acrylic portrait

Brooke "commissioned" this little illustration portrait for her sister Keira as a christmas present. It was nice to get back into painting again.

ROBOTOMY

Tune into Cartoon Network this Monday for the Robotomy premiere at 8:45.

I designed characters and props for the show. It's a fun show with lots of robot destruction for almost all ages.

Titmouse Bloggin'

Baeolophus is a genus of bird, commonly known as titmice in the Paridae family, all of which are native to North America. In the past, most authorities retained Baeolophus as a subgenus within the genus Parus, but treatment as a distinct genus, initiated by the American Ornithologists Union, is now widely accept




This week, I joined the Titmouse blog. Head over there once in a while and you will always find some interesting cartoon art from both the LA and NYC studios.

Some images are not appropriate for youngins.

http://titbloginc.blogspot.com/

Also, Tune into cartoon network this monday for the Robotomy Premiere at 8:45.

ed.

Starting Superjail today!!!

Finally, after being pushed back 2 weeks for some reason, I started my new job today. I am totally excited to get back to work doing what I love and what I do best... Making Cartoons! Before i took the Superjail test, i sketched out some "like" characters in my sketchbook to mentally prepare myself.

Dude Sketches

Presenting.... More Sketches from my Moleskine

this time, some dudes...

first a couple of characters you might find in prison..



and next a couple of guys belonging to the Bearded Society.

VB BG

As an intern on the Venture Brothers, I was lucky enough to be exposed to many facets of the design and production phase of a cartoon show. It is something you CAN learn in school, but doesn't quite make sense until you witness it first hand. (One thing that didn't make sense is, as an intern, not being given credit for the artistic contributions, however, I digress...)

As an intern, I was given menial tasks, such as paneling story boards into a template (to help the production artists), to more important tasks, inking characters for the character designers, and creating "tonals" for the background artists (which in my opinion was the most challenging and took forever). However, at the time I was one of a few interns charged with creating these "tonals".

Incidentally, the first episode to air from the new season of the show was not the first in production (actually, the 3rd). The "Butterglider and the Diving bell" episode was the last one I had contributed any BG assistance before my internship ended and was officially hired onto Robotomy as a character design artist. (I did work on some later episodes, inking characters and props...)

This is how I fit into the pipeline of Background production...

First off, the background designer is charged with designing a bunch of BG's per episode and is often biting off more than he/shw can chew. consider all the revisions they might have to make to meet the creators vision. The artist usually does sketches to be approved first.

This first image, designed by Background Supervisor, George Fort, was the approved sketch (it might have been the second version submitted???)



Sometimes, when George knows his workload could use a little easing up, and trusts the interns skills, the artist will ask for help.

Given the above sketch, I began to build the BG in flash using grays to give form, and eliminate all the outlines.

The result is the following image.




This version is then passed on to the BG Painter and they turn this gray thing into an amazing looking piece of finished amazingness!

I believe this image was painted by the Color Supervisor, Liz Artinian, who added so much superb detail and color it blows my mind.




Every step is a refining process from the previous. So much hard work and talent goes into the show, it is quite astounding, yet no wonder why this show has garnered so much success.

Let it be noted that all these images are on loan and are the copyright and property of Cartoon Network.

Venture Brothers Season 4.2 Arrives Sept. 12th

Well, the long-ish awaited return of the rest of Venture Brothers season 4 premieres on September 12.

I believe I had a hand in this first episode. Actually I was all over the place on this episode, if memory serves correctly.

I participated in paneling for the storyboard team, inking for the character/prop design team, and built some of the flash "tonals" for the background design team.

I hope I can post some of that stuff once the episode airs.

Here are some sketches i did last year to commemorate my time as an intern on Venture Brothers....

Bacon-kid, BACONKID!

I have been toying around with this idea of Bacon-kid for some time now... since my college days. I am sure I have some really crummy sketches of Bacon-kid in one of my sketchbooks back in my Berkeley Public Storage. Only recently had the concept solidified, and this design followed suit. I have a few short stories in the works and hope one day to produce one of them. Ren and Stimpy is a big influence on me when i consider kids cartoons. That and Dexters Laboratory. this is somewhat an extension of that influence, by way of Sponge Bob Square Pants.

However, the characters in Bacon-Kid are not fundamentally identical to any of those previous characters, and will hopefully be somewhat unique.

behold...

Bacon-Kid and Scramble-Kid...

mOldskine sketches

These are some sketches from way back in 2009. I was drawing in a moleskine sketchbook that had very thin pages, so it only made sense to draw on one page of the spread. I think you get just as much out of the newer books with heavier, yet less pages, because you can make use of the whole page spread, front and back.

I cut and past these pages together in photoshop, punching up some contrast here and there.








Again, I draw a lot of my inspiration from real people. I tend to use the subway patrons as subjects, because for the most part, their trapped in the car with me and are relatively still.

Gifted Sketches

Brooke's 8 year old niece, Cameron, is a very talented young artist. I have been pretty inspired, witnessing her talent emerge. Sometimes, we participate in drawing session when we visit NJ. Here are two sketches that were gifted to me after a couple of drawing sessions. These two sketches were made when Cameron was at the age of 7.

The first is a psycho monster inspired when we were all drawing killer robots.




The second is a portrait she made of me.



(*note: I did touch these up in photoshop a little to add contrast to the paper stock)

Moleskines... Part 1

Here are some sketches from my most recent moleskine sketchbook. These books are pretty ideal in terms of paper weight, smoothness and size.






more to come....

the Hidden World

I have been working on some concepts for a new game here at work. These are sketches for "relics" which your character would seek throughout the game and add to your treasure library... or whatever it will be called. I have been doing a bit of research for these pieces, however, some are simply made up from scratch.

