Santa-cipation (Christmas Card 2016)

An illustration for this year's Christmas card, if I weren't still sending out last year's designs.

Special thanks to my friend and fellow illustrator MD Jackson who posted a comment on my Facebook page suggesting that I could keep going with this drawing I did for a bag at an office Christmas party. 

It just goes to show you what a little encouraging comment can lead to and inspire (hint hint)

Heres to 2017 folks, let's all make it a good one!

Turtle Power!

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. 2016.

Digital.

Commission to kick off the Christmas rush!

To Serve Man

TO SERVE MAN. 2016.

Digital

A tribute poster for one of my favorite television series.

Big Hero 6: Master Blaster

C'mon Hiro, can't we just get beyond thunderdome!

(I bet Hiro doesn't even know what that line is from)

Brand New Me!

Since its nearly the end of the year its time to make some changes around here!

I designed this banner to work for my website, blog, Facebook and pretty much any other social media site I'm on. 

What I really wanted to do was show my work in a way that could be easily read, unlike the previous banner which was made up of thumbnails from my greatest hits. A self portrait featuring me drawing seemed like a much clearer way to show what I do. 

What a handsome fellow!

This is just one of many changes and simplifications I hope to be making towards my personal brand in the future.

Also, I made this zombie variant for Halloween! 

Good Friday

Here's a picture of Jesus I drew as part of a mailer for "Red Threads". I had done some designs for them back in 2013 when they were just a start up company. Now they've got their own offices and printing set up and everything. Cool!

Have a Good Friday and a Happy Easter! 

MCC Weekly 17: Witchblade

MCC Weekly Sketch #17 Top Cow

This week's challenge was Top Cow comics characters. Witchblade, The Darkness, Cyber Force, Aphrodite IX, etc. My only exposure to any of those characters was Witchblade, specifically the Japanese anime adaptation, which I'm sure is 100% accurate to the source material and made no deviations whatsoever! 

As a bonus, here's my original sketch for the project!

Sketch You Later!

Use the Farce Luke!

Alas, this post is not about any new Star Wars buzz or related fan art, this is instead a caricature of my cousin Luke done as a Christmas present.

I don't draw caricature as much as portraiture, (not since that one of Joaquin Phoenix in January) but I could probably benefit from playing with pieces that call for exaggerating the subject, rather than just copy what's there.

What I learned:

1. When working in a style that you're unfamiliar with, it's important give yourself plenty of prep time to experiment. The project may sound simple, but it'll come out better if you give yourself time to play with the possibilities.

2. If you're asked to draw someone that you've never met in your life. Make sure the client gives you MULTIPLE reference photos. Five minimum is a good place to start.


Now I want to hear from you. What have your art projects taught you in this past year?

The Making of Christmas Cards 2014

Plenty of people have sent me e-mails letting me know that they received their copy of my Christmas card so I guess I can sure it with the rest of the world now!

Two years worth of experience have taught me to start earlier each year so it was a bit hard to come up with something Christmas-y when I had only just caught the Halloween bug. So sadly I wasn't able to continue my unintended them from previous years of a seasonal messenger coming to your home, be it by angels or an animal.

Instead I opted for a self portrait, to make it more personal.

This Christmas, surround yourself with colorful characters!

My original plan involved a picture of myself at my desk interacting with a variety of fantasy characters. It was fun to construct this set up, but it ended up being too ambitious to be fully completed in just a month.

Its an idea I'd seen in other places and wanted to give my own take on it as a way of showing people the more fantastical elements that I like to draw.

Ed Catmull, John Lasseter and friends

Walt Kelly

Jack Kirby

To try and give it a fun twist, I added the finished card at my desk to create this weird recursion illusion. Yet another case of time limitations and necessity being the mother of invention!

Now I want to hear from you! What do you think of this year's Christmas card and how do you think I can improve for next year?

Merry Christmas!

Attack on Joker

Click to ENLARGE

This week, an oddball juxtaposition between comic book hero Batman and the anime series "Attack on Titan". The idea was to combine two similar things, the new Faceless Joker (which I think looks incredibly silly) with the Colossus Titan (which I think is quite scary).

Eagle eyed viewers may recognize that the parody product isn't an especially original image. The composition is taken from directly from this promotional image for the show. Also Batman was reversed and traced from this page by Bruce Timm. The pose was too good to pass up, not only did it match Eren's look, but was an example of Batman himself encountering a giant.

The motivation for this project (aside from the general goofiness of it) was to produce something simple that didn't require much planning so that I could concentrate on practicing in Photoshop, determine how to render something like the face, which has a lot of detail, without going overboard as well as experiment with different tools, textures and techniques.

Originally I was going to tinker with Elsa from last week, but thought that I might be more likely to want to continue if I was working on something I hadn't previously posted and considered "finished". That and its been a slow traffic kind of week and experience has thought me that mash ups with The Joker are ratings gold!

Sketch ya' later!

Warm Hugs for the End of Summer

Continuing with the commissions that I posted last week, Emily was eager to have me draw some other Disney characters as well. In her request for Olaf, I saw an opportunity to polish up a sketch I had done earlier this summer. I may tinker with this one a bit more, I could really stand to experiment with my application of color.

Another animated Disney sidekick who stole the show that Emily was looking to have drawn was Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy done up in this Alphonse Mucha Art Noveau style. 

I had hoped to make this a do a double theme with Olaf and Groot both giving hugs. Although tree huggers are likely to come away with plenty of splinters from Groot. Ouch! 

