Chimera Girl Run Poses

Several pages of me playing animator once again and trying to figure out how a quadruped gallop would work in human form. Not necessarily key frames or inbetweens either, just playing with shape silhouette dynamics while thinking in terms of of the next frame or pose if it were hand animated.

Don't remember where chronologically these drawings were made, but below is a letterbox beat board that got closest to a clean pose.

2018 Revisions

Series of pieces from the past several years that got some revisioning over the past few months, either draw-overs or complete redraws from scratch. (The bottom pic is a scan of an old bamboo piece I contributed way back when to Gallery Nucleus' "Jab Strong Fierce" show, around '09 I think. The whole thing was essentially a garage sale for Street Fighter fan art, though that was a rarity for Nucleus to do at the time. The original piece was rushed, and as a result was sh*t, but that was where my priorities were then, rushing everything to be productive rather than good.

As Ellis Redding would say, "That's institutionalized.")

Beta Euthynus, reworked illustration

A reworked piece that was originally from... I'll say 2015, because why not. Reworked it again last November from scratch, and then reworked the character on the right just now. Redid the facial expression on both drawings entirely, reworked the bottom right pose a little. The original from several months back is on the Instagram account somewhere, for anyone wanting to dig through my old drawings to make the comparison and laugh. (Hell, the original Original is probably on the Blogspot account here somewhere.)

New Banner Illustration

As well as playing around with a new watermark logo design. Had the same banner since 2015, which is enough time to be hitting the design of these characters differently, hopefully with a bit more attention to shape balance. I don't remember if I used the older drawing as an underlayer or if I sketched these from scratch; I want to say I did the latter.

(An alternate take):

Obligatory Retro Game Post 5

The Space Harrier cyclops mammoth got cropped out for now, but since this is part of a larger illustration, no worries. He'll have his day soon. As always, this can be found over at the Instagram account.

Birthday Card Illustrations

Two birthday card illustrations I did for a former coworker over a year apart. Given it's mostly all the same characters, it's a good benchmark to see what all has changed in my drawing choices and habits, if any. I think my waist proportions are a little more balanced now, and am hitting the eyes with a little more control and possibly style, mostly aping on Guillaume Singelin's cat pupil approach, which I like playing with. (The purple plum / raisin character is not mine, btw, but the friend's whose bday this was for.)

Posted this over at the Instagram account already: Complete revision of an ancient piece back from the CalArts days, 2005 or so. If you look closely you can see the original image in the background. I think I may have even used it for my portfolio submissions that landed me one of my first studio jobs at the time.

(Yes, an actual physical portfolio. 30 to 45 page booklets, with clear insert sleeves, badly printed images courtesy of Kinko's, and a grand total of 30 seconds spent by companies flipping through them - these existed at one point in time, back when Cintiqs were seen as a novelty item in the industry.)

If I remember right, one of the roommates at the time had a high end printer which I used to knock these portfolios out with. Later on I was at the mercy of Kinko's. The first got me into the industry, the latter not so much. Which makes one wonder if it was the quality of the work or the prints that caught their eye first time around, since I was drawing sh*t at the time. But it was sh*t that was high res on 80lb satin matte paper.

But oh well. Предоставь мертвым погребать своих мертвецов.

Another Sketch and Illustration Dump

This place is becoming more the clearing house for anything I do over a several month period. In any case, enjoy these several images my tens of viewers.

Forget Me Not - Art Against Alzheimer's prints

For archive purposes, some pieces from this year's 4th annual Forget Me Not - Art Against Alzheimer's, as well as a few from 2015.

Sketches before the year ends

...Because tumblr's flipping out for some reason over showing images proper. From the past few months going back to Halloween:

Which reminds me...

...Realized that I hadn't posted any of the previous Space Harrier stuff here before. So here they are, all two pages, plus development illustration.

Space Harrier comic pages and WIP cont'd

And the Space Harrier saga continues.

Some WIP pages and illustrations:

Beta Euthynus sketches illustrations and WIPs

Because Mr. Chris Palmer has really appealing shorthands for character faces.

Character Designs and Sketch Pages

Not even halfway through the season yet. Anyhow, making the effort every day to step away from storyboarding and doing some kind of illustration, design, or color work. Even if it sits in a folder for the better part of a year.

Nordic vs Hellenic

Part of a series of fight scene vignettes posted over at the Tumblr:
~ Part 1
~ Part 2

Memory Lane, plus random viking sketch

Some older commission design pages from around '08. The concept was supposed to center around a gift certificate or gift-card service with the idea of "Thank you" built into it. I'm not even sure if it's the correct kanji or Japanese term, but that's what I was given. I also think coffee was supposed to be part of the marketing factor, as in "Redeem at Starbucks" or whatever. These are some of the more interesting pages from the bunch.

Once past the initial stages of coming up with ad scenarios, I wanted to hone in on having a flagship character or set of characters that interacted with customers. In this case, a post-WWII delivery man and his pet shiba in tow. This was before I'd heard of Hachiko.

As always, once older material's dug up, the temptation's to correct now-obvious mistakes with the new drawing toys. Ended up redrawing ~40% of each page on the Cintiq. Which when considering the over/under for how crappy some older material can be, isn't all that bad. Mostly retooling of the faces - only took several years to unlearn self-taught bad habits - and some anatomy/shape refining.

Don't remember if this was earlier or later than the above two. In any case, the request was to go beyond the simple boy-and-dog duo. I think I was aiming more for a 50's flagship character that also served as a logo.

And, a random rough page from a recent series of Hellas-meets-Viking vignettes.

WEEEEEE...

Already posted the color version over at the Tumblr. But not the follow-up comic panels (below), reserved for you faithful tens of Bloggers.

Some alternate positions for arms & hands and whatnot, though they could be holographic extensions if she turns out to be an android or alien. And yes, that's Pen Ward and Colin Fleming in the war-driving van, beckoning our heroes to make a quick getaway. Feels like some shape refining and simplification in the foreground characters are needed.

Beta Euthynus Chimera Duo

Two characters that have gotten the most drawing mileage from me this past year. Skipped the greytone stage and just hit the colors as I would 2-tone, adjusting opacity on the layer as needed. Along with a host of other drawings, this one's gotten a few reworkings; but I need to make a point of just saying "~Fin~"and throwing it out there after a reasonable time instead of after months or years. Personal habits needs to overlap with professional.

(And, the Viking pic from last week. Reworked older bamboo mat painting from several years ago, revisions done in Photoshop. Not entirely happy with it, but when am I ever going to be, amirite.)

WIP

Like I said, plenty more where the previous came from.

Athena's Owl - sketches

Several unfinished Cintiq studies of "Athena" and her owl. Several more besides these in the works, along with a grip of other illustrations that need tying down.