Mighty Sketch Blog

Here's some stuff.

2012-01-07T19:16:00.000-08:00

Some recent sketches all sort of compiled together. Just trying to loosen up lately.

Catching up.

2012-01-02T17:19:00.000-08:00

Here's a bunch of new stuff, provided mostly without comment! Well, newish. Last year? I've mostly been drawing on paper and haven't bothered to scan anything.

The morbidly obese and physical fitness.

2009-04-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

So, I've been finishing up my portfolio at light speed to send off to various studios, so here's some more recent work that I shoved in there. I only really do anything out of my comfort zone when I'm working towards varying my portfolio for job prospects.

Here's some poses from some capoeira videos I was watching. It's a good study just because no one is usually wearing too much and the poses are always dynamic as hell. I was aiming for gesture drawings, because I have a hard time breaking things down to simple gestures.

Here's a morbidly obese man based on the picture of the guy I saw at the Memphis airport. He didn't look right the first time, so I drew him again! I like his uneven fat rolls under his tshirt as well as his despondent expression :D.

Sorry, nothing too exciting today!

More graphic novel planning.

2009-03-26T17:33:00.001-07:00

MORE THINGS FOR YOU.

Here is another main character. She has no name yet, and no superhero identity yet either. She's kind of a shell right now, though I've got back story and personality lined up for her.

Preliminary color design. I want her outfit to be kind of bright and garish, but can't decide if I want to take it this far. Color is not my strong suit! I will probably tone it down a good deal.

Early designs for her head. I wanted her hair to be more flowy and movie-starish. She looks too young, so I scrapped that idea.
This is her general costume design so far. I wanted to keep it somewhat like Lillie's, but more traditionally superhero. Ignore her scary face. I wanted to break up the suit a little, so I put a target looking thing on it. I kind of dig it.

Lillie's head drawn while eating dinner at school, thus the note about someone eating with their mouth open. Check mark indicates that I liked the face, slash indicates the opposite.

Her earlier design, with a complicated belt and ponytail.
Same idea, with a stiffer pose.
I think her skirt thing is shorter now, but this is the general final design I will probably go with.
My speedster, Charlie. The grade's indicate how much it looks like what I want him to look like. I hate profiles.

Eine Kleine Life Drawing

2009-03-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to beef up my portfolio lately, and what that boils down to is studying and rendering things more often. (Though my default is always sketches without shading.)

I don't know what that beast thing is, I just made him on the fly. I referenced poses from Hellboy (though I didn't copy) to study action and dynamism. The two poses on the right are referenced from an old anatomy book from the 50's.

I should disclose that these are drawn from Posemaniacs.com. There's no way a real model could hold the top pose. The bottom guy's legs are way too beefy.

I was practicing capturing poses, so I shuffled through Flickr and found photos of people jumping and did quick gestures based on them. Once again, useful for creating more dynamic poses. I like the guy on the bottom a lot.

These were done while sitting and eating dinner at school. The guy with the dreads came to ask me what I was drawing O_O. I didn't want to tell him I was drawing him. There was also a girl wandering everywhere talking on her phone, so I drew her a lot.

On these next few, take notice that I draw the parts I like, and generally ignore the head, feet, and legs. Oh well!

Some oldish stuff

2009-03-13T20:15:00.001-07:00

So, I haven't posted in awhile. Here's some things from a comic I'm sort of working on developing kind of maybe. I've working on this concept for about 5 to 6 months now, about a girl who lands a (crappy) secretary job, only to find out she's been hired by a corporation that's a facade for a superhero team...a crappy one with a bad reputation, which through various means she helps repair. Or something.

Here's some preliminary designs for the main character. Her former name was Alice, but now I'm liking Lillie.

A long haired incarnation, which I like but looks too young:

Here's some various people who could've been Lillie, but the one in the middle with the headband is closest to her current incarnation:
Here's her head again, and a doodle of a guy from an advertisement in the Memphis airport:
This is an early incarnation of her uniform. I did away with the belt, changed the sleeves to be dark, and changed the boots. (Too Evangelion).
A different take on the same idea. The boots look more or less like this in their current version.
Tonight, I'll scan some other designs I have with me and try and put them up at some point. I mostly just wanted to show how I go about designing characters. (Ah! My favorite part :D.)

I drew this picture.

