Random Doodles

Busy few months...

2011-12-14T04:36:00.000-08:00

Things have bee busy around the Condon household as of late. With a daughter in grade one french immersion, a wife with a job that demands lots of after hours work, Christmas right around the corner, and myself currently juggling two animation contracts and a band... Free time to sketch is at an all time premium. It seems everything I've drawn for the past few months has been for something specific. Not for myself. Which is great , but you don't usually get to do any free form drawing with commissioned work. :) This piece is from an un-used poster design for my band. I had the idea of doing it up like an Art Nouveau print. It never got finished. For various reasons... This was as far as it got. I might re-visit the concept again for another poster.

Speaking of Band posters... My wife and I were just nominated for Visual Artists of the Year for the 2012 Music PEI awards. It's a great honour that belongs mostly to my wife. She does the heavy lifting. I'm just here to bounce ideas off of and to contribute the odd illustration. It's great to see her get some recognition for the time and effort she puts into making us look so good. My band , Bad Habits, also got nominated for two awards. Weekend Warrior, and Entertainer of the Year. Needless to say we were pretty excited. We were told that it's unheard of for a band to get nominated for Entertainer of the Year without an album. We didn't expect it for sure. But we're thrilled none the less. The Weekend Warrior award is for the hard working bands that try hard to get their music out to people at the bars and clubs week in and week out. We've definitely done that.:). And.. It's a public vote open to everyone. So feel free to drop by the link below and throw a vote our way. You can also stop by http://www.afewbadhabits.com/ to check out the band in more detail.

Happy Holidays everyone!

http://www.musicpei.com/music-pei-week/ballot-public.php

Poster post??

2011-07-30T14:45:00.001-07:00

Wow. I don't post here anymore do I? Life's been busy as of late. With the band and the family, things get pretty busy pretty fast. But every now and then I do get the chance to draw. This is an illustration I did for a band poster. My wife April has been doing all the poster designs for us since we've started gigging and she's been doing an amazing job. You can check out some of the earlier ones she's done for us here..

http://www.afewbadhabits.com/p/posters.html

This time we worked together. She did up a comp for me to follow using some photos of the band, and I set out to do a bad Drew Struzan impression. :) I did this Grey tone illustration and she took it into photoshop and colored it. Then a little type setting in Illustrator and voila. One poster. The illustration got a little rushed at the end, and you can see it come apart at the seams in areas, but it was a good learning experience. I'm not sure I'd jump right into doing another poster illustration at this very moment, but I think someday I'd like to take another stab at it.

So.. Where the hell have I been?

2011-02-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

Well. Lets just say I got a few "Bad Habits" this past year. My last post was April 1st 2010. Right about that time I joined a band. We're called "Bad Habits". Our first practice together as a group was April 12th 2010. And things have been crazy since then.

My initial thoughts were that maybe by November or December we'd be playing a gig here or there. By late July we were in a studio practicing hard for our first gig coming on Aug 5th. We got to set up in the studio and record our full show through the same mixing board that Radiohead recorded Creep on. How surreal is that. All before we had even played out first live show.

Well, we hit that first gig running and haven't really looked back. By the time the end of December rolled around we had played more gigs than we ever thought we would and played an original song live on CBC radio. On top of that, we were set to go into record a demo on Jan 2nd. Now the recordings we made live off the floor that day are fully mixed and off to the local radio stations. Original songs on the radio before we hit our first birthday is beyond anything I could have hoped for with this band. It's all a bit surreal. We're gearing up to record a full album sometime this year. So far that's going really well. Fingers are crossed on that.

On top of that I've still been animating. I've done some freelance jobs here and there, but the band has eaten up all of my free time. So no blog for me :).

I've embedded our demo recordings in a player on the sidebar below. Check them out.

Go like us on facebook

www.facebook.com/BadHabitsBluesBand

Go check us out on reverbnation.com

www.reverbnation.com/badhabitsblues

And check out our homepage too while you're at it :)

www.afewbadhabits.com

Spread the word... If the word is good. :) And if any of you happen to live in Charlottetown, PE... Call you local radio station and request us. ;) Well... That's about all the pimping I can stomach. :).

Cheers!

Digi-doodles...

2010-04-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

Just some random warm-up doodling done with Sketchbook.
I've been drawing the Kellogg's Characters alot these last few days. This is a by-product of that. This isn't how they actually look, just my bad interpretation of them..

Bruiser.

2010-03-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

So I did this little sketch in the corner of a page I was doodling on the other day. And I kinda like it. Not so much the drawing per say.. But the character. A real bruiser. A guy with one eye slight closed over and an obviously previously broken nose due to his love of fisticuffs. So I though I'd explore the character further. Not really this exact design. But the character. Here's what I came up with.

Just playing with the features and proportions.
At this point I thought he'd just be a giant of a man. Tall, tree trunk forearms, and a barrel of a torso.I figured he could be one of those guys that enjoys the intimidation process that leads up to the scuffling. I've meet guys like this when I used to go to the bars. I always tried to make sure they thought of me as a friend.:).
Here I tried to make him a bit more compact. Both in overall torso structure and facial proportions. I thought he'd have thick sturdy hands with really prominent knuckles. The kind of knuckles that are good at breaking things. Like noses... Or walls. Hands that looked like they could really rip a person apart.
He'd have to get angry eventually.
I guess this drawing is based of the one I did above. Only in reverse.:) I should have photoshopped them onto one page so they were beckoning to each other. That might have tarnished their tough guy persona's though. I mean, his tight shirt here does make him look more like a player than a tough guy.
And Hey! Here's a bonus weirdo drawing! You're reward for schlocking through my ramblings and bad drawings.

More random junk..

2010-03-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I draw really messed up animal type creatures as well. For no real reason either.
Rooster I guess???

Some sort of duck?

Hmmmm. Platypus maybe?
And of course my cat.. Wearing some sort or vest? A natural combination right?
What's better than a human with an animal nose?? A human with animal ears...
This guy is so happy to have broken fingers.

I really didn't set out to draw a bad knock off of Silver from Treasure Planet when I started this doodle. Seriously. I didn't...

I have no idea what this is supposed to be. But this is a pretty good example of what I do when I'm just drawing without purpose. I just make a few lines and just see where they take me. Sometimes the results are unexpected, or unsettling, or just plain unwanted. :)

More Faces...

2010-03-21T04:35:00.001-07:00

More of the same mindless doodles..

Faces galore...

2010-03-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

When I sit down and draw mindlessly in the evenings, I always end up drawing faces. I'm not 100% sure why. I think it's because there's always a lot of character that can be displayed in the face. And I'm not very good at doing that. At pushing the expressions and making them readable and appealing. I also tend to repeat myself a lot. Use the same nose or shapes for every drawing. I'm hoping that by just drawing alot of different faces I can break away from my normal tendencies and maybe explore some areas I normally wouldn't. Or who knows... I could just draw a lot of the same things over and over...

Proudly carrying on the Canadian tradition of Humans with animal noses. ;)

More to come...

Doodle Dump...

2010-03-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

Here are some drawings I scanned last week that I just found lying around on my Hard Drive.

This is a quick little sketch for something I'm animating for my wife April.
I have no idea what this is.... Other than disturbing...
Again.. Just some mindless doodling as I watch T.V.
This was actually drawn from Rodin's "Eternal Idol". It actually looks nothing like this. except for the pose.
And this... Well this is what happens when you ask your wife for a subject to doodle. A monkey playing a banjo.. Classy. :)

Random Animal guy.. things....

2010-02-25T16:36:00.000-08:00

I've been watching Disney's Robin Hood lately. I love that film. There's alot of great character animation in it. Yes there was some re-use, and the story definitely has it's critics.. But some of Milt Kahl's work in this picture just continues to amaze me each time I watch it. And I love the anthropomorphic designs. Especially Ken Anderson's original concept art for the characters. It always makes me want to draw animal people after I watch it... Only I'm not very good at it.. .

So they start out innocently enough...

But then they start to sprout horns for some reason....And eventually turn into... The Wolfman??? I dunno.... Maybe I shouldn't watch Robin Hood that often.. :)

There once was a girl who loved to sing....

2010-02-22T04:31:00.000-08:00

Chloe told me an awesome bedtime story last week about a girl who loved to sing, and the troll that lived under her bed. It was really cute and had it's climax at the top of a volcano. George Lucas would be proud. :) It prompted me to do a little sketch of the girl and troll. Now she wants to make a book out of it. We'll see if her lazy good for nothing dad can do anything about that..

Drawing with Chloe..

2010-02-19T14:28:00.000-08:00

Chloe and I sat down the other night to do some drawing and she started drawing these cool characters and it gave me an idea. She would design characters on one half of the page and I would draw my interpretations of the on the other. So she wrote our names on our respective sides and away we went. Little did I know she'd be giving me revisions. And lots of them.. For instance....
I got revisions before I even started on this one. She wanted the little round girls pigtails turned into "valentines" And when I was done she told me I drew the mouth wrong. It wasn't supposed to be open, just smiling.. So she drew the mouth for me again by her character. That's what that U is beside her drawing.. She then had to erase some of the cat things whiskers because they were on her side and berated me because I made it's tail black and white instead of just white.

