Sketchbook Pages Fresh Off The Press

Well, not off the presses. More like fresh off the Cintiq. Recent series of digital sketches below, like literally from the past few days. Plenty of storybook vignettes and random character pieces.
(*Note 08 / '23: Redid some of these pieces back around 2022. So instead of the original dirty underwear that was here, you get slightly laundered boxers a few years later.)

(*Okay, now back to the proper timeline for my drawings.)

...And here's a redux of an older piece from... 2018 I think? 8-bit characters hanging out at the old Chinese takeout place we'd hit after class at the local JC:

I guess at the time I thought the shapes were pushed enough on the first version (small inset picture on the left). But in all likelyhood I just wanted to get the color and lighting done, and didn't take enough steps back to see if I actually liked the overall feel of the poses or the drawing itself. And as usually the case from back then, I didn't really push the concept or character interactions either, so... here you have it. More characters, a little more activity, including burping. Hopefully some color soon.

Revised Older Piece - Beta Euthynus Redux

Close up of an older piece (see below for full view). 

From the Instagram post:

Dug through the archives and found an older piece - alot of older pieces actually - and decided to do some revisions. Alot of these were pretty rough around the lines, and I caught myself cleaning some of them up on this one. But then figured, what the hell, at some point at least some aspect of your old work is what it is regardless of whatever fixes you make, or regardless of whoever had a problem with your approach beforehand ("Not clean enough!"). A person can always improve, but parts of how you used to approach art shouldn't be completely erased either. The industry, Instagram, the internet - as lame as it sounds, they can't provide your art with you. 

Which is just another way of saying: Don't let the studios or the Internet Commons erase your thumbprint or signature on your own work, warts and all. Trends have a way of flattening both concepts and art, and eventually the people who come up with them, if they let them. 

(And yeah, all of this grandiose stuff on a post that's basically an upshot on a girl's butt. I get it.)

Dirty Harry vs Michael Myers version 2

Post-halloween update. Second version drawn from scratch. Not a draw over, no reference, for anyone wondering if I cheat it.

Halloween Illustrations and Character Designs

Some post-Halloween illustrations. Above: Old prop design from a series I worked on, which got the color treatment. Below: Some witch character designs, turns and exploratory sketches. Consistency with character design and turns is a bit of a dragon chase, in that it can be done, is a good ability to have, but can ultimately distract from the key things in drawing (fluidity, spontaneity, dynamic balance) while coming up with concepts.

Of course, it can go the other way with a one-off drawing in a dynamic pose looking great... until it comes time to replicate that from another angle or in an overall design. Guess it all depends on how far you're willing to allow the visual language in a given world to stretch.

Dirty Harry vs Michael Myers

Detective Callahan vs. Michael Myers. Because why not. And because I need a Halloween-themed picture to upload.

Animation Hellhole Memories Part 2

Colored versions of the Allan Hancock Animation Hellhole crew playing Worms: Armageddon at my old place, and the Calarts Cube 5 crew playing Halo at the ever leaky Woodglen Venture apartments.

Below are more WIPs / beatboards of the Allan Hancock College days. Some liberties were taken with the cast of characters, in case anyone was wondering if I went to school with a salamander, capybara, Samus, or a witch. Which is still uncertain with at least a few of those, truth be told.

But again, the whole exercise was to try to recreate the Fine Arts Department from memory alone, especially the courtyard outside of Buildings E and F, since there's next to no reference for this other than Google Maps and my own hazy recollections.

There are more images and details posted over at my Wordpress page.

Animation Hellhole and CalArts Memories, WIPs

Series of recent unfinished sketches revolving around memories of both the pre-internet days of the Animation Hellhole at Allan Hancock College (panel 1), and the later post-internet days at Apartment 131 across the street from CalArts (panel 2).

As you can see, a majority of the time in both situations revolved around carefully researching the emerging world of interactive software.

(The second set of panels below are mostly based on the Hellhole days:)

The actual animation hellhole was literally a renovated janitor's closet inside the Arts Department at Hancock. It still had a working sink and some leftover mops, but it was also stuffed with state of the art second hand animation gear, both digital (two pieced together PCs, security cameras, a VCR) and traditional (an animation disc with several 80W bulbs cooking overhead and underneath).

