Happy Halloween 2017!

Have a happy and safe Halloween this year, from your friends at the Ouran High School Host Club.

Sketchbook Pages

Here are just a few more sketches from my free time. This all came from a dream I had about an island in the clouds that looks like a pair of kangaroos and it's inhabitants. If your like me and are constantly having crazy dreams I'm sure someone has told you to write them down. Me, I like to draw what happened and combine them into stories.

"This is Me" short comic

This is a quick something I made for my Graphic Novel class, the idea was to tell everything someone would need to know about us through a 2 page comic.

Imagineering Fantasia Update

Here are some photoshopped images I created to give an idea of what the final project might look like. I also started uploading some basic images into Maya, a 3D software. This is where physical filming will take place as a camera will be created and move through the 2D images making them look 3D.

Imagineering Fantasia

Hello everyone, sorry for the long wait between posts. I'm here to announce the beginning of a new project; Imagineering Fantasia (title in works). I'm still working on Mean Girls the Later Years, I just like to have more than one project going at a time in case I hit a stand still on one of them. This project will involve plussing the Disneyland Railroad between the Fantasyland and Tomorrow land stations, using the 1940 film Fantasia as reference. This would include the additions of fountains, topiaries and simple animatronics. Right now I'm still in the preliminary sketching stage so there's not much to show yet but updates for both projects are soon to come!

I'm a Disney Emoji Contest Finalist!

A few months ago I signed up for Disney/Adobe emoji making contest and was lucky enough to be a part of the top 20 finalist. My winning submission was Lady from Lady and the Tramp, one of my favorite animated films. The emoji was created using Photoshop. Thanks for your help, Lady!

Happy Mother's Day 2017

Now go out and give your mother or any important woman in your life a big bear hug!

Mean Girls the Later Years Update

Here is a large update for my ongoing series, enjoy!

Here is the Layout of the old folks home, a total of 3 floors.

This is what one of the rooms may look like during different times of the day.

This is the wallpaper I created that was used in the previous room. Note the use of lilies as they are funeral flowers.

This is a small prop page of item that might be found within their home with a large emphasis on color. 

Finally here is a list of my color pallets. I like to have a list of the colors I've used for multiple works on a single file for easier access. These ladies are still far from finished so more updates to come soon!

Dalmatian Animation

Here is my final from my observation in animation class. The assignment itself was very open ended and we were allowed to animate anything we wanted, I chose to animate a dalmatian shaking its spots off. I chose a dalmatian because I've owned two before, RIP Desi and Maggie. This is about a months worth of work. First I animated on Photoshop which I do not recommend, but I wanted the feel of a software like TVPaint which I do not have. Though I do find Adobe Flash easier to animate on, I feel that my drawings tend to suffer from lack of brushes to work with. After the animation process was completed, I exported the file as gif and then imported onto flash to fix any timing issues. This meant loading each image (about 70 in all), and resizing them all individually. A very time consuming process but I believe it was worth it all in the end.

Sketchbook Pages

Along with my usual 9x12" sketchbook I like to carry around with a much smaller 5.5x8.5 toned tan sketchpad. In here, I will usually only work in pen since pencil doesn't show up as well and it also serves as my art notebook for critiques. This is also one of the few times I'm able to use my white gel pen for highlights which I really enjoy using. Here I've been trying out a more anime-esqu drawing style just for fun. I went with a happy memories theme here, times with my cat, meeting princesses, and my time as a cast member at Disneyland.

Happy Easter 2017!

Have a wonderful Easter Sunday everyone!

Mean Girls the Later Years Update

My favorite paint colors have always been yellow ochre and pink so it just made sense to create paint my next layout. The painting is a bit more simple and abstract when comparing with my prop design, which will be posted soon. This is because after creating a quick wash background I heavily layered it by using nothing but my pallet knife. I wanted to focus more on color and feel rather than creating a fully rendered room. I can almost see a poster on the wall saying "Live Laugh Fetch". The painting is 18"x34" and the medium is acrylic.

A Yellow Submarine Spyglass

The Beatles Yellow Submarine has been one of my favorite films since I very little, so when I was given an assignment that let me explore just about any art I wanted I immediately leapt for the psychedelic animated movie. The paper which I was assigned follows the idea of taking one literary artist, (I chose poet Matt Shears) and any piece of art that relates to our field of study and for me that's animation. The first part of our assignment was to create something visual, and that was about it. With so much free reign I wanted to combine painting which is something I often do, and paper arts which I've never really explored before. The inspiration came from Robert Sabuda's Alice in Wonderland pop-up book.