This time she drew a big divide down the page, just so I wouldn't draw on her side again. And she started naming the Characters. This one is Gadqd. I didn't get many revisions on him. Other than the fact that I drew his pose wrong... :)

Good Ole Yge. She told me that the lines on the top of his head represent each time he's had a heart attack. Poor Yge. I fear he's not long for this world. :)
We now present to you... The iPig.... I'm not sure what it does or if she cleared the name with Steve Jobs but there it is. :) Then Mom got into the action too.

I heard her giving revisions on these too. :) She quite picky about her work.
She had a thing for hearts that day. I guess it was shortly after valentines. I quite like Yod. He's got a strong arm. :)
I sense that there will be many more of these drawing sessions with Chloe. It was quite awesome. And I enjoy interpreting the simplicity of her designs. Great job Chloe! :)

Old Eggo Ad...

2010-02-18T08:54:00.000-08:00

Here's an Eggo Waffle ad that I animated for Chuck Gammage a while back. I just found it on vimeo today.:) It was an interesting project. I animated the Eggo and his phone traditionally in flash with a video of the live action hand and props for reference. Then the phone and body were replaced ,or cleaned-up, with 3-D animation. I believe by the talented Seamus O'Keefe. I'm not 100% on that but I'm pretty sure he did it. I cleaned the limbs in flash and they were all composited together for the end result. It was an interesting mix of flash,3-D, and live action.

There were 2 other Eggo spots that I animated as well. One was a re-mix of this ad and another involved the Eggo with a paddle ball.. That was fun. Translating a traditionally animated paddle ball with lots of smears and blurs into 3-D. I don't envy the person who had to do that. :).

Me???

2010-02-16T13:48:00.000-08:00

So.... I've been dry lately. Both on the work and creative fronts. And it shows. It's been forever since I've posted anything. Here's a little self caricature I did the other day. It looked OK... And then I decided to ink it and... Well.... You can see the results. I'm not much of an inker, but I was inspired by another artist whose ink work had such life and spontaneity to it. I just had to give it a try. Mine just looks sloppy :).

Jason Smash!!!

2009-07-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

I did a little scribbley portrait doodle of Hulk this morning and threw some rushed color behind it. I then decided to go nuts and try and draw a full body Hulk. I was never very good at drawing the Hulk. I could never realy give him the awesome sense of sheer mass that he deserves. But I thought I'd give it a try. I managed to do a ruff drawing in flash without too many problems. Cleaning it up howerver... That's another story. Everytime I'd try and grab a small section of the artowrk to tweak it a bit and make it a bit tighter, large sections of the artwork would disapear or turn negative. That was really frustrating and really put me in a "Jason Smash!!" kinda mood. Don't know what flash was tripping out about but I just left the drawing in it's ruff state and added color.

I really have a love hate relationship with drawing in flash. Most of the time it feels like I'm drawing with a large melting crayon. This drawing was no exception. I've heard using a Cintiq goes a long way in making digi-drawing feel more organic. I'll have to give one a try someday. If only they weren't so damn expensive. :).

Wolvie...

2009-07-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

I started doing a little doodle today in flash and it turned into wolverine. I slopped some color behind it to make it seem like more than it is. Which is just an off the cuff doodle. Then I remembered that I had some drawings I did awhile ago of the old canuck. They were the only drawings of the character that've done that I thought turned out OK. And it was just me fiddling around to see how I'd handle drawing his mug if had to. So I dug those up as well, to fatten this post out a bit. They were only about an inch and a bit big in my sketchbook, so that's why they're a bit "shakey" looking. :) Not a very stupendous post, but I'm trying to see if I can post a bit more frequently to keep from getting rusty.

Dump 2.5..???

2009-07-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple more drawings I did recently. Nothing spectacular, but really all I have to show.

My Wife asked me to do a drawing of a robber and an angel for her last night.. I thought the quickest way to do it would be to go down the old flat UPA"ish" route. This is what happened.. And yes.. There be drugs in that there bag. Not money.

I was asked to do an illustration recently for local comedy troupe Sketch 22. It was supposed to go in front of a sketch they were doing about an alien going to a psychiatrist during their summer show. I went for the gross Jabba the Hut look, but I was told to keep the head human. Kinda adds to the strangeness of it all I think. :) The sketch ended up getting cut, and thus so did the illustration. I was actually kinda relieved because it didn't turn out that great. Lotsa cheaty cheatness in there.

Sketch dump 2.0

2009-07-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

Here are a few images I scanned recently. Not much to say about them. Just some random sketchbook doodles.

Sketchbook dump...

2009-04-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

My friend Keith and I have recently started giving ourselves weekly sketching projects to keep us motivated to draw. And I tend to draw the same things over and over if I don't give myself a bit of direction. So I was hoping this would help with that as well..I've been posting mine to my facebook account and thought I'd post a few here too. They're just mindless sketchbook doodles.. So don't think you're getting anything of quality. :) This was our first subject.. A Takin.. I did a couple of sketches from photo ref and the quickly veered off into cartoony caricatures..

Then Keith suggested we draw some rhino's. I didn't go as far off into the land of cartoon as I did with the Takin. Just quick little sketches...

Then Keith and I went to Tim Hortons and drew some regulars for a little bit. We only ended up staying for about 10 mins or so because Keith was too into it that day. But here's what I got out of it.. The first page was drawn from memory after I got home..

Our next drawing motivational subject was "evil". We were just going to draw whatever came into our heads when we thought of that word.. Again. I veered off track. As I tend to do. :) So some of these are less evil than they should be...

This one I drew with my daughter Chloe. She made some gestural lines around the page and I made a picture out of it. I think I like it the most:).

And with that I filled the sketchbook. It's been awhile since I've filled a sketchbook. It'll soon be time to figure out next weeks sketching project and start a fresh new sketchbook. Hopefully we can keep this up and I can fill the new one fast. I've got alot of barely started / totally empty sketchbooks that need filling. :)

Taken...

2009-02-16T12:25:00.001-08:00

I saw the new Liam Neeson movie Taken recently. It was quite a romp. There's nothing like watching Liam Neeson kick ass for about 90min :). The surrounding drama was... meh.. whatever.. But I liked the asskicking. It made me smile and laugh.. And unfourtunately caused me to draw this horrible 5 min doodle. Suposedly this is Liam Neeson. At least that's what my brain was thinking when I drew it.. Geesh... I need to draw more... Draw more Neeson...

Change..

2009-01-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

This was supposed to be an entry for the "Cute as a..." button event at the Confederation Centre of the Arts here in town. Something my wife talked me into. Until I realized 2 things... 1 it looked awful at the actual size of 1.5 inches. And 2.. I used an American quarter in my design and I'm pretty sure that's a copyrighted image. :) But oh well. I thought it was a funny idea. And I got to draw a little portrait of one of the most intelligent people I've seen take office at 1600 Pennsylvania ave. in my lifetime. And who knows.. Maybe someday he'll grace some actual US currency. But for now.. Here's hoping he can bring the change that is so desperatly needed in these times. He's got a tough job ahead of him. But I have faith in him. Have a good weekend!!

Long time no post...

2008-10-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

So I haven't exactly been posting up a storm as of late. Hmm.. In fact I've been kinda lax the last few months it seems. I have been keeping myself somewhat busy here and there doing some animation work. Did a promo piece for Chuck Gammage that he took to OIAF. It apparently got a good response. We'll see if anything happens with it. And apparently I was involved with a piece that won something at OIAF as well. John Halfpenny submitted a sequence I animated for the Dark Years and it won for Television Animation for Adults. Congrats on that John!

I haven't been doing alot of digital drawing lately so I really don't have alot to post. I've been draing alot in my sketchbook and I am sadly without scanner. These two kiddie portraits are some of the last things I did digitally. Doing portraits of children is tough. I'm not sure I'm that good at it. I'm thinking about doing a series of portraits of ugly people.. Just for fun. :) And they'll be easier to draw too. If I ever start one I'll post it.

It seems that I have passed my cartoon tastes on to my daughter. Her Grampy recently got her 3 goldfish and she quickly named them Fry, Bender, and Leela. And just to show that she is a harcore fan, she inititally wanted to call them Captain Yesterday, Super King, and Clobberella. Futurama fans will know what that means:). She also wanted to go out as Clobberella on Halloween. To my wife's releif she changed her mind this week and decided to go out as a princess. I still think Clobberella would have been hilarious:).

I had a birthday recently too. I'm now this old....

So that's been my life in a nutshell recently. Not much, but I thought I'd post something to keep this blog active. Have a good weekend.

Work-in-progress.....Maybe...