This is the fun part, because I am given a lot of freedom in style, and accuracy, which will eventually have to be refined.

Da Boz

The other day I was talking to Christy over at Titmouse and he shared with me an idea he had of some bad dudes based on a football athlete-turned-actor from the '80s. being a fan of this idea, i made some "fan art". Lo, and behold...

Dino Bones...

These sketches/designs were created for one of the set of props for the project I am currently working on (and almost finished with.) We really liked how the T-rex came out from a previous set, so we decided to expand into a subset of dinobones.

I designed these with some photo reference off the web and added a little bit of exaggeration into the proportions and, of course, a little costume "flair".

More Backup Characters

Some More of these characters i sketched out...

Backup Musician character sketches

As part of my current assignment, I was tasked with designing and creating some Back-up stage characters... mostly musicians and dancers.

This trio of Mariachi characters, I felt were fun to draw. I looked at some mariachi pictures for inspiration, though designed the characters from imagination. Aside from the oversized head and cartoon proportions, they're pretty much straight characters.



At first this octopus was more realistic, then I added the grin to give it a little twist, and it turn it into a cartoon.



I borrowed colors from Transor-Z for this robot drummer.



This cow went through many renditions before reaching this current one (and a few since, I think). At first he was designed after Will Farrel in a very famous "needs more cowbell" skit, though it was clear that the cow needed to go in a different direction.



The Idea for this bear was simple, influenced by Disney's Country bears. he went through a couple renditions, the first was closer to the Disney bear, and had quite a boring pose. I was unhappy with the pose and so this one came about. I did borrow the colors from one of the Country bear concept illustrations, only I pulled much of the saturation out of it.

As for the mantis, he first was playing a Sax, though the tuba was added, probably because there already was a sax playing ghost, and a tuba has a fun shape.

ZZ-Topkins

Sometimes at work, I get inspired to just throw in an original idea of my own after trucking through the list of assets assigned. I thought a rocking gnome would be funny for the project i was working on last week. So much so, that I researched some ZZ-Top images and some gnome images and with that as inspiration, sketched this guy out in Photoshop.

I thought I would give him the furry ZZ-Top guitar, but decided to go with the slick red guitar instead. I threw in some gator skin boots last of all. I think i adjusted some of the proportions in the final Flash render which exaggerates certain features, but I like the sketchy quality captured with photoshop best.

more mini ipod paintings with brushes

i bought a pen for my ipod last week, and im not quite happy with it. they were really cheap (3 for $5) so i am not too disappointed... what I don't like about the stylus is that the nub is made of rubber, so it provides a lot of friction.



it seems to work best when the nub is wet, which aint gonna fly. also, the resolution on the brushes app is still quite limited on the ipod. understandable, considering the relative size i am working on. I cannot wait until the ipad evolves enough for me to justify buying one. this it truly the wave of the future digital artist.

I did just order an icooly pen which theoretically should work much better, as it has a brush for a nib... therefore should provide little friction at all. I am a little skeptical with the nib size as its still quite large and might provide some inaccuracy when drawing fine details.



I will post again after i test it out.

Zany Props

Over the last two weeks, I had to create some "zany" props and characters for this Flash project I have been working on. This is my round of sketches. Some of these are my ideas but most were brainstormed with my creative directors.

by far, this was the more enjoyable part of the job... sketching and coloring. The Flash renders are far more finished pieces, but way more tedious to put together with can really burn one out. However, there are edits that are easier to accomplish in flash like proportions for example... heads can be re-sized to make it more exaggerated, and poses can be (and were) manipulated.

Brushes

Recently, a few factors came together leading to this post.

Firstly, I got on the touch screen bandwagon and bought an iPod touch.

Naturally as an artist, I took interest in the drawing apps. After downloading sketchbook mobile, I heard and read a story about some magazine cover illustrated in Brushes.

I immediatly downloaded this app to test it out.

This is my first foray into iPod art. I find fingerpainting a bit clumsy and anticipate the delivery of some touch pens from amazon. Hopefully this will improve the experience.

So for now, this is what I have managed from the Brushes app.



Now all i have to figure out is how to post images onto this blog using my ipod????

i will figure it out myself, however if you have any tips, or know-how you'd like to share, I would be very thankful.

Character Sketches

This set of character sketches were done for a client. they wanted to explore their options before settling on two.

Hashstronauts in trouble pt 4

I recently got back to work on the Hashstronauts story, (soon to be renamed "Crashstronauts". After laying out the 16 page installment, I started inking page 1 today. here is a taste...



to get an idea of the process, here is the layout I worked from...



in the end, I will add the words and possibly color or tones.

More Ad Comps

A quick scene I animated today

Baby-sitting a leaky window, I was resigned to work from home while bailing water from a bucket. This is what I could muster...

Ad Sketches

I have been on and off working on a project with the advertising agency Noise on developing a social game for one of their clients. Here are some of the latest sketches I contributed...

Sketching in the park.

It was a beautiful day in Brooklyn yesterday, so I took the opportunity to hit Prospect Park and tug along my sketchbook. Sitting under a leafless tree, I doodled these characters.


No... I did not see any of these characters in the park, however i was inspired by some of the park patrons for the bottom series.

Some backgrounds I worked on this past week...

I repainted this background from Snow White for a snow-white spoof animation short a friend of mine (Mike Carlo) animated for some buddies of his. The composition and colors were lifted from the original background. Hopefully the short will be broadcast live on tv on a saturday night in the near future. Keep your thumbs crossed and wish us luck.



This is a cut in detail of the above image...