2009-01-21T22:14:00.001-08:00

I lost my flash drive! It had all of my latest artwork on it :(. (And I can only imagine quite a few other things that I don't want to think about having lost.) Granted, I only lost it in the last few days, but I have the sinking feeling I threw it away. Sigh...well, at least the labs have a nicer scanner than I have at home.

So, for artwork I offer this sketch from the Drawing Club in Glendale from last Thursday. This was photographed, so I pulled it off of their blog :). I usually draw until I get to about the hips, and then the pose always changes on me. I get too distracted.

Stuff from my sketchbook

2009-01-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

So, today I'm posting the stuff I meant to post last month during my trip across the country. Woefully, I had so little internet access I didn't bother with posting at all. ALSO, I was enjoying my family's company and couldn't give a damn about my internet presence at the time.

As I was driving across the country this year (to Mississippi and New Mexico from LA), I made a drawing of me in a humorous car that I meant to post before leaving. And then I didn't.

These were both drawn during Thanksgiving, actually, while waiting in the Memphis airport for a ride to LA. The first is a very overweight man. Somewhere around the suitcase, I gave up, but that's okay because he obviously gave up on keeping his stomach fat encased in his shirt before I gave up on this drawing. The second is a half-asleep bald man being mystified by the technology on his cellphone.

I love Alan Tew. I like that he draws nothing but naked people in weird poses. I drew a naked person in a weird pose too! The anatomy in the clavicle's a bit screwy, but the legs are better than my usually attempts. Also, I was working out a character design on this page, but he looks like Scott Pilgrim with glasses instead :(. That said: sideburns yay.

Here is a suspicious meerkat.

Also, now I have a Twitter.

Sirius Black was totally framed.

2008-12-08T21:40:00.000-08:00

I've been working on this since Saturday, which is weird because I hardly ever bother to work on something more than a day. This is for the Animajor blog, theme: Harry Potter. I chose Luna Lovegood because she's the smartest character in the book. (No arguments, because it's true.)

The coloring is going faster, which is great because color is my biggest weakness. I still haven't quite reached that really harmonious color balance yet, but it works pretty well for something that wasn't supposed to be this finished. There's not much in the way of composition, but it really works well for what it is. The blank look on her face is sort of what I was aiming for, as per Luna's out-of-it-ness in general.

Storyboard goodness.

2008-11-30T19:32:00.000-08:00

Considering I want to be a storyboard artist one day, I don't really post my boards much. I can fix that! This is all the stuff I did for my Disney submission. Considering my time crunch, I decided to choose a scene from my senior thesis and redo it the way I might if I had all the time in the world to animate it. I have no idea how to do a cut on blogger, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Back with vengeance.

2008-10-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here at work, which is the USC computer labs for now, and I have nothing to do. And I thought to myself, "Self, you have a whole flash drive of crap you've never posted here." And then I thought that I was very correct in this, and should probably post something. So here's some somethings. Most of this was put together for my submission to Disney's internship program, so we'll see how that goes.

Character designs from my senior thesis, though I did these a few weeks ago. Some of her poses could be better, but I was tired and that's my excuse. At least her face looks pretty good over all.
This girl gets a bit more attention than she should, considering I have no background for her and she doesn't even have a name, but I like her well enough. I enjoy drawing her ponytail mostly. I've gone a few different (and subtle) directions with her design, but I like playing around with it. And drawing boots. Boots are great.

Mel, from my senior thesis. He takes a long time to get back into drawing again. These were done the same time as Ella in the first drawing, and also fairly late at night. He spends most of the film chewing, as reflected here. In the standing pose, his arms are way long, and I'm not sure how I missed that. Looks okay, though.
Some composition nonsense, and little stagings for character interaction. I re-storyboarded a small chunk of my film for my portfolio, so I'll try and put that up eventually. The backgrounds are from my film, but they're almost a year old at this point 0_0.

AAAAAaaaand a hippo. He looks so damn pleased with himself.

I'm also going to update my blog links (finally) to link all the people I like/know/like and know, so if I leave anyone out, please comment!

Right now I'm working on some character designs and stuff for a comic I'm planning, so hopefully I can post some of those soon. Only a few of my characters are fleshed out right now, most don't have names, and one literally doesn't even have a gender. I got as far as knowing I wanted one more character, but that's about it. Even still, I have five now, and that's really the magic number, so I'll probably keep it there.

Animation is a cruel mistress.

