Monster heads

Hello everybody! Fighting for opportunities to get some art done and here's what I came up this week as a class demo. Things are really picking up at my school and it's taking a lot of my time in a good way. Still I'm determined to turn the corner and get into a full time creative mode. Hope you are experiencing happiness in life and thanks for continuing to check in with my blog. I've got more art on the way.

Spy vs Spy

Another little window presented itself for some in-class sketching as one of my students in the advanced session of Character Design suggested a James Bond-ish type of subject for a demo. 

I followed it up in the next session with a female version of a secret agent kind of character where you're not certain if she's just an attractive lady who's interested or maybe she's something more.

Put the two together and you have a story in the works...

Scootin' ArtShark

Here's a sneak peek at the next ArtShark for the upcoming email newsletter for my school in Burbank along with a look at how the graphics developed. ArtShark is the long standing mascot for the Academy.

How it will look on the header...

Here is the reverse process starting with the final colored design...

Flat color with colored line and no dimensional shading...

The line was colored after the flat color was added to the image...

The final line drawing was scanned and cleaned up digitally in Photoshop...

It began with the original concept sketch...

Getting in the groove / new drawings

After a long and unintentional break from drawing I'm happy to say that I had a chance to do something new this past week. I asked a student what they would have me come up with in the advanced character design class as a demo. She suggested a young boy elfin type of character that was evil but could trick you into thinking he's good, done in my Jak and Daxter style. So here's the result...

  

Earlier in the first level character design class I did this simple head rotation as a demo and also for personal practice. It's healthy for professional character designers to keep their chops up when it comes to basic skills and rotations are a part of that.

Feels really good to get creative again.

Lost / auctioned Crash drawing comes home

The saga of the lost then found then auctioned Crash Bandicoot drawings concludes with a strange but true ending. At least for one of the three from Project A / BC that took place a few weeks ago. First it was mailed to the UK, then it wound up in Brazil for more than 3 months, then it finally made it to the UK where it was auctioned by the Worthing Boys Club.

As it turned out, the winning bidder as fate would have it was a student at my school The Animation Academy in Burbank, who was in attendance in June 2012 when I created the drawing as a class demonstration. Nearly 3 years later the student returned to take another class. Lo and behold, he brought the drawing with him, now framed and under glass, to the very place where it came into being in the first place!

I wouldn't have believed it myself but here's the proof. Things sure do have a mysterious way of working out sometimes...