And Now for Something Completely Different

Here is something in a slightly different style for me. This is part of some concept work I'm doing for an upcoming BYU animation project.
That is all.

Holdin' Out for This One

You ever sit down to work on a project and magic just seems to flow from your pencil and everything just comes out perfectly on the first pass? If so, post your name and address in the comments so I can come and hunt you down. It just doesn't happen like that for me. It took me three to six passes on each of these characters (not counting all of the wood-shopping just to figure out what I was doing) and I still sort of want do another pass, just to fix a couple of little problems I'm seeing.
Anywho. This is a character line-up for a story I'm calling Hero! until I think of a better title. I did this for Jake Parker's Character Design class. It was a great class and I look forward to taking a class in comic book design from him next year! I promise that I'll have something great to post for you before Christmas.

Jake Parker is my Art-Fu master

Jake Parker's CC and Benson

My poor attempt at same

I have been told that getting a degree in art is completely unnecessary. Maybe. But the cool thing about going to school for art is that you get to study with GREAT artists! One of my current teachers is Jake Parker, the creator of Missile Mouse and other great stuff. Check out his art. I especially like his latest awesomeness, CC & Benson.

Heads is Awesome

So I'm thinking about getting a wall mounting. Some people hang up the horns or heads of animals that they have hunted down/bought at a semi reputable pawn shops. I plan to use the heads of characters I have drawn. I could have Gandalf and Smaug on opposite ends of the room with the dorkfish mounted over the fireplace. Oh! Or Goofy as Mr. Wheeler posed like a bear in one corner of the room. That would be awesome!
More work from Jake Parker's Character Design class.

Darkest Shadows

These are silhouettes for Jake Parker's character design class. We were supposed to come up with thirty for each of two characters from either Charlie and the Chocolate factory or The Hobbit. I chose to do Sauron in dark wizard/necromancer mode and Smaug the dragon. Which one do all you inhabitants of the interwebs like best? Leave a comment.

The dorkfish returns!

He's not much for the social scene, but his choir vowels are impeccable. I painted this in Corel Painter in about 2 1/2 hours for a friend who conducts an open enrollment choir here at BYU. He wanted an image to show his students to encourage proper resonance and vowel formation. Hence, buck-toothed, fish-lipped, bunny-eared dorkfish here.
I would also like to make note that I was paid in taco bell for this drawing. Seriously people: will paint for food!

I am not a gibbering fanboy

Well, I'm not. I don't ever gibber. On purpose.
So, this week my copy of The Art of How to Train Your Dragon finally came! Sometimes I just open it and drool at (never on or over) Nico Marlett's drawings. He just manages to pack so much character into a few simple shapes and lines! I covet whatever mystic talisman grants him his powers. Plus I loved the film. If you haven't seen it, DO. Go and see it, I mean.

For Sale?

So...I may just have a job illustrating a childrens' book! Trick is, I've never done anything freelance professionally. I have no idea what to charge! I'm excited to do the job, it seems like a fun challenge, and I don't want to scare the client away with a high price, but I don't want to undercharge for a major undertaking either. What are standard rates for this kind of thing? What kind of price tag do you put on creativity?
Oh! And does anyone have a couch I can crash on...preferably on a non-American continent? Fenris is going to kill me when he gets out of those ribbons.

I M LA-Z

Yes, I am SO lazy. I haven't really finished anything over the last month. Well, not true, but there's nothing that I can plop down here on my blarg. So, this is a preliminary drawing for the finished painting that I've already posted. I made it for an assignment in Joe Olsen's class for the theme "This is a place of evil" or something like that. It kind of looks like Fenris there is kidnapping Peter Pan, and the perspective made it difficult to paint, so a lot of changes were made, but I like the way that this one has more mood to it. I promise to stop slacking off soon.

The End!

At last, another semester has come to thunderous, crashing close. My poor abused brain has come to a grinding halt and I can be blissfully brain-dead for the rest of the year. Which is only about two weeks, but every little bit counts.
So! Here are my final projects from this semester. I'll probably go back and post other things that I did too. That way people might stop by and visit my poor lonely blog. The top one is my painting final, including Fenris from down below and the second is my final from Joe Olson's class to the theme of "Imminent Defeat."

Portfolio flavored goodness

Nothing especially witty to say here. I just suck at updating this thing and thought that I would share a few portfolio pieces I've been working on. Regular readers (Hi Mom) will probably recognize the first two paintings from earlier this year. These are the honest to goodness finished projects. The third is new. This is my environment design for Sam Nielson's Digital Painting class. I'm pretty pleased with how they came out.

Adventure!

My little brother Alex just got his mission call! I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. For those of you who aren't Mormon or familiar with our interesting little practices, all of our young men (and any young women who elect to do so) between the ages of 19 and 25 are strongly encouraged to basically donate two years to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ where ever we are sent. My brother was just called to serve for two years in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin mission! It covers the upper part of Wisconsin and most of the upper peninsula of Michigan.
It's a big adventure! I served my own mission in the Philippines, Bacolod mission. So there's really no telling where these missionaries might be sent. And, of course, each little corner of the world has its own special challenges.
I think the most amazing part of the whole thing is that somehow, it works! These are not professional preachers being sent out armed with doctorates and practical experience in public speaking. These are children who love the Lord and want to spread around the love of God. These stuttering, passionate young men and women help people to make changes in their lives that years of counseling cannot make. For all their weaknesses and human foibles, they become instruments in the hand of God to bless his children, and those who truly understand greatness tremble at their passing. This dumb college age kids are exactly what Paul was talking about when he said that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.
I'm pretty passionate about this stuff. Anyway, here is a tribute to the great adventure ahead of all of us in the form of another picture I drew for Joe Olsen's drawing for animation class to the theme of Caravan of Awesome in the Desert.