I may come back to that some time later, but its September now, so I'm starting to brainstorm ideas on what I should do for Halloween next month.

Please make any suggestions you would like to see in the comments!


Sketch ya' later!

Cartoon Commissions

This just in, Shawn took my sketch of the Green Ranger from Doctor Who Day and had it signed by Jason David Frank! Thanks guys!

More recently I've been working on a series of illustrations for "Emily", who saw my work at the last day of the Midland County Fair and asked for some commissions of cartoon characters, like this one of Dory and Marlin from "Finding Nemo".

Inspired by glow-in-the-dark overlay posters made by Mondo Tees, I also made this text heavy variant. 

Then I followed that up with the Minions from "Despicable Me".

Originally I had dreamed up a comic involving a gag of one minion discovering another minion dressed up like a banana. Instead I opted for something simpler because it was taking a lot of time to much sure I was drawing these guys on-model. Maybe I'll revisit this sometime later.

Speaking of revisiting, I've still got two more commissions to do for Emily. Come back next week and I'll probably have those finished.


Sketch ya' later!

The Dudinetz Abide

Portrait of the Dudinetz family (Sarah, Kim, Chuck, Josh and Pete) that I was commissioned to do as a Father's Day present. 

The reference photo I was given to work with was rather grainy and the figures weren't standing on the same level surface so I took quite a bit of creative license with this one. Makes me wish I had taken more process screenshots. 

Party of Two

Yes loyal followers, after two months of work its finally finished!

Loosely based on an event from my own life towards the end of college were I was feeling utterly unprepared for the real world on the horizon. To celebrate the anticipation of graduation some friends were throwing a party at their place. I didn't want to go because I avoid crowds like the plague, but I was too afraid of what I might do to myself if I just stayed home alone. 

As predicted, I was having a miserable time. It was too bright, too loud and the amount of people packed into one room was enough to be a fire code violation. After being accidentally slammed into a back wall and having a strobe light test occur right in my face, I was just about ready to pass out when a gentle hand guided me outside. 

The two of us sat on the back porch in frigid temperatures for over an hour, just talking. During a lengthy lull in the conversation I felt something bubbling up inside of me that just couldn't be contained, and I just burst out laughing. It was the closest thing to joy I think I'd ever experienced. 


To learn what I experienced while making this piece, see The Making of "Party of Two".

The Making of "Party of Two"

This was actually an idea I'd started drawing around this time last year. This was about as far as I got. 

Wanting to see it through to the end, I started over by drawing about thirty different variations of the scene. I was also influenced by my then recent hobby of collecting movie stills for my inspiration files to go for a horizontal composition instead of vertical. 

Since I was trying resume my weekly postings to let people know that I was still alive and was in need of material to post I quickly threw some color onto these rough ideas. The response was both unexpected and overwhelmingly positive, so I decided that this is what I would be doing next. 

From there, I had my nose to the grindstone:

So, what have I learned?

Plotting out the composition by drawing over thirty different thumbnails really helped pull this project together, in retrospect, I wonder why I didn't hold to that pattern. Once I had figured out which sketch was going to form the basis for the final I think I was a bit quick to scan it in, blow it up and start working on the final. 

Drawing some slightly bigger scale versions after deciding on might have helped work out a number of the lighting and background details that I was struggling to develop towards the end. 

See the finished product and the story behind it here.

Action Figures!

Action Figures. 2013.
Photoshop,  5 x 7 original.

While I haven't produced many eerie illustrations for Halloween, I have been busy on some big projects! First up, this accompaniment for an editorial article for "Cool and Collected" magazine, a Kickstarter funded publication about vintage toys and other elements of collectable pop culture. The project still has a week to go at the time of this posting. Read more about it here!

The article itself is about repeat buying and variant collecting. Basically how collectors can get into the habit of purchasing toys based on all the alternative versions of a single character.

INSPIRATION:

In order to give the client an idea of the kind of vision I was shooting for in the finished piece, I created a collage of images that showcased a single character's diverse appearances over time.

SKETCHES:

My first idea involved a collector picking up a toy, only to discover that he is surrounded and overwhelmed my this action figure's relatives and predecessors. While this notion presented the sense of pressure with all the potential purchases weighing on his shoulders and some fun personality possibilities with each toy interacting with the buyer. However, both the client and myself were wary of putting a face to the toy collecting market so it was mutually decided to nix this one. 

The second sketch reversed the original scenario. Turning the front figure around so that he is still confronted and burdened by all the different types of toys. This ended up being the design chosen by my client. 

I put forth a third sketch of a high angle shot with the original doll mint-in-box surrounded by the successor toys, eliminating the collector character altogether. 

PROCESS:

Originally this was just going to be black and white with some basic color thrown over top. But then I ran into trouble trying to depict different types of textures, both cloth and plastic, in such a graphical representation. Since I had a full two weeks to put this together (and was doing the piece pro-bono) it presented the opportunity to play with some Photoshop tools I had been wanting to tinker with but may not have had the time otherwise. I figure "I've got all this time, I may as well experiment and perhaps have a little bit of fun along the way." 

Working in multiple layers with varying opacity was great for rendering this translucent clip-on armor

Working this way was something very new and different for me. I'm certain that it could get better and would be very interested in any comments on how I could build on this coloring crossroads for future pieces!

Summer Bummer Colors

This is a piece I did this past August called "Summer Bummer". You can read about the process behind it here.

Lately, I've been looking to reorganize my portfolio and figured that the changing leaves shouldn't be the only color we get around here!