The first piece you look through is the portal to Pepperland, the main setting of the film. Next is the Blue Meanies as they take over Pepperland. Then the Sea of Monsters is next, the first of many obstacles the Beatles face. After that, the Foothills of the Headlands as they give vague directions as to where Pepperland is located. Finally is the Sea of Holes, if you look closely, you might find the Sea of Green. The of course the yellow submarine is somewhere in-between. Sorry if it's a little hard to see the inside, it's kind of awkward sticking a large camera down the small peep-hole.

Mean Girls the Latter Years update

Here is an updated version of "Doris", the final part of the sculpture I had to finish was the face which is now complete. Now that that's done I'm currently working on a large bust of her. I'm not sure how I'll do the glasses quite yet but they will be made out of a different material so that they can be removed. Right now I'm just slapping clay on foam board for the bust. Once again I'm using Chavant medium clay.

Meerkat Animation

This is an animation that I've been working on for about a month now. An animal exercise involving a narcoleptic meerkat. I think I'll still work on a few spots including adding some in-betweens.

Mean Girls the Later Years update

This is a sculpture of one of my ladies made out of chavant clay. I had a little trouble with the face of my first sculpture (this is actually my second attempt) because I'm used to drawing in a style that doesn't always transfer well three dimensionally. I ended up switching to medium hard clay which held it's shape better so it was easier to work with. I still need to add her glasses, I'm going to black sculpey bake clay, the same stuff I used to create the weights.

Coming Soon!

Currently I'm in the middle of designing a new twist on the classic story Mean Girls. An earlier post showed early character designs and that's how the project started. Currently I'm spending my spring semester working on the visual development of the series, while in the fall I will be creating short comic strips following the lives of these mean girls as they climb their way up the social ladder within their retirement home. Until then I will be creating and posting home layouts, prop pages, clay models and more.

Live, Laugh, Fetch!

Tree Trimming Friends

As much as I like to create fan work I also like to create my own characters. The characters that I showcased here stretch from college to high school. Starting from left to write, my nameless lamb, kind of a basic girl personality. Sydney the platypus which has been on my blog before. Nameless dog, still new so she has room to grow and develop a personality. Rocko the raccoon (need to change his name because of Guardians of the Galaxy, He's a bit of a troublemaker and once had his own comic, a kind of western Prince and the Pauper. Nancy the cow is a scientist whose best friend is a flamingo (not pictured) and is roommates with unnamed cat. He is also fairly new but I like the idea of these two polar opposites that have to live together. I made this all the way back during winter vacation so sorry if it's a little out of season.

Bubbles!

I've been sort of self teaching myself Photoshop for quite a while now and texture has always been a hard one for me. One thing I've always wanted to learn was how to create bubbles. This is where I have to give credit to several helpful Pinterest posts. Creating one to look like an elephant however was simply trial, error, and a whole lot of layers. I thought it might be fun to have a Dumbo theme but most of the time on this project went into creating the bubbles. A lot of them are pretty over exaggerated in color but "clear elephants on parade" just doesn't have a good ring to it.

Cartoonification

Cartoonification is a small series I've been working on involving taking an animal, drawing them realistically (or at least in my style), and then turning them into a caricature. If I were to revisit this idea, I think I would try to exaggerate the final drawing a bit more. Something a little closer to how the hippo turned out.

The Starstruck Duck

Page 1 of the Starstruck Duck. This story is recreated from Don Rosa's comic by the same name that was never completed. What I did was take his sketches and tried to draw them in his style. First I draw what I want in my sketchbook, scan them onto my computer and finish everything else of photoshop. Again only these pictures are mine, the story belongs to Don Rosa.

 Here is one of the original pages that I had to work off of.

My finished drawing for the first page. Don Rosa's detailed style when it comes to his finished products are a hard replication, but I wanted to remain as faithful as I could to the original source.

I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Don Rosa at a comic fest in San Jose a couple years ago. He's a really sweet guy and ended up signing my copy of his magnum opus, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck for me. 

Mean Girls: The Later Years

Mean Girls: The Later Years is something I've been wanting to work on for a while now. It revolves around the idea that our grandmothers aren't always what they seem, they can be rude, loud, and mean. I wasn't planning on bringing any characters from the movie into these stories, it's just a working title I have. I also don't want the story to rely too heavily on what already exists and instead try to come up with my own stories. The bottom picture is of course a classic line from the film but also something that happened to my Grandma at her retirement home. Her and my other Grandma's stories are a big inspiration for me. I'm planning on exploring more of these characters in the future. 

Identity Crisis Animatic

Two years after my original "Identity Crisis" I'm finally able to show how I originally envisioned it. I've been storyboarding for a little while now but editing isn't exactly my forte. Of course there are a few changes I might make, but compared to the original animation I feel this flows a little better. I was also able to add the character of the otter which was missing in the original.