Happy Halloween!

It's once again that magical, mystical night when all of the little ghouls and goblins take to the streets to wreak havoc on the world. And it's not just for the kids either. I think I've seen more fun costumes here at college than I ever did in school as a kid. Some people started celebrating yesterday so that they could show off their awesome costumes and I ran into Russel from the new Pixar film UP!, Jareth from Labrynth (You know, David Bowie), a pair of sharks who roamed campus in search of a feeding frenzy, and a tetris piece that meandered around looking for a spot to fit in. I wish I'd had my camera.
So, in honor of Samhain, here is a creepy little steampunk onion dude. He's from a class assignment, but I felt like he deserved to be here as much as my inane comments.

In Dublin's Fair City!

Alright, it's a lie. This is not Dublin. It's actually downtown Cork, Ireland. This is my messy, sketchy rendition of St. Patrick's in Cork. Not to be confused with the St. Patrick's in any other Irish town with a population greater than two. They ALL have at least one church or cathedral named/renamed for good old St. Pat. I heard more reasons why than I care to list here, but I like them.
This was another assignment for Joe's class. We were asked to emulate the style of one Paul Madonna (no relation to the well known, somewhat creepy pop star) who wrote/illustrated the an ingenious little book entitled All Over Coffee. It's basically just a sketch book of awesome buildings and non-sequitur comments. Very good. I don't know if I would buy it, but it would make a great coffee table book.
I'm not sure how well I emulated his work, but I enjoyed this project.

The Swelling Ranks

Hello friends! I'm back and I've brought along yet another imaginary friend! Soon I'll have a whole army of these guys. Just think what you could do with a posse of imaginary friends. No really, think about it!
First, they don't eat real food. That means that you don't have to worry about providing any kind of actual sustenance for them. Second, they don't actually NEED to occupy any real space. Just brain space, and that only runs out of room when it comes to math and boring things. Third, these guys are indestructible! That is the whole point of imaginary friends, none of the bad things in life can touch them! And finally, they are always on MY side. No imaginary baddies stand a chance against my legion of imaginary friends. So much POWER!
Sorry, got a little carried away with the heady bliss of absolute power. It corrupts absolutely you know. It also rocks absolutely.
This is the latest in a parade of oddities from my third stint in Joe Olson's Drawing for animation class. I think I've got some other stuff roaming around my hard drive waiting for me to post...I'll just send the friends after them.

I'm like da Vinci! With a Mac!

This is the same spacefaring, bug-eyed dog, this time with actual good work applied to it. I thought I would share it with you.

This is the character design from the last post. I have painted it. Four times. All different. Obviously. Which one is better? Please choose one. It won't necessarily sway me one way or the other, but I'd like to know what the imaginary people on the internet think.

Two posts for the price of FREE!

Um...hi friends. I'm still alive. I know that all three of you who regularly check this thing were wondering. I just haven't had any kind of finished stuff to put here. But now I do!

Meet the Space Pug! He is not mine! I just added the poor paint job. The space pug himself is the work of the talented J Borutski. I have no idea who that is. I just painted his line art for my digital painting class. Also for Sam's class, I made a super-awesome-character design!
His name is Fenris. He's not quite done, but I'm close. Fenris is a hero fallen on hard times. Heroing is great and all, but there's no money in it and he has had to fall back on mercenary work, bodyguarding, and bounty hunting to get by, and since he's picky about who he works for and sticking to his Hero's code, he still doesn't make much. But he's got the crest from the (tragically short-lived) heroes' guild, and he's going to live up to it even if it kills him.
There's a lot more to the story. He has taken up with a young hero wanna-be and is showing him the ropes, one thumping at a time. It's amazing how one little assignment leads into a lot of extraneous, really fun, work.

It's like a sequel!

Today is day 21: Vacation. So I took one. Which means that the sketch I was working on just didn't turn out. So, for your viewing entertainment, here is take two of the back handspring animation from this spring, now in glorious pen! We'll be back to your regularly scheduled program tomorrow.

These are Earth Bending Feet

Those of you who know me may also know that I am an Avatar junkie. I. Love. Avatar. It's like a king sized helping of awesome with a heaping bucket of awesome sauce spread liberally over top. Toph, the blind earth bender pictured above is not my favorite, but she does represent the theme for the day. Day 20: Fortitude. Each of the four elemental fighting styles is modeled after an actual fighting style. Earth bending is modeled after Hung Gar, the Kung Fu style attributed to Wong Fei Hong, a Chinese folk hero who restored the fallen Shao Lin order. The style is characterized by its deep, powerful stances, particularly the horse stance, from which its forms are performed. Pretty awesome huh?

Faded Glory

The other day I sat down with my friend Aaron and we watched the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring. We still haven't gotten around to watching the second half. Mostly because when the council of Elrond rolled around and Orlando Bloom finally appeared on camera after an entire hour of blissful absence we could no longer take the movie seriously. Kind of tragic really, because I love the Lord of the Rings. I just don't like Mr. Bloom. They should have just left him in the prop closet they found him in and find a real actor. It's not hard you know. They just roam around the streets of major California cities waiting to be found.

Gandalf here is one of my favorite characters and Sir Ian did a great job with him. He is also grey. Which is today's theme. Day 19: Gray.

Yes, I know I'm a couple of days off, but I spent the weekend finishing my sample animation for the portfolio that I need to mail off sometime this week. I have decided that it's just better to go from where I was rather than trying to play catch up for the four days that I missed. More to come!