taking a break- penciling

just taking a small break between two different comic projects- I am extremely behind - but am getting better at penciling digitally- so wanted to get image out using photoshop with a brush with scatter and shape dynamics- at opacity of 35 and flow of 35 to simulate a pencil stroke- so here is a stylized version on superman... I was trying to channel jack kirby but looks closer to  Jon Bogdanove

just a little love for the family

my sister asked me to send her an image that she could use for her avatar on her intranet job communication site- where they post messages for projects and conference online- so I made this cartoon image to represent her- I was going to create in in Blender as a more rendered cg character bust- I sent this image to her for an approval stage- so i could start on a Blender project- she was so pleased with this prelim done in Flash that I just gave this to her to use.  She even came back and stated maybe I could do a bunch of them and market them to businesses- don't know if that is feasible- but always open to new opportunities.... maybe will do research- anyway here is the image- ciao

practice focus

sorry have not been posting due to me doing some projects that could help fill out my pockets- or at least for a month or so- but I am now in the realization if  I eventually want to do story boards I need to focus on 3 things- posing and staging- #1,  light and shadow-#2 and line quality #3 and on both board and in computer... If i narrow my focus on making a strong composition and staging characters for story advancement and drama building and motivation- that will help my work stand out.... and 2nd if i deal with lighting in even the most limited sense- i will get a depth of field to the composition and last but not least- practice on creating clean line will add that  extra polish i need.... so I will be posting several images getting my self ready to upgrade my portfolio.... so here is a test using a cartoony head style and cel shading-- as can bee seen- I got a lot of work cut out for me

peace

playing again with anime studio pro

After and between a few assignments I wanted to start playing again with anime studio pro and blender to get ready for  new FX Mulrooney projects that are outstanding... So I wanted to try to test myself on recreating appealing characters with in anime studio pro... at one point I though with the new flash that creating vector characters for anime studio was now impossible since they don't have a ESF file format export any more. But found out there is .fxg format that can be brought into illustrator and converted to illustrator 8 format or eps format with illustrator 8 set up that can then be imported into anime studio pro and lots of clean up if necessary.... Since anime studio pro has its own image forming tools I wanted to test my self on... the trick is actually layers for further animation with out clutter- I can either take photoshop image into program and create layered vector art in the program or create layered art in illustrator or need create images in flash and save out layered features as different symbols and then import via illustrator- so either way a lot of pre-planning has to be done to create a animatable form for anime studio pro- so on the left is the image created in anime studio pro in many layers- top right is photoshop jpg taken from flash render- and bottom right is flash rendered object on one layer... whew

Watching robotech movie

I was blown away at the draftsmanship of this Robotech movie I  am watching on Netflix- the addition of the 3g spaceship scenes makes this a major animation movie that probably wont get the credit it deserves- I suppose I am  fair-weather anime fan- I only give credit to the big box office productions...So here is a small tribute- got to get better with my draftmanship and color- but will keep trying...

tunnel rat

just trying to loosen up my sketchbook pro skills- I put ti down for a piece to do some comic work on photoshop cs5- but will try to do some concept work in the near future and to be honest sketch book pro has its focus on concept design and digital tools geared to the concept design artist- so i had to really learn how brushes are made again- so off to youtube and vimeo for some tutorials... I created this tunnel rat image with sketchbook pro and a some custom made brushes- I wasn't planning on anything special but the control with the linear brushes after they are created is exceptional- got a lot more work to do on painting and coloring as one can see- but I will let you take a peak at the image- Tunnel rat- peace

anime look- spike

just looking at Cowboy bebop movie and decided to pull off my rendition of Spike- this is a  another cel shade practice piece for me.  The image was done in photoshop cs5- a program that is increasingly becoming my  digital art tool of choice... The initial line work was sketch on background layer and finished on layer 1 using pen tool, ( with both fill in and create stroke) the brush used is  round hard brush at 100%opacity and 100% flow with shape dynamics  minimum diameter set at 65%  to give an even thin line... The base color and shade are done 3 layers between background -- layer 2 for facial tone, layer 3 for clothes, and layer 4 for hair--- I used lasso tool to map out ares of tone then later use lock transparent pixels to stay inside the lines for further rendering... for feathering effect- i used the smudge tool set at 80% strength.  For any further layers I used clipping layers- also to stay within the lines... my last set is the erase the background layer and add a hard brush tone with low flow for the background....