ASIFA Drawing Sesson Summer 2010 #2

Had a great time at Comic-Con this year.  Saw old friends, met new ones, chatted with some of my heros, and made some significant progress in the field.  Overall it was the most successful convention that I've been to. 

Look for a lot of new work here very soon!  Storyboards, characters, random sketches and more.

And more ASIFA, naturally.

We haven't really had the time or the energy to go the past three weeks, but this week should see the return of the regular life drawing.  I really want to try to loosen up my line and movement in the figure.  And I'm determined to figure out these watercolors!

Storyboards -- The Lady Jane Sc. 01

These I've been meaning to post for a while now. Boards for the first scene of a story I've been working on with my friend Kyle Kershner.

I decided to do them in Sketchbook Pro as an excuse to practice with it. I wanted to keep the drawings pretty loose but the framing solid and atmospheric. Now that I'm a bit more confident with the program I'm looking forward to the next scene. Bring on the action!

ASIFA Drawing Sesson Summer 2010 #1

Life Drawing class is back in session! I missed the first class, but managed to catch a good hour of the second class before running home to catch the Futurama premiere. I'm trying something a bit different with my construction now.

1-2 minutes each:

2-3 minutes each:

Trying to catch gestures with watercolor is really fun but difficult for me. Here's a few from the Spring classes I never got around to posting. I hope to see a big improvement by the end of the summer.

Hobbes, 1990-2010

My brother's cat just passed. She's part of a pair, and we've had her and her brother for nearly 20 years. We got them the year we moved to Virginia, and they've been a part of home for so long it's hard to think of her not there anymore. She went to sleep on the porch today and just never woke up. I'll miss you, Hobbes. You were a great kitty.

Joe Weatherly Animal Drawing Workshop, Day 2

The last day of the workshop spent at the Museum of Natural History. I can't wait to go back for a longer study of the skeletons.

Joe Weatherly Animal Drawing Workshop, Day 1

Today was the first part of Joe Weatherly's workshop at the Bronx Zoo. It was a great time, super informative and just plain fun to focus on drawing moving animals with a critical eye.

To



Tomorrow is skeletons at the Museum of Natural History!

Free-Form Doodling

I haven't really done that much drawing for myself the past few months. With the wedding, working two gigs, and foolishly purchasing the time sink that is Red Dead Redemption I haven't given myself the time to just sit and draw (with a real pencil!) for the hell of it. This weekend I'm going to force myself out of the rut. I'll be taking an animal drawing workshop with Joe Weatherly--I only hope it doesn't rain! I've started just free-form doodling to loosen up. I'm not even thinking, just letting the pencil sort make shapes and then following them to their conclusion, or lack thereof. Here's what the pencil decided to make from two of my sketchbook pages last night. What the hell is that little Gumby-type character?

I might post some more loosen-up exercises tonight.

Commercial Work

New animation! Here is the commercial featuring Dora the Explorer that I directed and animated last month for Nathan Love, Inc. The spot was designed and animated in Flash. Enjoy!



And here is an extended sequence:

Return

The repeated infrequent posting has got to stop, no more good excuses. The wedding in Japan was amazing, everything went off without a hitch and we just got back into New York. I'm in the middle of editing a crazy amount photos which I'll eventually be posting on my photo blog.

The commercial I directed before the trip is on the air now, so I'll be posting that too once I get everything together. More drawings on the way too!

Stay tuned,

Little doodle between files at work. 

I'm animating again.  It's been a while, since I've mainly been doing design work for the past year.  It's bound to eat up the majority of my time the next week weeks so I hope to be able to post at least a few sketches before the wedding.

The blog is in the middle of a bit of a redesign.  There's now a page bar at the top of the blog where you can no go directly to my current demo reel.  I'll be adding new pages as things calm down a bit more.

Scramble Time

Little break from posting lately, with work and the wedding just a month away I've been sitting on a few things I meant to post weeks ago. There's two weeks of ASIFA drawings I haven't compiled yet and even had to skip last week's session, which is a shame since I heard the model had a shaved head with a map of the world tattooed on her skull.

Bit of a preview of things to come:

Two sequences of new storyboards I meant to finish weeks ago that had to take a backseat for the time being. I hope to have the first sequence at least finished before the wedding. About 45 boards all told, thumbnailed and just waiting for me to get on with it. I'm doing them as a Sketchbook Pro exercise and the goal is to keep them fast and loose but atmospheric.

Boards, ASIFA sessions, doodles and a new fancy blog layout coming in the near future.

ASIFA Drawing Sesson 2010 #5 and #7

Sorry for the long delay in posting, but I'll be uploading some new storyboards (pirates) this week.

ASIFA session #7:


I had to miss two weeks of pose sessions this month, and it's amazing how rusty you can get in that time. My watercolors for these sessions here are terrible so I'm hiding them from sight to teach them a lesson.

ASIFA #5

Lazy Saturday Evening

Every once in a while I forget that there's nothing finer than drawing with a bottle of ink and a good brush.