2008-06-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a drawing that I was working on today. And it's duo-tone twin. It's based on an idea I had to do a drawing of me drawing myself. I'm not sure if I like it or not so it may just end up as it is. Never finished. Which is very like me. That's part of the reason the drawing I'm "drawing" in this is unfinished. It's echo's how I am with my personal work. I'l start something.. Then get to a point where I'm almost ruining it.. And then leave it half finished. Just ask Troy. He know's what I'm talking about. He's seen it first hand :). Have a good weekend..

Sketches..

2008-05-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

Here's an attempt to do some caricature sketching in sketchbook pro. I really prefer doing these kind of sketches from life as opposed to photo ref. I find it easier to get a real feel for a persons character when you can see them move around & hear them talk.. But I thought I'd give sketchbook a try with it. Since I don't have a scanner to post anything drawn on real paper. Didn't mind the pencil tool. but I found the markers behaved really unmarker like for me.. Could just be my settings.. Or maybe I just prefer real markers :)..

Buffalo Man Thing.....

2008-05-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

I was doing a little doodle of a buffalo and the facial proportions turned out more human like than animal... So I just went with it and made it a portrait of a Buffalo man type thing. That's the fun of doodling.. You never quite know what you'll end up with...

Clint..

2008-05-12T12:12:00.001-07:00

The man with no name.. or Blondie, Monco or Joe. Whatever nickname you want to give him. A couple of months ago a friend and I watched Yojimbo and Fistful of Dollars back to back. It was a great movie night that left me dying to try and draw Eastwood's iconic character. So today I was searching for some completely unrelated reference and I came across some pics of the man with no name. I took that as a sign and tried my stab at a sketch. It's very loose. Most of it drawn while zoomed way out on the canvas. That's why things are kinda scribbley. I couldn't see any definition in his eyes in the blurry ref so they are just dark slits of squint. Still wishing that sketchbook had a tool that acted more like a piece of conte. Maybe it does and I just don't know where to find it :).

Self Portrait.

2008-05-11T18:55:00.001-07:00

Here's my attempt at a self portrait. Mildly successful. I still can't seem to get anything out of these digital tools that I really want. Can't get them to hatch like your hatching with the side of a sharp, big lead pencil. This is a quasi - rip -off of a Drew Struzan self portrait that's at the beginning of his Oeuvre book. It's fantastic.. Like all of his work. So I thought I'd try one myself and even copied the pose a bit. I think I should have went with traditional media though. Maybe next time.

The man with the hat is back......

2008-05-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

And I still can't draw him... Harrison's a tough guy to draw.. I've tried a couple of times before and failed. He's that handsome with flaws kinda guy. Like Liam Nesson. And the flaws are usually the parts that are hard to capture.. But they hold all the personality..

I can't help but get excited for this movie. I know alot of people are already bashing it, but to me the last few trailers have really sold that it's still an old serialized adventure show. And not a modern day action movie.. Which I'm quite happy about. And I trust Spielberg. Even at his worst his movies are pretty entertaining.. Let's just pretend that Always never happened ok? ;) And I don't hate Shia like most people. I don't love him.. But he doesn't automatically ruin a picture for me just by his presence. It looks like a great cast. I only wish John Ryhs-Davies was back as Sallah. I love that guy. May 22 can't get here fast enough. Well.. For me at least..

Have a good weekend!!

Recent Flash animation

2008-02-09T05:09:00.000-08:00

Here's some animation I've done recently. I can't seem to get anything other than a mp4 to playback properly in youtube. Any quicktime format that actually looked good would only playback t like 3 frames a sec. I don't know how some people post animation that actually plays back ok with you tube :(. Anyway. Here's the first.

This was a little piece of animation that I did for Chuck Gammage. I had a week to complete it and clean up and color all the backgrounds. It was pretty intense. At the end of it I was working 18 hour days with a 34 hour straight non-stop work marathon at the end of it. I'm afraid that last sc might have suffered because of that. Can you spot which on it was? But it got done on schedule.. Just. The client was showing it at an event the were hosting on a friday at 7. I deliver the final cut to Gammage at4:30 on friday. Just enough time for them to burn a dvd and courier it to the client. Even though it was a tight schedule, I'm glad I did it. I think there's a shot or 2 in there that will make it on my reel. And hell. I basically animated a 1 minute short in a week.

This was a commercial that I animated for Moses Media. They basically gave me the concept and i did the boards and animation. Shout out to my partner in crime Troy Little for painting me a wicked background. it really brought the whole thing together. I wish the compression didn't make the beast look so crappy. He was the high point of this fro me. He's kinda of my homage to every Final Fantasy / rpg I've played. I guess he's my Bahamut / Behemoth :). It was just fun animating all those muscles. And yes.. that's me drawing away in my basement studio at the start. Everybody loved the spot. Even if I did think it looked less like a commercial for a video game course, and more of a spot for an animation course. And then the inevitable happened...

Holland college showed it to some game people who thought it was lame because it wasn't 3-d. Now. Did I think it sold the concept of "come take a course in video gaming"? Not so much. But I didn't think it was "lame". But I guess it's not good unless there's 3-d involved. So Moses Media had to get another artist to 3-d it up in the end. I think they were more bent out of shape over the 3-d add on than I was. :) As long as I got paid the client could do whatever they wanted to my animation. Gotta give it to the Moses Media guys (Jason & Beryl) they were a blast to work for. Every time I gave them a decision to make they always went with the one that would look better. Not everybody does that. And it deserves mentioning. I'd work with them again without hesitation.

So that it what I've been up to lately in this world of animation. Have a good weekend!!

Chloe's portraits

2008-02-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

My daughter Chloe has recently grasped the concept of facial features and where to place them. It wasn't really a gradual thing, it just kinda happened all at once. One day scribbles.. The next, faces. She likes to draw on her magna doodle so some of the more inspired ones are lost forever. But every now and then I can convince her to draw on paper. here's are soe that I managed to get scanned recently.

Here's one she drew of April. I like how she gave her cartoon pupil eyes. She's been doing that alot with the faces she draws on her magna-doodle. Notice the many pony tail / barrettes around here head. And of course, the random color scribblings on top of everything.
Now this one amazed me. She got the colors and the features. And nostrils too. Nice touch.
So this is her first attempt at me. Drawn with a highlighter (sigh). But it turned out soo well I had to try and scan it. I like my nose and how she positioned my pupil looking up in a worried way. Very me. And hands and motion blur feet to boot! This next one is photoshop's attempt at making it easier on the eyes... Sure...
And last , but not least, is potatoe head Jason. Now this one was draw right after the last highlighter one. I now have eyebrows and fingers on my hands.. My feet are still blurry. I'm not sure what kind of subconscious commentary on me that is. I think the line under my mouth is her attempt at my beard.. or one of the lines is my mustache. not sure. She hasn't developed her facial hair techniques yet :). I liked how she added that one line to the top of the head and told me it was my hair. I mean.. I know I'm thinning.. But that's just ridiculous ;).

I wish I would have taken pictures of some of her magna-doodle drawings.. some of them were amazing. To the point where I thought my wife might have drawn them. I'll have to do that in the future. But all-in-all I have to say these are not too shabby. Especially for a girl who hasn't turned 3 yet. Keep drawing Chloe!!!
.

Portrait work..

2008-02-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Here's some portrait work I did over the holidays. The top 2 are April's grandfather. They were done as gifts for the family. Again. I'm poor. So you get drawings. The other 2 were freelance jobs. The grandmother one was constructed from about 3 or 4 different photos as there wasn't really one good photo of her. I had to completely create a section of her face too, which is challenging. Having never met the woman. And the kids were just hard to draw because they're kids. I always seem to mess up the proportions of kids and make them look too old or too baby like. Oh well. The clients were happy.. Which I guess is all that you can hope for.

My Grandfather..

2007-12-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas time. So that usually means I'm doing drawings for someone if not everyone as presents. It's a combination of being poor and wanting to actually creat something for someone. OK.. Maybe it's more the poor thing. Anyway.. This Christmas I decided I would do one portrait that I could then give to all my aunt's and uncle's ,as well as my mother and grandmother, as their gift. I had been wanting to attempt a portrait of my deceased grandfather for quite some time now. But I could never work up the nerve to do it. I've sat down with the intent of doing it before.. But never actually did anything that could be mis-construed as starting.

I had "borrowed" a couple of photos from one of my grandmothers albums a few years ago. One of them was picture of my grandfather when he was in the navy. So I thought it would be neat to do a double portrait. One of the young man and one of the father & grandfather that everyone knew. The photos weren't the best. The navy one was pretty good but the other one I had was pretty blur-tastic. I think I was moderately successful. I gave them to the family last night at our family Christmas party. I got one "Who is it?" So maybe my success margins were actually a bit below moderate. Here's the finished product along with the photos I used as reference. This made me realize how easy it is to see details in high res digital photos. These photos forced me to invent more than copy. I guess I've been spoiled :).

