R.I.P Sparky

I finally sculpted for the first time in what feels like forever. I made a quick little magnet of Sparky's tombstone from Frankenweenie. It's going to be a little christmas gift for a friend.

Baldwin Park

Maria and I set up a booth at the art walk at Baldwin park a little while back. I got very positive response from everyone that went by, but I only sold a couple prints. It was a good learning experience, though, and it was fun!

Almost there...

I added the hair and fur. I also ditched the rear hooves and added a sort of interpretive grass. The back leg closest in this picture is looking too long. But it's all a wire armature and the legs are sort of the most important bit of structural integrity. So I'm not sure what to do. Meanwhile, tonight I'd like to add what little harness and reins this guy's wearing on his head and tackle the eyes as best I can.

Portfolio Mailer

Round two, FIGHT! I'm finally ready to start sending out more portfolios. This time I'm sending to both Jim Henson's Creature Shops and two of the three Chiodo Brothers. I just thought I'd show you what they'll be getting. A nice cover letter, a standard high quality portfolio and a stereographic portfolio with viewer. It's the stereographic viewer that I hope stops them for that brief and vital second before they decide whether to toss it, or look at it. 

Big Bird

A few years back, I painted a depressed Big Bird and joined it with one of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut quotes. It seems to be bizzarely relevant now!

Horsey Horse.

I haven't had too much time to work on the horse lately. I've been doing night shift at work, so my energy is shot. 

Horse

I recently mailed off nine portfolios to Laika and Pixar. Of those 9, I only got a response from one. Mr. Jerome Ranft of Pixar was kind enough to call me and offer me a very spot on critique of my work. His main piece of advice was that I push myself into areas that I'm not comfortable with, either working in super stylized or super realistic sculpture. So I've decided to push myself into the scary world of super realistic. Mr. Ranft's suggestion was to sculpt off of a single photo, not a turn-around. That way, I force myself to decide what the depths are and the entire piece becomes decisions and interpretations.

So tonight I've started the armature. He's mounted to a 10x6 base and he'll stand around 9 inches tall. It's nice to come back to pure sculpting. I don't need a clever idea, I don't have to worry about lighting and color.... I just have to sculpt!

Elk is finished! .... I guess...

Well, I apparently can't do fur in sculptris. I tried to find videos or guides or anything online, and no one mentions it. And I can't import it into photoshop with the 3d still intact. So, this is as far as it goes until the next project. I'm relatively happy with it. It's better than the last two. But it falls terribly far from what I had expected. I also HATE that it wouldn't let me paint the eyes all the way! Grrr! 

Elk in progress...

I saw a time lapse video of someone making an elk in sculptris. I thought to myself, 'hey, I could do that!'. So here's my next project. At this moment, I feel I'm halfway through it. The head needs a lot of attention, and I'd like to really go crazy with the mane. The Antlers are just started, really more of a placeholder at this time. I'm also going to paint this thing when I'm all done. I'll either do that in sculptris or attempt to bring it into photoshop (as I've gotten the impression you can do that in this version of photoshop.).

Sculptris Dragon

      Here's my official second attempt in sculptris. It's much better than the first, but I need a lot more practice!

Sculptris! Lets do this!

I just found out about sculptris. It's free. It's simple. All the tools are the same as Z-brush and you can export all files over to Z-brush. So my goal is to work on it and learn about it a little bit every day. This terrible mass is my first attempt. I call it "coyote ugly".

Eight Tiny Riendeer

I'm starting a project I call "Eight Tiny Riendeer". Tonight I worked out the main Character.

Better...

So, I've decided to slog through it. I changed the background color and made everything else cooler, keeping the sheep warm. I like it a little better, but it's still missing something... I might actually redraw it again.

hitting a wall.

I've entirely redrawn the crowd scene and started coloring it again. this far into it, I decided I don't like it. 

More crowd

Here's some more of the crowd. Maria had the genius idea of having the cow ringing a bell! 

Some of the Crowd

Here's the best of what I've got so far for the crowd. The cheetah and the turtle I can't really use without  major changes, but I thought I'd show them anyway.

