Mewssingno.

Pokedex Entry: Mewssingno., the Future-Devouring Pokemon.

Mewssingno. is the only Pokemon with complete omniscience. It knows where you live. It knows who you love. It knows you still pee your bed at night. And it knows you tried to cheat to get infinite Rare Candies and Masterballs.

My first fusion in over a year. I'll be selling a full-size print at the SLC Comic Con in September!

BFA is done

My BFA show is finally done and hanging up. I didn't get to do all the pieces that I wanted, but I'm still glad its over and I can start sleeping normally again. Here are some more sketches for it that I haven't posted yet, this time for the Mantis Ant boss design:

Sketches for my Show

I need your help: here are some sketches for characters I've been working on for my BFA show. I want your reactions to them - leave a comment, send me a message, email me, etc. about 2 things:

1. What costumes, designs, hair, any details that you like or don't like (ie what is appealing?)
2. What you think works with the context that I've written on each character, and/or any suggestions you might have to better fit that context

Here's the context for these:
The characters are reboot designs of an old fantasy video game called "Secret of Mana." Here's the original game art (and yeah, that's pretty much all of it). I wanted to redesign the characters in a science-fiction setting but still keep some of the fantasy feel to it. The 3 main characters are a boy, a girl, and a "sprite" child; here are there descriptions from the SNES game that I want to visualize

Boy: All physical ability, no magic, specializes with the sword. In the game, he comes from a small village, is somewhat timid and unsure of himself, and doesn't say much. He's resistant to his adventure at first but eventually accepts it, more out of a sense of duty than anything else.

Girl: Some physical ability, uses healing/defensive magic, specializes in martial-arts combat. She's the daughter of a nobleman in a large kingdom and is very talkative, but she's also hot-tempered and often lashes out recklessly.

Sprite: Low physical ability, uses offensive magic constantly. The comic-relief character who is somewhat unaware of emotional tension around him. Has an untamed, wild feel to him. Likes to play jokes and trick people. In this science-fiction version, he uses advanced technology instead of magic

Caricatures at Brick Oven

During the past year I've done caricatures of employees over at a local pizza restaurant. Their management likes to put them in frames and keep em up on a wall near the entrance. Here are a couple I did this week:

Golden Pixie Award

Last year I spent a good chunk of time working on a website for Fruit Friends; I was hired out by a company in Chicago called Zocalo Group.

The website's design and animation was submitted for a Pixie Award and was announced this January as one of the Gold winners:

http://www.pixieawards.com/5th-annual-award-winners/

(Scroll to the very bottom of the page)

"Vibrant colors and well drawn BG elements made the site fun. the characters are cleanly visualized and the fun settings will appeal to the product's demographics.  I like how the 'action' often flows down as you scroll the page."

Here are some screen captures from the work I did for the site

Valentine's Day Caricatures

A private order for some guy and his girlfriend for V-Day

Lupus Fundraiser

Got hired to do some caricatures at a fundraiser for Lupus treatment. Even though it felt like a super high-brow event, the people I got to draw were some of the nicest I've ever met

Blackbeard Daily Sketching

Started participating in a Twitter trend called Sketch_Dailies where they have a different theme up every day to draw for fun. The first one I jumped in on was Blackbeard

Caricatures at the Sundance Filmmaker's Brunch

This past Wednesday I had the awesome opportunity to do caricatures of filmmakers over at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. To be honest, I was way more excited about meeting people there than I was about the pay - and I even snuck a little food from the buffet table before I set up, heheheh.

I was contracted out by Ian Johnston, the director of Too Many Legs Animation Studio in Salt Lake, and got to work alongside Mel Milton, a character animator that lives in Orem - both of whom blew my mind with their industry experience and kindness (I felt like an ant that got to work alongside bulldozers).