2008-09-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

This is all I have to offer, and it isn't finished :(. I've been pretty down on the creative front lately. Like, really really down. It's a combination of stress and anxiety. Fun!

Anyway, that computer science degree I started is really looking like it would've been the better avenue at this point ~_~.

A wonderful day in the neighborhood.

2008-06-21T23:26:00.000-07:00

Here's most of what I've done in the last...two weeks? It hasn't been that long. I've actually been pretty productive lately! I'll try and organize this somewhat.

First off, I've gotten better at Photoshop coloring! I'm so happy. I think I've figured out the general right amount of working on something until it makes me happy. I finished a lot of this picture in one night, and then left it for another day before I went back to it. The difference a day makes! I ended up messing around on sort of un-perfecting a lot of the little things, like giving the jacket and skin some more colors and working the boots a bit more. I think it speaks of better times to come :D. The Vespa was super duper referenced, with a few design tweaks, etc.

This is all from a rough idea I've been kicking around. I've done some animation for it, which will hopefully show up here too. It's a test run cycle, but here head's a little bobby for the effect I want. Otherwise, I'm proud of it. I would've uploaded a longer version, but wireless isn't powerful enough for that.

And here she is climbing a building. This was mostly a color test, and to mess around with a real composition for once. That's my fake (but real perspective-wise) city in the background. Technically, I would like them lower in the picture, because they throw off her composition a bit.

And here's a rough little storyboard I started for the whole sequence I'm planning. These aren't final. I need to fix her face in the fourth panel, and the giant monsters she's supposed to fight after the last panel need to be designed. (That's a foot, by the way. It makes sense with the next panel.)

Here's some weird stuff. I'm trying to loosen up a bit stylistically for my cartoony Nickelodeon portfolio. Don't know how that's going really. These were quick things in Photoshop just to do something.

And in case you haven't seen this at my DA page or the animajor blog, here's my masterpiece. My blog layout keeps changing because I need to design it for real. I can do the CSS for it, but it's just a system I'm not familiar with yet. I've spent some time trying to figure out the coding, but Blogger is very loose with it's restrictions and it's throwing me off. There are things that you need and things that you don't need, and I have to figure the difference out. I've got to build my webpage again and get a domain name before I can do anything else with this really.

Next time I'll post my recent stuff from my sketchbook. It needs a lot more cleanup before I can do anything, though, and I don't want this post to be too long.

This may prove that I'm not all that zany.

2008-05-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

This is a picture I started over the weekend. It's still a work in progress because I need to finish the background and maybe add some highlights and crap. I was going for something more design-y with the hair, and I think the effect is nice. Not my normal style but I like it. Hell, I'm just glad I managed to open Photoshop again.

Same dancer girl as before, but I scanned her hi-res and now I'm posting her alone. I didn't do a great job scanning her the first time. I started drawing this girl, and she looks very Chris Sanders-ish. She's a bit scribbly.
I'm trying to make some more cartoony stuff. Nickelodeon isn't really interested in my normal drawing style, so I'm seeing where I can go that's a bit more zany. I'm not very zany. This girl was going to be a pirate, but I may have petered off on that idea.

Some more weird faces. This is a weird style for me to work in at all O_O.

She's cute :D. Just another scribble.

A girl jammin' on a poorly rendered guitar. Never mind that guitar straps don't work that way.

Bababa ba ba ba, bababa ba ba bwaaaaooooow.

2008-04-02T23:57:00.001-07:00

Damn, I realized that after putting together my portfolio, I never finished putting up the rest of the pictures from it! It's not like I have any time to draw lately anyway. Most of this was spastically put together last week for Dreamworks. I would've separated everything back into its original form again, but I didn't have time, so you'll just have to look at things like I have them arranged for my portfolio printouts.

I whored this picture all around Cartoon Network. But hey, if it gets me a job it'll be worth it! I had quite a few people impressed with me by the time I was finished handing out my fliers, and the people who came to my 'pitch' really enjoyed my thesis. It's too bad that I couldn't have shown them a more finished product, but I hit all the big scenes and one lady said she cried :D. Well, I shouldn't put a happy face there.

BAM. Dancing. I was looking for the fastest way to get something impressive looking into my portfolio, and I managed to get both of these out in the same day. The poses were referenced but not copied. It was a bitch to make up a belly dancing costume from scratch though. I had to look at a bunch of really tarted up white people trying to look exotic to get an idea that wasn't too gaudy.

