this piece still needs a lot of work. Though I Had a good timing modeling and getting the scene ready, even if maya tried betray me and caused a few headaches. In the end I was able to block it out. I wish I had more time to play with the timing more and add more things on the back end.

So just a refresher, the idea is the the guy has just woken up and he is not a morning person, he is on auto pilot and is being slow. Every day he eats a bowl of cereal, it's his routine and it is important to him. He trys to pour his milk on his cereal and discovers that, his douchebag room mate has once again drank all the milk and put the freakin carton back. This disturbs him and he is feverish to try and get any milk out and he explodes in to action.

While I was working on it I was also on auto pilot and when I started animating him taking the milk out of the fridge I instantly animated it like it was a full jug. I was about half way through before I realized what I had just done, and then I thought, this might actually make this more entertaining, the guy is so on autopilot that he moves like it is full.
I regrettably just had this idea right before I am about to turn the assignment in but, I think for Next week I might have him start at the fridge and have him open the door and then turn and pour the milk and have him explode more. Right now I feel like I can't feel the beats because of the movement and the time, like I see the beats, but I think the beats can be push way more.

Arts Benicia Mosaic Project

2011-07-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

During the Open Studios (I also created the flier for the show) which was may 1st, (I finally got around to uploading the pictures) this year they did the Mosaic Project for the first time where they will be raffling off 144 little panels created by some artists in the community. Laura and I created panels for the exhibition.

144 tiles
It was a smash success and all of the tiles were sold. I have no idea who got my tile but I got a tile of one of the artist members whom I like very much.
My tile, The Octopus and the Skull
Laura's Tile, The Bunny Skull
It was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to doing it again next year.

Zombie Homeless

2011-07-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

AM Q4 ASN1 Week1 Redux No More Milk

2011-07-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

Once again back into the breach.
This Quarter my mentor is Melanie Cordan and she has quiet the impressive resume. She seems super nice and intense as a mentor, I am really stoked for this quarter this I feel will be my make it or break it quarter.

It took me about half the week to come up with the concept for this. I kept trying to figure out a catalyst for the change in emotion, this assignment needs two different beats where the character changes emotion. Last time I did this I tried to have the character have an internal shift, and it just takes too long for 10 seconds of animation. All the other ideas had to do with the character getting hit on the head, which felt too cliche' and then one morning I drank all the milk and Laura was none too pleased and I thought this would work great for a change in some ones attitude, from tired/ lethargic to angry/ energetic.

I started out by shooting video reference again, I feel a little out of practice and I have to be mindful that I am in an apartment now and can't just bang about really loudly. I wasn't 100% on what I wanted to do so i tried to shoot 10 different attempts. From those 10 I decided that these 3 were the best of the different ideas that I came up with while we were filming the piece.

Based off the video reference I started picking and choosing my favorite parts, the first shot was my favorite and i tried to base most of it off of that one and I took what I wanted out of the other ones.
I stated as I usually do by just kinda hand animating/ laying out the scene in photoshop, however this time the end result was less then aesthetically pleasing. Because all of the action happens in a limited space it's hard to see the variation in the movements, I usually take up more space in the scene, so the layered effect was not very effective. However, the point of this is to get my break downs looking correctly and help me to make it all flow and look correctly with each other. (I already saw my crit, because I forgot to post this on Sunday, and my new mentor Melanie was to take this and make an animatic with it, which sound like a great idea)
page1
page2
Based off of my critique I need to work on the ending where he is mad. Some of the things I did were kind of Cliche and I need to add more fury and make him a little more animated in the end. I have a couple of Ideas on how I can improve them and Melanie gave me a couple of starting points for me to jump off of to improve the idea. I am really looking forward to getting back into Maya and doing some blocking.

Zombie Laura

2011-07-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

Zombie Luchador 1

2011-06-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Re-Animation Mentor

2011-06-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

I have returned to Animation Mentor. This quarter promises to be challenging and I know I will learn a lot. I hope that I can keep up and do a good job at school and at work at the same time.

August Munny

2011-06-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

During the big 100 year sale at Blick I bought two Munny figures with the intent of making August and Gilda figures.
Here is the sketch I made on the August Munny with the little yellow pen that came in the box.