On a total side note. When I first looked at the young photo of my grandfather I thought he looked like a young Tom Waits. Minus the wild hair of course. Nobody else saw it. So I probably just had Wait's on the brain.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Girl Sketch..

2007-12-11T08:44:00.000-08:00

Here's a sketch I did from an Image from http://characterdesigns.com.. I think it was taken at an Anime convention. Hence the wild headgear. I thought it had a great expression / attitude about it.. I'm not sure I got it.. And I think my end product ended with a bit more Rosario Dawson in her than the actual girl in the photo had.. Or maybe I'm just seeing things..

Flag guy..

2007-12-10T12:56:00.000-08:00

I was surfing around http://earthsworld.com/ today and found this image.. And it just screamed "Draw me!!!" So I did. I should have caricatured it more. I'll keep that in mind for the next one..I apologize for the crappy flag drawing.. I just didn't have the patience for all those stars.. :).

The Dark Years...

2007-12-07T16:57:00.000-08:00

The mini-series I worked on for Chuck Gammage Animation airs on Dec. 26, 27 & 28th on History Television. It was a very unique project that combined live action, archive footage and different styles of animation to tell the story of depression era Canada. It was very different than anything else I've worked on. The main animation style was visually bold and challenging to get a hang of..I came onto production late in the first episode so I worked mainly on the second and third episodes. If someone is committing suicide or attempting to.... It's probably one of my shots :). I don't know why.. But I got a handful of them. I'm not sure what times it's airing. So while you're enjoying your turkey leftovers do a little surfing and see if you can find it. And if you do, give it a watch and let me know what you think. :)

Have a good weekend!!!

Portraits anyone??

2007-11-19T06:36:00.000-08:00

Anybody interested in a portrait can contact me through the info on the poster. Thanks.

Memory Sketch..

2007-10-12T16:36:00.001-07:00

Last night as I was upstairs looking after my girl I decided to try and re-draw my picture of Joe that I had drawn earlier that day from memory. I used a brush pen to do it. It was an interesting exercise. Naturally this is much more caricatured than my previous one. If I'm not working from reference I tend to be cartoony. You can see that I remembered some things pretty well.. While other aspects are much more generic. I could tell while I was drawing this that I spent more time studying the eye and nose for my previous drawing than anything else. Their details were still pretty clear in my head.. But things like the hair and such were not so clear. It was fun.. And I gave me a chance to play with my prismacolor markers. :).

Lloyd.

2007-10-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

Here's today's little sketch. It ended up taking me closer top an hour to finish. So I blew my 30 min rule right of the bat.. This sketch is of my Uncle Lloyd. He's a great guy. Last time I visited his place he was just putting the finishing touches on a 2 story work shed that he made out of found materials.. It was great. Would make a great location to film a horror movie.. hmmm... Have a great weekend everyone!

Joe..

2007-10-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

So.. I gave myself a little challenge today. Do a little drawing in 30 min. So I found myself a picture of my friend Joe and away I went. It's not entirely successful.. And It's not entirely a failure. I know what he looks like a bit too well so I can spot all the mini catastrophes in it. I'm ok with it for a quickie little 30 min sketch. I'm going to try and take the time to do something like this every day.. If they turn out I'll post 'em ;). Wish me luck!

Nanny Beat

2007-09-17T04:58:00.000-07:00

People have said that I have a "knack" for drawing portraits. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think I have a knack for caricaturing features. You see, when I draw a portrait of someone I might know to see but not really know on a day-to-day basis, like a movie star or singer, I tend to generalize and just try and slightly caricature their features. This usually make people say "wow.. Looks just like them" when in reality... Probably not so much.. This is why it has always been challenging for me to do portraits of people that I do know in my day-to-day life. No amount of caricature can convince someone that the drawing looks like the person I'm drawing unless I've captured their personality in it in some way. That's always been hard for me.. Personality in a drawing?!! Sure.. Give me a big fat pencil or a colerase and I'll doodle you up a cartoon with some personality.. Personality and likeness.... EEEKKK!!

This is a drawing I did of my wife's grandmother who passed away recently. Anita Beaton.. Nanny Beat as we called her.. And with it I faced this exact challenge. I knew what she looked like from every angle. I knew her personality.. And... I knew when I wasn't getting that in my drawing. And I wanted it. I wanted this drawing to be her personality. I had started this and pretty much abandoned it for that exact reason. It sat at that pencil stage for quite a while. Then we found out that the community center that she volunteered at was going to have a little "something" in her honor and they wanted a picture to hang in the hall. My wife thought this would be the perfect time for me to finish this drawing. So I struggled through "finishing" it. I put that in quotes because I wasn't so sure whether or not it was finished. Then my wife did a little photoshop magic on it fine tuning the levels and making it sepia tone.

I'm not sure I captured what I wanted to with it. Or maybe I did and I just can't see it. I guess I won't really know if I captured it until I get the family's reaction. And really... When you get down to it.. That's all that really matters when you're doing a portrait of someone, for someone.. How they fell about it. How I feel about it is moot. If they're happy then that's all I could hope for.

This one was for you Nanny Beat.. I hope you like it..

Ugghhh.....

2007-08-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

So.... I threw together a super ruff demo reel last weekend. Nothing polished or anything.. Just a first ruff edit/work-in-progress. I've had no demo reel for so long that I just needed to have something put together as a starting point. I've been trying to upload it to youtube to no avail.. It'll upload.. but it won't play.. It just gives me a still frame every few seconds.. great for animation.... I did manage to get a version to play correctly but it's super low rez and not even 24fps.. So it strips out some inbetweens here and there.. Anyway. Here it is. Not much.. but a start.. I' had alot of animation to look through to weed these clips out.. Alot of animation.. But not alot of good animation.. Take a look and let me know what you think should stay.. and what has to go.. Alot of it needs to be polished. I'm not going to do that until I decide what I'm keeping :. All the characters and what not are copyright their respective creators. The music is AA Aardvark Hotel by Big Sugar. I just used it as a temp track for now and it will eventually be replaced by some crappy piece of garageband music that I've yet to create. Enjoy..

Picture for Chloe..

2007-05-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

Here's something very different from my recent postings. Not much of a drawing.. But I try to post anything I can. It's a Little Mermaid drawing that I did for my daughter. I'm going to do a small series of princess drawings for her play room.. Should be fun.. And a bit of a change of pace for me. I find that when I spend lot of time drawing in a particular style, be it more cartoony or realistic, I have a hard time going back to something different. Thats what happened with this.. It should have been a piece of cake.. But I was stuck in portrait mode and couldn't get a decent drawing out. This is what I ended up with.. Not horrible... Not great either.. Hopefully the next one will be better..

On a side note.. This is the first illustration that I've taken from start to finish traditionally in a long time. I even went so far as to do a full size color pencil comp first.. Felt like the old days when I used to draw on paper & illustration board all the time.. I did get a little freaked out when I busted out my paints though.. Paint and I have never seen eye to eye.. And it's been forever since I've used any form of acrylic.. Thankfully the coloring was very simple.. Now I've got the urge to do more.. If only I could find some illustration board on the damn island!!..

Sayid... Step by step....

2007-05-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

I was drawing a picture of Sayid this weekend.. And once I got into it I thought it'd be fun to document my steps and post them. So here goes....
So.. I work with 2 windows open side by side. When drawing on paper I like to get as close to my reference as possible. Working like this digitally is as close as I can get to that feeling.. I'll open my ref image in Preview and open sketchbook and slide my window to half the screen.. From there I usually do some loose ruff work.. Sometimes on multiple layers until I get a foundation that I like.. Or at least on I know I can work with to make work later.. At this point it rarely looks anything like the ref. Unless I'm very lucky. At this stage I work with a rather large pencil brush and shades of grey.

The next thing I do is create a new layer and take the standard pencil brush and go into it in more detail. A tight pass. This is one of the more time consuming steps for me as it's here that I try to nail the likeness and get all the detail in place to help me with the shading later. This is where I decide how much caricature I'm going to use. I'm going for a very graphic style so I'll go in and draw out hair patterns and hatch in shaded areas. During this stage I'll often zoom in on my open windows so that each are only showing a small segment of the overall image.. It helps me get the smaller details down.. But it can also really throw off your overall images balance if you work too zoomed in. I always have to zoom and and check on the overall every few minutes...

