Nightmare

This was a lot of fun to make. The assignment for class was to illustrate a dream or nightmare. In my thumbs I had more cheerful ideas but the one idea that caught my eye was my experience of sleep paralysis several years back. People describe the experience as if someone is sitting on your chest and you can't move even though you want to. Its a weird inbetween of being awake and still dreaming. Thankfully I have only experienced it once so far (knock on wood). All I remember was trying to flip the light switch which took me a hour to do while I had bizarre images materializing and fading away into the shadows of the room. Once I did turn on the lights I realized that the reason for sleep paralysis was from lack of sleep and that I should go back to bed. So remember sleep is very important. A tired artist is a crappy artist.

As for the process I drew on Rives BFK mid-tone so I can put in shadows and highlights. I like drawing with FaberCastel's Polychromos series, and for this piece I used the Cobalt Blue. Highlights with white color pencil. Once done scanned the drawing and put it into Photoshop. I then made my flats, added some color, messed with layer adjustments, wiggled my fingers, and PRESTO I had a finished Illustration.

Line work

Flats

Color Block In

Final

Avatar the Last Airbender

Needed to update the blog with something so I created this Avatar piece. There is plenty of other work that I have done so far I just need to scan and post it. It will most likely be one big art dump at the end of the summer quarter, so be on the look out.

Fantasy Earth Zero

Actively trying to find art competitions and was able to find one on deviant art for Final Earth Zero a free MMO of Square Enix. Check it out!

Game:

http://fez.gamepotusa.com/

My submission:

http://tweetmoo.deviantart.com/#/d2s3w38

Heroescon

Well, I have survived my first Heroescon and it was a blast. I was impressed with the great turn out of artists. There was such a concentration of talent that it blew me away. It also made me realize that I have a lot of work to do in order to get ready to table next year, but I am always ready for a challenge.

This year I was just observing and seeing how the artists set up their booths and work the crowd. It was nice because I was there to meet people and get acquainted. Some of the artists that I had the pleasure of meeting were: Sean "Cheeks" Galloway, Tom Bancroft, Chris Schweizer, Guy Davis, Frank Cho, and many more. They are all solid artists and people I admire, and recommend you look at their work if you haven't.

Also, stay tuned during the coming year because I am going to push myself and hopefully see some results in my art. I have a feeling Heroescon next year will be even more fun!

End of the Spring Quarter

So another quarter has gone by and it was fun. Plus I get to share my test pages I did for Marvel. They are from the Marvelous Land of Oz script. I also included character designs and sketches as well. Enjoy!

Tip

Jack the Pumpkinhead

Mombi

Getting distracted

Trying to work on homework, but having a hard time focusing so I decided to make this sketch instead. Materials are black pencil and a fat permanent marker. Trying to work on my focal point and treating the drawing as a design when using spot blacks.

Also, here is a funny picture that my girlfriend took about a year ago. I think it demonstrates how I feel right now.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/susanholsteinphotography/4543936754/

Airplane Comic

Last quarter I wanted to make a comic. It was a good thing that I did because it helped my teachers and myself assess what areas of crafting comics that I need to work on. The biggest one after I got a lot of good critiques was to work on my word balloons and placement so the space is economic and doesn't cover any important information. Bad balloon placement is partly due to my lack of nailing down a script at the beginning. Coming from an animation background I never had to worry about word balloons and treated pages like storyboards, which is fine of course until the word balloons are put in as an afterthought. That's when things start getting muddy and clarity can start going out the window. As my friend Missy would say if you fail to plan, plan to fail.