The Collector

This is my entry for this month's 2D challenge over at the Gnomon Workshop forum. The topic was "The Collector." I've been itching to draw a fighting robot, and with the topic, I thought it could be cool to have a robot who collects the aerials from his defeated foes, as a kind of kill trophy. As you can see by the tally marks on his chest, he's almost up to his 20th victory now.

Form and Color Sketch

I've been doing a lot of blocky and straight-edged stuff at work lately, and I need to break out of that. So I've started sketching out some more organic forms in my sketchbook. I'm taking some of them and rendering the forms using photos as color and material reference. I'm beginning a personal vehicle project with a couple of friends, and I need to work on form and rendering. It's been a while, and I've gotten a bit rusty.

This one is from a photo I took of a little Corvette show they had in the parking lot of an ice cream "festival" my wife dragged us to back in June. I guess the day wasn't a total loss if I got a good sketch out of it ;)

Iron Giant Sketch and Painting WIP

Any of you who know my two-year-old son probably know about his obsession with The Iron Giant. He watches it almost every day. In fact, he knows it so well that he directs my wife and me in role-playing his favorite scenes, commanding us to "stand over there. You're looking at the giant building [power plant], and I'm the Iron Giant in the trees." Then he proceeds to walk around making loud stomping sounds with his mouth. This continues for some time, until we tire of it and distract him with something else. Or put the movie on again. I'm actually quite glad that he likes the movie. I think it's one of those oft-overlooked gems, and it's one of my favorite movies.

I decided to do a drawing and painting of the Iron Giant for my son as a painting practice exercise. Here's the sketch on toned paper and the work-in-progress painting I've begun in Photoshop. It's kind of fun once in a while to do a piece whose sole purpose is to practice painting and not to have to worry about designing something from scratch. I'll post updates as I go.

New Blog

Hey, everyone, as you may have noticed, I haven't posted any work on here for a while. I'm very fortunate to have been rather busy of the last few months, and while I'm doing a lot of work, I'm prevented by NDA's from showing it just yet. To be able to do work that I can show and continually add to my portfolio, I've made it a goal to participate in more online forum challenges and activities. There are so many of them out there, and I've been making an effort to catalog them for my own convenience. In so doing, though, I realized that such a catalog might be a useful resource for others, so I've decided to create a blog dedicated to gathering information about various online forum challenges. You can find it at this link.

My goal with that new blog is to make it easier to sort through the many challenges available online. I'm sure my listing isn't 100% comprehensive, and I welcome any other suggestions or links you may have. I'm also in the process of designing the blog to be a little less boring looking, but I figured I'd just go ahead and get it out there. I'd love to get your feedback, so head on over there and see what you think and let me know what you think might make it more helpful.

Thanks!

R.I.P. Norm Schureman

It is with true sadness that I write about the passing of a great inspiration and instructor of mine, Norm Schureman, who was killed in a tragic turn of events this weekend. I only ever had the chance to take one class from Norm while I was at Art Center, but he's been a friend of mine ever since, always offering advice and encouragement. I learned so much from Norm about design and drawing, and I was always in awe of his vast amounts of knowledge on just about every topic he ever discussed. He taught me that it is never enough to know how to draw, but that it's more important to know about what I'm drawing-- and know it inside and out. His instruction and outlook on life have contributed immeasurably to my skills as a designer and as a person.

I'll miss you, Norm.

EOW- Ancient Palace Ruins

This week's Environment of the Week at ConceptArt.org was "Ancient Palace Ruins." Here's my entry:

Constructed adjacent to the beautiful river, the palace offered a stunning view to its former occupants until it was swallowed by the raging torrents of a merciless flood. Now the palace has become part of the river, merely another large stone worn away by the rushing rapids.

Deep Space Pitstop

In my continuing effort to participate in more art forum activities, I did this piece for the monthly competition hosted at The Gnomon Workshop. The topic was Deep Space Pitstop. This space station would be the closest outpost to the Serpent Nebula, and families would stop there to get some food, rest a while, and let the kids go to the bathroom before seeing the popular tourist attraction.

Creature of the Week #165: Zombie Dinosaur

For someone who thinks that the whole zombie thing is getting a bit overplayed these days, I sure have been doing a lot of zombies... The Creature of the Week topic over at ConceptArt.org this week was "Zombie Dinosaur." I'm trying to participate in more of the many weekly activities available on various forums, and this is my first step in that direction.

Here's a quickie I did as my brothers watched. We had to look up some gross pictures of rotting meat to get it just right. Gotta love Google image search (thank goodness for SafeSearch).

The newest member of the Round Up Gang

I was given an assignment to place a character from an old movie into a screenshot of a newer movie. My son has watched Toy Story 2 dozens of times in the last few months, and I've been watching just about as many Clint Eastwood westerns. So I made the Man with No Name ("Blondie" in The Good the Bad and the Ugly) one of the members of Woody's Round Up Gang.

