Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Jacking lumber since 2008

Don’t anybody sing the lumberjack song. Don't you dare. This is a little something from some freelance work I’ve been doing, “The Physics of Animation”. It’s mostly been diagrams up to this point but we’re starting a chapter now that requires a lot of character work, which is awesome for me. This illustration is to show balance. I needed to do a front and side view of a character in a balanced pose and then a front and side view of an unbalanced pose similar to the first one. The character had to be top heavy and have small feet to emphasize the out-of-balance pose. I chose to draw a lumberjack since I’ve been wanting to do one for a while and he fit the description. I originally had him posing with his ax but I had to change it because adding another mass would have complicated the physics being explained so I opted for the same pose, but with him holding his suspenders instead.

I need to get out and work in my sketchbook soon. I've been in a wierd funk lately and the little I've done outside of work isn't worth scanning, let alone posting online.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

I'm a winner!

I just updated yonder portfolio. FYI.

I wish I had more work to show but I've had the misfortune of being ill for the greater part of the last week. How I managed to catch a freak head cold in the dead center of summer is beyond me. It's like I found the only cold bug in the entire Bay Area that survived the end of Spring... like I won some kind of sick lottery. Anyway, that's done. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.


Above: I did these 2 pages over two weeks ago. The ones on the right side were done at a food court in a mall while I escaped a heat wave. I need to start drawing people in areas where they're more active. Like the park, or something.

Above: I was invaded by bees when I drew the messy hillside so I wound up rushing through the values and it looks kinda crap. Some old, swaggering drunk biker dude came out of an honest-to-gawd saloon and started hitting on me when I was drawing the motorcycle. I promptly relocated. And I drew that little, elderly Asian woman when she was entering the "Jurassic 'Fight Club' Sweepstakes" at a movie theater. It seemed really out of character... actually, I don't think she knew what she was entering.

My friend, Ellen, is the one in color. This new sketchbook loves soft pastels so I think I'm going to start doing more color sketches.

Monday, July 14, 2008

To the Necropolis!

Okay, new sketchbook. Hey. I've actually had this particular book for, like, two years now and just didn't draw in it. It's a Fabriano Artist's Journal, like so:

It's pretty cool but I'm totally homesick for my old, brown, recycled-paper sketchbook. This new guy does not accept wet media very well. Uh uh, havin' none of that. And I'm all about wet media! Dammit. But it is forcing me to try new things and I'm excited to see what happens when I get to the darker papers. One pro about the new guy: he's about 25% the size of my last one so I fill the pages faster and feel more productive. Oh yeah, he seems to like markers a lot. That's cool, too.

Above: Some people I drew in a mall food court last week. We had a heat wave and I was in serious need of some air conditioning. The mom of that baby I drew totally turned around and glared at me when her friend noticed I was staring.

Below: I visited Colma, the week before last, and drew in the Italian Cemetery. Colma is a bona fide necropolis... the population of the dead there outnumbers the population of the living and there are graveyards all over the place. I found hella graves with "DeVincenzi" on them... yay, Jack! Holy crap it was cold out for a midsummer's day, though!


This is completely random but... every time I hear the bridge to "Lips Like Sugar" by Echo & The Bunnymen, it's like system paralysis. It's so damn good.