Front

Back

I had never thought about having a toy of something I have made, but now that I've made one, I would love to see some one mass produce one of my designs, that sounds like fun.
Preview for the Gilda Munny; she stills needs a lot of work. The pen that she came with was black and the sketch shows through the acrylic paint I've been using, so right now I'm in the process of sanding the ink off of her... albeit slowly. Soon she will have a different design closer to the sketch that I made for the two!

Zombie Steph

2011-06-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Zombie August

2011-06-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

Zombie Gilda

2011-06-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

Falling for You

2011-06-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

It was my co-worker Chris's 5 year anniversary earlier this week and he asked me to make a drawing of Bunnies sky diving so I did just that.It probably should have said, "Still falling For You" in retrospect.

Unicorn Vs. Dinosaur

2011-06-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Laura was feeling down on a while ago and asked me to draw her a Unicorn and a Dinosaur fighting. I quickly made a sketch to brighten her day and decided to finish it up, Enjoy.

FAF: Bowie and Zazu

2011-06-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

I am a huge fan of Orc Stain, I even bought some original art work by James Stokoe (which has yet to arrive).

My favorite characters are Bowie, the poison thrower, and her monster companion Zazu.

Zombie Nerd Artist 1

2011-06-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Zombie Kawaii Girl 01

2011-06-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Zombie Male Nurse 1

2011-06-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

FAF: Batman Portrait

2011-06-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

BATMAN!

FAF: Wolverine Portrait

2011-06-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

WOLVERINE!

It has been a while since I have posted one of the these, and by all means this is a meager offering, but I am trying to get back into blogging and posting art. The best way to get back in is to just do it so here is the first of many Fan Art Fridays!

Laura Portrait 2011 02

2011-06-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

This was one of the warm up drawings that I did for the caricature gig I did last Saturday as well as one of my early tests with a new technique I am trying.

With this I added a simple color layer and had the layer in color mode. I think I need to go crazy with the grey tones to make this work better.

I added a few more layers and played with the modes and it came out like this; it was pretty much what I wanted it when I started working on it and it's fun to play with. Looking forward to doing more with this technique.

The Fat Knight Returns

2011-06-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of Laura and I as Batman and Robin from the Dark Knight Returns.
Laura recently dyed her hair blonde and her new look reminded me of the Robin from Dark Knight, so to go with my drawing of myself and my friends as Batman (circa 2006) the Fat Knight has returned.

I recently purchased a new set of pens for a characture gig I did for a high school grad night. I noticed that a lot comics already have the greys in them before colors, so I started to experiment with drawing, inking and shading my drawings with markers and then coloring them in Photoshop.

Laura Portrait

2011-03-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

Laura 2011 portrait

Lub Kiss

2011-03-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

It has been too long since I posed anything so I thought I would quickly share a little doodle I did for Laura.

Job Daruma Finished!

2011-02-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

Way back in September of 2009 I received a Daruma from Laura. Today I can no color in his other eye because my prayer has been answered, I now have a full time job.
As a friendly reminder for those who don't know, a Daruma is a Japanese wishing doll; when one is about to embark on a project one paints in the right eye of the Daruma doll making a wish or a vow to complete the task at hand. The person is then supposed to put their efforts and energy towards the task and the Daruma supplies the luck. When the task has been completed one paints in the other eye to signify the achievement.

FAF: Chewy and Chewy

2011-02-18T12:00:00.000-08:00

The pet name I have for Laura is Chewy,
So I drew us as Han Solo (Laura) and Chewbacca (Eric)
So this is "Chewy and Chewy"

Pokemon Valentine 2

2011-02-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

Pokemon Valentine
For Taylor and Justin
HAPPY VALENTINES

I Can't Bear To Be With Out You

2011-02-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

A Valentine for Rick-O
Happy Valentines!

Pokemon Valentine

2011-02-14T08:00:00.001-08:00

Poke'mon Valentine
with Eric (SNORLAX) and Laura (CLEFAIRY)
HAPPY VALENTINES!

AM Leave of Absence

2011-02-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

I am gainfully employed, and it is a full time gig too! This however means I do not have the time to work on animation and I have to take a leave of absence from Animation Mentor. I know so sad, right when i was really starting to get the hang of it.
I hope that by the summer that I have the routine down and will have the time and energy to continue, however, right now I just can't do it.

