LOTR studies

Lately I realized I'm getting complacent and so I've been trying to get back into doing studies.

Libros de Arte

I got the Art of Tangled and the Art of Megamind this week, and both of these books are awesome! The Art of Tangled is worth the money for Glen Keane's sketches ALONE, never mind all the incredibly beautiful renderings and interesting insight into the design process. If you've got the money, these are both more than worth the price!

I'm looking at the art of Darksiders next but I'm curious if any of you have checked that one out? Thoughts?

I'm 25 years old today

...which is cool and all, but check these out.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSEnzs8AocY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlXRengzZoc


Incredible, evocative storytelling in only a minute (second one is directed by David Fincher):

If only more commercials were done like those.  Thanks Camilo for showing me the second one!

GIGACON!

If you're in the D.C area on the weekend of January 14th, you should really stop by to check out this convention.

What is it?  Here's an excerpt from the website : Gigacon is an educational based, multimedia convention sponsored by The Art Institute of Washington (Aiw). We incorporate many of the majors at the AiW, such as; Media arts and Animation, Game Art, Graphic Design, Audio Production, Fashion, and many more. And we try our best to bring in professionals from each of those fields. Students, as well as faculty members, and outside visitors gain knowledge, tips, and tricks from the professionals at Gigacon.


Some of the folks that will be attending:

Humberto Ramos

Joe Benitez

Brian Stelfreeze

...and MORE.  This is the second time around for the con, which means it's still starting out, it's smaller, and it's WAY more intimate.  You'll have more time to get really thorough critiques from these masters of art, and there's time to actually hold conversations with these guys, which you unfortunately don't really get at the massive conventions like SDCC, where there are a thousand distractions every 7 seconds.  There's more info on the website, including a more comprehensive list of the guests that'll be attending.

WEBSITE  -  http://www.gigacon.aiwdepts.com

A cool blog about phones and gadgets and stuff

A friend of mine started this blog where he talks about a lot of things that I can't afford because I'm poor.  If you're less poor than me, this might interest you.


http://www.techminnow.com/


If you like it, make sure you leave comments mentioning my name.  That way he'll buy me beers which will let me forget that I'm poor

Justice League CG Movie Concepts

A few weeks ago, just for fun I started doing concepts for a faux Justice League CG movie. I've always been a huge fan of Bruce Timm and the DC Timmverse he helped create, and I thought it would be cool to basically design the JLA movie that I would direct if given the chance. I didn't do any huge drastic changes because I didn't want to betray the characters in terms of who they are and what they're about. I just wanted to build on what's already been established and tweak things the way I saw them. I was going to wait until I had more artwork before I posted this, but with all the freelance I've got, I don't think I'll be able to work on this again for a while.

 

Clark and Bruce face shots: This pic is kinda what started the whole thing. I always thought Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were a great opportunity to play with contrast. They both have similar features in a broad sense (Caucasian, black hair, relatively good looking) but I don't think they need to be drawn to look the same! These characters couldn't be more different, and so I tried to play that up with the shape language used in their design. I made Bruce primarily out of triangular shapes to associate him with danger, and I made Clark mostly out of chunky block shapes to emphasize a sense of protectiveness (which I think is what Superman is all about). I rounded the corners off on Superman's "blocks" to make sure the shapes were still comfortable and friendly.

I also made Bruce slightly more pale than Clark because I feel like it emphasizes the lack of warmth and is another way to appropriately add contrast to the characters.

Superman:  Superman is a wholesome, good-natured guy with antiquated notions of heroism, and that's what  I like about him. He represents a more honest hero, and SO many people don't like him because he's too corny, or not badass enough, and I think that's ridiculous. I hardly touched his costume at all because I wanted him to look corny and I wanted his image to reflect the dated quality of his beliefs. I really don't like when people try to make him like, this dark, violent, angry guy just for the sake of making him cooler.

Anyway I tried to make him primarily out of chunky square shapes, and I went as far as taking away the angles on his boots to make them a little more chunky and plain. I think he should be a big character to emphasize the fact that he's all about IMMENSE power and protectiveness. I know a lot of people say that he shouldn't be big because nothing would give him a workout, but I disagree because

1) Every time I see him lift something, he looks like he's straining real hard. Whether it's a car, a piece of rubble, a building, it all seems to be difficult for him.

2) The design reflecting the spirit of the character is more important to me than whether or not he'd be big in real life. He's powerful and he's protective, that's what I want my design to emphasize.

