B-Boy Student Film

So here it is, my student film at the Vancouver Film School. The game he's playing at the beginning is Super Bomberman for the SNES and the song that he dances to is "Voodoo People" by The Prodigy. All of the elements (modeling, texturing, lighting, animation, etc) were done by me in Softimage.

"B-Boy." 2001. Softimage.

Storyboard page/Final Render Comparison for B-Boy. 2001.

Eddie Vedder Shirt

This is a shirt featuring an Eddie Vedder drawing I did in 1999. This is the final image, after some Photoshop love and the Eddie Vedder name and signature at the bottom. On the back by the neck, I also added an "Alive Man" image (for those PJ fans that know what that is).

B-Boy Model Videos

For my demo reel at the Vancouver Film School, I chose to do a breakdancer playing video games and getting inspired to switch over to dancing after he sees his lava lamp start to dance to his stereo music. For this, I needed a character that could be flexible and expressive, and have an appearance that worked with the hip-hop style. I was inspired by the designs of artist Justin Bua, and used a character in his "Green Street" piece for the main head reference. These three turnaround videos display my b-boy model from different focuses:

3. Turnaround video of head, textured.

2. Turnaround video of full body, textured.

1. Turnaround video of full body, untextured.

Breakdancers

Breakdancer Kids. 1999. Graphite on paper. 9"x11"

I got interested in breakdancing my senior year of high school. It wasn't until college that I actually started learning moves, but I always liked the fluidity of movement, control of power and balance, and general style that dancers worked into their moves. When I got more familiar with the dancing, I decided to incorporate it into my demo reel for film school, once I was accepted into the Vancouver Film School for August 2000.

TV Turnoff Week Promo

TV Turnoff Promo #2. 2002. Digital.

This image was originally done for the Adbusters.org submission contest for their "TV Turnoff Week." As someone who liked the idea I submitted several styles, one of which was a person turning off the television and raising the blinds to let the bright sun fill his room. This was the one they chose to put in their magazine that year. My goal is to keep submitting each year, noticeably raising the bar on the images I put forward.

Cousins on beach

Cousins on beach. 2003. Oil on panel. 16"x20".

The fourth oil painting I did, this time of three of my cousins. The size comparision is between the finished piece and the 4"x6" (?) photograph I based it off. I gave it as a gift to my aunt, and had a great time painting it in my Chicago studio, where my workspace was a card table set up in my kitchen (it was also the dinner table, when it didn't have supplies on it).

Scratchboard: The Frisk

The Frisk. 1998. Scratchboard. 9"x11".

In high school we often had assignments of taking different mediums and creating a piece with them. Back then I was mainly interested in honing a realistic style, and so my projects would rarely be surreal or memory-based. For this piece, a National Geographic was used to show a police officer frisking a man against a university wall (it was a bank in the original picture). I used an X-acto knife to scrape off the thin layer of black plastic that covered the white scratchboard, and the texture that resulted somewhat resembled grass. The reference image's stark shadows helped the final scratchboard piece pop more, I think.

Draft Wes Clark Political Cartoon

Wes Clark Cartoon. 2003. Digital painting.

In 2003 I was recruited to do some political cartoons. This relay race handoff scenario signified the possibility of General Wesley Clark being drafted into the race that Governor Howard Dean was then leading. It angered some Howard Dean fans, but at the time Clark looked like the stronger candidate to many. Eventually Senator John Kerry won the primary race, and lost in the general re-election of George Bush (seen casually walking on the track in the background). I really enjoy doing political cartoons because of the way they challenge an artist to communicate complicated issues and ideas with simple and often funny imagery. I hope to do many more.

Weezer vs. Radiohead

Weezer versus Radiohead. 2002. Pencil with digital color pass. 11"x17"

This piece came from the random observation I had one day that the two bands had a high number of parallels between the appearances of their members. Both had slight-looking frontmen, lanky and shaggy haired guitar players, and drummers of similar shape. The rest I pushed where I could to make the similarities pop. Colin Greenwood was made a referee in the "fight" to balance out the number of people on each side, and song lists were made for both bands to fit in the background. The slogan "as commercial as alternative gets...as alternative as commercial gets" doesn't have much meaning to it, other than to summarize the parallel universe theme.

Goodness

Goodness. 1999. Oil on canvas. 24"x24".

I think it's finally time to add a painting to the mix. Although I had made one other oil piece before this, I consider this portrait of the band Goodness to be the first real shot I took at oil paints. Before that I had done acrylic and watercolor, which dry much faster. I like how forgiving oils are and the length it takes to dry gives a lot of flexibility and room for error. Drawbacks are the ventilation that's needed and waiting three weeks for the piece to dry, however.

Ben Kenobi and Claude Monet

Ben Kenobi. 1995. Graphite on paper with digital color tint. 4"x7".



Claude Monet. 1995. Graphite on paper with digital color tint. 8.5"x11"

Portraits will always be a central aspect to my work. I started exploring abstract work in college, but before that I spent most of my time practicing realism and accurately replicating pictures in magazines and books without a grid (to better test proportions). These two came out pretty well for being somewhat quick, and the Monet got me a bit closer to getting fabric textures down. Although my portfolio doesn't have much diversity in it for these years in my life, I'm glad I focused on graphite and realism because of the solid foundation of 2D skills they gave me once I branched out to color and other mediums.

Life Drawings

Life drawings. 2000. Graphite and Conte on newsprint. 14"x20"

Hand Studies. 2000. Graphite on newsprint. 14"x20".

I've always enjoyed life drawing and like to jump in to whichever area looks good to explore with a pencil. Over the years my approach has become more comprehensive and methodical, taking into account proportion and value. Working as an animator forces yet another angle: the short gesture drawing, which demands fluidity and an extra bit of life. Conte and graphite on newsprint, 2000.

Mos Def: The New Danger

Mos Def: The New Danger. 2004. Graphite on vellum, 8"x12".

Mos Def: one of my favorite musicians and a good actor in his own right as well. This was from his "The New Danger" album cover art as a study in clothing textures as well as tones.

Greener Guy: Issue 1 Cover

Greener Guy: Issue 1. 2000 (colored 2009). Multimedia. 11"x17".

Time to add some color in this blog! This was done during my time at the Evergreen State College, a very liberal arts school that had its share of dreadlock'd folk. I loved the culture there, and did this as an homage to the conflicting nature of so many people I'd met: outraged and motivated on one hand, and hedonistic and free of responsibilities on the other. It originally debuted on the college newspaper's art page, and I revisited it years later with a digital color pass in Photoshop. As I colored it, I tried to convey the gray and desaturated campus (as it was most days).

Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke. 1998. Graphite on vellum. 7"x11".

This portrait of musician Thom Yorke (of Radiohead) was done a year before my previously-posted Stanley Kubrick piece. I was still trying to improve on the realistic style and fell short in areas like the coat texture/depth, the smoothness and value of the skin, and the "pop" the eyes lack.

Stanley Kubrick (and a hello)

Welcome!

Stanley Kubrick. 1999. Graphite on vellum. 11"x14".

For my first blog post, I'll start with my favorite high school piece; a reproduction portrait of film director Stanley Kubrick. To me it symbolized the first time I really got a hold on realistically rendering a figure. If you look closely, you can see my initials and the year it was done near the center of the camera he's holding. Kubrick remains one of my favorite directors, and the attention to detail he was known for was on my mind as I worked on it. This blog will serve to display the works I've done in the past, as well as works in progress, and I will include my thought process for each piece as well. I hope you enjoy it and become a Blogger follower by clicking in the Follow section on the right column.