Linhenykus monodactylus

2011-01-30T17:04:00.000-08:00

Linhenykus monodactylus
I drew this for Draw a Dinosaur Day 2011

AM Q4 ASN1 The Painters Lament splines 01

2011-01-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

Splines! I was able to get it to splines and I was able to clean it up pretty well. This was the least painful transition for me and I am pretty happy about it as well. It still needs some work and the timing needs a little work but so far I think this is the best assignment I have worked on at AM. Hoping I get a good critique and I will be able to get a nice piece out of it.

Burlesque Babe pinup 01

2011-01-29T17:07:00.000-08:00

New project that I am working on with Laura. Expect to see much more of Burlesque Babe this year.

FAF: Boba Fett Skull

2011-01-28T05:14:00.000-08:00

I'll try and keep these short from now on after reading Dan Hipp's blog, it seems the point of the art blog is the art and not me pontificating about it. If people want to know more they can ask. Here is a cross section of Boba Fett's Helmet with his skull inside.

Kill-O-Byte 01

2011-01-27T01:19:00.000-08:00

Concept art from "Salavged" part of an international short film I am working on, i.e. my friend Ted Lister got a job in England at Moving Pictures Company (MPC). Congrats Ted!

AM Q4 ASN1 The Painters Lament Blocking 02

2011-01-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

The painter's anguish is not over, here is my second blocking pass. I got some great feed back from my mentor, I like his critiquing style. Next week I will be going to splines I hope I can get everything I want done in blocking early in the week.

AM Q4 ASN1 The Painters Lament Blocking

2011-01-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

So I wake up on Monday, I make my coffee and breakfast then I was going to get started on working on my homework. I go to turn on the machine, and it won't turn on, I try several outlets in the house and the AC adapter won't light up. I end up taking the laptop to Geek Squad and they tell me that the mother board is fried and that it would cost 700 dollars to send it in for a new one (F*ck). So I order a new computer, however, it is going to take several weeks for it to show up. In the mean time, it is the return of Kuchunka, my 7 or 8 year old desk top that has an angry whurring noise when it is on. It runs maya 8.5, which initially caused me some problems when it came to loading the Animation mentor assets, however after a couple of days I got it all worked out.
Sadly this lead to less time to get the actual assignment down. Some of my poses are weak and my timing needs to be worked on and I need some more break downs. It's an OK first pass, I was hoping to take it farther, though I have 3 more weeks to make it shine.
After My critiques last week I filmed some new reference, I shot about 10, where it had a quicker timing. Less time thinking about does the work suck and more of a visceral reaction. I attached one, so I could get some feed back on it and see if I need more reference. I'm looking forward to spending more time on it this week.

AM Q4 ASN1 The Painters Lament

2011-01-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

Whoo! Another quarter has started and I am excited. Had some trouble getting started but once I did you couldn't stop me.
This quarter I am in Introduction to Acting with Dave Vallone, who has been in the business for 25 years and has done it all. he seems like a cool laid back guy, I'm looking forward to having him as a mentor.
The first assignment is to have two different beats, I chose to star out with a happy painter who steps back and looks at his piece and realizes that it sucks and then becomes very sad and decides to quit. I started out by filming this reference.

I ended up filming like 40 or so of these, most of them were very similar, I don't think I need that many in the future, or next time I will try and make them more different. I picked the 8 best to put into the reel to show my mentor.
Based off of my reference I started planning out my shot. I wanted to make sure that when I planned the shot that I left the character more open to the camera. Most of my reference was in profile, not the most dynamic angle for silhouettes. When drawing this I tried to get as many poses in as I could, it ended up making it look more like a mess then usual, however, I felt when I took any out that it felt bare.
Here is a closer look with some more break downs as to what I want to do. I tried to add as many break downs as made sense and adding as many actions as I can, I probably have too many, but it will be easier to cut things out then have to think about what to add.
I have already got a bunch of great suggestions on how to make it better. I think to make it work the best I need to play down the change from Love to sad. Make him step back and instantly know that he sucks. I think I need to shoot a little more reference with that in mind. I am going to try and keep it in the 10 range this time. 40 was far too many.

Fan Art Friday: Bossk on a Segway

2011-01-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

Here is the first installment in my Fan Art Fridays (which shall be here after refered to as FAF in the titles). This is something that I am hoping that I will be able to do every Friday for the whole year (fingers crossed). For my birthday I received the Clone Wars Season 2 DVDs and there were a couple episodes with Bossk, Aura Sing and Young Boba Fett, this inspired me to work on my first piece. I am a huge MC Chris fan, and he has a couple of songs about the Star Wars bounty hunters including Bossk on a Segway.