 

Green Lantern:  I thought it would be cool if his outfit was more of a manifestation of the ring's power as opposed to just cloth. I think that's the angle the live action movie is taking too, so I thought I'd do my version of that idea. I thought it would be cool if the green parts were constantly shifting, and seemed like you were looking inside some kind of unstable, nebulous energy reaction. I went with the spots because I was paying homage to that swiss cheese effect that Jack Kirby used to do whenever he drew energy.

Wonder Woman: I went with angry, warrior, man hating Wonder Woman. I feel like if you're raised your entire life immersed in bigotry, you're not just going to change your beliefs after a single adventure. It's not gonna be like "oh these guys fought with me to save the world, men aren't so bad." Nobody just drops prejudiced opinions like that, they skew and distort things to keep supporting and maintaining their discrimination. I feel like her acceptance of men would be a very slow, gradual thing and it would never be 100%. I was mostly inspired by Darwyn Cooke's design with some tweaks here and there where I thought it made more sense or would add some appeal.

Batman: I wanted Batman to be composed of triangular shapes to emphasize how dangerous he is. I also didn't want to draw him big and bulky because in my version he's primarily an acrobat, not a bodybuilder. He's constantly doing flips and jumping off rooftops, so he'd be extremely lean. I also gave him the more armored costume because

1) It looks cool

2) Having an outfit that looks more like protective gear while everyone else is wearing more "costume-y" outfits visually reinforces the fact that he's human and mortal. It reminds us that he NEEDS this to protect him and that's a trait that I (and I think most people) like about batman.

I also made Batman's skin even more pale here than in the Bruce Wayne pic to further emphasize the lack of warmth in Batman, and it also helped to add more contrast against the darkness of his suit. I like the idea of his face being that one little speck of pale, cold, humanity peeking out from this huge enveloping shroud of darkness.

Scenes: These were (relatively) quickly done pieces to give an idea of mood, lighting, and color. I'm not 100% happy with all of them, but for the most part I like how they turned out. More than the other stuff, I wish I had time to do more of these. I feel bad that Green Lantern (black guy) is the only character who doesn't have one, but I was going to do another set of 3 with Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, and Flash. Maybe I still will.

More...

Spaced

Being a huge fan of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's work on Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, I decided to check out Spaced. Spaced is a sitcom about twenty-something year olds written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, and directed by Edgar Wright. It's got a shitload of movie/geek references (Simon Pegg's character is an aspiring comic book artist) and it's 14 episodes of fucking awesome. 

You can really tell that it's made by a group of friends who are writing a lot of themselves in the characters, and that makes it hard not to care about them. The ending of the last episode totally got me emotional as hell. It's not that the ending is depressing or anything, but the finality of it just kinda leaves you feeling sad and makes you as a viewer wish you could hang out with these guys just a little longer(and musical montages at the end of good shows will ALWAYS work on me). Every artist and child of pop culture should go buy this show right now. 

Warm up

My warm up today

AFI Top 100

  Over the past year or two, I've been made painfully aware of just how many movies I should have seen, but haven't.  This is pretty ridiculous for someone with the aspirations that I've got, so to rectify this and to expand my cinematic IQ, I've decided to go through the AFI Top 100.    Here are the movies I've watched so far

- Citizen Kane
- The Godfather
- Schindler's List
- Star Wars
- Chinatown
- Apocalypse Now
- The Godfather Part 2
- North by Northwest
- A Clockwork Orange
- Taxi Driver
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (saw this one for the first time in its entirety today)
- The Silence of the Lambs
- Pulp Fiction

I also saw Yojimbo Sanjuro, and the Seven Samurai which I feel should be mentioned as part of a list that all storytellers should see.  A few of those movies I had seen before, but the majority of them are all new to me.  I think it's interesting that the film I enjoyed the LEAST out of that list was Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I'm sure must be blasphemous to a lot of people.

I think I'm going to have to go back and watch a lot of these movies a second time to try to take them apart and do my best to analyze them.

Influence Maps

I thought this was an interesting and useful exercise.  Here's a little info on my choices:



1. DICE TSUTSUMI - Brilliant painter currently working at Pixar. I love his lighting schemes and have been totally ripping them off lately.

2. GLEN KEANE - The weight, fluidity, appeal, and gesture in each of his drawings is insane.

3. BRAD BIRD - The Incredibles is my favorite of his movies, and in general I think he's my favorite director in animation right now.

