Comic Book Art: This is not the post they want but the one they need!

Comic Books have been a very big part of my youth, at certain points in my life they even became a escape when times were tough. I started to really get into comics during my first year of high school; during that time I got introduced to the artwork of comic book legend Jim Lee. I remember spending a lot of my time just copying his illustrations trying to develop my own style during the process. Later on I stumbled across another artist named Alex Ross. Ross had a very different approach when drawing these super beings... he painted his comics and designed them realistically.


Alex Ross (along with Marc Davis, Alan Lee, John Howe and Crash McCreery) has become one of my favorite artist. His approach to comic book art really changed my view point when tackling any subject matter that I'm currently working on. He taught me to go against the norm and really have fun with whatever I do and most importantly make it my own.

The Batman above along with the Joker and Beast below, were all done as speed digital paintings; each were painted in under an hour or less. They were quick, fun and really helped loosen up my drawing hand.
The last two drawings were both personal projects; I really wanted to tackle two fan favorites in special way. Superman (which happens to be my fan favorite), was the first one I took on. I'm pretty happy with the costume design and his likeness; I'm still not pleased with his right hand and I mean to go back and address it. The second one is a work in progress of Wolverine. I didn't want to do an action or aggressive pose with him but more like he just finished or waiting to whoop on someone and is taking a smoke break. I didn't want the claws to be present and I also kept his costume to his established look but with tweaks here and there.

Joker, Speed Painting

Beast, Speed Painting

Superman, Digital Painting

Wolverine, work in progress

Arr! There be pirates in this post says I!

Marc Davis has always been my favorite of Disney's famous Nine Old Men of  Animation; It began when I started to investigated who this balding artist was that always appeared with Walt in those behind the scenes at Disneyland shorts.
I loved his concept artwork for The Pirates of the Caribbean attraction and I became obsessed with pirates myself when I started to do research for my own work. My pirates owe a lot to the late Marc Davis; the designs came from my head, but the personalities that came from these designs gives a little wink to what he had in his concepts.





Below is an old school project from concept to final; Funny thing is that my wife told me to change the far right pirate's eyes so they were looking down because he would not be looking into her eyes.

Sketch

Rough Color

Final

The following are sketches I did while playing around with different ideas. Some of these I do quite enjoy, so expect to see final of some of these in the future.

Pirate Sketches

Title: "Red Beard", The following design was for a project I did in college. Here you will see it from sketch, to color test, and then to vector. I later revisited this design and fleshed it out adding a wench for company.

Original Sketch

Color Test

Final Vector

Redesign 

This final piece was a personal project I did for fun. I had a blast studying the costumes and sketching out Captain Barbossa, Jack Sparrow and Will Turner. I am still really pleased on how this one turned out, I still need to add Elizabeth.

The Three Amigos

There and Back Again: "Hollywood Edition"

"Hooray for Hollywood"

As I mentioned in previous posts, I love Hollywood and its history; because of this, it's tends to be one of my favorite subject matters when I'm doing art for myself. I love those classic movie star portraits and the glamour that just pours from those images. Producing digital paintings based on these portraits really taught me how to use Photoshop (due to myself having to figure out ways to replicate certain effects that appear in these photos). 

The first group of images were created using graphite or a bald point pen. Some of these pieces were completed pretty fast, while some of them received a little more love. Your going to notice that Lon Chaney is a popular subject for me and it's due to my fascination with the man himself. When I was younger, I saw this movie with my mom called "Man of a Thousand Faces". It was a bio/film of the life and career of the great Lon Chaney starring James Cagney. Of course they Hollywood"ized " his personal story but man did it show off what he could do artistically and as an actor. Well, he is probably second to Lucille Ball when it comes to favorite actors of all time.

"James Cagney", Graphite

"Walt Disney", Pen 

"Charlie Chaplin", Pen

"Marilyn Monroe", Graphite

"Lon Chaney", Graphite

"Marlon Brando", Graphite

The last 3 images are all digital paintings, I like to choose a "Big" project and work my way toward that project. Chaney's Phantom was that project and it's success was due to everything that came before it. (I'm very proud of Marilyn's hands as well)

"Lon Chaney", Digital

"Marilyn Monroe", D.P.