Drawn in RT's unfortunately boring class. I figured I haven't drawn animals from memory in awhile, so it would be good practice to screw around with some designs.

Zoo animals. Zoonimals. That gorilla was not gonna move for nothing. The only animals I could draw standing up were the ones that didn't move that much :(.

I've been showing my artwork around the studio a bit, and my storyboard friend commented that I've got great form, but my pencils aren't confident. I'm sort of seeing what he's saying, but I'm trying to figure out if it's something I can change consciously or not. A lot of the problem is that I draw "cleaned up," but not on purpose. I plan to start out sketchy, honestly. But I get lazy and just draw over lines when I should erase them, or turn shapes into other shapes without erasing if I don't like something. A lot of my girls end up with really thick lines in their jaws because I tend to just draw over it until I find a shape that I like. Then it looks like they have beards or something, but I never change it *lol*. It's one of those things I'll have to pay some attention to when I get a chance to draw again :(.

I was reading an animation blog today, and I was sort of disappointed to find out that the guy designing (creating?) the series hadn't put any thought into his girl characters! He posted a girl who was really really stick thin and then said he just can't draw women :(. I feel like a freak in this industry sometimes. I represent a whole half of the population, and I'd like to think my half of the population has great abilities and ideas and talents just like the male half, but why are we not trusted more? It's not like women haven't been on the planet as long as men have. We aren't a mutant race. I'd like to think that we aren't as incomprehensible as we're made out to be. (And here I would point out that the 'complicated women' is by and large a media creation that only exacerbates the issue -- women have the capability to be simple and reasonable but aren't particularly encouraged to do so in any media meant to influence them.) Ah, my raging feminist is showing. (Rightfully.)

And I need to sleep now.

Some wonderful things.

2008-03-23T15:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry for my long absence! I am exhausted. My mother used to let me take mental health days in high school because I'm such a high-stress kind of gal. I wish I could afford to take a mental health day lately. Spring break was about the lamest break I've ever taken, aside from the sleeping in part. That was nice.

I had to put together my portfolio this weekend for my Dreamworks application, so here's some goodies from that. I've been trying to just draw whatever lately just so I can shove it into my portfolio. It's a bit whoreish maybe. Most of these were probably drawn at Cartoon Network in my downtime.

I found the blog of the art director on Ben 10, and I was really impressed. He apparently does a lot of work for Marvel comics. Mostly I just loved the way he drew hair. It's very stylized like it's a sheet of fabric coming off of the person's head, and I sort of used the idea here. Gwen in the new Ben 10 series looks something like this, but I figured I would punch the design up a little more.

This is a page from my portfolio. It's a few "life" drawings I did at work based on poses from Posemaniacs. I think the one on the bottom right is a guy, but don't hold me to it. The top girl I drew to prove that I can draw boobs properly after my earlier naked-lady picture didn't really cut it. The effect is okay. I could do better. Mostly it was because we just watched Les Mepris in Int'l Cinema and I was impressed at how naturally beautiful Brigitte Bardot was and I wanted to sort of go for that feel.

A little art nouveau never hurt anyone. In late middle school/early high school, I was really big into turn-of-the-century advertisement art (still am, mostly). I drew a lot of draping cloth and flowers and flowing hair. I know art nouveau is really the style that people who don't know anything about art put on their walls, but I still think the Golden Age of illustration is my favorite. Dad got me hooked on Maxfield Parrish when I was a teenager and he's still my favorite artist ever. I think in general it was good to have that influence, because it gives me a bit more to work with than the more generic anime style my art morphed from. And I really like drawing cloth. A lot. Part of me still wants to be a 1920's advertisement artist when I grow up (and build a time machine).

And I have a lot more to post, but in the interest of keeping this interesting, I'll post more tomorrow or Tuesday :).

I need a better scanner.

2008-03-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

These scans prove that my scanner is pretty sub-par, but what can you do? It gives everything a sort of 'antique' feel I suppose.

I realized that I haven't got any sort of 'environments' in my portfolio to speak of, so I drew one. Granted, this is from a picture because I can't visualize non-organic things very well. (I just had a very weird moment of deja vu, but that's neither here nor there.)

Some monsters on a page. The bottom one looks more Seussian up close. I'm partial to the chubby one in the top left, and that's why he's biggest. The eyeball monster weirds me out, personally.