Coupla Paintings

Here are a couple of digital paintings I did today. The first is from a 4 hour life painting session in class. I'd like to go back and figure out something for the background to make it more interesting.

This second painting is the result of about 20 minutes of experimenting with a method of "finding" an image in an assortment of random found images. I like the mood of the piece, and I'm afraid to do anything more to it, lest I ruin what it has going for it. I'll probably go back and add some more, but here it is for now.

Film Study

I'm kind of a latecomer to Westerns, but I've spent the last year finding and buying every Western featuring Clint Eastwood that I can find. They invented the term "tough as nails" for that guy.

Here's a study I did from one of his movies. Bonus points go to whoever can name the specific film that features this shot.

Santa Ana Airport Sketch

Here he comes, here comes John Wayne. I'm not gonna cry about my pa. I'm gonna build an airport, put my name on it.

Kitbash, Part II

I've managed to do a little more work on my kitbash project this week, and I want to make an effort to show my progress. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the build, but I'll try to update the further ideation steps as I go. I've never done this before, and I think showing the process can be useful in finding what does and doesn't work. What better way to motivate oneself than falling flat on one's face for all to see?

So, this week, I took a straight-on side view photo and used the path tool in Photoshop to create a line drawing. I really like the orthographic line drawings you find in books about airplanes, and I wanted to recreate that kind of drawing here. After doing the line drawing, I experimented with various color combinations.

In my head, this is a scout/recon vehicle designed for navigating moderate terrain. It doesn't travel very far, but it can travel rather quickly. It has one large gun, used primarily for self defense, as it is not an attack vehicle. After trying several color combinations, I realized that a type of camouflage would probably suit it best. From a design perspective, camouflage is not necessarily the best coloring, as it masks the contours and shapes of the design. However, that masking would perfectly suit a vehicle with this purpose, so I think I may take it in that direction. Perhaps the camouflage reacts to its environment, like a chameleon, so it can be used in various types of locations. I will probably experiment with it a little more, but here's what I've got so far.

Please share your opinions and suggestions! Which color schemes do you think are working, and which ones should we never speak of again?

Kitbash, Part I

So this last week, I decided to do a little design experiment. Well, it was an experiment for me, as I'd never done it before and was not quite sure how it would work out. For those of you unfamiliar with the term "kitbashing", it refers to the activity of taking parts from various model kits and combining them into something new and original.

So I got an Apache helicopter kit, a jetfighter kit, and a couple of Gundam kits, and put 'em together. Then I painted the whole thing with matte gray primer to unify the whole thing, as many of the different pieces from different model kits were a wide range of colors.

Below are photos of the finished model, and I'm pretty pleased with it. Next, I'm going to take photos of the model in specific lighting scenarios and do some digital paintovers to experiment with paint schemes, weathering, environment, etc...

It's nice to work on some personal stuff amidst the professional work, but often hard to find the time. I really want to finish this project, though, so stay tuned for Part II, coming soon...

Walker Concept Indoors

Our assignment this week was to practice rendering an object with an indoor studio lighting setup. For consistency's sake I decided to use the same vehicle as last week's.

Walker Concept

This is another rendering exercise. I tried to get more into it and really develop something I'd really want to work on.

A couple of new things

It's been a while since I've posted some stuff, so I figured I'd put up some work in progress.

This first one is a concept for a gun that I'm doing for my Gears of War 3 project in my Props and Vehicles class. It still needs some tweaking, but I like where it's headed.


This is an exercise in rendering chrome and different reflective surfaces. I extended a photo that my wife and I took in Moab, Utah, and painted in the rocket ship. It was a time-consuming but kind of fun exercise.

Armored Transport Concept

It's been forever since I've posted on here, so I figured I'd throw up a piece I did this week. Hmm... I could probably phrase that better... I figured I'd post a piece I did this week. Yeah, that's a little better.

I don't often do wheeled vehicles, so I decided to make myself do one to satisfy an open-ended assignment in my Vehicle and Prop Design class (the assignment was to design a vehicle of any kind). There are still some ideas I'd like to see on this, so I'll probably do little bits here and there as I find the time.

VisComm 3 Homeworks

I haven't posted for a while, so I figured I'd show some of my recent homework assignments. These are all for my VisComm 3 class. The first is a painting done over a photograph of a foamcore model (which I just realized is probably still taking up space in the shared laundry room... oops, I'll have to take care of that tomorrow...). None of the model shows, but it was the starting point for perspective and shadow reference.


These are thumbnails done for the image that follows. Some weren't too great, and I really liked a few of them. I might come back and revisit some of my favorites.



This was based on the winning thumbnail. I tried to go for the iridescence of a beetle, and I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt to do so. It was an interesting process.