Stegall Family Portrait

Howdy Folks! Over the past couple weeks, I've been working on this fun little side project for Jeremy Stegall, a friendly chap I met while tabling at Baltimore Comic Con. He commissioned me to do a "family portrait" for him and his wife. I really enjoyed getting to create an image that captured the personality of the Stegall clan, instead of a more traditional painted portrait. Any who, hope you guys enjoy the piece! I'm particularly fond of the dogs.

Also, you should check out Jeremy's photography portfolio. He's based in Laramie, WY. Got some impressive stuff on his website!

I stood under the waterfall...

And now time for another Owl City exercise. This has been so much fun. Adam Young's lyrics although again, highly eccentric just give me so many interesting ideas to play with. My goal with these illustrations is to see how quickly I can come up with a concept and illustrate it, attempting to improve my speed and illustration quality with each one. This one took a bit longer than the bear, but I'm close to about 3 - 4 hours per illustration. Now the question is can I get that down even faster? I guess we shall see. I'll keep you guys posted!

I saw a bear in the den...

The lyrics in Owl City's music, although highly eccentric, is very poetic and surprising descriptive. This illustration is based off of a line from his song Plant Life.

Olive

This is my latest addition to my personal Pushing Daisies fan art collection. Olive has some of the best lines and character moments on the show. I think my love for Pushing Daisies might be reaching an unhealthy level of obsession, mostly because I continue to drool over the production design. Oh well! I’m sure that infatuation will run its course, but for now, you folks will just have to put up with it. A shame, I know. 

MTA

The morning and evening commute via the NYC subway system is ripe with a smorgasbord of characters just waiting to be captured in my sketchbook (or sometimes iphone nowadays). The variety of cultures, clothing, personalities, and mental stabilities amongst MTA patrons is surprising and impressive (and makes me giddy with devilish excitement just thinking about it). This illustration is based on a sketch I captured earlier last week. I'm not sure why I specifically choose to render this individual, but I will say the combination of pure disdain on her face, with the harsh over-head lighting may or may not have been contributing factors. 

The Dark Knight Returns

Pencil and Inks: Drew Zucker

Color: Matt Doering

I had the pleasure recently of working on my first collaborative art piece with my buddy Drew Zucker, a fellow SCAD grad and rising sequential artist. This is our entry for the Dark Knight Returns tribute/competition sponsored by the 2011 New York Comic Con. Selected artists get their piece published in an anthology. I’m so glad Drew asked me to color this piece! He sure did a spectacular job making Batman look epic as hell. Needless to say, it was a fun piece to color, and refreshing to dive back into the comic world for a change. Wish us luck, and take some time to show Drew’s blog some lovin! 

Spirit Guardians

Folks, sleep is a magical substance that invigorates the soul and makes one extremely productive, at least it does for me. Sadly, I ashamed to say that I have found myself neglecting to get to bed on time the past couple of weeks in favor of staying up late to get some extra drawing accomplished. Unfortunately the extra hours are never that helpful and the lack of energy makes me even less productive on the days that I do have time to draw. Balancing a work life with a “work” life is tricky business when your hobby is also your second job. 


I’m taking a break from the birds in favor of another project involving boyscouts. I’ve been doing some color tests for two of the main character. I’m trying to develop a coloring style for the project (which will probably be a comic (perhaps)). Does the coloring look familiar? I’ve been using direct color reference from two popular sources to help jumpstart experimentation and creativity. Can you folks name the two films that inspired the coloration you see before you?  

Slow day in paradise

I bet St. Peter likes to knit angel wings in his spare time. I'm sure even heaven has it's slow days :D

Happy (belated) Halloween!

Better late than never :)

Last week was TOTALLY RAD! This is the first Halloween that I’ve been able to hard-core celebrate in a long time. Thank you New York for making this season very hard core in deed. Seriously, there was a new Halloween related activity I got to participate in each day last week:

Last Sunday: Paranormal Activity

Monday: Shopping for my Halloween costume - Todd Ingram

Tuesday: Horror Film Director Lecture Series (this one included the director of C.H.U.D.)

Wednesday: Paranormal Activity 2 (scared the shit out of me).

Thursday: Pumpkin carving and the Spanish horror film REC

Friday: Office shindig. candy, and lighting the pumpkins

Saturday: Halloween party in Brooklyn (we were out till 3:00 dancing and bar hoping (one of the bars had Nightmare Before Christmas on loop)).

Sunday: Resting more Halloween movies (Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Secret Window, Disturbia). And of course, there was more candy to be had :)

Hope everyone enjoyed their week too!

Fat Unicorns RULE!

So, over the course of my college years, I’ve promised a few friends that I would create some artwork for them. Last December (yeah I know, a LONG time ago), I promised my friends Cora and Jane, that I would do a painting of them as vikings riding the back of a fat unicorn (kind of a homage to that classic Bugs and Elmer cartoon). AND HERE IT IS!!! And it turned out pretty ridiculous what with the volcanes AND the lightning. Ha! It was fun. Taught myself some new coloring tricks in Photoshop along the way. Now onto even CRAZIER pieces!!! Any suggestions? Anyone?

So I'm a little behind on my holidays...

Yup, this is my father's day post...on Independence Day. Haha! I'll catch sooner or later. This drawing goes out to my awesome Dad, celebrating all the crap he's put up with over the years. Thanks Dad! Your seemingly endless flow of patience is inspiring.