4. GAINAX - Specifically FLCL, Gunbuster2, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Awesomely dynamic stuff.

5. BRUCE TIMM - He might have come up with the perfect simplification for animated super heroes.

6. GOBELINS, l'école de l'image - All the shorts coming out of that school have been absolutely ridiculously amazing. 

7. HAYAO MIYAZAKI - I know it's blasphemous to say this, but Miyazaki's movies really had to grow on me because I was NOT a fan at first. My initial impression was that his movies went off on long, slow, unrelated tangents and that his endings were too "deus ex machina" as a friend of mine put it. I still feel that way about some of his movies, but the charm, whimsy, and complexity of his characters have won me over. 

8. CHRISTOPHER NOLAN - Brilliant writer/director. There's not much that needs to be said really, I'm sure everyone has seen Dark Knight and Inception. I REEEEALLY like The Prestige though, and it may be my favorite of his movies despite that ending.

9. EDGAR WRIGHT - BRILLIANT writer/director. His sense of comedy and story are just absolutely amazing and I love that even though his movies are comedies, they have a surprising amount of heart and depth to them. He creates parodies without being condescending or pretentious, and he has these constant "loops" in his movies where dialogue from the beginning is repeated at the end under completely different circumstances. Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead are each so densely packed with hilarious scenes and really clever little lines that it always amazes me. I've seen both movies so many times I could probably talk along with the characters on screen.

10. FINAL FANTASY VII - This game DEFINED my middle school years and has had a huge hand in influencing my aesthetic sensibilities. I never really let go of the giant weapons/high tech/swords and sorcery stuff that this game introduced me to.

DOODLES

Randomness done today in Photoshop with a Wacom Bamboo Fun. I gotta get me one of them fancy cintiqs one day.

Because Hobos are Awesome

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love drawin hobos.

Turnaround

The main character of the new set of boards I'm working on.

Ghibli's "Tales of Earthsea"

I should start by saying that I went into this movie after hearing all the negative reviews about it, so my expectations were pretty low. I immediately assumed that people were unfairly comparing Goro Miyazaki's debut film to his father's masterpieces, and I found this extremely unfair considering how much experience in animation Hayao Miyazaki had before he directed his first full length feature film. I chivalrously defended the underdog in my mind, and I turned on the movie having made up my mind that I was going to enjoy this story.

About halfway through the movie, I realized that Hayao Miyazaki was absolutely right in criticizing his son when he claimed that Goro didn't have the experience necessary to direct a feature film.

 It shows. it REALLY shows. All the mistakes made were incredibly basic storytelling mistakes for which I think there was no excuse. I've often heard this movie described as feeling superficial, and I think that's a really accurate description.

Throughout the story, stuff just kinda happens, which is because there is very little motivation (if any) for the characters' actions. They just do stuff and go places for no real reason for the entire first half of the movie. They're just walking, talking plot propellers that deliver really stilted dialogue, even when taking the cultural differences into consideration.

Another ENORMOUS problem is that the protagonist is so dispassionately reactive to everything, it's really hard to give a damn about him. Things will happen to him, characters will do stuff, you really won't care about any of them and halfway through you still won't know what the hell the movie's even about.

Visually it's fantastic, with Ghibli's gorgeously painted backgrounds.  I even like the throwback character designs. They look more like the older, Nausicaa style of design and less like the more recent Spirited Away/Ponyo stuff (which I still like). The animation is great compared to most other studios out there, but kinda weak when compared to other Ghibli animation. The main reason I say that is because there's very little in the animation that demonstrates the characters' personalities. The expressions and movements are kinda generic and it feels like you could swap one character's animation and put it on another and it wouldn't make much difference. What I always admired about Ghibli movies is Miyazaki's hyper attention to detail in the character animation, insisting that characters move based on how they're feeling and what their personalities are. This is kinda rare in anime and it's something this film unfortunately lacks, which isn't surprising given Goro's insistence on staying out of the family business.

There are some cool action sequences which will do their best to hold your attention, but otherwise the movie's a little disappointing. If Goro Miyazaki ends up writing/directing another movie, I hope father and son won't be at eachother's throats as much during production and Goro will actually work with his father and take his advice.

*EDIT* I also want to add that the English Dub casting was really good, and Timothy Dalton did an awesome job, especially given the limitations of the script.