Prana: Indy

2011-01-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

One of my goals for this year is to complete the two comic book projects that I have been working on for (roughly) the last year. One of them is Captain Cadaver and the other is Prana, I am the artist for both and two different friends are writing them. This some concept art for Indy, he is a computer and machine genius who was born in space, which leads to some birth defects. More on him later.

Indy

Monster Jalil

2011-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

In appreciation for what my last mentor taught me I thought I would make an art piece for him. I don't particularly plan to make this a trend but I just felt that he showed me so much, helped to give me hope and change the way I think; so that I have the tools to do what ever I set my mind to. His whole mantra was; if you worked hard enough you could over come anything and be great. I figured the comment he makes could be about how hard it is to deflesh the human skull or he is trying to teach his collection of skulls that they should all work harder.

The New Eric for 2011

2010-12-31T18:00:00.000-08:00

Figured I needed a new portrait to start out the year!
Got some hobo gloves for Christmas I love them!

WAR HAMMER Ornament

2010-12-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

At the opening for the small works show at Arts Benicia, where I had a couple of paintings for sale, one of the board members approached me about making a Christmas ornament for her stepson. She bought the one that I made last year and it was a big hit. This year I was asked to make it War Hammer themed. Now I am not supper into war hammer but I used to love going to the War Hammer store in the Metreon way back when, and looking at all of the models. It also just so happened that when I went into Comic Relief in Berkley that in their 50 cent comic bin I found a War Hammer 40,000 comic, where most of my reference for the piece came from. My quick internet search confirmed this so I went ahead and made it based off of War Hammer 40,000 hope that was what he likes.

On the bottom I put one of the Space Marine symbols, a skull with wings in gold!

I actually forgot to take snapshots when it was actually done. These were the most finished progress shots that I took. I added silhouetted warriors in the back ground to make it feel more epic. The pictures don't show it well, but between the emblem and the picture on top there is a silhouetted pile of corpses that they fight on.
This was a lot of fun I can't wait to make more next year, maybe some more for planning and I can get more then one done in a season.

Christmas Card 2010

2010-12-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Family portrait time again. It has been a couple years since we did a family portrait and my mom and I thought it was time to do another one. This time we did something a little more fun and had us all flying in Santa's sleigh being led by the families two cats Mr. Wiggles and Sammy.

AM Q3 Progress Reel

2010-12-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

Well I have reached the end of Quarter 3 and I can't wait until Quarter 4. Here is everything that I have done thus far at Animation Mentor (in reverse order).

Wow, I hadn't realized how much I grew this quarter until I saw this. I guess that is the point. I have to say that the first assignment is painful to watch, but is actually my favorite. It has lots of fun little segments and I like the change in attitude. . I think I will spend some time and make that work. Maybe I'll change the tree to a dummyI have a much better idea on how to do that now. I also want to improve that drunk scene.
On our last Q&A of the quarter Jalil gave me a special shout out for tanasity, because I guess I got extra hard critiques and I didn't let it phase me and he was happy with my progress. He was my favorite mentor, he pushed me hard and he taught me so much. I have regained my animators eye and now it is impossible to watch anything without critiquing the motion and studding it. It is a gift and a curse and I think it will only get worse, but the first step to becoming a better animator is learning to see motion and break it down. The more you can see the more you can see in your own animation and you will be able to improve it. I wonder which mentor I will get next quarter.
I though I would add the still for my title card this quarter with Spike and I as vikings yelling over ale. This was before I had to cut the sword out to fit in the text. Now for winter break, which will be filled with more work and animation.

AM Q3 ASN3 Refining03 "Final"

2010-12-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

This week I was amazed to find that I was not ripped a new one, not that my shot was bad last week, just the last couple of weeks have been rough in the crits. Though I love it and it has helped me to grow so much, no hard feelings Jalil. So this week it was all clean up, tracking arcs, going frame by frame making sure all of my splines are nice, clean, and pretty. I don't feel that it is 100% there, but a good 95%. I took it as far as my eyes and skills could take me. I am really happy with the end and the beginning, however, when he takes the step up to the keg that whole section feels off, not wrong, just not quiet right.