I just finished my first month on the job at Large Animal Games, and so far it's been a highly exciting yet, somewhat exhausting experience so far. Working a full time art job is a little bit more difficult that I expected, but with any new experiences, it takes a little bit of time to adjust. Finding time for my personal artwork has been tough, but getting better (which is why posting hasn't been so frequent...ahem). We just finished a prototype for a new facebook game this week. I helped with concept design, layout and animation artwork for the game, so fingers crossed that it gets approved for production! 

Life in New York is busy and exhilarating! Happy 4th of July everyone! I'll have an independence day type of something or other posted soon :P

More "Pet Yeti" Backgrounds...

Finals are a week from tomorrow. I'm going to get all of my stuff done...how?

BUT, good news! My compositor Nate Taylor and I sat down last night to work on the film and we now have one mintue of COMPLETELY finished film!!! Only three more to go! New project deadline has this film finishing up right around the end of July. Just in time for San Diego Comic Con!

Finally!

Ok folks, I finally finished the last of the eight illustration series for the "Emma and Molly's Pet Yeti" opening sequence. Whew! Boy did these turn out to me more troublesome than I originally anticipated. Ugh! My next post will be all eight of them in a row so you can see the story progression from one to the other. I swear I think whatever my next film is, I think it will be one of those cool painted short films that keep cropping up all over Cartoon Brew and Line Boil. The majority of the work that I've done for EMPY has been painting, and I'm really starting to enjoy painting and illustrating a lot. Many of the artist that crop up on these sites have found really unique ways to combine painting, illustrating, and animation into one perfect hybrid. It's cool to think that animation doesn't necessarily have to be separated into animation, cleanup, background painting, but that all three processes can be one in the same. I'm even more excited for graduation now. I can't wait to explore and experiment!

Here are a few of my more recent favorite short films that you guys should totally check out. All of these have been a huge influence for my next film (again, whatever that might be (not sure yet)). 

Headless Studio Reel

Bear Film

Red

Valencia California

Happy Mother's Day!

Well, I'll admit. This is an image for the film BUT it is oddly appropriate considering the holiday don't you think?

We're getting down to the wire here at school with finals (and graduation)only three weeks away, but boy is time escaping me quickly. "Emma and Molly's Pet Yeti" is making steady progress. The portion of the film that we're going to put in the senior showcase is almost complete! All that's left is cleanup, color, and a few more backgrounds. Here's a composite test that I just recently uploaded to vimeo. Unfortunately I won't be able to load the whole film onto the internet until the festival circuit is complete but I'll continue to delight you all with a wide variety of "sneak peaks" until then (like I've been doing :D) Enjoy!

Advice from a new director...

Another illustration for "Emma and Molly's Pet Yeti."

Hmm...just realized that my last two posts were of lonely characters. Haha! I promise there's not a trend going on here folks. 

For those of you getting ready to start your senior projects here's some advice from a first time film-maker:

1: Become a decision maker. Make sure all of your artistic choices are made before you even touch production. Being wishy washy about concept design or storyboarding just leads to trouble down the road.

2. Hire a producer. Being organized is extremely important for keeping your team on track. Nick Allred and Courtney Hood have been incredibly helpful in this regard. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the needs of your crew, and before you know it, you have no time to actually create art for your own film.

3. Make sure you meet the needs of your team first before getting your own work down. Getting wrapped up in your work puts the rest of the team behind. 

4. DO NOT hire seniors to work on your film. They are too busy doing there own films to help you out (even if they insist that they aren't).

5. It will take longer than you realize to do EVERYTHING.

These are the top 5 things I've learned being a first time director. I wish I could say that I'm a fantastic leader, but I'm not. I'm inexperienced and I still have a lot to learn. But I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. I can't wait to start the next film, with all of my previous mistakes hopefully realized and worked through. 

Yeti at the Beach

Ha! Ever wonder how a Yeti stays cool at the beach?

Finally I'm nearing the end of my senior project class (about time)! I've been creating these illustration for my Sequential Art senior project class at SCAD. I'm excited by how much work I accomplished over the course of the quarter, but it's fairly daunting how much work still needs to be done in order to finish the film for May. But thanks to my wonderful team of animators and layout artists, the film is getting done a little bit at a time. I'll have more goodies to show soon, including the finished treehouse layout and a final composite test.

Another painting - Kitchen Bedtime Story

I'm pumping out these paintings like crazy. Finals are next week! And then I can do non Yeti related artwork.

Shadow Puppets - Yeti Painting #3

I actually finished this one up last night, but needed to pass out for a few hours. So now I'm up to three finished paintings (with only minor tweaks needed to be made), and that leaves six more to go (I actually took the time to count then last night). I'm taking a break today to work on some animation for a class, so you guys should see another finished illustration sometime tomorrow or early Saturday. 

Yeti Illustration #2

Awesome! These paintings aren't taking as long as I expected. Thank goodness because I have SOOOO many more to do (about 6). But this is number 2 of the eight total, and number 3 will be done later tonight. If I can keep up this pace, then finals (two weeks away T_T) will hopefully not be as headache inducing as it usually is. BUT, it is SCAD so finals will be headache inducing no matter what happens. I'll let you know :D

Finished Color Piece

Finally, I can showcase a finished illustration for "Emma and Molly's Pet Yeti." This is the very first image of the film.