Once I have a tight that I'm either happy with .. or sick of working on... usually the second.. I'll add a mid tone on a layer underneath the tight. This is the step where I either hide or delete the ruff layers...
Once the mid tone is there. I'll often go back to the tight layer and darken things up.. And ad more hatching
Then I'll start getting into the tones by laying down a mid dark tone. I use the paintbrush for the tones at this stage..Sometimes I'll save a greyscale version of the ref image at this point to help me figure out where all the tonal breaks are...
Then I'll take that tone down a step and blend start to work into it from the overall mid tone.. Sometimes hatching.. Sometimes being more graphic with it.. it all depends on what I'm drawing and the mood I happen to be in..
Then I'll select that same mid tone dark and slide it down a shade an flesh out some of the darker areas..
I went as far to apply the darker shade as the mid tone for his hair as well.. I'll usually try to nail down the mid tone for the hair while I'm doing the skin tones. But i leave the highlights and shadows on the hair for later. Just a personal thing.. i can split my focus that's all...
As you can see.. I decided that the last tone was a bit too wimpy.. so I went a tad darker with it. I've been going a little washed out with the contrasts on my portraits lately. So there is rarely any hard blacks.. even if the ref suggests otherwise..
Once I'm reasonably ok with the shadows I've applied I'll head in the opposite directions and start applying highlights the same way that I did the shadow. I'll usually add a much darker dark to the eyes just before I do the highlights.. Just to draw a bit of focus to the eyes. I do this on the same layer with the same paint brush.. Same with the highlights.. all on the same layer...
Then I'll make a new layer and go in with the marker tool and start hatching out some tones with a dark grey.. A grey that's slightly darker than the darkest tone I have going at the moment. I'll also switch over to the pencil tool at this point and on the same layer start hatching in white.. Or very light grey.. To bring out more highlights...
Then I'll switch back to the pain layer and get a white or close to white and apply the hard highlights in the eyes..
Then back to the paint layer and with the brush tool start figuring out the hair. Starting with the mid tone for the highlights..
I usually use 3 or so tones in the hair.You only really need 3 tones to make something look realistic.. A mid tone.. Shadow.. and Highlight. But sometimes you'll want to smooth out the transition between the 3 of them....
I went back and added a shadow tone to the hair. it just felt a little flat to me without it..Then I got back on the marker layer and do a loose pass with a dark tone.. Something a bit darker than the darkest tone I have going.. Just to add some depth to some areas and to define things that might have gotten a bit sloppy in some other steps..

Then I open the file in Photoshop and mess with the contrast a bit.. Not too much. I want it a bit flat.. and then a little crop and save for web and voila!!.

I now have a slightly wonky drawing of Sayid... Which.. if you noticed.. Was spelled wrong on my working file the entire time due to the ref image having it spelled wrong.

So that's what goes into me doing one of these little grey scale portrait dealies that I've been doing for the past while.. I've been going through a Drew Struzan faze which has kicked me into portrait drawing mode.. Nothing like looking at an artist like Drew who can really capture a likeness to make you either wanna stop drawing.. or wanna draw more.. He knows how to add that little bit of caricature to make the portrait look more like the person than the actual person does.. It's a hard line to draw.. Too much caricature and it looks too cartoony.. Not enough.. and it looks generic.. without likeness. That's why the initial loose ruff stage is so important to me.. it's the place where I can exaggerate and then pull back until I get something I like.. I still tend to lean towards the generic a bit too much though...

Anyway.. Thanks for looking and reading.. If anyone has ;) See ya!

My Sister...

2007-05-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

My sister visited me this weekend. She works at Banff springs Hotel in.... well..... Banff.. So it's the first time I've seen her in a while.. it was nice.. we went out for Indian food and she told us about getting drooled on by Jason Preistly and having Kraft dinner at 3 in the morning with Alec Baldwin.. I guess alot of celebrities frequent where she works.. She's seen more drunken celebrities than I'll ever see.. Anyway.. She asked me to draw a picture for her.. and her it is.. A portrait.. I think it's the first time that I've drawn someone with glasses.. well.. Drawn someone with glasses that wasn't a cartoon I guess. It's weird trying to capture that little planar shift that happens to the features that are being skewed by the glasses.. oh well.. I tried.....

April...

2007-04-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Here's another drawing in the same style vain.. This time it's my wife.. I'm slowly getting comfortable with it.. Still not 100% there.. but getting there.. I'm going to try and do a Lost character each Wednesday until the new episodes end.. So that what.. 3 or 4?? Something like that.. have a good weekend!!

Grey or Sepia???....

2007-04-25T18:41:00.000-07:00

A quickie self portrait I did of myself.. I can't decide whether I like the grey scale or the sepia... So I posted both.. I do know that I desperately need a haircut and a shave though.. That's a given....

Ben...... or is it???

2007-04-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Lost night here's a wonky drawing of Ben... The more I look at it the more i think that it's not a bad drawing of Ben.. it's a good drawing of data from Star Trek... :) And here's a bonus photoshop cheapy color tint version as well...

Another try..

2007-04-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

Another attempt at the same style. This time of my daughter... I messed up the eyes as usual.. And I had a hard time inventing the shadows and trying to apply the hard edge shading to a less angular face.. oh well.. Live and learn....

Late night drawing...

2007-04-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

I was up late tonight drawing for the first time in ages.. Well.. the first time in ages where I was drawing for me.. and not for work... Here's the results.. Another little Sawyer doodle.. I went a bit more designy in the approach. Not something I'm used to.. You can tell where I was starting to fall asleep at.. :) Enjoy!!

Sawyer..

2007-04-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd try another lost character sketch.. I was going to go with someone that'd be a bit easier to draw.. Like Hurley or Ben.. People I could mess up but it would still look like them because their features are so distinct..But I like Sawyer.. He's just a bit too generic looking.. Yeah.. And everything different about him I totally missed in this sketch.. his hookish nose.. his scowley beady eyes. Oh well.. Next time I'll stick to an easy character. Oh.. And I was not enjoying the photoshop shading.. I really need to go back to pencil and paper...

Me..

2007-04-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

This is a little doodle I did of myself... One of the side effects of having a webcam built into your computer. You can get live reference of yourself whenever you might want it. Lovely expression eh?. Just a wonky little doodle with some super fast crappy coloring job.. I need to find painter.. I enjoyed coloring in that much more that sketchbook. Man.. I'm just noticing how wonky this drawing is now.. geeeshh. I think I need to go back to paper for a while.. These digi drawings haven't been doing it for me lately.. I need that graphite on paper feel........

John Locke...

2007-04-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted a drawing in ages.. Had a few minutes today and did a little sketch of Locke from Lost.. I thought I'd color it.. but I'm really not liking how photoshop's brush tool works at the moment.. I'm wanting something a little more organic.. Like painter. I'll have to see if my old painter classic will run on my intel mac.. hmm.. we'll see.. until then.. here's Locke in sketch form.. I hid the construction layer so it's just my tighter pass.. I fucked his eyes up pretty bad... that seems to be something I do pretty conisitantly when I draw digitally. Man this is a bland drawing.... oh well.....

More Chloe....

2007-03-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

So.. last Thursday was a Chloe and daddy day. They happen every now and then when our day care baby sitter has to take a day off for various reasons. When she woke up I asked her what she wanted to do this morning. She said, "Make a Chloe movie!" OK.. So I asked her what she wanted the movie to be about.. "Hmmmm... Cookies!" We had just gotten cookies the night before. The first time we've had actual cookies in the house in a while.. I should have expected the answer. OK.. Cookies.... We can do that...We spent the next 30 - 45 min shooting as fast as we could. It's a strange challenge to come with something to shoot on the fly and keep your 2 year old daughter entertained. Especially when there's a bunch of cookies in front of her for most of the time :).. We then relaxed and ate a cookie. I found and hour or two to edit it all together while her and mommy had a little sleep in saturday morning. Then mommy found some piano music that seemed to fit and that was that.. She really likes shooting these little home movies. And It's a blast doing things together with her like this. I have a feeling this won't be the last.

New post??!!!

2007-02-28T12:52:00.000-08:00

What the hell??!! A new post??!! Well... Kinda... but not really. Been busy lately. Looks Like i'll be busy for a while too But that's good.. I think.. I don't have any artwork to post , but here's a little something. It's what Chloe and I gave April for valentines day.. Chloe colored a nice heart drawing for her and I documented it with my trusty little sony handicam. do yourself a favor and don't look for continuity mistakes.. It's too much for one person ;) I was just glad I was able to cut together what I had into something kinda cohesive.. 2 year olds don't take direction very well.. They just wanna color all the time :). I threw down the tom Waits music after I edited it together and it actually worked in places.. Without any touchups.. Luck.. well.. enjoy.. I'll try to post artwork sometime soon...

Something funny

2007-01-11T06:56:00.000-08:00

So no.. I'm not really posting anything of worth.. but something funny that everyone can waste a few precious minutes of your time. Go here...http://roxik.com/pictaps/ and enjoy... He's me.. I created it in like 2 seconds.. So please.. Don't judge the drawing.. Just look at my mad dancing skills!!!!

Long Time No Draw......