Gotta keep the devil way down in the hole

I've been getting a bit bored with rendering all the time, so I'm kinda deviating from that for a while and trying something a little different. This is another doodle I got carried away with. I've had the Boondocks and the Wire in my head for a week or two now, so I guess this is me getting both out of my system. Tried to capture the feel of the Wire while I was on a high from Seung Kim's incredible work.

Comic Con was awesome!

Comic Con was insane. There were lots of awesome people, lots of money spent, lots of generous artists giving me more advice than I know what to do with.

I very quickly discovered that Stuart NG's booth is a magical place where bank accounts go to die. They had so many amazing art books that I'd never even heard of, and I'm obsessed with art books. I want to say thanks to Octavio Rodriguez and Louie Del Carmen especially for tearing my work apart and putting up with hundreds of my questions throughout the entire con!

But ANYWAY, I should talk about the pikchur. The image above was kind of a style test for a possible future project. I'm thinking of pursuing this aesthetic for my thesis/student film if I really do end up going to SCAD for my Master's in September. This may be way too ambitious to pull off on my own, but I think I'll just ignore that issue and learn my lesson the hard way.

To the people leaving comments in what I think is chinese but I don't wanna say it definitely is chinese because I don't wanna sound racist

Cut it out

Inception!

I really enjoyed the movie. I REALLY enjoyed it. I could take all day writing about the things I liked, but it would be hard to do that without giving anything away. Instead I'm just going to point out my one gripe, and that's the lack of character development and lack of chemistry between the characters.
I think that DiCaprio's character was fleshed out well enough, but I really wish Ellen Page's character was made a little more three dimensional, and same with Levitt's. I don't want to elaborate (for obvious reasons), but that's the biggest complaint I've got with it. The story got a LITTLE mechanical and I think it could have used a little more emotion and heart.
There may be a few plot-holes here and there, but the overall quality of the movie was so good that it's more than forgivable. When I walked out of the theater, people weren't analyzing it as a movie, they were talking about their OWN dreams and speculating on events that happened within the movie as if the characters were real people. During the end of the movie, people were literally leaning forward in their seats and I really loved seeing that level of immersion in the audience.
I'm really excited for Batman 3.

Ess Dee See See!

San Diego Comic Con is just 7 days away and I'm ridiculously excited. Last year was my first time going and it was such a massive sensory overload that I ended up missing a lot of tables and events because of my uncontrollable artgasms. If you're going and you know of any cool after parties, drink n draw sessions, sketchjams, whatever, let me know. I already plan to hit up Dan Panosian's event on Thursday night.

Also, a few things you should check out at the con:


Sunday 11:00-12:30 Comic-Con How-To Session: Bryan Tillman— Animator and art instructor (Department chair of media arts and animation, game art and design, visual game programming, visual effects, and motion graphics at the Art Institute of Washington, DC) Bryan Tillman will cover character designs for animation and what makes them different from comics. Bryan is the owner and CEO of the Kaiser Studio Productions, a production studio for comics, toys, animation, and games. Room 18

AND in Artist Alley you should go to EE16 to meet Bryan Tillman and Enrique Rivera. Both of them will have two other awesome artists at their tables, one of whom will be debuting artwork for www.beautifulmonstercomic.com. The other will have an AMAZING comic called "The Solution" which has incredible artwork and an even more incredible story.

Mention my name and you get a free smile.

Sketchbookery part dew

It means part two. In Spanish.

I got a full time freelance job with Emerald City Games, which has been a blast to work on, though I'm not allowed to say anything about it. Since it's gonna be a while before I can show anything, here's some junk outta the sketchbook. I really need to improve at drawing volumes and forms. And gesture. And depicting the figure more expressively. And incorporate more exaggeration and appeal.

I need more life drawing.

me

Just boredly messin about in Photoshop. Now I feel like that guy from Seven Samurai, I've constantly been rubbing my head ever since I started shaving it.

My beautiful face is ruined....

Quick speed-painting of Vega. This is one of my favorite scenes from my absolute favorite interpretation of Street Fighter. I changed a few things around though.

Took about two hours. I cheated on the proportions like crazy, that mask would be enormous.

More portfolio work

Finished another painting. I'm doing my best to focus on telling a story and maintaining dynamism.

Some sketches

Pages out of my sketchbook, nothin fancy.

Just another comic test

New work!

I was very much influenced by anime when I was younger, and I don't think I want to completely lose my taste for that aesthetic, which is what's been happening as I immerse myself deeper and deeper into the gorgeous world of american feature animation. Guys like Dice Tsutsumi and Paul Felix and Glen Keane have been having such strong impact on my work lately, I think this painting was me shifting towards some of my earlier obsessions. I like what came out of it but there's still a lot meshing of influences to come.

