Petsecure - at the vet!

This was the first poster I was commissioned to do for Petsecure, featuring the new pets I had redesigned for them. They wanted the first one to have both pets, going for a visit to the vet.

Here are a few super rough sketches I did to get an idea of placement....

After the client chose which one they liked best, I did a bit cleaner rough...

 Then did a rough colour pass to show the client....

And here is the final! Yay!

Home Made Valentines for my Valentine

I painted a Valentine for Tams and gave it to her tonight. My favourite gift to give people is art.... and especially when "they" are my beautiful wife.  :)

And a couple more I made for the "series":

Water, the Hub of Life.

I was asked to be involved in a great campaign called "Art for Water". They got over 100 artists to donate an original piece, and they would all go up on an online catalog, where people could order prints. All the proceeds of the catalog are going to build new wells in countries that are gravely short on clean water.

Anyway, a thumbail of my piece is above... I was inspired by the quote above that I found by an old philosopher. Water is so integral to sustaining any kind of life, and we all take it so for granted here in the West.

Click on my thumbnail to see my page in the catalog, and peruse the many amazing pieces! It would make a great Christmas gift, and a chance to pay it forward  :)

Poncho = cape.

Another great line [which turned into a drawring] from one o' my favs, "Modern Family", back in Season 1. Gloria is talking to Jay about Manny wanting to wear his poncho to school, and she says to him "A poncho is just a cape that goes all the way around!"

[Insert loud chuckle here!]

Painted panda.

Fiddling around in Flash, trying to paint like I am in Photoshop. 'Tis tricky, but always fun to try new things in a totally different style than my usual....

Cheese please?

Aww... he had no idea.

Dancing a jig.

I had some time waiting for more approved designs here at work today, so I just started sketching in Flash and this little dancing alien showed himself. Little varmint.

Go dance yerself a jig today!

The K-King's Sp-Speech.

By making "pun" of the title of this film, I am in no way making fun of the subject matter. I absolutely loved this film, and the relationship that develops between Lionel Logue and The King. I am fascinated by true stories, and especially when those stories can encourage and teach us all a little something about not giving up.

The Oscars are a favorite time of year for me -- so this year I am gonna attempt to sketch my interpretations of the top 10 Best Picture noms.

1 down, 9 to go!

I triple-dog dare you!

Doing caricatures from Xmas movies just got a lot funner. Yes, funner. Here is the first half of the "A Christmas Story" cast, all coloured and in their fashion. See below for an enlarged version of each character; Ralphie is shown in the previous post. More coloured leg lamp fun to come!

Ralphie, now in Technicolor!

As I said, I have the whole cast inked and am in the process of adding color to them all, but here is Ralphie, avec color!

Princesses. Pink. Perrtty.

A friend of mine is commissioning me to work on something uber-fun: paintings for her kidlets! She has three adorable little guys, and I am designing them each an original painting. The two girls love princesses, so I mocked up a few rough colour thumbnails to show her a few idears.











Once she narrows down her favs, I will get to refine the character designs and begin to paint on canvas! Me love designing for kids. We are on the same level! :)

For a friend

I recently did this painting for a dear friend of mine who is going through an extremely rough valley in her life. I hope she finds some comfort in the words of Mother Teresa, as I have in my own valleys.

"We should ask ourselves, 'Have I really experienced the joy of loving?' True love is love that causes us pain, that hurts, and yet brings us joy. That is why we must pray and ask for the courage to love."
- Mother Teresa

A "Tina" sort of Mom

Here's some of the freelance I have been up to lately... some character design, some graphic design. I have enjoyed it! The first character my client wanted developed was a funky sort of Mom. I named her "Tina".

model sheet for "Tina"; pencil & digital

concept poses for "Tina"; pencil & digital

colour concepts for "Tina"; digital

A finished still from "Tah-Dah"

I honestly feel like I am developing Photoshop Elbow. [in lieu of Tennis Elbow!!]

However, since I am on the almost-last stage of my film, I can deal with this never-ending Photoshop colouring frame by frame! By the end of all this, I will have felt like I ran 14 marathons. With my pencil :)

So here's a finished still from my upcoming film, "Tah-Dah"! I am excited to finally start to see it come to Technicolor life – I have been staring at the grayscale animation and backgrounds for what seems like eons, so this stage is exciting for me!

Stay tuned!

Colour Concoctions

Right now I am trying to clean up all my animation [as quickly as humanly possible, which is not easy with clean up!]....so I thought I'd post my newest colour script for my film.

I really want an earthy palette, but one that's also a bit wacky to work with the UPA-ish stylings.
I hope this works, but the real test will be when I start to paint my animation and backgrounds!

Must.....keep...........drawrrrrrrinnnnnnggg......

Gesture paintin'

I'm a-still animatin' away on my film, so I thought I'd post some gesture studies I did from life drawing last semester.

Lookin' back at these, I do actually kinda miss it this term!

I'll definitely try to keep taking life drawing on the side, wherever I end up; it's such great practice for sharpening your drawing technique, and it's also a great way to experiment with styles. Unlike caffe drawing, the models don't move, so it's a great opportunity to take more time to study details.

Back to rough animating I go!

A "TAH-DAH" test

I am madly ruff animating as we type.....HOWever, I thought I shouldst post a test scene I did before Christmas to see if I could ACTUALLY animate the way I was thinking in my head. In order to get the result I wanted, I mean. It's not perrrrfect, but it helped me work out a LOT of pipeline bugs, and is definitely helping me not lose sleep during the ruff animation stage....wondering how I am gonna clean up and colour all those frames.....

As you can see, I didn't finish colouring all the frames, but it was good enough for moi.

So enjoy the sneak peek!
Stay tuned for the real flick, April 2009 :)

Chirp, Chirp

Watercolour birdies from the Royal Winter Fair a few weeks ago....I wanna go back! Birds are fun. And even more fun when they look angry. Don't ask why, it's just one-uh-those-things.

It's a watercolour life!

I've been forcing myself to do the last couple weeks of life drawings classes with just my watercolours...it's a challenge, especially with the shorter poses! But it definitely is a very rewarding challenge, I love how painting forces you to slow down more than conte or pencil does...and you have to be constantly thinking about colours, lighting, blending, etc.

Me loves to paint!





Only 2 more life drawing classes....ever! I can't believe that. CrazyNESS!!

Mamma Meeeee-ah

I had some time today at work to fiddle with Photoshop and experiment a bit with brushes and such...and I thought it's been a while since I did a self portrait of meeself.

I like the colours, I don't know if it has much likeness.... but I shall keep tryin'!