2006-11-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

Well... I has been a long time since I've laid real or virtual pencil to paper. Literally the last post. So I thought I'd try something different with this post and show a progression of the sketch I attempted to do. I've often found it really useful to see step by step progressions from people who really knew their shit. So I thought it might be fun to have one from someone who has no clue what he's doing and is just kinda fumbling his way though it.. Might be neat... Might be a total waste of blog space.. Either way.. Here it is..
So.. This is my first step.. After I've found my reference i start with a little pencil sketch. This was all done in sketchbook pro. I ususally do the initial sketch in 2 layers. One layer with super rough with a thick pencil set to a grey. And then a layer over that where I set my pencil tool a bit smaller and grab a darker shade of grey to tighten up. You can see in someplaces that when i do the rough i try to start figuring out the shapes I want to try and model in certain areas later.. This is usually pretty helpful for me.. Although sometimes I end up discovering that my initial choices were a bit off.. So.. This is my second step.. I've decided to attempt to do this skech in black and white with an eraser technique. So I laid down a drak grey as my darkest tone. Then I took a slightly less drak grey and started to carve away the features. I actually kinda like the way it looks at this stage. All dark and creepy.. And her skin has that bumpy sick texture to it..Now I just start doing tone passes with lighter greys. i usually start with a big brush and then switch to a smaller one for any needed details. You can see that the tone got really marbled and uneven.. I have issues trying to get even tone in sketchbook.. I like painter because you can mold each color into the last.. Sketchbook uses more of a layering technique. It's something I haven't gotten used to yet in sketchbook..So.. You're not going to see too many differences in the next few steps.. just me trying to get a more overall even tone. To do this I added a new layer and took a larger brush to try and blend the big masses together. I also added a couple of areas of darker grey.. It kinda worked. I exported an image from another step I did after but it was very close to this so I didn't post it. Basicaly... Doing the big brush blending took some of the punch out of the detialed areas. Like the eyes. so I went back in and reworked those areas a bit. And I added some edge highlights on some areas..
And this is what I ended up with.. I tried to blend some areas more and filled in the dead spots in the bg. I don't know if it's really what you'd call finnished.. as the overall skin tone is still all over the place. The neck in particular could have used some more TLC. But it was a fun experiment.. And it's all I could get done on my lunch break ;).. overall I think I like the way it looked in step 2 the best.. Have good weekend everybody.

Old man...

2006-09-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

Man.. haven't posted in a while. I've been busy with work and any spare time i have I've been devoting to my short. Editing the animatic at the moment.. I haven't really been sketching that much lately.. Which is bad.. I can feel myself degrading day by day. And I've abandoned the "post every page of my sketchbook" idea.. Mostly because the only thing I've drawn in my sketchbook since my last post has been rough story boards & character concepts for my short.

This is a little color sketch of an old guy i found on http://earthsworld.com/index.html It's a neat site with lots of photos to sketch from. I did this while waiting for something to do this afternoon. And I just got something to do.. So..... I guess it's finnished. Man. the hair really bites.. I keep forgetting to treat it as an overall mass. I get caught up in the strandiness of it.. and then get bored.. and voila! I get hair like this... oh well.. Go check out the earthsworld link.. see if you can find the old guy...

Western Short...

2006-08-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

The other night I had some wierd fit of creativity.. Right as my wife was going to bed i was doodling a little cowboy drawing.. and it got me thinking about ideas... and I ended up roughly storyboarding a little short over the next 30 -45 min.. It was fun.. and I think I'd really like to try and do something with this one.. I know I'm the king of starting things for myself and never finishing them.. I have a couple shorts just lying there at either the rough boards or rough animatic stage... But this one felt different.. it was more serious... Most of my ideas are humor driven.. anyway.. here's a sketchbook page with my initial doodles for one of the characters...

hehe and the other image.. well.. I was showing Troy my rough boards.. and explaining them.. and he said... "You know what's missing... PIRATES! Pirates are hot now!".. and we started spewing out ides for a pirate / cowboy movie.. there were some pretty funny ideas... So I did a stickie doodle of the logo for the pirate cowboy short that might never be.. hehe.. If you check the sketchbook page out.. you can see where i drew the intial logo concept as we were talking.. it's a skull with a horseshoe behind it.. on a belt buckle. I changed it to guns and blades.hehe it's wonky as hell.. but whatever.. it's just a doodle.... hehe.. ahhhh... Troy... we have to make the Pirate/Cowboy movie!!

Anyway... Have a good weekend all!!.

My Smeagol...

2006-08-02T04:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a few skeches I did of my cat Smeagol last night.. He doesn't like to sit still.. So most of this is from memory.. He's a great cat.. He likes to keep to himself.. But he's not afraid to come and get some love when he needs it. Notice how inconsistant he looks from drawing to drawing... It takes great skill to be that inconsistant =)....

Sketchbook pages 12 & 13...

2006-07-26T04:37:00.000-07:00

Here's 2 more pages I drew last night while half asleep on the couch.. You can tell.. by how random they are..

Sketchbook pages 6 - 11...

2006-07-26T04:16:00.000-07:00

Hey all.. as promised.. or maybe I should say as warned.. I'm posting all my sketchbook drawings in my new pad as I do them.. Here's my weekend drawings.. Kyle and I went downtown and sat at one of the sidewalk cafe's and listned to jazz for a few hours.. it was great.. wish I could say the same about the drawings.. you can tell that I kinda got disinterested by the end of it. And look.. I left the part on the second page where i dropped water from my glass on the page.... so that can attest to me not editing anything.. enjoy....

Sketchbook pages 4 & 5...

2006-07-14T03:23:00.000-07:00

Soo.. Here's yesterdays sketchbook drawings.. as they appear in my book.. You can probably notice by some of the line work showing through the noses on these that I've taken to drawing my head shapes first.. then adding the features.. Not my normal way of doing it.. I'd usually start with the persons most prominent feature.. then build around it... And I'm usually more slavish to how much they resemble the people I'm drawing... these are more "inspired by" the people as opposed to a straight out caricature.. again.. something i never tended to do that often.

hehe.. funny story.. on the top page there's two bearded guys at the bottom.. well.. I had just started drawing this guy. like literally just a line .. and he looks right up at me.. and stares.. so i draw the rest of it without looking back at him.. drawing what I assumed he looked like... it ended up looking just like me.. only with glasses and different hair.. later I drew the second one.. same guy.. only now he had forgotten about me.. what a difference.. So aparently if I don't get a good look at someone.. I draw myself.. I don't know how freudian that is...

Nathan had good point about posting my sketchbook drawings this way.. he said it's going to take alot of honesty.. and possibly a whole lot of humility to do this.. again.. hopefully i can keep this going.. even through the very off periods.. Have a good weekend!!.

Sumo...

2006-07-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Soo.. I'm going to be working on some sumo animation here at the studio.. Here are some rough gestures I did today to try and get a feel for the character.. He's got alot of mass.. and I think that's going to be fun to move around.. I didn't do the actual design for this character.. My director did that.. And I didn't quite put him on model. and some of the construction.. is.... well... questionable ;).. even in this rough stage.. oh well.... These were all done in flash.. That's what I'll be using to animate this sucker too.. Hopefully I'll get the time to make the animation look as good as I can make it look... here's hoping.. Enjoy!!.

New Sketchbook...

2006-07-13T04:06:00.000-07:00

So.. I had to start a new sketchbook yesterday.. And I thought of a new idea for my blog.. I'm going to try and post every page from this sketchbook as I draw it.. That means there'll be decent drawings.. and horrible drawings.. and possibly some incomprehensible stuff as well.. I'm going to try and do no editing whatsoever.. just scan and crop out any weirdness.. and post.. We'll see how long i do this.. as my sketchbooks often have vast sections of total crud. I'll still be posting other things as I draw them too,, So it won't be all 100% sketchbook.. But it should give all of you an idea as to how often.. and how inconsistantly I draw in my sketchbook.. sooo. enjoy the inside cover and the first pages of mall sketches....

Still Here...

2006-07-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

I'm still alive.. Been kinda neglecting my blog as of late.. poor blogey.. I've been messing around with my jam character.. trying to get something that feels nice and i can draw repeatedly..That's almost impossible for me.. Saw super man too.. hence the weird superman drawings.. I also saw Dead Mans Chest.. So be warned that there might be some equally bad pirate drawings to come...

Sketchbook pages...

2006-06-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of pages I drew while waiting for a ride the other evening.. Just playing around with head shapes again. Nothing big.. Off to Halifax this weekend.. should be fun.. Hoping to see some of my old animation buds.. Well.. have a good weekend all!!.

Adrian Wapcaplet

2006-06-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

Sooo.. Nathan and I are venturing into our first animation jam.. or kinda.. we've got a piece of audio with 2 characters and we're each going to take a character and animate it without the other knowing what we're doing.. It'll be interesting. So I did some sketching last night of the character I'll be doing.. He's called Adrian Wapcaplet.. The audio's from a monty pyhton short. So think Jhn Cleese as a really over eager ad agency guy.. I usually start with the face.. That's where i usually find the character.. I initially sketched the second from the top page.. and I liked the 2 in the lower right hand corner.. And then I decided to play with shapes more. Go a bit less "Cleese" with them. I like the middle guy from the top page And there's something about a couple of them on the second page from the bottom too.. Still not 100% which one (if any of these) is the guy.. Any thoguhts?? Anything seem to fit Nathan?? You know the audio I'll be animating ;).. this should be fun =).

haircut..