Junk on a page. These are bits and pieces of things that never materialized into anything more. On the bottom you can see my weird from-memory rendering of JEM, which is truly truly truly outrageous. Then there's some more sort of man nudity, as always. I like the little boy. I was going for a young Marty McFly.

Working hard and hardly working.

2008-02-23T22:57:00.000-08:00

Today I accomplished a lot, but I don't know if it was the stuff I was meant to accomplish. Luckily, the fruits of my labor are more drawings, so whatev.

Here's some more faces. The only one I'm really thrilled with is the middle one, because she's actually pretty sexy :D. I was attempting "pinup face," and I think it worked pretty well. The top one is gross, but the bottom one is cute.

This came about because I found some drawings of Disney Princesses as pirates while wandering on Deviantart. Snow White is my least favorite princess but the one with my favorite design, so I had to draw her looking a lot more badass. I didn't intend to do anything more than add a little background stuff to this, but I ended up coloring (?) it. What's interesting is that despite the quick color job, I like it a lot, and it has a lot more contrast to it than I usually do when I'm not working monotone. I love contrast, but something about coloring in PS tends to make me err on the side of caution.

This is the Blue Beetle (II)! In celebration of Ted Kord's recent return to life, I decided to draw him the other day :D. I don't usually approve of the revolving door policy that superhero comics seem to have on the afterlife, but I ♥ Ted and I'm glad he's back. So, he's all blue and totally powerless, has the occasional weight problem and a heart condition, and his only defensive weapon is his gun that shoots really bright light. No joke. But he's also 10x better than Spiderman, and that's all that really matters. I was experimenting with space with the cropping of this one, and I generally like it.

This is my contribution to the crazy cat lady entry at the Animajor group blog :D. Mmm, classy!

And now I need to get back to working on that scene I'm supposed to finish for Monday. Or not. Possibly not. I already did one extra scene last week, plus both of these scenes are taking longer than I expected.

I approve of this system.

2008-02-20T21:26:00.001-08:00

Haha! I made it to blog post #2! Here is most of the rest of the junk that I scanned or drew in Photoshop recently. I actually have been drawing a lot more since getting my internship. I think I'm spurred on by professional competition.

This is my Southwest phase:

She's supposed to be a cowgirl pinup, but it doesn't really help that I drew her in the corner of my sketchbook. (Thus there's a weird stripe where the rest of her leg might be otherwise.) I'm okay with this, but I think she could be better. Her face is a little weird, and I tweeked it in photoshop, but it's still not A+. I am proud that her jugs are not falling out of her top or about to knock her in the face as they tend to in pinup drawings.

Here's some cowboys. I assume they're gay. I started with the one on the left, and then he looked lonely, so I drew him a friend. The friend might have special interests in this boy, I think. I drew this sometime over winter break, so it sadly has nothing to do with Heath Ledger. (I enjoy drawing blue jeans.)

Other junk:

I was practicing expressions. This isn't a particular guy, I just figured it would be a good idea to try and stay with the same character. My personal favorites are the two faces at the bottom. I like to think they happened sequentially.

I started drawing this girl's head in Photoshop, then just kept going and sort of ended up somewhere. What is she doing? I don't know. She doesn't know.

Some hilarious chickens (?) from the animajor group blog. Mmm, delicious.

This is my sketch blog, dudes.

2008-02-18T22:49:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my sketch blog! I started this because I need to get my smoe self out there and exposed or something, and apparently people do this using blogs. Here are some drawings. I didn't put them all up today, though. I figure by spacing them out, it seems like I draw and scan things a lot more often than I do. Which I don't.

This panda is adorable. (And delicious.)

This girl is also adorable. I don't know what I was aiming for here. I've been trying to develop a simpler style that might work for character designing or something, but I think I decided that isn't really how I roll.

I have issues with this picture, and most of those issues are with her boobs. They aren't up to my normal standards of boob drawing. They look really fakey, and I pride myself in knowing what boobs look like. (I have some.) I'll try harder in the future.

This is a mixed bag of deliciousness. I was bored at my internship and sketched some things in Photoshop. The dude with the head was done without reference, but I did have a reference for the back muscles of the dude sans head. I think this picture is lacking ass. I have a Chowder poster in my cubicle, so he's in there too. Looks happy enough.

That's my artwork for now. I'll put up more soon so this seems like a real sketch blog and not something I just inundate with pictures whenever I happen to scan things. (That's once a year.) For next time: faces, gay cowboys, and chickens. Not all at once.