Summer 2009 Odds and Ends

Here are some sketches and pieces that I did this past summer but never found a good reason to post them.

Hipster Tennis  – she’s so ironic… she doesn’t even use a racket – inspired by my brother and sister-in-law’s shenanigans.

I tried to work on some character designs for my comic and ended up getting a little out of hand.

But I felt it was still worth posting about it.

Same goes for the toned version. And yes, I was looking at a lot of Street Fighter III art around this time.

I was very hesitant to post this one, since overall I don’t really like it, but it I feel that it’s still a worthy exercise… in something.

Woman at Embarcadero – Pitt brush markers on Fabriano Journal paper

Marcel, Profile – Oil Pencil on Fabriano Journal paper.

Santa Monica YWCA Figure Drawing – Oil Pencil on smooth newsprint paper – 2 min quick sketch

Santa Monica YWCA Figure Drawing – Oil Pencil on smooth newsprint paper – 5 min quick sketch

Santa Monica YWCA Figure Drawing – Oil Pencil on smooth newsprint paper – 10 min quick sketch – just imagine George Michael’s  “Careless Whisper” and you’ll get the picture.

Hockey, Love, & GUTS! – Chapter 3 – Home Afterthought

It’s about time isn’t it? Well, let’s get right to it then, and I’ll leave the talking for another post. As usual, click the image below for the chapter page.

Enjoy!

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Happy Birthday, Reggaenights’ Blog!

I just noticed it now, but yeah, it’s been a year since I started this. I could say a million things about it, but I’ll just have this sketch of a future “Hockey, Love, & GUTS!” character do the talking.

Thanks for all the visits, to friends, acquaintances, or just passers-by. You’ve made all the difference this past year for me, so thanks so much!

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Getting back into painting… “And I said to him like, whatever…”

It’s been a while, but I just felt the urge to paint again. Chapter 3 of “Hockey, Love, & GUTS!” is taking a little longer to finish and the disappointment of unemployment is only exacerbating that progress. But, it’s getting there, and I’m trying to find ways to keep me motivated to keep writing and drawing. So I decided to take the character of Mercedes into a more colorful realm, trying to maintain the line weight and quality that is so strong in the black and white drawings, while giving some dimension and developing a style that fits with my tastes. Also, lately my blog has gotten quite a lot of views from 9 fans (I’m looking at you “9 Movie Boards”) and that’s gotten my riled up to get back into character concept design. So what better way to practice than to use my own characters.

Character Design is of course as hard to describe as art, so I’m not going to get into definitions here, and only talk about and show what I like, and you’ll probably get a feeling for my tastes. It may come to no surprise that I am a fan of the artists at CAPCOM and SNK. I’ve grown up being flooded with their art work, so it’s hard for me to even think without their influence. Recently though I decided to look at my art books again and do some “art studying.” I’ve noticed that while the Capcom artists differ wildly in style, their line work is still the thing that governs a lot of their color and compositional choices. I think that’s what keeps their illustrations feeling “cartoony” and fun, being very realistic, yet not explicitly. Subtlety is key, and I revel in that.

So expect more to come. These didn’t take that long to do, and hopefully I’ll only get faster at doing them. Well, for one, they help me relax from all the story brainstorming I have to do while drawing panels and pages of the comic. So enjoy the progression below of my thought process and feel free to give me tips on that too.

Rough

Line

1st pass

2nd pass

Final

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SDCC, 9, Her Lion’s Jump, and Miyazaki… oh, and yeah, I’m still working on my comic.

I didn’t plan it that way, but it seems like it’s all happening this week. My short film “Her Lion’s Jump” was selected to screen at Comic Con, which is fantastic, of course, but its screening schedule is right against “the 9 panel” so, I’ll be missing all the audience excitement for that. And I can only imagine it will be intense if the panel at Wondercon was any indication, plus this one has most of the cast, Shane himself, some surprise guests, and heck, it follows the Hayao Miyazaki panel! But, it’s all good, I’ll come prepared. So much so that I’ll be in and out of the Con very quickly, to see the master himself in Berkeley on Saturday. I presume the Miyazaki lecture up north will be more civilized, or maybe just lacking fanboys with 15 part questions… oh wait, I’ll be there! 0~0