Buy my tablet PC!

I'm trying to get to San Diego Comic Con, so I've put my tablet PC up on ebay. If you're in the market for one, I would love you very much if you decided to purchase mine. Below is a link to the the bidding page:


BID ON THIS AWESOME TREE-SAVER

The New Doktah

I like Matt Smith as the new Doctor Who, but I'm really not a fan of the new intro music.

Also, above is an animation background I did recently as part of an art test for Spark-Flow

Epic Music

Anyone who knows me knows how obsessed I am with soundtracks. When it comes to music, the more theatrical the better for me. When I listen to that kinda stuff, I tend to get really inspired and my brain goes crazy thinking about movies, movie-making, shots, stories, images, and it feels like I'm on a creative high. I think the treatment of a soundtrack (or lack thereof) can EASILY make or break a movie and it's something that's overlooked by a lot of us visual types. I mean how much impact would that "married life" montage from Up have if that song wasn't there? How much identity did the soundtrack give to the original Star Wars? Anyway below are links to a few of my favorites, check them out.


Moving Mountains by Two Steps from Hell - It's pretty much as epic as it sounds, it's been used in a few shitty trailers -
LINK

Freedom Fighters by Two Steps from Hell - used in one of the Star Trek trailer song -
LINK

Hollywood and Vines by Michael Giacchino - It's the song they used in Lost when people walked around. This is the song they WALK AROUND to. (I recommend you fast forward to 1:00.) The version I'm linking to is one where someone combined the different versions of the song used in the show-
LINK

Baidir Trailer - And awesome trailer made in france as part of a pitch for a new animation project. It's pretty amazing -
LINK

Barbarian Horde by Hans Zimmer - It's from Gladiator. The whole reason I listen to this song starts at around 5:35 -
LINK

Character Studies

These are some loose sketches of the protagonist starring in my next set of storyboards.

messin around

trying to focus and failing utterly.

Roger Ebert's rant

Let me start by saying that I don't agree with what Roger Ebert said about video games not being art. First of all, the debate over what makes art "art" is a long, endless assault of opinions and the lack of unity on that point makes the entire argument moot. Having said that, I personally define art as the act of creation with intent. Within that, there is obviously good art and bad art. I think good art is measured by how successful the artist was in communicating what the intent WAS, and then achieving it.

Now let's talk about what Ebert MEANS to say, which I think can be summarized by one of his own quotes;

" 'No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.' To which I could have added painters, composers, and so on, but my point is clear."

Now on this point, I ALMOST agree, but not quite and my disagreement is three-fold

1) There's this wonderful romanticized notion that older=better, and it's just not true. Well at least it's not automatically true. This notion exists EVERYWHERE though, and it's an idea that has woven itself in the minds of appreciators of movies, video games, t.v. shows, books, comics, animation etc. Now I think a lot of the time, people say this because older material sets the precedence for techniques and ideas that will influence the later generations. They do this because they're the first, and they have the opportunity to set the standard for how the medium will be used from then on. Progression is usually slow and gradual after the initial birth of a new medium. Limitation also usually forces creativity and it also usually forces things (like movies) to center their techniques and methods on the basic essential principles of their craft. Video games are no exception to this.

2) Not all video games are meant to be storytelling, a lot are meant to be more about the interactivity and experience of actually PLAYING the game (tetris? katamari?). This is a principle of video game creation and it's something Roger Ebert doesn't seem to understand. It looks to me like he's comparing video games to movies as though games are a slight alternative, and like I said, this isn't always the case. I personally enjoy the cinematic, story-oriented games more, but I know that's not what all games are about.

3) There ARE some games that compare, even on the narrative side. Half Life is a big, fat juicy example of amazing storytelling, amazing immersion, amazing character development, amazing EVERYTHING. There are very few other examples but I don't even need to go beyond this one.

I think Roger Ebert may be right when he says "no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form." but it's only probably because nobody will want to give the medium the respect it deserves until it's old enough to automatically deserve it.

If you're looking for inspiration..

It's amazing.

John Nevarez's blog

Studies and a doodle

A Game of Thrones Cast!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/

I'm excited. My only issue so far is that too many of the characters are "pretty." In the books, there are specific characters who are attractive and it's used as a story element. If everyone's good looking, that story element gets lost.

