Odosketchin'

I finally decided to man up and give this Odosketch thing a try. I feel super rusty with the pen and pad. I think if my past art instructors saw these, they'd take back my degree. Anyway, Odosketch is definitely addicting. Hmm...maybe I could use it to thumbnail animations...

LEC Lunch Crew (Done)

I think I'm going to call this done for now, even if I didn't get all six characters in. Sorry Eric--I'll have to add you in the next round!

Lately I've been wanting to try to draw in a more reductive and stylized fashion, but I always end up adding more lines and detail as I noodle. I then end up with something that's not pushed enough in terms of shapes, proportions, and gesture, but at the same time, not realistic enough in terms of lighting and rendering. I always seem to end up at an awkward place somewhere inbetween. Guess I'll just have to keep practicing.

LEC Lunch Crew

I couldn't get this out before Halloween, but here you go--another WIP to add to my collection of unfinished personal work.

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
Tristan Sacramento as Kratos
David Lam as Wolverine
Eric Lin as Spiderman (in jeans and a Spidy t-shirt)
Me as Ryu Hayabusa (Ninja Gaiden)
Steve Kuroki as the Juggernaut
Patrick Przybyla as the Secret Apprentice

There's a few characters still missing, but as you can see, I can't even finish six.
Anyway hope everyone had a happy Halloween!

Thundercats: Going For Gold

WORK IN PROGRESS...

No shadows and color balance yet, but here you go.

The initial plan was to throw some Nikes onto Cheetara as another mock ad for the Olympics. __________________________________________________________

And here's the inspiration!



I remembered this being one of the best cartoon intro's of the 80's. Great pacing, dynamic poses, exaggerated timing and in-your-face action, and cool effects animation!

Time Sliders 1

Here's a quick sketch of a couple of urban ninjas I'm hoping to flesh out in the future. There are a few others in the crew, and if I ever manage to carry out one of these personal projects of mine, I'd like to model, rig, and animate these guys (and gals to come). But you know how that goes...

Indy Storm Animatic

This was the animatic for the film in the previous post. Again, this was done back at school.



Cutting storyboards together with audio definitely helps with planning...though it didn't seem to help my animation at the time. :)

"Hansel and Gretel" Story Beats

We've recently lost a few comrades at work so I've been asked to help out with storyboards for our pre-vis animatics. An excuse to draw is always good, but since I haven't been drawing everyday, it's a bit intimidating, esp. with all the kick-ass concept artists we have here! *cough* Dela Longfish *cough*
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Anyway, in the flavor of storyboards, I pulled up some (yet again) old work from school. The following story beats were done in conjunction with the Layout Apprenticeship in my previous post.

The idea behind these beat boards was to outline the entire story using only 10-15 drawings. At a glance we could check the pacing and make sure we're hitting all the plot points that we need to.


This is the final version.


Here's an alternate version.

Lastly, a side-by-side, in case you want to see the differences.

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I'll throw the actual boards up in a later post.

Minnie

A portrait for a friend.

"Hansel and Gretel" Layouts: Part 3

Alrighty, here's the last batch of these "Hansel and Gretel" layouts. (I'm kinda itching to move on to something new)

After we finalized our line drawings, it was time to start experimenting with different lighting schemes. We did several small studies, playing around with values--lights against darks, darks against lights. We also threw in the characters to see how they'd fit into the scene.

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And finally...the final rendering(s).

My first attempt at a final was the one on the left. I wanted to play up the contrast to accentuate the pointy branches. I also had the house back-lit to get yet another pointy/triangular silhouette, as well as to give it a slightly more ominous feel.

The feedback I got from my mentor after showing this was to add more atmosphere--to further separate the foreground, middleground, and background elements. He also suggested that I light the house from the front to bring more focus to it. The final final is the one on the right.

And just for kicks, I embedded evil "faces" throughout the rendering.

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Key take-aways from the Layout Apprenticeship:

Up until that semester, I've always been very biased towards drawing just characters. In fact I didn't like to draw backgrounds at all. Thanks to this Apprenticeship, along with the other Vis Dev class I was taking at SJSU, I developed a new appreciation for environments. Although I know I still have much to learn about creating environments, I definitely appreciate a good one when I see it!

Aside from composition, lighting, etc., the biggest "ah-hah" moment for me during these classes was when I realized that an environment can be a character itself--a character whose attitude and mood all depends on how you "dress" it.

"Hansel and Gretel" Layouts: Part 2

The next phase of the layouts was to pick one shot and make a full line drawing. Before jumping into that, however, it was probably a good idea to design the house by itself. Here's a few early house ideas.

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And before nailing down a final composition, I experimented with many different layout possibilities. Here's a couple of them.

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And here's the final line drawing(s).

The one on the top was actually the first version. I thought it might have been a tad on the detailed/realistic side, so I tried an alternate version that had a more reductive style. After going back and fourth between the two, I finally decided on the bottom one.

Each final drawing was actually separated in layers (foreground, middleground, background, house). These layouts are usually drawn on separate sheets so you could create motion parallax during camera moves. Also, characters moving behind foreground elements would be coverd by them.

