Crash and Tawna Together Again - 2020

Received a request for a reunion of Crash and Tawna. Drew this a few days ago. Hope it does the trick! 

I just realized this is my last drawing of the year and the decade!

A very Happy New Year to all you great people and thank you for following my blog all this time! Hope your best dreams come true in 2020! 

Merry Christmas 2019

Finished this greeting for my school just a few hours ago and would like to feature it here to say hello and wish you a very Merry Christmas !! It's our mascot character ArtShark just being himself.

I hope you have a special time full of love with people that mean the most in your life. Thank you for the fun of sharing my art and thanks for following my humble blog and for visiting also. Wishing you joy and peace and prosperity and good health and creativity and all the good things in life !!

Ho Ho Ho... Is that you Santy Claus?

Seasons Greetings dear Blogger friends and followers! I hope this finds you well and happy!

It was last Sept 17 this year that I was toying with images of Santa Claus helping a student in class understand the idea behind concept design. That is to try different approaches to a theme and see what you wind up with. So here's the demos I did that evening starting with the original page and then featuring each design on its own.

Elfin Girl Head Rotaton

Here's another class demo for my beginning character design students. I started it on November 5 then did the 2 back views on December 2 and completed the pencil line early today on December 5. Sometimes it's not possible to do the entire work at once so I break it into sittings and eventually complete the drawing in class.

I'm sure you've heard it before from me that rotations are an essential aspect of professional character design as they are the bridge between the concept and production. Also they're excellent practice for developing solid draftsmanship skill and they're fun to do.

Crash Bandicoot Doodles from 2013

In the early days of posting on my blog it was a time of uncertainty for the Crash Bandicoot community. I noticed a high level of anxiety among fans so I did what I could to contribute to keep Crash alive by drawing him. It had been a long time and only periodically would do something I wasn't especially excited about.

I knew I had to practice so on September 19 2013 I sat down and sketched Crash to get back into it. These are the pages I did minus some images that didn't quite make the cut. 

I'm archiving my work from the past few years. That's what lead to this rediscovery. It was fun and something special drawing Crash back then. Like visiting an old friend you haven't seen in a while and catching up on things.

 

Facial Expression notes

Here's something from over the summer. I gave my students a little demo on things to keep in mind when managing facial expression models for their characters.

Spyro the Dragon - finished painting

Hello friends! How are you? It's been so busy the last month and a half I can't begin to tell you. Causing some genuine issues which I fully intend on addressing soon. But that's a subject for a later time.

Meanwhile remember this post from last August 21? It was a pencil drawing of Spyro on illustration board. I posted that I was going to paint it. Well I'm happy to report that I did. Here it is...

Took a while to complete. I worked on it at different intervals. I figure around 18 sittings a little at a time since that day in August. Finally finished it the morning of November 2 around 6 am. Then I went to the corner shop at 7 am when it opened and bought a frame. By 9 am I was at a local art gallery to feature it in an upcoming art show and I had to deliver the painting that morning to make it.

The acrylic color palette I used was very odd and also limited. As such I noticed the colors were getting away from me as I progressed with the painting. Spyro was turning out as something other than the red violet he is known to be. So I went with what I had using these unusual colors and decided to make this a different character.

I call the painting "Dark Spyro" and imagine him to be an evil counterpart from another dimension that creates havoc in the world Spyro inhabits. I think I'll call him Oryps.

Thanks for you patience with my extended break from posting. Working on this was one of the reasons. As an added bonus I'd like to feature scans of the painting at different stages of its development going backwards in time. The original is 8 1/2 x 11 inches (around 21.6 x 28 centimeters). 

 

Here once again is the original sketch...

Big Bad Bunny - Head Rotation

A couple nights ago in class while working with beginning students in character design I was lecturing about the importance of being able to create a professional rotation. Being able to turn a character is an essential skill in the scheme of things when it comes to production. So I came up with a fun character concept and did this demonstration turning the head.

Pet Octopus?

I started this demonstration a month ago in class helping a student with her interpretation of an image she was coming up with concerning a strange hairstyle she was creating for her character. That's the drawing on the left. Then I saw something in what I sketched which gave me the idea of a girl who wore her pet octopus on her head. Thus the drawing on the right.

Character head design - Class demo

Greetings folks! I came up with this little sketch the other day in class for the beginning students in character design at my school. You can see signs of the basic construction of the character in blue pencil. Once I had the concept developed I committed to the form with a final line in graphite. Then I followed up with blue pencil again to accentuate an overhead light source and bring out the dimensional aspects of the forms that make up the design giving the image depth of field. Nothing fancy just something quick and fun.

I'm on Twitter

Lately people have been encouraging me to go to Twitter and open an account. I registered years ago in 2009 and left my account dormant. Over the past few months friends have really been getting on my case about launching it. So I started by developing some art dedicated to a Twitter theme.