As always, things started out pretty slow. People tend to notice/want caricatures as they leave parties, unless those people are little kids (which thankfully, we didn't have to draw many of...). The brunch was hosted by Southwest Airlines and they had hired out some models for the party, some of whom I got to draw :D

I also got to meet and draw the Johnson brothers, some super fun local actors from Utah. You might recognize the bottom left one as the coach from High School Musical. These guys were crazy fun to draw and were some of the nicest people I met there

I also got to meet director/producer Sohrab Mirmont who just got done working on the film "The Freemason." Awesome guy, and I tried my best not to geek out when he added me on facebook.

Snowflake

This was my storyboarding final for Kelly Loosli's class. I'll tell you up front, it has some gun-based violence and dark humor.

Final project for one of my classes. Its a scene from a video game I played as a kid: Secret of Mana. Here's the process of how I painted it-

Started with a speed painting to lay down basic composition and colors. The scene in the game is where the protagonist falls off a bridge, down a waterfall, and lands in a valley where he finds a sword stuck in the ground. You can see the bridge in the background on the left.

Changed some of the shapes to be more interesting and added more greens to the closest cliffside. Also gave the sword a red cloth tied to it to make it more noticeable

Stared fleshing out some of the plant shapes in the foreground and added definition and texture to the waterfalls and nearby cliff.

Added detail to the background and refined some of the plants in the foreground; cleaned up the waterfalls farther away and broke the bridge in the middle to tie in with the story. Also added some slight yellows to the nearby cliffside to show the direction of sunlight better and add visual interest through variety.

Really started defining the cliffside, spacing out the waterfalls even more around the sword to seem less crammed in the space. You can also see how the waterfalls draw the eye down and lead them to the sword by the angles they are at. Started sharpening up more of the foreground plants and objects as well as the middle ground. You'll notice the sword is a bit more refined too. I kept the strong sunlight coming in from the left on a separate layer and put it on top of everything to make sure it still worked. It also acts as a compositional element to draw the eye toward the sword as the center of attention.

You can also see in this closeup the attention I'm giving to add visual interest to parts that aren't even that important. This is something I learned from Sam Nielson's class this year - to maintain the basic value in an area, but still maintain interest through slight shifts in color and texture. Even though that rock is not a focal point, it adds to the overall appeal of the piece.

Made some major changes to the foreground plants. I was frustrated with the palm tree for several reasons - it was pissing me with its perspective and trying to get the fronds to look right and it wasn't fitting in the space I wanted without messing with the composition (which was more important). I scrapped it in favor of some more appropriate trees that probably make more sense being near a waterfall anyway. I also ditched the purple and pink colors of the foreground plants; I originally liked having those colors because I thought they would add to the fantasy of the landscape, but I realize they just take away from the color harmony and distract from the real focus. I also started refining the middle ground and the grass around the sword.

Finally, I polished off the middle ground and sculpted it to reflect the strong sunlight. I added in little sun-dust sparklies around the sword as well, more as a gimmicky cool-looking element than anything. Then I bumped up the contrast just a tinsy bit to give more of a bright sunshiny feel to it, and slapped my signature down in the corner.

Quick concept painting of Oz

Inktober 13

Inktober 8: Charizard

Inktober: Desperobo!

Robot cowboys are awesome.

Desperobo pg 2!

Page 2 of my short comic about a robot cowboy! (see page 1 here) Still unfinished and uncolored - let me know what you think

Desperobo!

Uncolored, unfinished, here is the mid-draft stage for page 1 of my short story: Desperobo

There are 3 pages total and the plan is to eventually color it and get it printed in an anthology project called Reality Not Included, in which I've already submitted another piece (currently unreleased)

Inktober, Day 2

Secret of Mana. Oldschool.

Scarecrow Head Sculpt

Making a really creepy scarecrow character for a class. And yeah, school's here again, so that means posts are gonna be erratic *sad face*

Scyther-Marowak fusion

Its been a while, so I thought I'd do another fusion. They seem to be getting creepier and creepier... maybe I ought to ease up.