On the Surface of the Moon

Here's my latest background painting effort, a panning shot of the moon. I wanted to finish this one quickly, and I did, but that meant I wouldn't allow myself to go back and work new ideas into it. The result is a piece that I like, but think could have stronger/more fun design. It was fun to do though, so I'll probably make a better moon shot in the future. I've been listening to a lot of John Lear and Richard C. Hoagland's interviews about how they believe there to be mining operations on the moon as we speak and even that the moon itself is artificial and was towed into orbit thousands of years ago. ... They're a lot of fun to listen to.

Sam's Branmallow Man

This is my version of my brother Sam's character that he created for an assignment in Mike Owens' Storyboarding class. I actually like Sam's version of him better, seen here in a greyscale storyboard sketch:

Sam invented this little bran guy (made of bran, not poop) who's the mascot of the Branmallow cereal. The commercial Sam thought up and storyboarded is hilarious, and hopefully Sammy and I will have some time in the future to animate it. I'll let you know when Sam posts the boards up.

Magical River of Adventure in Technicolor

Click it big. This took a long time to color, but I'm pretty pleased with the result. It came out pretty much exactly how I wanted it to, which is rare. I definitely had the work of Sid and Marty Krofft (H.R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters) on my mind while making this. If you've never seen those shows, I encourage you to check them out, they're amazing.
Here are a few closer shots of some sections.

Boshi-Basiik Designs

SMBFC.net wrote a nice article about my girlfriend Susan's company, Boshi-Basiik recently. Amidst the table of Susan's adorable hats is one I actually designed: the Koala. It's light blue..and on her head. I designed a handful of hats for Basiik over this past summer, and thought I'd post some here now that they've been made. They were scribbled pretty quickly in Flash, but they're kind of fun.

The aforementioned koala design.

The obligatory owl design. I gave this one ear flaps that are actually little wings, which I think are cute, though a bit much for handmade bulk production.

This raccoon-looking character is actually a Tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog). This was the first hat design I came up with, and originally did so just because I planned on begging Susan for a custom hat of that design. It's also my favorite one, probably because it's the one I wanted in the first place.

And of course, the line wouldn't be complete without a hat of our wonderful cat, Mudjo. And this post wouldn't be complete without this picture of him after he wedged his plump body into a shoebox on the desk next to me.

Owl and Squirrel Background

Here's an establishing shot from my Senior Project animation about an owl and a squirrel. If you look closely, you can see the owl perched atop the hero tree in the shot. The camera will be slowly zooming in on him in the animation. I painted the piece in greyscale first, then colorized it, all in Photoshop. I actually like the grey version a lot too, so I'll post that as well. The trees are from a custom brush I made.

Forbidden Island

Here's my latest environment comp. I looked at this next to the other illustration I'm working on at the moment (coloring my waterfall drawing) and I realized that this piece is really boring comparatively, even though I personally like it. My future environment compositions will hopefully have a bit more going on, in terms of design. That said, as boring as it is, I'm sorta into it. My love for Mary Blair's conceptual work on Peter Pan definitely played a role this one. I sort of based it on that particular body of work, but not directly. Instead of using her work as reference for style, I used my cloudy memory of what I could remember her Peter Pan work looking like. The result ended up not really looking like the Mary Blair work much at all, but had a similar tone to it.

Waterfalls

This is the first you'll see of this large drawing. It started out as just the top waterfall and grew into this. I represented the flow of the water with a changing pattern. I had a surprisingly good time making the stagnant swamp water pattern. My favorite part is probably all the faces, trees...well, I drew things I like, so I'm into the entire piece I guess. I've got some plans for coloring it, hopefully that doesn't take forever. I'll probably color it in Photoshop, but I drew it all in Illustrator.