A little while ago I drew some sketches of Coco Bandicoot. One in particular featured her with Crash. I thought that version of Crash would work well for what I had in mind and created a graphic for Twitter from it. Then I modified the image for header art on Twitter.

Late in the evening on Sept 11 the account went live. I though I'd get maybe 20 or 30 followers by the next day. Boy was I wrong.

Currently a little more than 24 hours later my follower count is at 1769 as of this writing.. 

Additionally I have 107 comments that need attending. 

I guess I've got my work cut out for me! Anyway my longstanding Blogger community is great and I will continue to interact here. If you're on Twitter and you'd like to follow me there you're welcome to do so if you like.

Here's the link... https://twitter.com/zembillas

Here's the Twitter art I did. Thanks everyone! I'm a lucky person to have the attention of many wonderful people!

   

My version of Ara Bandicoot

There's someone on my blog who goes by Araceli "Kahn" Pereira. She's a talented artist who came up with her own character called Ara Bandicoot. Ara plays with dynamite and she has a big crush on Crash.

Here's a link to her blog.

I was asked to draw her character in my style. The look she established is very good. I could get into it easily and do my thing. Took it through the blue pencil phase.

So here ya go and thank you kindly for being a follower of my blog!

Drawing "He-Man - Masters of the Universe"

Greetings folks! Thanks for checking in. Way back at the start of my career I was fortunate enough to be working as a newbie at Filmation Studios. About a month into my first studio gig in animation one of the production managers comes into my room with a big box full of action figures and vehicles from Mattel Toys.

That moment was the beginning of the "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" TV series. It revolutionized animation for broadcast television as it was the first series created exclusively for syndication. In other words it bypassed the traditional networks and was sold directly to local stations. The strategy was brilliant and the series was a smash hit.

The news came out at this year's PowerCon (He-Man Expo) in LA that Netflix will be reviving the He-Man franchise with a new animated series based upon the one from the 1980's. There's also a new motion picture in the works call "Masters of the Universe: Revelation". Both of these projects will be coming out sometime in 2021.

So... being the last artist alive from the original development team I thought it would be a good time to start drawing He-Man again. After many many years I thought it would be interesting to see where I'm at with my He-Man skills. Here's what I've done so far. 

I imagined I was back at Filmation picking up on where we left off with the character. I struggled with getting him on model especially his face but things started to come together okay for just starting out. I'm a little rusty but with practice I'll get back in my He-Man groove.

These are blue pencil drawings. I plan on completing them in black line.

 

  

Follow this YouTube link and you'll see what I mean... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5LpwO-An4

 

This is what you do when you're exploring action pose possibilities. Roughing out thumbnail sketches.

Spyro Portrait - I'm going to paint this

There's a local painting group that meets at my school a couple times a month. When they come in I usually paint with them. This is what I'll be working on. A portrait of Spyro the Dragon. The sketch is graphite on heavy weight illustration board. The kind that's used for painting backgrounds in animation production. Measures  11 x 8.5 inches  (28 x 21.6 centimeters). I'll be paiting this in acrylics. We'll see how it turns out.

Jak and Daxter at Universal Studios - 2008

I've been looking through some archived files and found this photo from January 9 2008. I remember meeting a friend for lunch at Universal Studios Hollywood on that day. When I was there I saw this big banner showcasing Jak and Daxter. I think it was over the entrance to a video game shop. I was happy and proud since I did the bulk of the character design work on that game. So of course I took a picture to remember the moment.

Here it is 11 years and 7 months later and I have a chance to feature it!

Crash and Spyro at Sony / MGM Studios in LA

There's a gift shop on the Sony MGM studio lot in Los Angeles. Actually it's the Culver City area to be exact. The studio has been around for many years going way back to the silent movie days. Many great movies were filmed there along with the many years of their cartoon studio producing Tom and Jerry and other animated shows over the decades.

A student of mine was touring the studio recently and when he visited their gift shop he saw some Spyro dolls and Crash toys on display. Their gift shop is not open to the public. It's a treat to find out they carry the characters there. He took this photo and shared it with me. Thought fans out there would enjoy seeing something unique and special.

Crash Bandicoot - New Color Markers

Howdy folks !! I recently purchased a new set of color markers so I could give demos at my school. I really needed them as my old set had worn out. I found a great deal on a set of 120 markers through a company called Arteza. They're similar to Copics in quality but at a much lower price. 

Anyway here's my first attempt at trying out the new markers...

More Coco Bandicoot - 20+ Years later

Last time I posted some sketches of Coco Bandicoot but I wasn't comfortable with straying off model from what she would normally look like. So I've created a few more drawings where I tried to get her appearance to be more on target. Blue pencil and black line ball point pen.