Better Late Than Never

Hey all, I obviously haven't been posting anything for a while as I've been super busy continuing work on the Oz: The Great and Powerful out in Michigan for the past several months.  I really didn't want to miss the Christmas/ New Year post so here are a few of the cards I sketched for some well wishes to friends this past week.  That last one was for the year 3011.  Watch out for those f*cking lasers!

Canon's Imagin8tion with Ron Howard

These paintings were done for the wonderful Canon Imagin8tion project in which Ron Howard invited amateur photographers to submit their "most imaginitive" images based on several movie themes in order to inspire a Hollywood short film.  The categories included setting, time, character, mood, relationship, goal, obstacle and the unknown.  You can view the amazing images chosen as semi-finalists here:ttihttp://www.youtube.com/imagination.  

Work is always a lot of fun, but it's even better when you get to contribute it to something as creative and inclusive as this.  I can't wait to see the film!

Iron Man Rip Off!!!!!

I looked at this again and the background was boring me to tears so I took a lighter to it.

What more is there to say?

Pie In the Sky

Been a little while, just moved yet again so gimmie a break.  I'm back in LA and it's been nice the past few weeks, so nice in fact that after work I haven't felt the need to do any extra work..until now.   This was a piece where I was really trying to focus on scale as I've been out to expand my worlds to a larger scale lately.  I've always loved artists like John Harris and John Berkey who have been incredibly skilled at this.

Funny Nissan Leaf Commercial

What if everything ran on gas?  I loved the concept when I heard about the premise for this soothingly hilarious commercial based on that question.   The scene with the dentist totally gave me the chills.  With any luck someone with a sense of humor and a soldering iron  will put a gas-powered iphone up for sale on etsy.com.

Got inspired

I got inspired to start this one a little while back after watching a great Kekkai Kotaki interview where he was doing a doodle that turned into something great while he was answering an interviewer's questions.  It was kind of a fun one as I didn't really have a goal in the begininning as far as what I wanted it to end up being so it took a few left turns and ended up being a big ass ship.

Not another one!

Last cave one for a while, I promise.  I was doing some problem solving with this piece, and trying a different approach based on using the magic wand tool on a photo to lay some initial textures.  Normally I would have painted over the textures a bit more, but I some of them ended up yielding interesting shapes so I decided to incorporate them more literally.  It's still a bit crude as I haven't really given much attention to softening the edges, but I think it got the job done.

Thanks all for coming to Career in Concepts!

Just wanted to say thanks to those of you who were able to make it to the Career in Concepts lecture this past weekend.  It was great getting to meet all of you and I'm excited to see what you'll come up with having had lots of exposure to tons of new ideas.  Anyone who wants sketch help or a critique on anything they're working on is more than welcome to email me for a second opinion.  Thanks to Hong Ly and Santosh Oommen for putting it together!  Here's an upgrade of that demo. :)

...gotta exercise

Working on tuning a new technique for developing environments quickly while retaining the ability to make major changes easily.  This took around 3 hours, but could definitely use some clean up.

Down at the lab

I think that's a P.F. Chang's over there..  Been boning up on some environments trying to crack a quick construction method that works for me.  I've got taking a long time down pat on these two, but things are starting to come together.  I really like the density of certain urban environments, as you may be able to tell from some of my past posts.  I find that I get caught up in the detail and sometimes it ends up taking longer than planned in the beginning to work through a piece, but  I'm going to start focusing on the main thrust of an image during it's initial inception and I think that'll make it move along a lot faster.  I had some success with that kind of direct simplicity on the quick "Tome" sketch, so I'll have to apply that to a painting that requires more detailing and see how that works out.

Touché

Pyracantha was right (comment on previous post).  The cut lines weren't all that clear so I decided to open it up.  Ideally this would have massive ride height adjust-ability for off-road and high speed applications as well as to let people in and out more realistically.  The old design did, but as this version was more or less a quick sketch  the suspension doesn't really come off that way.  It certainly deserves another visit at some point.  

Nooner

I haven't actually done a vehicle for several years, but that belies the fact that they are one of my favorite subjects to develop.  I'm hoping to get a couple more up here in varying degrees of finish in the next few days.. This one is based loosely on a vehicle done for a school project a few years back.

Towers

I'm off work for the moment so I wanted to get out as many environments as I can.  This was a quick little photo bash that took around 3hrs.

Old Western Pitch

Capitol

Tome

Sandstorm Landing

Sorry been so busy!! Gonna try to do more quick ones that focus on mood, graphics and narrative. Enjoy!