Rough Background

This was a rough shaded background for another collaborative animation. I was given a very rough sketch from the story board and access to pictures of a clay model of the rock formation. The squiggles are suggested light ray lines for the sun that is back-lighting it.

Rough Background

Another rough background for a collaborative animation.

Another Rough Background

This is a dutch angle background: I was given the rough outline below and asked to play with it and shade it. I skewed and resized the tree shapes, enhanced them, and added foreground elements to draw the eye towards the action from the storyboards. This was for another collaborative animation.

Illustration Assignment - Lymric

Music Appreciation - by Reina Elizondo

This was for an assignment to choose from some limericks and illustrate one of them. I chose 'There was an old man with a flute' by Edward Lear. This was done with pen and ink washes on watercolor paper.

Illustration Assignment: Illustrate a Song

Hotel California - by Reina Elizondo

I chose to illustrate the song 'Hotel California' by the Eagles. I wanted the feminine form to be made out of both the desert and chaos, to represent the desolation and to touch on the references to drugs and addiction in the song. To me the woman in the song is a representation of temptation and a lure to darker urges. In my picture the zipper of the woman's dress is a car on the 'long desert highway' and it's revealing chaos underneath.

Illustration: Reach Out and Touch Someone

Reach Out - Skin Hunger

Revised Illustration

An illustration of the excerpt  :

Cynthia Rylant. The Islander. (DK, 1998.) 

I was a boy when I met the mermaid, and, of course, no one believed me. It didn’t matter. I was a solitary boy — lonely, actually — and had long given up on anyone understanding what I said or how I felt. I had lived with my grandfather for three years, and he was a kind and gentle man, but he could not see into a boy’s world and so could not do much more than love me.

Illustration: Losing All Hope Was Freedom

Illustration Assignment: Cover for The New Yorker

 I wanted this to be a statement on left behind dreams.

Edit: I've recently seen a commercial that is totally rocking this theme since I posted this...coincidence? Looks at follower #s...I guess so, lol.

Revised Illustration

This was intended to illustrate the idiom 'Cock and Bull Story'; in other words an unbelievable story.

Watercolor and some ink.

I wanted to make the face in the foreground telling the story and so I made the dragon and flames coming from it's mouth. I associate 'unbelievable' with fantasy (ergo a dragon) and fantasy with purples and violets. Of couse dragons have fire so I got a good warm vs. cool going with the flames and the dragon. I'm aware I need to strengthen contrast in value and saturation.

I used salt sprinkled into the washes to get the background texture and I absolutely love the effect. It makes me want to experiment with more textures that way.

This is the revised version.

Illustration Assignment: Graphite

Strawberry Herring

This is an illustration of the following nursery rhyme :


The Man in the Wilderness

A man in the wilderness asked me
How many strawberries grow in the sea?
I answered him as I thought good,
As many red herrings grow in the wood.

Background for Collaborative Animation

Another Background for the collaborative film: Complement Me. Directed by Kathryn Nicolas. This is still being worked on, so you won't see this background in the current rough cut.

Matte Painting

Our assignment was to work on a matte painting with any subject matter of our choosing. This was the final I turned in.

Playing with Textures

I wanted to experiment with some textures.

Revised Bukowski

This is my pastel piece with the revisions I did to resubmit.

This was from an assignment to illustrate the following poem :


The Pretty Girl Who Rented Rooms 
by Charles Bukowski

Down in New Orleans
this young pretty girl
showed me a room for rent and
it was dark in there and we stood
very close
and as we stood there
she said,
"the room is $4.50 a week."
and I said,
"I usually pay $3.50."
as we stood there in the dark
I decided to pay her $4.50 because
maybe I'd see her in the hall once in a
while
and I could not understand then why
women had to be like she was
they always waited for you
to give a sign
or not to make the first move
and I said,
"I'll take the room," and I gave her
the money
although I could see that
the sheets were dirty and the bed
wasn't made
but I was young and a virgin,
frightened and
confused
and I gave her the money
and she closed the door behind her
and there was no toilet and no sink
and no window.
the room was damp with suicide and death
and I undressed and lay down on the bed
and I lived there a week
and I saw many other people in the hall
old drunks
people on relief
crazy people
good young people
dull old people
but I never saw her again.

finally
I moved around the corner
to a new place
for $3.50 a week
run but another female
a 75-year-old religious maniac
with bad eyes and a limp
and we didn't have any trouble
at all

and there was a sink
and a window
in the room.

Mattes for 3D Collaborative Animation

Illustration Assignment: Sketches around Savannah, GA

For this assignment we read parts of the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt then we sketched around Savannah. These sketches were meant to give the viewer a strong feel for the city.

Background for Collaborative Animation

Another background

Background for Collaborative Animation

Another Background

Matte Painting WIP

Our assignment is to work on a matte painting with any subject matter of our choosing. I got some feedback on this about warming up the colors of the dome and making it more transparant. Also to work on the icicle shape.

Illustration Assignment: Pastel

This was from an assignment to illustrate the following poem :

The Pretty Girl Who Rented Rooms 
by Charles Bukowski

Down in New Orleans
this young pretty girl
showed me a room for rent and
it was dark in there and we stood
very close
and as we stood there
she said,
"the room is $4.50 a week."
and I said,
"I usually pay $3.50."
as we stood there in the dark
I decided to pay her $4.50 because
maybe I'd see her in the hall once in a
while
and I could not understand then why
women had to be like she was
they always waited for you
to give a sign
or not to make the first move
and I said,
"I'll take the room," and I gave her
the money
although I could see that
the sheets were dirty and the bed
wasn't made
but I was young and a virgin,
frightened and
confused
and I gave her the money
and she closed the door behind her
and there was no toilet and no sink
and no window.
the room was damp with suicide and death
and I undressed and lay down on the bed
and I lived there a week
and I saw many other people in the hall
old drunks
people on relief
crazy people
good young people
dull old people
but I never saw her again.

finally
I moved around the corner
to a new place
for $3.50 a week
run but another female
a 75-year-old religious maniac
with bad eyes and a limp
and we didn't have any trouble
at all

and there was a sink
and a window
in the room.

