Merry Christmas Bear!

Christmas in the eyes of a child.     20" x 16"     Oil on Canvas

This year I was asked to create and donate a painting for a local charity event called The Festival of Trees. The event is run by the Mercy Foundation, and volunteers team up and put together a 'Tree' package that follows a theme; people then bid on the package and the money raised goes towards helping children in need. The theme of the 'Tree' my painting will be with is "Christmas through a child's eyes" or something along those lines. 

Dusting off my digital painting skills

Some practice sketches

Monkey Studies

Environment Pen & Marker Sketches

Doing more environment art Direction for my world's design. Each page contains quick sketches of environment shots for a different part of the world. Each Sketch takes about 10 - 20 min. 

For each page I do some research and gather references to help me generate ideas.

Cold Mountainous/Forest Region 

Icy Mountain Region

Fantasy Castles/ Ruins/Fortress

Exotic Island Region

WIP

Quick Environment Sketches

To help me in my process of creating this fictional world, I needed to do some rough visual treatments for what I imagine certain parts of the world looking like. These treatments are meant to help stimulate ideas for the era, cultures, technology, politics, religions, and important landmarks that might occupy these places.

I liked the look of inked sketches, they were fast and fun to do; however I ended up running out of ink partway through and didn't get all the places done.

World Map Progress

Using the original world map as a starting place, I cropped each continent or major area and printed them. I then took the prints and traced over the top to create a higher resolution, more detailed version of each. Then I scanned them in again.

The only problem I have is that the line weight varies when I put them all together into the world map. I'm hoping this won't be too noticeable after I paint them and landmark them.

Original Map

New Version of World Map with Hi-Res Areas

Time to build a world - Creating a map

So I've decided to Build this world that I've been thinking about for a long time. It's really for a story that's been in the back of my mind for years but I didn't really know how I was going to get it out.

So I'm going to start by building the world my story takes place in. I'll start with geographical maps, then I'll write out the histories, create the cultures, create their peoples, and so on.

I'm really picturing this story being made into a graphic novel and/or being made as an animated series. However it could also be told through a video game (I was thinking a turn-based strategy rpg, since there will be emphasis on war and battle).

The story will be a fantasy epic that is more grounded in reality than most fantasies. It's not really restricted to just fantasy though, there will be a mix of all my favorite genre stuff. This story is basically going to be like my love letter to my favorite genres, books, movies, tv shows, comics, and video games.

Thus far I've done an outline of the world map; and I'll proceed to detail it further and later paint it so it looks like a cool explorers map.

A plain line drawing of my world

Capstone Update

For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to balance my use of time for Tutorials, Practice, and other classes.

What I did for the first week was watch some foundation videos on perspective, color, and light. I've done a bunch of perspective practice sketches, but it's all the technical boring stuff that you don't want to see. The color theory and lighting videos just brushed up my knowledge on the subjects. I think the time I spent watching videos for the first week was about 12 hours.

For the last two weeks I scheduled myself to delve deeper into perspective form drawing and then proceed into drawing vehicles.

I'm a little behind schedule at the moment; at least from where I want to be. I've run into the issue of prioritizing my schedule. Also I need to find a better method in which I juggle tutorials and practice; watching them all first then trying out the stuff I learn feels too taxing.

Where I'm at right now is the stage where I am supposed to do research and gather references for vehicle and robotic designs. So far I've been doing a lot of perspective form practice.

For the rest of the week I will be doing more vehicle design drawing; and If I have enough time I'll try doing some traditional and digital rendering techniques.

