Thank you, Mr. Kim

I'm thankful that I get to work with people who are awesome.

One of my coworkers, Jason Kim, has a great eye for appeal and design, and he spent about 20 minutes helping me out by drawing over my design.  He always notices seemingly insignificant things that in the end make a drawing much stronger.  Click the image below for an animation showing the transition from my original drawing (blue) to his fixes (red) to see what I'm talking about.

Just for the record, Jason suggested that I put some feet poking out of the end of the dress, a suggestion I ignored for reasons I'll explain later.  So if it looks funny without them, that's my fault.

Speaking of which, do you ever wish that people gave more critiques on art blogs instead of just digital high-fives?  I used to go to some art forums and I liked the positive criticism and exchange of ideas there.  But I understand why it's not the same with blogger---it's missing is the constancy of conversation threads, where it's easy to keep track of dialogue you're interested in (and interesting comments don't quickly get swept away by new posts).  Maybe someday someone will come up with a hybrid solution that can satisfy both needs.

Figure

I like the result from last Friday enough that I won't wait to post it with a slew of others.  About 90 minutes.

Forgotten Princesses

Done for the Avalanche blog "Disney Princesses"  Topic.  No, this isn't an insider leak of future projects, and yes, I do realize that Hester Prynne isn't technically a princess.

Not-so-popular admission

I like musicals, I can't help it.  I sometimes wish life was a musical.  Like when Jeff Bunker fires me, I'd much rather have him do it singing a bass counterpoint to the chorus of the entire staff of the company, who would of course be peering through the window to his office and flinging their hands into the air in rhythm.

My wife bought me some songs from Wicked for my iphone.  I've seen the musical, and it's okay (lots of untapped potential in the story).  But some of the songs are really great, including "Popular," which I can't get out of my head.  The situation behind the song is funny, but the song itself is nothing short of brilliant.

Marvel Tribute

My employer just recently bought Marvel.  They will never let me anywhere near the characters, though, and this is why.

Good drawing session

I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out, considering it only took an hour.

Grayscale

Thank goodness for the Avalanche drawing session---it's the only thing keeping me drawing things outside of regular work these days. This one is about an hour of work. I did a body too, but I thought the image worked better cropped.

Friday Painting

I wish I could post more, but I'm so busy at work right now. But here's something I did in our figure drawing session. It was meant to be a caricature, but I think I ended up normalizing him too much as I painted over the drawing.

Another quick caricature

From our figure drawing session. This one look closer to 15 minutes, then I spent a few adding in the highlights after I scanned it in.

Meager offering

Sorry for so few posts lately. I've been extremely busy at work, and we've been in the process of moving at home (we've actually been in the new house for a couple weeks now, but there are always so many projects after you move).

I could only dedicate ten minutes to the figure drawing session this morning, but the model had such an awesome face I just had to exaggerate it a little.

A tribute. . .

. . .to my favorite faces on our local NBA team. I wanted to spend more time refining the likenesses, but I decided I'd better finish it quick since the Jazz aren't looking so great against the Lakers right now. The players depicted here are (left to right) Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur, Andrei Kirilenko, and Deron Williams. I thought Deron's likeness would be easier to capture because he looks like a baby monkey, but he ended up being the hardest one---I'm still not happy with how he turned out.

Friday drawing session

This one was turning out pretty good, I just ran out of time. This was about 90 minutes, all digital.

Drawing session and Ace in Action concept

I was experimenting with color in this morning's drawing session, but I could never get the skin tones to work quite right. I feel okay about the picture anyway, but just in case it's not enough I'll include some conceptual development from Chicken Little: Ace in Action. This was the original design for Abby's fighter, before they changed it to a hovercraft. I wanted her ship to mix the trendy feminine Volkswagon Beetle-esque look with the military purpose of her fighter.

Friday drawing session doodlery

Some drawing session paintings just work, and others I decide aren't worth posting by themselves. The smart part of my brain says that means I shouldn't be posting them now either, but the stupid part of my brain hopes that nobody will notice even though I'm drawing attention to their deficiencies. I do like lots of things about these though, despite their various problems.

Cinderella's father

For those who were guessing, the version I'm noodling around with is Prokofiev's Cinderella. My wife and I went to see the ballet here a while back, and I've been obsessed with the idea of fleshing out a storybook or animated version ever since. What I find most interesting about Prokofiev's version is not only its unique variation on the story, but the sort of wistful tension that exists throughout the music, even in the playful and happy parts. I haven't found an appropriate style to match the mood of the music, but I'm working on it.

In Prokofiev's Cinderella, her father is still alive, but he's too old and broken in spirit to prevent the abuse she suffers. I like to picture that his weakness comes only partly because of age---so my idea is that he never quite recovered from the grief of his first wife's death, and the oppressive nature of his second marriage has worn him down completely. I wanted him to look like a lord or duke of some sort, someone whose family would be invited to the Prince's ball, and whose moderate wealth would attract the attention of an ambitious lady with spoiled daughters. I tried to reflect all these ideas in the design of his face.

Sorry the colors are so muddy, but I did it quickly (and figured it worked for someone who had lost the will to live anyway).

Character design doodles

I wanted to give people a peek at how I develop my character designs---lots of drawings, writing ideas in the margins, thinking about how to tie the look of the character to his/her personality and purpose, developing the costume designs, etc.

This is for a personal project I'm working on (mostly for fun). 5 points for anyone who guesses the project, 100 points for guessing which version I'm doing.

Avalanche drawing session

I went to the drawing session this morning and tried to apply some of the things I've been learning lately from the tutorial sessions by Adam Ford and Dave McClellan. I painted this almost entirely with Painter's "Loaded Palette Knife," because I wanted a different effect than in my usual paintings.

Lunch study

Some guys at work have been doing these studies during lunch, and I was happy about the way this one turned out, so I'm going to post this. Done from photo reference, no color picker, about 45 minutes.

I'd post the photo, but I don't know if it's copyrighted, so you'll just have to imagine.

Gangster progress shot 2

I want to spend a lot more time adjusting how the values work on this thing, but I need to post something.

Another gangster

Another one for the Avalanche blog. I'll post a progress shot for the other guy soon.