AstroBoy meets Pinocchio

Our 90 minute Illustration Challenge this week was "AstroBoy". Once again I didn't know anything at all about the topic, so I quickly did some research on the net. I didn't get all the details, but the most interesting thing that I discovered was the similarities btwn the story of AstroBoy and that of Pinocchio. So I decided to give them a play date. These weekly challenges continue to be a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Temple of Cartoon Mojo Header

I've never really won anything, so it was a real honor to have my art chosen for the 2009 header of the department blog for the Sequential Art department of SCAD-Atlanta, known as the Temple of Cartoon Mojo. This piece was done in ink on paper and then digitally painted in Photoshop. Lettering done with a pen tool in Manga Studio EX. Click the art below and you will be taken to the site to see how they incorporated it into the design of the blog.

Character Sketches

I'm doing a 13 page story for my next project in my Speed Sketching / Thumbnailing class. For this I'm telling a story from the childhood of one of my characters. Jack is a little guy who got badly abused by the neighborhood kids and took Kung Fu help cope. Here are some of the sketches for this story.

The first one is mousy looking Jack. And the second image is the bullies from the trailer park where his lives.



This sad sack is Jack's dad sitting in front of the tube at the bar in his trailer.


Here is Kung Fu Master and ex-special forces soldier, Carlton Forge and a shot of the interior of his School.

90 Minute Illustration: Ben Grimm

Here's this week's 90 Minute Illustration for my Speed Sketching class. The topic was "Ben Grimm", otherwise known as the Thing from Marvel's Fantastic Four. I knew from reading the comics that Ben dated a blind sculptor named, Alicia Masterson, who often used him as inspiration for her clay sculptures. I figured she wouldn't need a lit room to work, and that would be an interesting thing to hook into for a nice moody piece. This piece has a lot of issues with perspective and lighting, but overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

Speed Sketching

I'm in a class called Speed Sketching for Sequential Art this quarter where I'm doing 90 minute illustration challenges in class and thumbnailing comic pages. So far it has been a massive challenge and a lot of fun. Prof Shawn Crystal gives a topic at the beginning of each Thursday class session, and we have to research reference, come up with a concept, and then draw and ink the piece of art... all in 90 minutes. I'm not used to being under the gun like that, so this has been a little daunting for me. But this exercise is helping me discover that I can function under pressure and still come up with some decent stuff. It's giving me the confidence to work faster and more decisively on other projects too. I think this quarter is going to turn out to be just what the doctor ordered for my working process. Here are the first two images. I'll be posting the rest as the quarter progresses.

The first topic was Calvin and Hobbes. I decided to have Calvin imagining Hobbes in a slightly different way than usual to fit the theme of a tiger trainer. I'm fairly happy with the outcome although there are lots of things I would have done differently if I had had more time.


I was completely unfamiliar with the cartoon series Avatar, so this one scared me a little. But after doing some quick research on one of the computers in the classroom I came up with this idea for a layout and action. I didn't know what age the characters were supposed to be, so you Avatar fans please forgive me for making them too old. I really like the piece and I'm concidering doing a tighter version of this one if I can find the time. Thanks for taking a look.

House MD Digital Painting

I've been watching a lot of House MD over the last few months. They guy's face is extreme to say the least, and that's prime fodder for a caricature artist. For this piece I mostly worked with brushes I created for photoshop along with a couple of standard brushes. You can get a lot of mileage with very little with digital painting. It helps to know all the bells and whistles in the program, but mostly you still just have to know how to draw and paint. For this piece I drew the first sketch in my sketchbook and scanned it into photoshop for rendering. I haven't decided if its done yet really, although I like the rough and dark look because I think it fits the character's personality. Thanks for looking.

Client Painting

This morning a friend reminded me that I haven't posted anything in 3 weeks, so here is a little something that I finished a few days ago. This is a caricature painting of a client. I tend to be a little lite on the exaggeration with client work, so I didn't do much of a stretch. However, I'm pretty happy with the experimentation that I did with my photoshop painting technique. I don't publish the reference images that clients send me, so you'll have to judge this on its own merits.



I'm taking a concept art class this quarter and there will be a lot of character designs, creature designs, and vehicle and environment designs. Keep checking back for those starting this week.

Thanks for reading.