Capstone Timeline Updated

Design Boot Camp 

Revised Schedule

• April 15th - Perspective form drawing 
• practice sketches
• April 17th - Intro to vehicle drawing 
• Watch tutorials and practice sketching
• April 22nd - Vehicles & Robots  
• Research robots, cars, industrial machinery. 
• Gather texture materials. 
• Produce idea and more finished sketches.
• April 24th - Vehicle rendering techniques  
• Tutorials on vehicle rendering techniques: Matte, Shiny, Rusty, etc.
• April 29th - Perspective for environments 
• Watch Tutorials again.
• Go through my perspective book which covers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 point perspective. Do the exercises in the book.
• Study how other artists use perspective, do some copies.
• May 1st - Architecture design 
• Study various styles of architecture. Gather References. Do study sketches. 
• Look at architecture in popular fiction (Film, Animation, Comics) 
• May 6th - Art direction
• Watch the Tutorials for environments.
• Watch tutorials on other artist's techniques.
• May 8th - Environment Sketching 
• Sketch and Speedpaint
• May 13th - Set Design 
• Study historical, contemporary, futuristic set designs.
• May 15th - Advanced Digital Painting Techniques 
• Environment matte painting. Environment Rendering techniques.
• May 20th - Dynamic Character Drawing 
• Do some life drawing sketches. Figure drawing for animation and comics. More head studies and portraits; study facial and body expressions.
• May 22nd - Character costume design 
• Includes researching historical and contemporary fashion. Study cultural designs.
• Do a few original character design sketches.
• May 27th - Creature Designs 
• Animal anatomy and dinosaur drawing tutorials and sketching. Digital creature painting techniques for fur, flesh, etc.
• May 29th - Character / Creature painting 
• Tutorials on creature and character digital painting techniques.
• Do a couple character and creature paintings.
• June 3rd - Storyboard Studies 
• Watch a tutorial on anatomy of film / animation. 
• Do some storyboards from my favorite movies, shows, and game scenes. 
• Do some lighting and color studies by doing quick paints of scenes from movies, shows, games. 
• June 5th - Conceptual Storyboarding for Film & Animation 
• Watch tutorial on conceptual storyboarding.
• Try doing a couple original storyboards. 
• June 10th - Final Portfolio 
• Scan in all my sketches and drawings. Organize all products of studies this term and document them in a pdf. Post to blog. Put anything "good" in my portfolio.

Capstone Proposal - Design Boot Camp

Design Boot Camp

My project is simple, to do a series of design workshops to produce a larger body of professional quality work for my portfolio.

For my Capstone project I will be doing individual studies for various aspects of entertainment design. I will be working from tutorials and books to strengthen my foundation in drawing and digital painting techniques. Areas of focus will be developing dynamic characters, mastering perspective, using color.
Techniques I will practice are visual storytelling, speedpainting, matte painting, portraiture, industrial design, anatomy, and Art Direction.
I chose not concentrate this project on a single idea like a game or film because I didn't want to restrict the range of my concepts. I want to produce a variety of genres and styles, I really want to use this project to experiment and improve my skills.

My products of study will include character sheets, creature sketches, colored renderings, digital matte paintings, interior and exterior environment scenes, key art illustrations, vehicle designs, robot and machinery, storyboards, and so on.
To be more precise I'll list specifics for each area.
Character: Silhouettes, Costumes, Portraits, Animated Poses, Detailed Sketches, Turnarounds
Creatures: Animal Anatomy, Single creature variations, Animated Poses
Environments: 1pt/2pt/3pt Perspective, Single location various shots, Interiors, Exteriors, Landscapes, Architecture, Lighting, Color Studies, Implementation of Life
Vehicles/Robots/Weapons: Designs drawn in perspective, Silhouettes, Presented in layout sheets, Textures
Storyboards: Script writing, Thumbnails, Animatics,
Key Art: Storytelling Illustrations fully rendered with color, Marketing Art, High Concept Illustrations

Some visual research of other artists:

Nicholas Kole

James Paick

Feng Zhu

Kekai Kotaki

Treatment Visuals (Personal Work):

I believe my strength lies in the "idea" stage of my designs; I have plenty of ideas to work on. My weakness would have to be a lack of polish to my art. I need to work on a solid work flow as well, developing concept art from abstraction to production. I also want to work on advance digital techniques that will speed up my process and help make the final products higher quality.

My goal is simple, to achieve a level of skill that will prepare me for the professional field. I want a body of work that will make potential clients want to hire me.

Timeline: (Tentative / Don't know the dates)

• 1st critique - Foundations Complete
• 2nd critique - Characters / Creatures
• 3rd critique - Environments
• 4th critique - Vehicles / Robots / Weapons
• 5th critique - Storyboards
• Final -  Illustrations and Key Art

Art 348 Final Project Stuff

Works in Progress