"Lon Chaney", Digital Painting

There and Back Again: "Digital Paintings"

Adapting to new styles and technologies; Well digital painting and the Wacom tablet were the the two aspects of conceptual art that I needed to get a firm grasp of. I've purchased a lot of reference material, usually concept art books of popular films and video games and digital art made up a large portion of what was shown. 
I feel that I really found myself now that I work, for the most part, on  the computer and my Wacom table (I currently use an Intuos 3). It took me about a year to really get the grasp of how to use this tool and to get a feel for it. But it really helped me loosen up and experiment.

"Rhino Warrior": This was my first character that was completely drawn on the tablet. It started from a sketch I did at work (I like to go to Google and sketch from random images), from these sketches I came up with this cool looking rhino/human hybrid face. I later redrew it in Photoshop and added the rest of the body. I went with a tribal feel for this one and I still hate his shoes :)

Here are few other concepts:

"Bird Man"

"Female Study"

"Zombie Concept"

The "Bird Man" started off as a sketch I did while looking at some bald eagles and this old mans face kept popping into my head.The next one was my first attempt into painting a female character; she is my Pre-Wonder Woman. The final one was for this video game project that never got off the ground, I'm still pleased with it.

And a newer one!

"Dwarf Warrior Revised"

"Warrior Dwarf Original"

Well this guy was actually a revisit to an earlier design that I had did a few years back. The original was a sketch I did for a class project which was then colored in a Photoshop (I didn't know what I was doing). The revised design shows a significant amount of growth in the tools that I now know how to use (somewhat). I had a lot of fun with this one; He has a personality and a story which the viewer can have fun imagining when viewing specific traits that are visibly present. The only thing that I had to keep somewhat the same from the original design was his two handed ax, I still think it's bad ass.

Well that's it for know, the next few posts will continue with some of my older projects then off to the new stuff!

Character Design for Animation Research

I found this book, "Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950's Animation" by Amid Amidi at the public library. I really enjoyed this book and it helped me take a good hard look at my character designs to see what I was missing... Style!

This book covered animation from the 1950's and I loved the simplicity of everything. The following designs were created based on what I observed. 

 I like to start with head shots, its important for me to get the character's personality this way before I tackle the rest of it. 

"California Dreamin"

I decided to create this blog as a means of sharing my artwork and my creative process. It also serves as a replacement from funding a website! I wanted to share with anyone who was interested... Why I draw what I draw, what inspires me, and how I'm working toward the goals I have set for myself.

So "California Dreamin", why did I decide to title my first blog with that? Well when I'm about to start working on whatever project that I'm currently working on, I play this song as a means of pumping myself up. Since childhood, I've had but one goal and that goal was Disney. I grew up watching the Mickey, Goofy and Donald; Plus every Disney feature film available (live action and animated) with Pinocchio and Swiss Family Robinson being my favorite. As time went by, I started to become fascinated with the man himself, Walter Elias Disney and of this world that he lived and worked in, Hollywood. 

When researching Walt, I got introduced to all of these other individuals like Chaplin, Threes Stooges, Bing Crosby and my favorite Hollywood movie star, Lucille Ball. I would watch all of these classic movies with my mom and I fell in love with these comedies, dramas and musicals. My favorite of these movie genres were the ones staring the classic Universal Movie monsters. The art that went into the makeup and the design of these creatures fascinated me.

Well  I digressed, back to Disney! Animation, that was my original goal, that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be one of those original animators who worked along with Disney to help establish what animation was and what it could be. I wanted to experiment with different techniques and new styles to design these awesome looking and believable characters that you actually care for. I wanted to get thrown into W.E.D. and get the challenge of designing what you see at Disneyland. Damn it, I wanted to be Marc Davis! 

Well I was born a few decades too late, the Disney I fell in love with is now gone; I fell in love with history. But the desire, the passion to work for this company and in Hollywood is still there. I really want to call John Lasseter my boss. My passion is not the actual animation anymore, but in character design and conceptual art. I want to create the characters you see in those big blockbuster movies. I want to design those characters that everyone falls in love with (like Buzz and Woody) or scares you (like Jesse from Toy Story 2), she creeps me out OK!  I want  to work in the Hollywood industry period. Times change, so do goals but one has never changed for me and that is to see my name in the credits of at least one film. That is why I play that song whenever I prepare to do some artwork.

Next time some actual artwork ;)