I think next quarter I need to do simplistic shots and plan my time so I could pretty much restart the shot every week, I have learned a lot by starting over.

AM Q3 ASN3 Refining02

2010-12-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

So I got a small crit last week, to change the angle my character is standing. I changed it and it lead to better silhouettes and poses. However, it also made it so some poses were wrecked and nothing was matching up at the barrel. I had to start over. I feel like I made some pretty good progress this week. I like having to start over, I usually get something better, faster, stronger.Though I need to film some more reference and fix some parts. I'm hoping that by the end I have something that looks finished to me.

Social Gaming Viking 02

2010-12-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

OK this has now turned into a Red vs. Blue thing. I'm looking forward to trying to get two done a week.

Social Gaming Viking 01

2010-11-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

I am working on creating some new material for my portfolio in the hopes of getting a job. This is the first in a series of Vikings I am working on that will be done in a Faceb0ok game kind of style.

AM Q3 ASN3 refining01

2010-11-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

This week end I went to the mountains with Laura and her family and needed to turn in my assignment early. This is what I had gotten done by Friday before I left. I continued to work on it over the weekend cleaning up splines.

AM Q3 ASN3 Blocking01

2010-11-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

I really love blocking. It is my favorite part of animation, probably because I haven't figured out how to clean up my animations very well yet. As always my reference was not honest enough, next time I have to make sure I have everything that I am going to use in my animation on hand before I start planning so it is as honest as possible.

What I did to make the animation more honest was duct tape a varnish spray can on to one of my cheaper hats (not going to ruin my nice bowler hat) and used that as a proxy for my drinking horn. I knew I couldn't really tape my horn on my head it is way too heavy to stand up properly and to be pulled off multiple times. I had a lot of fun re-shooting my reference and trying to do different and more interesting things to use in my animation. These were the best ones. Though I had a couple that had some better starts that I might want to look at again later.

This week I tried to find stuff to live in my scene and I had trouble finding it for free so I decided to just make it myself and that went pretty well. I had to remake the horns on the helmet so that they could be taken off of the helmet, and it ended up making bigger more intimidating horns so I was pretty happy with that. I'm looking forward to my critique and moving ahead with the animation.

AM Q3 ASN2 Final and ASN3 Video Reference and Planning sketches

2010-11-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

The Critique I got this week was hard for me to watch, because it was so true and so easy to see the errors afterward. Pretty much watch Jalil told me to do was to look at my reference and copy it as best as I could. So I started over I re-blocked the shot watching the reference and started getting my key frames from the reference.

I don't think I broke a lot of my keys down enough before I moved into splines, wich has lead to some linear looking movements at time, lesson learned. This shot is not done, and it needs more refinement, but it is well on it's way. The first 100 frames are the most refines and I spent a lot of time making sure that the sword arcs are really smooth in that section. The only down side is that it make the elbow do weird things and now it has a jittery quality to it that I'm not 100% on how to fix, because I tracked the arc on the elbow and it makes a smooth arc, but looks jittery.

For the next assignment I wanted to do something easier with less big broad movements and more subtle and direct movements. No more swords! So I decided to go with drinking.

The thing taped to the counter is supposed to represent a keg. I tired to tape little paper horns to my hat, I don't think they were good substitute for real horns, though luckily Laura has given me a a big drinking horn from Scotland so I had that. Next Halloween I need to buy a viking hat, for reference. Based off of the reference I came up with this planning.
Here is the lay out with the key frames. I'm going to have to make some barrels or hope I can find some free models on line.
I'm looking forward to refining assignment number 2 and for working on my next assignment.

CC Zombie portrait 01

2010-11-09T20:00:00.000-08:00

Capatin Cadaver is a zombie super hero and his world needs to be populated with other zombies here is the first zombie portrait.

Captain Cadaver portrait 01

2010-11-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

I am working on a comic book project with my friend Wes and this is a portrait of the main character. I was trying to do something like Dan Hipp, who's style got me really inspired to work on this project again. It has been sitting on my back burner for a while. Mr. Hipp does a technique where he is uses dashed lines for shading, I took that technique and went over board with it and did it with multiple colors. I don't feel like it works. Though I understand why and I hope to make it better next time. There will be more on Captain Cadaver in the near future.