Fixes

His legs were really irritating me so I had to fix them. The shape didn't work well for the design and the centerline/construction was all way off.

yes

Last night I was in a rendering mood, so I painted this. As usual, this started from a random character doodle and slowly morphed into this, so there wasn't any planning involved and I did my best to improvise. I finished it today with polish and touchups, but I think this is the fastest I've ever painted something. Kinda looks like Danny DeVito's character from twins.

Also, I'm thinking of ideas for a new sequence to storyboard, I'm not thrilled with how my last set turned out.

Captain Simian, and the Spaaaaaaaaace Monkeys

My post isn't really related to Captain Simian, or any kind of space primate. It's just that I've had the intro song stuck in my head for the last 3 hours and I have NO idea why, I haven't seen that show since I was like 12. But I DID go to the zoo today and I did some gesture drawings of a monkey, that's probably what planted the seed.

Anyway, I went to see How to Train Your Dragon today and thought it was a very good movie. Unfortunately, my friends and I were taken out of the illusion by a messed up audio track and a loud, ignorant dude shouting on the phone and yelling to his kids as he came in and out of the movie. Needless to say, we all want to watch the movie again, properly.

Still though, I admired all the visuals and I enjoyed the story a lot, though it didn't tread too far from what you'd expect of it. There were a few lines that jumped out at me as corny and/or ill-delivered, but I was more than willing to overlook that. The designs were gorgeous and some of the compositions really inspired me to do some art. All of the flying sequences were amazing and overall, it was just a beautiful movie to watch. I definitely want that "Art of" book. I still need to get the Art of Up, and the Art of Kung Fu Panda too.

Also, on a completely seperate note, I'm reading the 4th book from the "A Song of Fire and Ice" series by George R.R. Martin (two Rs?!), and I don't understand what's wrong with this man. Though I'm enjoying the books, I'm really irritated by the fact that he seems to arbitrarily kill off characters that I've spent 3 books getting to know, and their deaths do VERY little to move the story forward. He keeps tacking on new characters and getting rid of old ones, and the whole time I'm left wondering why he had me invest in them for so long if he was just going to toss them out for no apparent reason (shock value?). I'm very excited about the HBO series being developed based on the books.

doodles

Amination

rough from Daniel Araya on Vimeo.

I often need to take a break when I work on one thing for too long, otherwise I get really cranky. In between storyboards I've been messin around with this off and on over the last two or three days. I probably won't get a chance to work on it again until next week or so though, but I plan on finishing it.

Still more

Still hoppin around stylisically. I made a lot of progress on my storyboards though.

'nother experiment

Messed around with something a bit more dramatic.

More webcomic experimentations

Still making small aesthetic decisions about the webcomic as I build my storyboard portfolio. My personal favorite out of this group is the third one but I seem to be the only one who feels that way. Most likely, I'll end up going with something that resembles the last image. These little mockups are really fun to do.

warm up

Doodles. Decided to warm up by exploring the differences in the way people sit depending on their mood.

Webcomickery

This is a test panel for a webcomic I'd like to do. The comic would include the following:

- robots
- monsters
- ridiculously oversized weapons
- ninja
- samurai
- energy beams of some kind
- hovercycles
- some kind of futuristic order of badass monks
- a structured mathematical system by which power can be measured
- a heroic kid
- power suits

..and more badassery that I can't come up with right now.

None of that is a joke. I'm including everything I thought was cool when I was 13, most of which are guilty pleasures that I still enjoy today. I'll do my best to make a cohesive story out of it.

I would have included floating islands, but James Cameron has made me nauseous at the thought.

Movie Studies and Megacon

These are a little old, but I've been trying to build my sense of cinema lately by doing studies from paused movies. Lately though, I've just been doing quick thumbnail studies in my sketchbook as opposed to these painted studies. Just trying to block in the composition and understand what the director was going for. Although I couldn't help but render the Citizen Kane studies because the lighting is just so f*cking amazing. As I did the CK studies, the lightbulb really came on.

So....Megacon. Crazy comic book convention in Orlando Florida taking place in about two weeks. WHO'S GOING?!?!

Well unfortunately, I'm not. BUT a bunch of my buddies are, including:

, , ,, and more. So if you're going, make sure you stop by one of the Kaiser Studio tables and say what's up. If you mention my name, you'll get a free handshake.

Also, they'll be debuting the RPG card and dice game, Dark Legacy. The Megacon homepage has more info:

http://www.megaconvention.com/