One notable exception to the historical accuracy of these pics is the super model time traveler featured in the last frame, but otherwise I tried to keep it faithful to the crew, situations, and atmosphere of the time: Endless days of drawing, shooting animation or the sh*t, running off to Chopstix for cheap Chinese food (a miracle for the Santa Maria/Orcutt area in the early 2000's), digging around Gamestop or Blockbuster for Playstation games, endless nights playing Worms: Armageddon or Puzzle Fighter, planning our next trip to San Luis to either get art supplies at Law's Hobby or whatever art books and comics they had at Captain Nemo's.

Again, keep in mind that for most of us it was pre-internet, pre-Amazon, pre-smart or even cell phone. You got by with what you could find and took it all in with the company of friends.

Art Against Alzheimers 2018 - Street Fighter submissions

Two sets of Street Fighter prints I submitted to this year's Forget Me Not: Art Against Alzheimer's, run by Mr. Brandon Tokunaga. (Ibuki for the first pic; Cammy and Chun Li for the second. An unfinished first pass of the Ibuki illustration can be found here.)

All proceeds were donated to Alzheimer's research as well as Alzheimer's care and assistance. That said, the theme for the art has been increasingly pop related, esp. with vintage video games taking a lion's share of the print submissions. Given that the show made a good chunk of change this year, I'd say that's a winning strategy, and for a good cause.

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.")

Obligatory Retro Game Post - What I've Been Playing

Posted this already over on the Instagram and (don't laugh) the Deviantart page.

Anyhow, a visual representation of GBA games I've been playing recently. Was a little too late in getting this done to enter into this year's Forget Me Not: Art Against Alzheimer's charity art auction, but next year will prove to be a challenge since stuff apparently flew off the shelves and raised over $5k. Not bad for something homegrown by Allan Hancock Animation Hellhole alumni on the Central Coast.

- Official Facebook page for Art Against Alzheimer's.

Acheulean Beatboard

Piece from almost a year ago. Posted on the Instagram account back then; did a couple slight revisions the meanwhile, mostly having to do with just balancing the faces and head shapes surprisingly enough. (I can see why most artists avoid doing the downward-angled head at a slight turn from center. I think though that this was drawn before I had a more solid undersketch system down, or of establishing the feature distances on a character's face.)

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.)

Character and Story Development Pages

Two condensed pages of recent character studies that sort of bleed over into either story or scene ideas. Spitballing pages, more or less, figuring out both character design and personality.

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):

Character Design Sketch Pages

Roughly 3 sketch pages, formatted together vertical-wise, moreso for Pinterest than anything else. Good luck ever seeing it there though. As always, some of these can be found on the Instagram account.

Am sure my tens of viewers could care less about whatever progress I may or may not make on this front, but I need to be able to gauge for myself where I'm at in terms of simplifying shape choices, or just having a better shape and line rhythm that isn't sacrificed for the sake of belting out story ideas, and vice versa. Is a fine line between actual productivity and spinning one's wheels in order to feel productive. If the animation industry's taught me anything...  Well, there's a whole tier of management dedicated to extracting the latter. Which I think explains more than a few end results, in things far beyond our own profession.

And then we see it in the wheels,
the wheels!
Which never like to rest,
the wheels! . . .
How heavy are the stones themselves,
the millstones!
They dance in merry ranks . . .
The millstones!

Slumberhexe - Daydream Notebook 01

Intended more as a WIP progress page, throwing a few non-sequential panels together from separate pages. Was also an excuse to explore color options a little more.
-------

~ The original full pic that started the process:

~ Panel detail of the peasant riot:

Slumberhexe - Daydream Notebook 02

The original full page, which ended up going counter clockwise starting from the top right for whatever reason. Trying to create anything should mean allowing yourself to get messy; and despite the eternal critique of other artists (read: animators), getting the creative juices flowing sometimes means not giving much of a damn about everyone else's nitpick; "Not left to right? I can't follow, I don't get it."

Yeah, neither do I. Not fully anyhow. Hence the process of creating.

Slumberhexe - Daydream Notebook 03

 Several of the individual panels given their own page.

A close up of the last panel.

Espionage

Tone study, but also a reminder to myself that a scene needs an environment and atmosphere.

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.