2006-06-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

Bloggers beign quite fussy with me today. Sooo. Here's a short post of a couple of quckie drawings of myself.. one from last week.. and one this morning as i headed out the door to work.. Notice the dramatic hair difference.. And also my sexy santa clause -esque physique... bllarrgg.. They also highlight my lack of drawing skills and my perma-scowl..which is actually my neutral expression.......

Cats, People, and New Blog.. Oh my!!

2006-06-15T06:47:00.000-07:00

Hey.. here's some bad drawings of my cats. I made the mistake of using a grey tone marker to fill in some areas.. and it just made it a dark mushy shape.. live and learn i guess.. and here's some more people at the local food court too.. they are all soo beautiful.. Some friends and I started a new blog where we hope to semi regularly post animation.. Check it out..

Monthly Animation Jam

Not much there yet. Just some old demo reel stuff.. hopefully we can get some more of our friends to join.. And eventually.. It'd be really cool if it turned into an actual animation jam where we'd keep picking up where the last person left off on a particular animation. But right now.. It's just something to force me to animate for me a bit more often.. Have a good weekend!!..

More Ch'Town Peoples...

2006-06-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some more sketches I did on a lunch outing with Nathan and Kyle.. Well.. Most of them are anyway.. some are just doodles.. And there's at least one where I drew the same guy twice.. and I'm in there somewhere too.. Got a new pen.. a Pentel sign pen.. kinda neat.. it seems to work well when you're confident and decisive with your lines.. Which I'm sooo not.. Mr. In-decisive here.. But maybe they'll force confidence upon me... ahh.. Hey.. This is also my 100th post.. Not much when you compare it to other blogs.. But I've been known to start things and never go abck to them.. So this is a small step in the right direction.. oh... and don't ask about the naked goatee & glasses guy... Cause I have no answers.. .

Stuffs....

2006-06-06T04:08:00.000-07:00

Wow.. it's been awhile since I've last posted.. Had the internet connection go down for about a week.. and then got preoccupied with other things. Oh well.. That happens.. Here's a conglomeration of doodles from the past week.. Some are people at the mall.. Some are just warm up sketches.. and one was drawn on a stickie note.. enjoy.

My Girl....

2006-05-19T16:08:00.000-07:00

Here's little sketchy color drawing of my daughter..Chloe.. I didn't quite manage to capture her beauty.. Still finding coloring in sketchbook a struggle.. Maybe I'll actually keep working on this.. And finish it... Anyway.. Have a good weekend!!

The Kyle Marshall Summer '06 Line.....

2006-05-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

New to the Kyle Marshall Summer 2006 Signature Collection is this lovely number that Kyle has called "Midnight Waltz" Notice the fine gold trim and detail work with matching gold crinoline underlay. The flowery touches make this dress scream summer. Kyle is also drawing attention to the matching shoes.. Flats of course. In case an impromptu romantic dance should ensue. Kyle will soon be taking orders for his entire Summer line. Quantities are limited.
Pre-Order now!! (Army green hat is optional.)

Warm Up drawings...

2006-05-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

Here's some warm up drawings I did this morning in Alias Sketchbook to get loosened up. The top one is one of my Co-Workers Troy.. This is how I imagine he'd abuse his magical powers if he was at Hogwarts ;).. The bottom drawing is another Co-Worker.. Kyle.. It's the first thing I drew in Alias Sketchbook.. Awwww... Isn't that special... Welll not really.. He just happens to sit beside me.. So he gets drawn from time to time ;) It seems Sketchbook is really condusive to the fast and messy way I draw.. That's my main problem in Flash.. I'd draw something fast and loose.. and it'd look like a big mess of solid color.. Yay Sketchbook!! Have good weekend !!..

More Alias Sketchbook & Potter...

2006-05-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

Here's another Little quick Potter doodle I did in Sketchbook.. I started to color it.. then stopped.. I don't think I like the drawing that much.. So I probably won't finish coloring it.. But here's the sketch and as far as I got with the coloring.. Not much... But all I have.. And I know i'll get shit from Kyle and Troy for drawing more Harry Potter "Fan Art".. But I don't give a crap.. ;) I think I really like sketchbook for drawing now.. Still not that used to coloring in sketchbook though... But gimme a few more hours on some weekends and I should be able to fumble my way through something.....

Alias Sketchbook...

2006-05-10T15:44:00.000-07:00

Recently tried Alias Sketchbok.. Great drawing program.. Just starting to mess around with it. Here's a little quickie doodle I did with it.. avec horrible fast coloring too.. I started reading Harry Potter book 6 this morning... So Snape was what came out when I sketched... Program will still take some getting used to.. But I like being able to do these Super quick crappy drawings and not having to scan them in order to post.. Altough.. I should probably stop posting my fast crappy drawings.... unfortunately.. They're all I draw lately....

Misc. Doodles....

2006-05-09T04:35:00.000-07:00

These are some doodles I did while waiting for renders.. or any other precious seconds of time I can grab to sketch.. Nothing much.. Just some Sketches.. They're all over the place from a drawing of my wife and a gesture of chloe.. to severus snape. Oh.. and a doodle of my director that I did while on the phone with him... That speaks to how mindless these are... Think absent minded phone doodles.... No real thought or anything behind any of them.. just mindless drawings to keep my pen or pencil moving around my sketchbook.. I feel like I really need to do some actual drawing sometime. We'll see if that ever happens. Til then...You'll have to make due with these "drawings"....

Sichuan Takin.......

2006-05-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Well.. I don't ususally post more than one a day.. At least not in a long time.. And I hate to drive those beautiful Sargent drawings further down the page... But I just found a really interesting animal over lunch.. I was searching for gorilla images (so expect to see more gorilla related posts again) and I came across an image of a Sichuan Takin... Very strange & cool animal... My first thought was... This looks exactally like the beast in disney's beauty and the beast... So I had to do a quick drwaing of it.. Do a search for them.. they're neat. they're considered a national treasure in China.. Which is the only place they are know to inhabit.. Or that's what I understood from the blurb that was on the page where i found the images...

John Singer Sargent.....

2006-05-04T04:26:00.000-07:00

Hey.. I have nothing new to post myself.. So I thought I'd post some drawings from one of my biggest artistic influences.. John Singer Sargent. Ever since I first saw his paintings and drawings I was amazed at all the usual things that amazes me with great artists.. What structure.. What Knowledge of form... Such Confident draftsmanship.. But what really got me about Sargent.. probably more so than most other artists.. was the energy in his work.. You can see the kinetic brush strokes in his paintings.. And they add soo much life.. And his charcoal sketches had so much flow and life.. He didn't mess around.. You won't see alot of scribbley hatchey lines tryng to find the form.. Mostly just big bold confident strokes. To me... He drew like an animator would... His work continues to amaze me.. And I just wanted to share it with the few people who drop by this blog. All these images were found online a few years ago.. If you google his name.. you can find some interesting pieces. Enjoy!.

A Bunch of Nothing....

2006-04-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Hey... Here's some doodles I did this week.. Nothing much.. Been a very hard week drawing wise... Nothing seemed to click this week.. Most of these were drawn in a super fast frustration fit. Some of them are people I saw when out at lunch... but all of them were frustrating to draw.. None of them looked the way they did in my head.. But then again.. they never do.. i have a hard time slowing down and just drawing... I always feel the need to get onto the next drawing... It's the animator in me I guess.. Have a good weekend!!.

Hermione , Ron & Hagrid.....

2006-04-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple more Potter sketches I did last night.. Kinda missed the mark on them.. But thought I'd post them anyway.. I took 2 stabs at Ron.. i know he's described as thin in the books.. But I always picture him with a rounder face.. more like his Mum for somereason..... And Hagrid... whew.. I missed that.. He needs much more beard and hair. I don't know why.. But I've been drawing these really small with a tiny leaded techincal pencil... My scans are about 300% the real size... Man.. I messed the eys up on every one of these.. well... At least I'm consistant =).. I'll try to revamp the on the weekend and see what happens...

Qui-Gon Jinn...

2006-04-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

This one is for Steve.. Who asked for a Qui-Gon drawing.. and for Troy.. Who told me my Qui-Gon's nose was too small.. enjoy..

Harry Potter...

2006-04-20T04:41:00.000-07:00

So ... I told myself I was Not going to read the Harry Potter books until after seeing the movies as to keep the plot surprises secret.. I decided this after seeing Return of the King with my wife and her telling me that she had no clue what was going to happen once they stepped into Mt. Doom.. I wanted that same feeling with the Potter movies.. So I figured that I'm far enough ahead movie wise now so i get a set of the Harry Potter books a couple of weeks ago.... I don't think I can hold myself to my promise... I really really love these books.. I'm already into the fourth book and dying to see where Rowling takes the story in Books 5 & 6.. So... so much for seeing those movies before reading the books.. oh well..
My favorite so far is Book 3.. Same with the movies.. Something about the Azkaban story just gripped me. And Remus Lupin and Sirius Black are my favorite characters so far... I've never really been one to draw fan art from books I've read.. Don't know why.. It'd make perfect sense if I did given my career and all.. But it never really happened.. except for Lord of the Rings... But even that was just some head sketches of Aragorn , Boromir, and Theodan.. But there are a couple of sc's in Prizoner of Azkaban that are screaming for me to draw.. So I took a couple of minutes last night and sketched out some head shots of some of the characters.. Pretty close to what I saw in my head.. Except for Snape.. He's still not there yet.. And my first drawings of Black just looked like me only scruffier.. hehe..The hard part for me will be the costumes.. As they tell soo much about the characters.. Drawing fabric isn't exactally my strong point.. Hopefully I'll actually take time to draw out a couple of the scene images I seen in my head...

Liam.. and Some guy....

2006-04-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a little quickie sketch I did of Liam Nesson to kill a horrible brush pen I have.. It almost worked. A couple more drawings and it'll be out of my life forever!! Nasty drawing though... The other drawing is something I doodled up while waiting for the scanner to do it's thang.. I need to draw more. Or maybe just better.... hmm.. probably both.....

Horrible Tom Cruise Drawings....

2006-04-13T05:04:00.000-07:00

Well.. I've been pretty sick lately.. Monday and Tuesday were horrible.. I feel I need to post something.. And these are the only things I've drawn since my last post.. Sad isn't it.. The bottom one was a quick sketch in flash on a break yesterday.. and I had referance for it.. so I have no excuses.. the top one was a quick doodle I did at home to try out a brush pen that was on my desk.. I had no ref for that.. And I actually like it better.. April says it looks like Tom Cruise , Tommy Lee Jones , and Mr. Spock's love child.. I agree.. The three of them really should get together and create some offspring.. I mean look at the sexy results... rrrrroooooowwwwwr. I dunno.. If I try a few more attempts I might actually get something decent.. My first attempts are alway pretty far off base..... Have a good easter weekend everybody..... That means both of you...;)..

Caricatures....

2006-04-07T12:50:00.000-07:00

Found some really sweet caricature blogs last night.. Some of them had photos of the people they caricatured next to the end drawing.. They were pretty awesome.. I drew of couple of the models myself.. Nowhere near the caricaturing ability of the people who's blogs i was visiting.. They were good.. Very inspirational. Check out their sites..

http://marlomeekins.blogspot.com/

This is the place that I got my photo referance for these drawings.. See if you can spot them.. and then look at what an amazing job he did with them. Mind blowing.. Mine pale sadly in comparison.. they look tame...

http://existentialdreams.blogspot.com/

Why I'm going to hell..

2006-04-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

So..... I've been forced to draw garfield at work.... Don't ask..... But my drawings had to look like the cg model for the second movie.. Not the normal cartoon Garfield... Again.. don't ask... But here are some of my roughs that did and didn't make it into the final mix of what we're doing.. I feel there's a special spot in artists hell for me because of this.. and Troy too.. Don't deny your involvement Troy!! They made me feel dirty.... oh soo dirty. Especially the air guitar one.. Man... I've hit a new low.....

What a sexy bastard...

2006-03-30T04:14:00.000-08:00

He's a sketch of me with my new haircut. well.. New a few weeks ago... In all my hideously deformed glory. Enjoy...

You ever get that feeling.....

2006-03-28T16:03:00.000-08:00

You know the one.. Like something intangible is following you around. Ready to lunge at any moment.. I feel it all the time. Feeling it right now... I apologize for the quick use of inferior photoshop coloring here.. Man.... I need to learn how to draw......

Some Sketches for you???...

2006-03-21T08:05:00.000-08:00

Here's some randomness from my sketchbook..I've been kinda pen crazy as of late.. trying to find one that feels right to me.. Troy has a wicked pentel brush pen.. I'm thinking I might need to order one of those.. The page of similar looking guys are initial development for a short idea kicking arond in my head. The other page is just a page from my sketch book. the guy at the bottom reminded me of the dad from the wonder years for some reason.. it wasn't supposed to be him.. It was some guy at I saw breifley while out to lunch.. He didnt' actually look like this either.. oh well... .

Full Contact Brian...

2006-03-20T04:14:00.000-08:00

Our Production Manager ,Brian , recently got back into Kung - Fu.. But.. The group he found here on the island is full contact.. Not something he's used to. Last week he got his finger busted up.. So I figured I'd do a little drawing of what he'll look like in a couple weeks time. And yes... He really does look a little bit like me... We're both members of the beard and baggy eyes club.....

I have no idea.....

2006-03-17T03:53:00.000-08:00

This.... This is why I shouldn't sketch with brush pens.. It leads me down weird ways that I probably shouldn't venture.. I was inspired by Troy Little's amazing control of the inkey tools and decided to sketch with some myself... This is the unfortunate results of my sketching. I have a long way to go in learning how to control such a permanent black line. It always freaks me out when i draw with something that makes me live with the choices I initially make.. Instead of endlessly fixing them...

Uggghh....

2006-03-16T04:23:00.000-08:00

Man.. Sometimes I draw soo horrible it's funny. I sketched these things last night after work.. Man.. These are soo bad I was actually laughing out loud at how bad they were.. My wife can verify that.. I dunno what it was... An off night I hope.. But I haven't been posting much lately so i thought i should at least post whatever I have.. And this is it.. .

Happy Birthday Darius!!

2006-03-09T04:25:00.000-08:00

Hey.. Here's an old caricature I did of my pal Darius Graff.. the guys an insanely talented graphic designer in halifax.. And it was his birthday on tuesday.. Same day as Troy's.. Happy birthday buddy! Come visit soon!

Troy Little...

2006-03-08T05:08:00.000-08:00

I have no new art of my own to post. Been busy with animation.. I did manage to get a rough boards pass done on my short last week.. Had 30 min while my wife and daughter were asleep one night.. It went not too bad.. It's around 85 panels. Nothing too long... Trying to work out the animatic now... And tighten up my really rough boards...

soooooo..Here's a little caricature of me that my co-worker / buddy Troy Little did. Troy's an amazing artist.. He's got mad skillz with the sequential comic book art.. I mean come on!! Just look at how he captured my sleaziness!! He did make my teeth a little too perfect.. but that's ok... Artistic license... Checkout his blog in my links section. He's got a really great one panel comic strip series called Mygrain... Hillarious... So stop by his blog and wish him a Happy Birthday!!! (it was yesterday) see ya!!..

Doodlez...

2006-03-01T04:35:00.000-08:00

Well haven't posted much latley. And this really isn't a post either.. I've had the majority of my time taken up with my daughter turning 1 (Happy Birthday Chloe!!).. And.. I'm working on Some new Doodlez animation... It's been great soo far.. It's been too long since I've animated the little guy. Sooo fun.. I get to do thumbnails for animation again!! You know it's been too long since you animated last when yor telling your director "Man!! I'm loving doing these thumbnails!!" heheh.. Ahh.. Working on this doodlez project has re-ignited the animation fire in my belly. And Lady and the Tramp came out yesterday... Man.. Milt Kahl's animation in that blows me away. Soo inspirational... I hope I can put some of this new belly fire to work on my short.. which I hope to start story boading next week.. Ahh... And I heard that Ron and John heading back to Disney??. Things are looking good for animation...

Tim's sketches..

2006-02-20T03:59:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since i went to tim's sketching.. nathan and I went this weekend.. they were renovating the place.. which was ok.. Most of the regulars stoped by for a bit.. And we even found out some of thier names..I also threw in my stickie note memory sketch for the week.. it's the same guy that was in ym last memory sketch post.. he came in 2 more times.. but i didn't have the heart to keep drawing him...

Stickie Bears... Day 2..

2006-02-17T04:06:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my Stickie render Doodlez from yesterday.. I think Next week I'm gonna go through all the concepts that nathan and I ahve done and Whittle it down to a final model... should be fun.. There are some on this page that I actually like.. Being forced to draw really fast made me make some different design decisions..

Stickie Bears..

2006-02-16T05:50:00.000-08:00

Late yesterday afternoon I decided to draw a quick Polar bear sketch each time I had to render a file. to explore some different possibilities for my polar bear character. Some are only a few seconds sketch.. But I found I played with the shapes a bit more when I knew it'd only be a few second throw away sketch.. some of them are definitally throw aways.. I did most of these on stickies.. Hopefully I can keep doing this today as well... Keep exploring the character...

Happy Valentines Day!!

2006-02-14T12:50:00.000-08:00

This is the Valentines drawing I did for my wife. with the caption "You've always had my heart."... Not sure if she liked it. =). she replied to me with " I bloody well Love you too." So i think she got the Joking spirit of it ;) I also sent it to some of my staff mates here at the studio. with a more generic crappy caption. enjoy. Hopefully no one will find it offensive. And if you do... well.. sorry...
Happy Valentines day to all!!.