Our main sheep

Well, here's our sheep. I've given him a better mouth and cleaned up his design a bit. This is all I really need to sculpt him. Next step is to draw out a bunch of crowd characters. 

The main character

 So, here's the first page of sketches I did tonight for the main character. Here's what we thought...

We both liked the dog. His expression is good, but we felt a different animal would ultimately be more interesting.

I decided I liked the more quiet devastated, suprised look better than angry. The quietness of this expression will contrast more with the explosive crowd and draw more attention to the focal point of the piece. Maria liked the mouth from the gorilla, but not the eyes.

 We were both more drawn to the black ram. This one very nearly captures what I want, but Maria suggested taking the mouth of the gorilla and adding it to the ram. I agree! Tomorrow I'll draw out a bunch of sheep and try to hit that perfect pose and expression!

The Next Illustration: "Bad Investment"

I finally have an idea for another illustration. This will mark my twelfth illustration and the final piece to my portfolio before I start sending it out across our great country. 


This time around I thought I'd really put myself out there and give you guys everything as it happens. Every night I'll post what I've done... even my first sketch... sigh...

So here's my first drawing. I want a cheering crowd of animals at some kind of event, and I don't mean just happy, I mean a sudden explosion of unbridled celebration! At the center of this explosion will sit the main focus of this piece, someone who is utterly devastated.

I'm not dead set on a sheep. I thought a black sheep would be a nice little extra bit of metaphor, but I'm going to spend the next couple of days drawing whatever animals I can think of who might lend themselves to that perfect expression I want. Whoever ends up looking the most like despair itself, will be the winner. 

Of course I want the rest of the audience to be a huge variety of animals all showing different kinds of rejoicing. You can see from the overall sketch, I want the stadium roof, along with the foreground animals in shadow, to provide a nice frame for our devastated friend. I'm hoping that with this dark framing, the main character's being dark too will be a good composition.

My self set deadline is three months. The same time it took to make The Last Breakfast. 

Wish me luck! Feel free to make suggestions... especially on composition. 

Yeah, I'm a nerd.

Being a nerd has become popular in the last ten or so years. A lot of people claim it just to fit into the trend, but I've been one my whole life. I built model planes and grew up watching Star Trek when I was young. I'm extremely lucky to have a girlfriend who encourages and allows my nerdiness to grow exponentially. My nerd creds are pretty legit. I've hosted several  games of D&D and most recently I've just finished this custom box for one of my friends. He plays 'Magic The Gathering'....

The box was completely built from scratch. I stained it and lacquered it twice. I lined the inside with black felt. The top stays closed with two strong neodyne magnets.

Dice tray at the bottom.

  The top of the box was adorned with a relief sculpt with an elemental symbol in each corner.

The middle tree design had the logo text in negative space. 

'A Peanut Dissected' is finished!

Here we are, with the end result! 

It really cleaned up nicely with real T-pins and paper labels.

Mr. Peanut update

 I found some real quark floor samples so I'm using one of them as the background he'll be mounted to. The Quark board is BEAUTIFUL!!! I need to finish his monocle, add a decal to his hat, put pins in him, and mount typewriter font labels. It will be fantastic!!!

Megacon 2013

I've just mailed off my payment for my Sculptwerks megacon booth!!! I've worked up a nice little inventory so far. I've got 200 prints of The Last Breakfast, 50 prints of Scrooge, 5 or 6 sculpts and 18 gummie medallions. I'm not going to make any more until my payment clears and I actually officially have a place to sell this stuff! So now we play the waiting game......

Wedding Cake Topper

Max and Jessica got married last saturday. 

They chose the greatest wedding cake topper to ever have existed.

Mr. Peanut Disected

I like taking a break between illustrations and doing a little quick side project. This one is something I've been wanting to do since Ringling and just never got around to it. I thought it would be funny to sculpt Mr. Peanut disected and displayed like an insect complete with latin labeling and display case. This is the first sculpt I did. It's OKAY.... but it's missing something.

Aha! A face! It needed that little extra bit that said, this was once a man! ... or living peanut thing..

But something's still not right. I think I went a little to far on the dark disturbing side. I need to tone the face down a little.
A closeup of my Tim Burton-esque creation. I think just a simple mouth and no nose will be a bit easier to look at...