doodles

I consider myself a big car nut, but motorcycles are really fun to doodle around as well. I did these thumbs to help familarize myself with the language of motorcycles. These are great to do when you suffer by watching a long love story. :P

The New Adventure

I am currently working on Gatchaman (G-Force in the US) as a visual development artist at Imagi Animation Studios. It is very exciting for me to work on this project since I grew up watching this show. I am very fortunate to be working with a talented team of artists which is extremely inspiring. I'll try to update every now and then since it will be crazy for the next few months.

Concept Design Academy Fall 2008

Hello,

I just wanted to announce that Concept Design Academy will be starting up again this fall for another great round of classes. Don't forget to sign up early since classes fill up fast. Cheers.

Stay tuned on the previous update. Work has been tremendously busy. :)

in progress

After doing in game maps and fixing bugs for 3 weeks, I had to get this done to keep myself from going insane. Sorry it took so long. Here it is.

I don't think I posted any production sketches of any type since my blog was up. This is 60% of stuff I do most of the time at work which I don't reveal too much on my blog. Since this is the "drawingmantis" blog it would make sense to post some drawings for once. I felt like drawing a weapon tonight since I haven't done it for awhile. I'll take this to full render next time.

Thumbnails

Initial thumbnails for class project....

Midnight snack

One color study before hitting the sack.....

Dominance War 3

I was honored to be invited this year to be a judge on Dominance War 3. This is a game art competition where artists from all over the world are invited to wage their skills against one another. Please check it out. Lots of fun stuff to see! Cheers!

http://www.gameartisans.org/dominancewar/en/index.htm

color sketches

Just for fun.....

Class Demo

So here is a breakdown of what we went over last night in class.

Example 1:

A. I lightly laid in a perspective grid to establish the space to guide my shapes. Starting with a midtone background, loose sketches are drawn in with a midvalue. I chose a angled composition for this comp. Quickly determine where light falls and shadow falls. At this stage, think of using graphic shapes rather than "render". We're more concerned about designing the page first.

B. By adding darker shapes, I establish shapes that are closer to the viewer. The focal point is off to the left so keeping focus on design, I try to relate foreground structures to it by "helping" point the direction into the payoff view. I'm being less subtle with these to illustrate the idea. Start adding the darkest value and the lightest value to achieve contrast.
Don't think about rendering at this stage, it's more about organizing your shapes within the space to read. Also, Flipping your images or looking at them upside down will tell you if the comps are balanced.

C. After refining the shapes a bit more, these will be sufficient enough at this stage to get an idea of how the environment will play out.
The following examples are done with similar steps, but I went with a less sketchy start with this one and kept it clean. One thing to stress at this stage is that I'm not concerned with establishing atmoshpere yet. Just design.

Enjoy!

San Marino Sketch

This is a watercolor study I did today while I was waiting for my wife to finish up her work. 5x7 Fabriano cold press

Cats In Spaaccceeee!

Ink and watercolor. Switching gears away from the sci-fi techy stuff and going back to traditional. I've always been inspired by Gary Larson's drawings so here's my take based on my two cats. Enjoy!

Pepper

I found an old watercolor brush and Higgins ink in the garage. I decided to have some fun with traditional painting since I miss it so much. It took a few tries to get back into painting with wash, but this one came out alright I thought. The cat just won't sit still for me. Well, that's what cats do.

Game Informer - February Issue

2008 All rights reserved. Sony Computer Entertainment and Insomniac Games

I had to repost this one due to technical difficulties. :) I apologize for the comments that were lost. Thanks for those who commented earlier though. These are some concepts from the GI February issue. The cover page was done by Rodrigo Ribeiro.

"Blah" 10 step breakdown

10 step tutorial

1. Layin a rough compostion to begin with.

2. Establish a general light source and direction early on because everything in the scene will be based off of that. At this stage, you want to nail your values well. Don't worry about color for now. Solid value grouping will enhance your color later on.

3. I decided that the composition will be more effective vertical because I want to show the tower and the vertical structure more so the canvas was expanded using the crop tool.

4. Using a stock sky photo, proceed to place it in. I used Multiply since it seems to work best for this piece because of the mood.

5. Continue to block in the major details. I used a stock photo of a rock for the foreground and used curves to correct the lighting. Using color balance, I proceeded to match the rocks to the palette of the painting. When using photo textures, it's a good habit to try to make the photo consistent with the "paint" in the scene. Usually in my tighter paintings, I end up painting it and variating a lot that there's no photo left. However, don't let the textures do your work, you still need to apply the fundamentals of painting. :)

6. The tower was detailed a bit more as well as the rest of the scene. Keep in mind to have the canvas in its entire view when painting the general area. This will keep you from getting "tunnel vision" and neglecting the entire composition. Make a habit to flip your canvas often to check for compositional balance.

7. In this step, it's time to add a bit of "drama" by placing high key values in key areas to make the scene pop.

8. Using soft light I added some warm and cool colors for the light. On another blending layer,
color dodge was used to add "light" to the scene. The clouds were painted over a bit for variation. Creatures were indicated for scale. Color was then further adjusted.

9. Flip the canvas again to check for balance. Continue refining.

10.For the second to last step, I wanted to achieve a feel of an old classical painting so a texture was overlaid on the painting to give it some "tooth", but it is very subtle.

In the final painting, the support column of the bridge looked too simple so it was beefed up. See previous post. This painting can be tightened to your heart's content, but for the purpose of this image, it should suffice.



Enjoy!

Blah..

Another demo for a class on texture application which came out decent. I'm getting tired of doing science fiction and war stuff and I always wanted to do medieval stuff for a change so here it is. I'll probably tweak more on this when I get time. Happy Thanksgiving! I'll post a breakdown on how I did this later. Stay tuned.

Fokker Fun

This was a speed painting demonstration done this weekend for a friend who is attending Art Center. His concept involves Fokkers battling it out in a distant future setting. This piece came out better than I hoped for a demo so I'll post it up. Sorry for not posting anything for awhile. Things are even more busy now since I've taken on a job teaching on Saturdays. I hope to post more things periodically. Cheers.

Fighting with Heat and Plastic

Painted over at Montecito Park today and fought against the heat and paint. I didn't finish, but I'll put this one up anyways. No pain no gain. This was done in acrylic. I think I'll try watercolor on the next one. :)

By the Rose Bowl

Acylic on 4x6 wood panel

Since I'm on vacation this week, I decided to drag my lazy ass out into the heat to get back into painting the hard way...in the LA heat. I gave myself about 30-45 min per painting. Let's just say the other two are being prepped for another painitng venture.

After this session, I decided to go up to Art Center and I ran into Gary Meyer. He remembered my face, but forgot my name. He asked what I was doing there. I told him I was finishing my 4th term. :P

cat play

Here are some pics I took recently of our bundles of joy playing. Hazel is the one sitting on top of the sink and Pepper pretending to be a sneaky ninja. Apparently, she forgot to pack her tail at home.

Painting 101

Back to the basics.....with real paint! It's been several years since I painted traditionally. Shame on me! So today I decided to go to an art store to buy a few tubes of paint. Prices on art supplies really went up! More reason to paint digitally....haha :P

This was painted at night from my deck. It was quite a feat considering getting back into it after a long time, but nothing is more rewarding than true painting. And yes...my car magically transformed into an Toyota Echo at midnight, really! This was painted with acrylic on a 4x6 panel. I'll be doing more of these life studies frequently. Enjoy!