To be continued...

"Hansel and Gretel" Layouts: Part 1

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During my time at San Jose State, I had the privilege of particpating in two “Virtual Apprenticeships” with a couple of artists from Disney Feature Animation.

Once a week, through video conferencing, we would meet with layout artist Michael O'Marah and storyboard artist Ray Shenusay. Here we'd present our work not only to each mentor, but also to the other professionals down in L.A. running the program, our entire class at State, and a couple of other schools that were also part of the program. Needless to say it was an awesome experience, while at the same time very nerve-wrecking!

The story that was used for the Apprenticeship was the classic tale "Hansel and Gretel". In the next few posts, I’ll share some of the work that came out of that run.
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For the Layout Apprenticeship, one of our first tasks was to take a few scenes from the story and create some rough layouts--2 exterior shots and 2 interior shots. Since I was also participating in the Storyboard Apprenticeship, I just used some of my rough boards as thumbnails. As for the style of the artwork, it was up to us to decide.

To be continued...

Street Fighter Sketches

I was a HUGE Streetfighter II fan growing up--shoot I still am! Back in the day, my buddies and I spent countless quarters at the local Golfland arcade, Aladdin's Castle at the mall, and 7/11's across the Bay Area trying to perfect our combos, reflexes and strategic mind games.

Thanks to a post by the Unleaded Artists, I was made aware of an illustration contest for the upcoming Street Fighter Tibute book. Although I didn't have time do up a final illustration, I figure I'd pay tribute to this great game here.

Hopefully I'll find some time in the future to fix, tighten up, and color a couple of these roughs.


NOTES:

• I gave Sagat a pony tail because the moment I saw Tong Po in Jean-Claude Van Damme's old flic Kickboxer, I immediately thought, "That's what a live action Sagat should look like!" This fight takes place in my made-up backstory, where Ken meets Sagat for the first time. The two were a lot younger and were fighting in local underground fight clubs before they went international. Being a cocky young buck, Ken underestimated the Thai fighter and got his ass handed to him.
• In the Guile vs. Ryu pic, I'll be changing Ryu's pose from a fireball charge-up stance to a throw pose. I'll need to add some trail for the fireball as well. Finally, I'm going to see if I could show a bit of Guile's face.
• Guile's flat-top -- believe it or not, my hair used to look like this back in the day! It was all about the Aqua-Net (non-scented ultra hold)!

300 Speedpaints

Sorry if the last post was a bit lengthy. Here's one that's a lot shorter.

Nothing original here, just a few speedpaints based off of screen captures from the 300 trailer. (30-60 minutes each)

More Spiderwick Explorations

Here are some loose sketches and variations for J, Simon, and Mal.

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Mal on the far right was the first incarnation of this set. The middle was the second version. The one on the left with the jeans was the last. Now she looks too much like Hermoine--whoops.

The right was the first version. I then decided to cover her up a bit with the one on the left.

The first was the one on the far right. I then thought she probably shouldn't be flashin' her belly (wouldn't want my daughter to). I opened up the jacket for the last version on the left to get some more space division.

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Hipster Jared. I knew these wouldn't fly, esp. with the anime hair-do and the white kicks, but I had to anyway.

Spiderwick Concepts

Before we had any reference material or direction from the film, we explored the idea of taking a cartoonier route for the look of the game. These are early concepts I did for the game version of Jared, Simon and Mallory--the main characters from the Spiderwick Chronicles.

An initial direction I was given was to throw Jared, the head-strong twin, into a hoodie and some cargo shorts. Simon, the more timid and "nerdier" twin was to sport a vest sweater. No matter what I did, though, Jared always ended up looking not as brash as I had hoped for with the shorts.

I finally decided that the better, and more atypical solution was to flip it and give Jared the vest and collar outfit. To me, it wasn't about what you wore, but how you wore it.

In the end, we had to match the film so all of this was thrown out the door anyway. To this day, I still would have liked to see the game end up with a more stylized and storybook look as opposed to a realistic one, but that's just me:)

San Jose State Spartans

The day I saw that first 300 Trailer, I ended up re-watching it at least 20 times that night. It got me super-pumped! I wanted to grow a beard! But since I'm nowhere near as ripped as those mo-fo's, I had no choice but to throw down a painting.

As for the movie, my high expectations got the best of me. Although it was still enjoyable, it didn't reach the level of Braveheart or Gladiator as I had hoped. But it did have some sick battle moments!

Firing It Up!

Hello everyone, I've finally decided to give this blog thing a shot!

I want to set this off with a tribute to Saturday morning cartoons--I'm talking about the good ones from back in the day! Shows like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Thundarr the Barbarian, and Dungeons & Dragons, played a big part in what I'm doing today.

This piece was originally done a while back for a Wizard Magazine contest. Although I wasn't able to trick the judges into giving me a prize, it was still a lot of fun. (In case anyone's wondering who this is, it's Firestar from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends)

Finally, I wanted to give a quick thanks to everyone who's been busy bloggin' these past years--all of your postings continue to inspire me!