Here's the pencils:

ASIFA Drawing Sesson 2010 #3

Full pages from today's session as promised:


4-5 minute poses.


1-2 minute poses.


2-3 minute poses.

Snow Piggy

Large post today, and more coming soon. Been working on storyboards and a whole bunch of design work I can't post, as per usual. So in lieu of that here's a bunch of recent stuff from the sketchbook.

ASIFA Drawing Sesson 2010 #2

Last week's ASIFA session poses. Lately I've been posting only my favorite drawings from each session, which sort of counteracts the whole focus of gesture drawing. Starting now I'm going to be posting more full pages from the sketchbook:

1-2 minutes.

2-4 min.

2D Animation Reel, Winter 2010

My current demo reel featuring both personal and professional work.

Run Time: 1:38 minutes

Media: 2D Flash animation, pencil, stop-motion, 3D Maya


--Click here for my Demo Reel Breakdown.

Enjoy!

ASIFA Drawing Sesson 2010 #1

The new ASIFA figure drawing sessions of the season kicked off tonight. I've started trying out some watercoloring during the 5 minute poses. I hope by the time the season ends I'll learn learn a thing or two how to do it.

Another life drawing post. I've got some pirates coming up I swear.

Anatomy Study II

Lion's front paw in profile. I've been playing around with the human and animal anatomy books I picked up from the library. It's a good lesson in patience, and it's helping me to focus on how little things work in a drawing or concept piece.


I've come to realize that this blog has been pretty life drawing heavy over the past few months, since most of my non-life drawing work of late can't be posted for some time. Coming up, pirates!

Anatomy Study

Kick-starting a semi-nightly attempt to learn something about large cats.

Uglino and His Sons - Detail

From our trip to the Met today.

At the Met

Still trying to decompress from the whole new year's/con adventure, but starting to get back into sketching. We've started a regular weekend trip to sketch at a museum. There were these nifty little terracotta and marble maquettes at the Met I plan to go back and study further.

Japan and Gigacon 2010

Preliminary rough.

Last weekend was the first annual Gigacon in Washington, DC. Azure and I were very proud to be a part of jump-starting what will hopefully be a new and growing convention. We were able to meet a lot of excellent artists, got to catch up with some good friends, and were hopefully able to help some students with their portfolios.

Thanks to everyone who came out and to everyone who bought a sketchbook. It was a new experience in self-publishing. There are still a few available, so if you missed your chance to pick up a book at the con and would like one shipped to you just drop me an email. We're setting our sights now on New York Comicon, and with luck a couple of higher print-quality brand new content books.

Gigacon came on the tail-end of our first trip to Japan together (and my first time ever!) where we spent New Year's with her parents. It was a blast and I can't wait to go back. I took my Canon and my new prime lens with me, so there are lots of pictures. Please feel free to check them out on my Flickr page, or select photos soon to be uploaded onto my Photography Blog.

Now it's back to work. Still working on concept design, but I will making the attempt to spend at least 30 minutes every day studying or sketching something completely separate from my design, storyboard, or comic work.

Things to study this year:
-Tigers
-Gorillas
-Crocodiles
-Mens' suits and womens' clothes
-Landscapes

Hamster Slapfight

I don't know what this is or why I drew it, but this made Azure squeak.

Sketchbook Vol. 1

The sketchbook's been sent to the printers and should arrive in time for the convention. It's a full-color 16-page mini-book. I decided to keep it direct and simple, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. The book has a number of new sketches that haven't been seen on this blog as well as some old favorites of last year and prior.

It's a limited first printing, but if people like it enough I will put in another order. In the meantime it's back to work on Doc Flamingo and a few other things.

A Start

Rough pencils for the first panel of Doc Flamingo. So much to draw in these first four pages. More to come!

I'm in the middle of hurriedly compiling a sketchbook to send to the printers later this week. My wife and I have been invited to teach and speak at the 3rd Media Art and Animation Forum at the Art Institute of Washington in January. This year they've turned it into a full convention with an artist alley. A lot of great people are on the guest list, so I've got to try and get something good together to show. I'll be posting the cover in the next day or so.

A few from last week's ASIFA session:

ASIFA Drawing Session #12

Lot of designing to do this week. It's another large amount of work I won't be able to post for a while. Woo!

In the meantime, here's stuff from tonight's ASIFA. From 1-5 minute poses. Click for a large view:

ASIFA Pose Sessions #11

From tonight's ASIFA session. 1-3 minute poses:

From the sketchbook:

Flash Practice

Messing around in Flash. I'm not sure who he's boxing yet or why, but I admire his positive attitude.

Thumbs, ASIFA Pose Sessions #10

Working to get back into a steady drawing groove. I started thumbnailing the first pages of Doc Flamingo. I want each panel to challenge myself with new angles and compositions I don't often get the chance to draw. I'd like to carry this discipline over to my next upcoming storyboard project.


From tonight's ASIFA session: