First Week Homework

So here are my Environment sketches I made over the course of this past week. I drew them into my sketchbook at different places and then scanned them into Photoshop. I then reworked them a bit by adding different shades to backgrounds and foregrounds.



As I understand these were supposed to be quick sketches, real simple shapes and layouts...I might have gone with too much detail and tinkering. I have to learn to simplify and focus on shades and shadows...

This was at a motorcycle shop in San Pedro. I was waiting for the doc to come out with the news..



I like using the blue col-erase Prismacolors as they give this nice soft feel to the image, not as harsh as using dark lead. Very good for initial concept layout.



















During my break at work...











I went riding my bike through Santa Monica on the way to get my plates at the DMV. I found these two buildings, worth sitting down next to and drawing. The shading was mostly added at home.

















This bridge looks awful...I rushed this one badly... I think it was getting dark and I was cold.














walking the dog near the apartment I ran across these electric meters...not too exciting.

February is here

Big plans for this month as I'm starting my art classes Saturday, tomorrow I'm going to the art store to buy some supplies. I've also bought a motorcycle finally...and I'm ready for the road, this is how I'm going to get from place to place from now on. Since classes are starting I'm sure to be drawing a lot and thus posting a lot of new concept art and stuff on dimgraphic.com.

Freelance wise, I'm working on a logo for Aaliyah's production company to come, so far the concept is there and I just have to rework and make it look more corporate, or logo-like. The idea behind this one is taken from the name of the company being Dirty Water Productions which relates to her community and its history. I took the symbol of cupped hands holding water, after considering a few other visual options like a sewer drain or a gutter with a deposit of stagnant water...The hands represent an offering, even if it may be dirty water...the gesture overpowers the purpose.

I've been commissioned to create a music video as well, so I'm generating ideas involving a song titled "Little Girl" by Chris Alleyne, you can hear it on myspace at that link.

I've updated my DemoReel page by adding a title credits animation I did a few months back for a film project called "Sophie" as well as some other old motion art samples using After Effects.

A new year and a moment to write about it!

It's been a while since my last post and I haven't uploaded much of anything new lately, so atlast behold...words, updates! The months just flew by...Christmas, Newyear's, birthday...and now it's almost February. Well, here's the latest...
School
I enrolled into a few 10-week classes at the Art Academy of Design in order to brush up on my craft and learn a massive lot of things hopefully. Analytical Figure Drawing, Environmental art, and Creature Design will be on my courseload for a few months and I'm really excited about that! Unlike my past experience in taking drawing courses, the Art Academy focuses specifically on the elements needed for what I want to do in the concept art field...for example, figure drawing isn't just drawing a nude model anymore, the workload seems promising in being detail orientated and specific as I'll be spending weeks drawing knuckles, and hands, bones, joints...piece by piece, working up to a full human form. The Environment Drawing class is definitely going to upgrade my ability in working with lighting, shadows and everything to do with composition. We'll be going to different locations and draw on the spot, gathering from the class description. The Creature Design class speaks for itself as I could always use more practice in making crazy concept characters. It's definitely been a while since school, or at least it feels that way...but this is good, this is refreshing and well needed. Having taken a drawing workshop at this school earlier last year I really enjoyed the class and expect to get a lot out of these courses as well.
Freelance
After working on the storyboard for "After the Headlines" Aaliyah had asked me to create a few more things, a DVD cover and disk design for the dvd. The work is in progress as we're going back and forth discussing ideas for the design. I'm also going to do a Logo for her future production company. At the same time for another client, I have some photo retouching work and animation to do. What I'm doing is taking older black and white photos during times of Slavery and reworking them in various ways. Coloring areas and highlighting faces, retouching the quality of the photos and adding color here and there. There will be some animation involved as well. I have also been recently asked to do a music video for a short piece of music, this should be a fun project; I'll write more about it later.

Up top is a photoshop character design of an Alio Bounty-hunter chick I made up one night and worked on for several nights more painting it.

A few new things

I just uploaded a few new pieces and a few old pieces! Check em out by clicking Concept Art and Archives to see whats there. As I'm doing more art and trying to categorize things into their appropriate places like concept or illustration or 3d...I realize that it's getting hard managing what goes where! For now I'm devoting "archives" to store my illustrations as well as some 3D that I've done in the past. Now if I get into more 3d, ill most likely add a whole new link. "Concept Art" is mostly pencil scanned drawings and digital sketches that I've done. They're not meant to be final pieces really..Anyway, the most important thing I realize is keeping everything simple and easy to find. No one likes to dig around and waste their time when they're looking at sites. It's usually a quick 'flyby glance' if anything.

So, In my free time I've been helping out my friend Hasan building a site for his Photography and Videos, using Dreamweaver. The site should be running shortly at www.hasansenol.com so you can take a look there if you want. As we're both building it and adding quicktime videos, and flash components...sound files, etc, I'm thinking of ideas that I can incorporate into my own site. For example, I have yet to update my comix page and make it all nice and pretty. It looks terrible right now. But the more I focus on the presentation aspect of things, the less time I have on the raw creative part. Of course both are essential as I have to impress people in order for them to take me serious and/or hire me for that matter when I direct them to dimgraphic.com.

The piece way up top is a space marine I sketched up, scanned in and painted in photoshop. A couple hours of work. I should start timing myself to see how long it takes to do a piece like that for my own future reference. It's inspired by the upcoming StarCraft II game from Blizzard. I sent them the piece so maybe they'll put it into their fan art section!

I also added some old Paintings into the Archives. The photos are pretty poor quality I must admit but I figured I'd post what I had for reference. I do want get back into oils again. Oh! Almost forgot, I gotta brand new shiny "People Counter" at the bottom of my page to track how many visits I get.

Working on 3D, Concept Art and Storyboarding

Just Uploaded my 3D artwork
I dug up my 3d work that I made back when taking a Maya at UB and posted some of my characters and texture work here in the "archives." This way I can maybe show people some of my 3d knowledge and have them hire me and pay me and give me benefits and etc to create elaborate masterpieces of all sorts...I'm trying to revisit the program and get more 3d stuff going...maybe some landscape and cityscape pieces would be nice!


Concept Art
About two weeks ago I attended a 'concept art' workshop at the Concept Design Academy out in Pasadena, LA. The whole thing was really interesting and inspiring as Christian Alzmann, an awesome artist described his works and techniques in creating creatures and characters. The thing was about five hours long and well worth the time and money. Since then I've been inspired to draw and paint my own concept stuff...and even to consult Christian on a few tips and pointers. The guy emailed me right away with a plethor of advice-so I have him linked to my "blogs list" so that that YOU and I can both check out his work periodically!

My Latest StoryBoard
I've been working briefly on a side gig too, helping a friend with a short film that she's doing called "Who is Chasing Whom." I drew up something of a 20 page storyboard for her and helped her and my friend Hasan film downtown one day. The storyboard in any film or animation project is vital since it's basically a blueprint of every single shot that the director plans to shoot. Without a concrete layout, you can imagine how much time and film could be wasted both on shooting and editing. Also, attention to detail can be lost without good note taking and make the film inconsistant with the story especially when shooting your shots out of sequence. With the SB, everything went quick and smooth!

The more storyboards I do the easier it becomes for me to come up with sequences and shots. With this project I worked directly with the director and there's a big difference when you have em right next to you as opposed to a director that can only be reached through email or phone. It makes for less revisions and the whole thing takes less time. Much easier to work that way in my opinion. Having photograph references is of course the other huge advantage when storyboarding as well as a map or top-view of the location, if there is a lot of action to be had. This way you can plan out character movements in relation to camera movements and the such.

I'll post the storyboard for this film soon!

Wall Mural and 17 Days Exhibit Animation

GGR Wall Mural

I've been meaning to put up pictures of the wall mural my friend Vali and I painted in two days...about a week ago. This is a 20 ft. wall mural of a face, I think it's the face of a guy in the 6o's that was used in commercials telling kids not to use drugs. So I call up this ad asking for an artist to paint a mural for them and I responded, checked out the location with Amber and estimated how long it would take to do...I took the job and with Vali, $130 worth of paint+stuff and 14' ladder rental from home depot we got the job done in two days. We transformed this wall into that wall!

The place is Called GGR or Gourmet Green Room, it's a medical marijuana distributor...how medical really...im not sure as I've seen people of all ages come in and out through those doors...I just painted thinking, well, Perhaps we just have a very ill society these days if everyone is in dire need of weed. The owner offered to write me a letter of recommendation in the case that I ever wanted a marijuana card for myself. Man was he surprised to know I wasn't really interested. "You guys must be from the East coast or something?" how did he guess? Anyway the guy paid us a nice sum and said if I ever wanted to hang some artwork up in his joint I could do so. He'd take 10% of everything sold. Now I gotta make some art to hang there. You can see more the mural in progress pics on my Myspace album at this link!

17 Days Exhibit

So I've finally finished my Animation for the 17 Days Exhibit and just at the last minute too, as I am supposed to show it on the 13th of October. My piece is called "Panoranimation" and it will be running the whole day at Western Michigan University on a loop and maybe even in the Cepa Gallery in Buffalo sometime next Spring. The piece is a mixed media animation piece featuring a stream of imagery and subtle animation with video. The name of this piece portrays a panoramic moving landscape that expresses a slow trickle of time passing, as one gazes at the panorama. This is a sedated moving piece running at a little over 6 minutes and thus requiring the viewer to stop and gaze for a while in order to absorb it in its fullness. Panaranimation studies an ongoing transitional flow of video with as little ‘cutting’ as possible of scenes. As a matter of being, it is for the most part just one scene. If "Panaranimation" was a still painting, it would surely take up a good 30 or 40 feet of horizontal space, thus in animated form, the art compacts itself to save physical space. You can see the animation in its 3:2 format at this link, or the widescreen format here.

Quickly on Politics

Politics...what lunacy lately..then again it's always been lunacy for as long as I remember. What have we turned this country into? A reality show! Gambling our own futures with self righteous, finger-pointing, corrupt assholes. I did have hope at one point during this past year and that was when Ron Paul was running...I agreed with him 200% and would have been more than proud to have him be my president. A man like that could have really turned this country around...instead we have lunatics running the show. 3rd party candidates of course have no chance but to be deemed as nuisances trying to "steal votes" ...what a load of shit. But anyway what can I expect, what can anyone expect these days when the media is all bought and owned by a certain few, when the political system has all rotted down to its very core!

I created these two political cartoon style sheets and a few political cartoons about McCain and Obama earlier this summer as I thought I'd be doing a whole series relating to the campaign trail, laughing at these two fools and their very important viewpoints and positions. I had a few concepts going and some rough cartoons, but it never really got beyond that. Now that the whole thing is bound to end soon in November, God save us all, there's really no point in trying anything...why contribute to this fun-packed thriller-suspense extravaganza!? In my closing thoughts I'd like to mention Bob Barr, the Libertarian party candidate who I've picked to be my choice as he's stated again and again about the corrupt nature of our bipartisan system and the fact that our two choices (obambi and MickyCain) are the one and same really. Your thoughts??

Updated Resume

Here's just something I made in Graffiti on Facebook a while ago, it's a simple and fun tool that lets you draw on your friends' walls. The best part though is when you're done, you can see a time-lapse video of how you drew your piece turning it into a process-art like animation.

Actually the real reason for a post is to say I've updated my resume page! Check it out.