AM Q3 ASN2 Refining 01, More Blocking, More Sketches, More Reference More Everything

2010-11-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

OK so it seems like I'm going all out every week, it is tiring but I am still figuring out what I want my scene to be. Before I wanted it to be a super powered viking getting revenge against the tree that he failed against years before. I realized that it was too fantastic and I couldn't get something believable and honest with what I had going so I decided to change the end so I knew better what his motivator was. I changed it to him being just a better warrior training against a tree.

This one I made more honest I used a "real" sword and a real tree. Something that I could really swing at. Though I bent the sword, so maybe you wouldn't want to train against a tree seeing as people are softer then tree and you don't want to mess up your equipment while training if you don't have extras. I really enjoy playing with swords they are so much fun. I'm glad I have an excuse just go out there and swing sword around.
I drew some really rough sketches for this, not wanting to waist too much of my time on drawings instead of animation I didn't go into to much detail beyond a really rough thumb nails. I decided not to add them to the blog.

Here is my refining. I wanted to get it into splines because I get harder critiques from Jalil when it is splined out, which is hard because it makes watching the critique painful, (I already watched it) though I now know what I need to do and how I need to push it. I feel pretty confident that I can push it and make something really awesome for next week.
I also need to plan my next shot and I think I am going to do the Viking pouring Meade out of a barrel into his helmet and drinking it, this one should be fun.

Steph in a Nom Nom bar

2010-11-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks in Consensual Tentacle we have been doing a plot line where august is stuck in a video game dream world. I will be doing some more posts about that in the future, I really fell in love with the character WARGUT and I think a more polished Mother Brain pinup is in order. The whole time Laura has been writing this plot line the ending was going to be this image of Steph done like a Mel Ramos painting.
Steph is inside a Nom Nom bar, which we made up.
On her chest there is a Hanya, fu bats holding peaches, the imperial symbol on her arm, and a storm trooper pm her other side. I imagine on the other side she has the rebel symbol and a Chewbaca, kind of Fan boys style with a light and dark side.
A cross her stomach she has the word "GROOVY" from earthworm jim and the army of Darkness.

August Halloween Pumpkin

2010-11-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

This Halloween I went to a Pumpkin carving party on Friday at the Favors House and I decided to carve a August into the pumpkin. So I created a template to carve, my goal was to try and not cut holes into the pumpkin but have a thin layer of pumpkin for the light to shine through so I could have thinner lines.
I have never carved a pumpkin like this I usually use a knife and cut holes into the pumpkins and I had only a vague understanding of what I was getting myself into. My ideas was to tape on the template and then poke holes in around the lines so I knew where to cut. That was way too time consuming do I opted to just draw on the pumpkin with a sharpie instead, it was way faster. I took about 3 times as long as every one else to gut and carve my pumpkin. I used all if my old sculpture tools. I knew there was a reason that I kept those things around.
I was pretty happy with it. Though I think I would do something with some cut outs and some thicker lines next year. It was a lot of fun, but getting all the pumpkin skin out of the cracks was hard.
Next year I'll do the whole CT crew, August, Gilda, and Tako.

AM Q3 ASN2 Video Reference, planning and Blocking

2010-10-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

After my e-critique from Jalil, I decided to start over and redo my reference and my planning for this scene. He suggested that I use something that I can actually hit with all my might so that I can get better arcs in my body and more honest acting and poses. He said to make it simpler and to take out any walks that I had going on it it. So I spent a couple of hours shooting reference, it took me a while because there was a guy across the way working on some ones roof and I felt really self conscious. Though I shot it twice after the first time I found out what I really liked about the scene and I was trying to capture different subtle ways of doing it.

After shooting the reference I did my planning drawings. I found a lot more interesting actions to do this time including the sword rolling off the shoulder and moving into an attack stance. I feel that could look really slick.

I e-mailed my new reference and drawings to Jalil and he said that I need to hit the "tree" harder, I'm still holding back. But he said that some other guy from Weta saw my drawings and said they were really nice, so I got that going for me.

Though I didn't get that e-mail until after I had already finished my blocking because Weta is in New Zealand and is a day in the future and He doesn't answer our e-mails on weekends and I sent the e-mail on Friday.

I feel pretty good about my blocking. I think I need to do some more reference with the sword hits and to vary those two hits a little more. But this is a great start.

Sailor Comes Home to Skull House on the Prairie

2010-10-26T16:19:00.001-07:00

Sailor Comes Home to Skull House on the Prairie