I'll repost with revisions later.

Illustration Assignment: Ink

An illustration of the excerpt  :

Cynthia Rylant. The Islander. (DK, 1998.) 

I was a boy when I met the mermaid, and, of course, no one believed me. It didn’t matter. I was a solitary boy — lonely, actually — and had long given up on anyone understanding what I said or how I felt. I had lived with my grandfather for three years, and he was a kind and gentle man, but he could not see into a boy’s world and so could not do much more than love me.

I will be posting the revised version later.

Background for Collaborative Animation

Another background; again I received the shot in black and white and painted it according to their lighting and color schemes.

Concept Art for Collaborative Animation

This is more concept for one of the senior animations I'm working on.

Background for Collaborative Animation

Working on backgrounds again. The director gave me the shot in black and white and I painted it following her lighting and color scheme.  I need to change the corner walls to the purple curtain material.

Concept Art for Collaborative Animation

A low pressure sketch for one of the senior animations I'm working on. They're revamping the ideas so the director asked me not to spend too long on these in case they change directions again before I submit it.

Background for Collaborative Animation

This is a background for one of the senior projects I'm working on. The director gave me the shot in black and white and I painted it following her lighting and color scheme.

Background for Collaborative Animation

This is a background for the other senior film I'm working on. I received the shot in rough form and painted it in according to their lighting and color schemes. The lowest cloud was already painted by another artist.

Winner!

I won Avid's Media Composer 6 at the Tech Pro Expo! They were kind enough to link me to a few tutorials as well!

There were some good lectures at the expo. I especially liked the steady cam demo. It looks like such a fun job! I think that's the way to go if you wanted to be a cinematographer.

La Reve was awesome, an aesthetic delight!

SCAD Tech Pro Expo

I'm heading over to the SCAD Tech Pro Expo. And later there's La Reve: The Dream. Fun day ahead.

Forest Concept for Collaborative Animation

This was more concept artwork for a senior project I'm a part of. They're changing the direction but I still wanted to post this really fast. I used acrylic paint to make a few washes on  a canvas board then I spread it out and cleaned it up for the back plate in Photoshop. The trees and grass were all done in Photoshop.

Nurbs furniture for steampunk room

These are quick renders of the furniture I just made last night for my graphics class. We had to make three pieces of furniture from photo references for this project. Eventually these and the other two steam punk artworks I posted: the gears and the painting with Steampunk Lesbia - will be part of the final project for this class. The final is to have a themed room with two artworks and three pieces of furniture. For our next project I will texture these pieces and finish building my room. Last I will light it all. 

Pipe Organ
photo-reference: here

Curved Shelves
photo-reference: here

Spider Chair
photo-reference: here

Steampunk Painting Adjust - Lesbia Weeping over a Dragon

This is a steampunk take on the painting 'Lesbia Weeping over a Sparrow' by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.  I've adjusted the painting by painting and compositing on it in Photoshop. This was for an assignment that was just to show we could use Photoshop. We were able to pick whatever we wanted as long as the end result could be considered fine art and I chose to adjust this painting.

Lesbia Weeping over a Dragon
reference: here

Background for Collaborative Animation

 This is a background for one of the senior projects I'm working on. The director gave both Savannah and myself the shot in black and white and we painted it following her lighting and a general color scheme. She wanted to get a feel for our styles. I'm not quite happy with the tent wall and she asked me to try for a smoother look.

The funny thing is that Savannah chose almost the same colors for the pillows which we got to choose any from a bunch of color keys. They were the same except for the cream pillow on the left which she did in orange.

History of Matte Painting

I've been watching videos about matte painting to know more of it's history.

Peter Ellenshaw was really impressive.

Gears in Illustrator

I made this for an assignment. We had to show we knew how to use Illustrator. I think I will add onto it later so that this will just be the background for something else. I'm thinking maybe a metal sculpture of a stylized moon or a clock on the right.

Gears

Latest WIP

I'm working on a couple of teams for the seniors' projects. Here are the thumbnail/rough concepts I'm working on for a background for one of them. I want to take it further in the direction of it's perspective and get a better feel for the cave size. The top right squares are acrylic, the rest are in Photoshop.

Savannah College of Art and Design

I haven't posted in a long time. I've made some drastic changes since then and things are finally settling down.

I have transferred to Savannah College of Art and Design. It was a whirlwind move and I'd actually already started the fall semester at Utah Valley University when I got my acceptance letter to SCAD. I literally had ten days to pack, wrap up as much as possible at my old job (which included writing a new manual for whoever took my place,) and fly out to Savannah for orientation.

Last fall was amazing and intense. I'm so glad I made the leap! Just being surrounded by so many confident, art-minded people, who aren't afraid to follow their dreams, makes me so enthusiastic every day here.

I transfered quite a few credits but by no means all of them. I had to take some foundation classes last quarter but this quarter I am in my major classes. I'm in visual effects here instead of animation, but at UVU the animation department included the visual effects.