Anyway, prior to all this crazyness, I’ll get to watch 9 before all y’all (suckas!) in just a couple of days, and I can’t wait. From what I’ve heard the reviews have been positive, so I’m definitely hyped… well, I have been for the past 3 years since I last worked on it! O_O

As the title of the post says, I’m still working on “Hockey, Love, & GUTS!” but this past month has kept me busy with doing storyboard tests here and there (I can has job nao plz) as well as visiting family that I haven’t seen for years. So, for now, I’ll post some rough previews of Chapter 3 of HLG, and next time I’ll put together some more sketches.

hlg_v01_ch03_p01_roughs_preview.jpg

hlg_v01_ch03_p02_roughs_preview.jpg

hlg_v01_ch03_p03_roughs_preview.jpg

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One for the Road

I’ll be at the KidsFilmFest http://www.kidsfilmfest.org/films/ in Brooklyn, NYC this weekend! I’ll be back in town on Tuesday, June 16th. Here’s a sketch of Pearl to keep you tuned in until then. The comic is still in B&W mind you, but maybe this will become part of a cover someday…

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Hockey, Love, & GUTS! – Chapter 2 is here!!!

Wednesday is comics day, so to get right to the point, here’s Chapter 2 of “Hockey, Love, & GUTS!”

Enjoy!

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HLG – Chapter 2 is now 2 and 3 – also, more sketches, so: Chapter 2 – Preview sketches #2

Ok, so I lied in the previous post. Those sketches are not for chapter 2, but rather 3. But, you know, that’s story. It’s a constantly evolving thing – it’s neither progression, nor regression, but rather, evolution. So, things change, but the good news is that inking for chapter 2 is almost done, so maybe it’ll be posted in another week or so? (Crossing my fingers here…) In the meantime, enjoy these quick sketches of some of the characters that I can guarantee you will show up in chapter 2.

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PS: The reason for the delay isn’t just one but many including the following: unemployment, looking for work as a full time job, cutting a trailer for “Her Lion’s Jump”, cutting an animation reel together, regretting the fact that I haven’t done either of those things already, regretting that I can’t work on HLG any faster than I already am, often wondering if I have so much time how come I can’t produce more work, getting engaged, thinking about the wedding, trying to have a social life, having fun, etc…

HLG – Chapter 2- Preview sketches #1

Yeah, I’m still going at it… albeit slowly. But, no worries, thumbnails for all 18 pages of chapter 2 are done as well as the script. Now it’s just a matter of drawing it out. I’m still making some decisions about the final look to things, even though I learned a lot from doing chapter 1. Had I been doing this on tangible media, then perhaps doing it all in B&W would have been faster, but it seems that I get more mileage done and I’m able to maintain an appealing aesthetic with the gray scale tones. But, if B&W is faster, and I’m able to convey tones solely with that, maybe I’ll switch. Just have to wait and see. I’m sure there will be another preview post like this, and I even thought of posting one of the rough pages for this one, but I thought that might give away too much… maybe?

Well, I’ll try and find a good rough next time. In the meantime, enjoy these sketches of an upcoming character… by the way, Mercedes and Pearl are still alive. Oh no SPOILERS! DA DA DAAAAA…

(Would you really expect otherwise? After all they are the main characters of this story! But these sketches are of neither of them, as you can probably tell… )

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Hockey, Love, & GUTS! – Chapter 1 – Pages 8 – 14 – Chapter 1 End

The end of chapter 1 is here. Now I understand this isn’t the best way to read these pages, so as I’ve mentioned before, I’ll build a new page just for this comic with subsequent pages for different chapters. If you stop by the blog and they aren’t there on the sidebar yet, it’s probably because I’m still working on them. I think also from now on, I’ll probably post previews of chapters amongst my other posts, and then just post the whole chapter on a page instead of a few pages on every post. But, this was the beginning of something new for me, so I’m bound to make mistakes. Anyway, enjoy and let me know what you think.

Page 08

Page 09

Page 10

Page 11

Page 12

Page 13

Page 14

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UPDATE: comic pages and chapter pages have been added to the sidebar for easier reading. I suggest opening all the images in tabs and closing them as you read, depending on how your browser selects multiple open tabs. Maybe when chapter 2 is up (when will that be, I wonder…) I’ll find a better way to have the pages be read.

UPDATE 2: Gallery order on the sidebar page for Chapter 1 now fixed. Sorry for those who tried to read it there and were confused, my apologies. But, it’s fixed now, so why not give it another try?