Hardcore Christmas

This was my tribute to Christmas and Hardcore music back in the early eighties. It makes me laugh.

Vacation Time

Here are some images that remind me of vacation and surfing. Something, I think, everyone is thinking about. At least the vacation part. Enjoy.

ATTACK OF THE CHUPACABRA!!!!!!!!!!

This is my submission for this session of DrawerGeeks.com. It was first a sketch of what I thought the chupacabra would look like. Then DrawerGeeks' subject of "Alien" came to be and so I saw it as an opportunity to finish the piece. I kinda like it, hope you do to.

The Evil of Disney

These are some of my favorite Disney Villains paintings. Along with the Chernabog piece posted earlier. I painted a couple of headshots but I was playing with the way their personalities showed through the paintings. The Hades piece was pretty interesting. My framer for the painting had the idea of actually setting the frame on fire to add to the effect. It was awesome. Looked really cool. Cruella DeVille was fun because I caught the moment when she was driving super crazy in the movie. I tried to make it look as if she was coming off the canvas. I think I succeeded because a few of the gallery workers were scared of the piece. Hee Hee. Maleficent is one of my all-time favorite characters. She has grace with her evil which allows me to pose her in a dignified manner and still emit evil.

Arrrrrgh! Matey.

Here are some illustrations for Disney's Cruise Line. You can see the different styles I got to work with. I like painting and doing illustrations and this was a subject different from the average Mickey and Minnie flirting with each other. Plus I like working with perspective. Must be from working at an architect firm.

West Coast, East Coast....I gotcha covered.

Here are a couple of designs I worked on for West Coast Choppers. I love motorcycles, so these we a lot of fun to work on. The mexican wrestling poster was inspired by the movie Nacho Libre. I thought it would be cool do something like that. The funny thing is that I looked a catalog from WCC and it had a mexican motif. Made me laugh. I want to re-work it an make it look old and worn out. I'll finish and throw it up here at a later date.

Book Cover!!!!

I worked on this book cover for a good friend of mine. We talked about the layout of the cover and how she wanted it to look like an od mining town. So that is what I did. She designed the characters so I had to stay close to her designs. We also talked about the feel of the piece and so we came up with this color scheme as well. I painted most of the cover traditionlly, but the type and the ghost characters were added later in photoshop. Very fun project.

Brochure

Another brochure for you to look at. I did this brochure for a company called "WriteStep". I actually had to do two different brochures. One for adults and one for kids. I liked how the kids turned out better. So here it is.

Logos and Brochure

It has been requested of me that I put up some artwork that is a little different from what I have currently up here. So I will. I am going to put up some logos that I have done as well as a brochure. The logos are various marks for either projects or companies. The brochure was for a local chapter of FPRA(Florida Public RelationsAssociations). It was a the need to match their website at the time. So that is what I did. Please enjoy.

Bliiiiiinnnng!!!

Here is the final art for the the drawings submitted before. You can see some differences but all in all they are similar. Boba Fett's head was cocked off to the side. Which I thought was a better pose. It shows a little more cocky attitude. But I was told to change it. I still think it works. Originally I had Leia with this super-massive gun. I thought it looked cool. Again I was told to change it. I couldn't argue with reasoning, they wanted it to be a stormtrooper's gun like the movie. No changes on the stormtrooper or Darth Vader. The shirts flew of the shelf. Later I even spotted it on a guy who looked exactly like what I pictured the demopgraphic we were hitting.

First Drawing...Then Final Art

I found some of my drawings that I did for a Star Wars program. These drawings were the start of a t-shirt program for Star Tours in MGM Studos. LucasFilms loved these. They were really glad that we were pushing the envelop with their characters. Nto sure why that was, but we ran with it. Have to give some props to the guys i worked with on this designs. Darren Wilson and Dave Keefer took the inkings from these drawings and did an amazing job rendering and adding design elements to them. They turned incredible. So what did I do you, you ask? I drew the characters in this style and digitally inked them. So here are the drawings. The final art will follow.

Holy Perspective, Batman!!!

This was a my first trading card painting for Disneyana. I picked the gargoyles from Hunchback of Notre Dame because then I would have an excuse to paint the Notre Dame Cathedral. The painting is 24"x36". A lot of perspective. There is a hidden mickey but it is not in an obvious place.

Chernabog

Chernabog is such a cool character to paint. The painting was cool to work on. I wanted to push the cool and warm colors on it. I think I was pretty successful. This is one of those paintings I want to do again and really make it realistic. I think that would be awesome. I think about all the things I would do to enhance that character. More muscle tone, more veins, some tears in the wings, the list goes on.

Tom Morrow shows us the Future

This piece of art is obvious. It was for Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom. This was a project where we wanted to play off of the neo-retro styling of the re-designed tomorrowland and incorporated a comic book element as well. So I concepted this idea and ran with it. It was the main piece of art for the program. We did the panels to reprsent the windows of a comic book page and the had the characters break out of the panels. The whole piece was inked in Illustrator. All the elements in the background was inked seperately so that I could move them around so that I could get the best visual appeal in the panels. The characters were also inked seperately as well. When it came to color I want to give the feel as though it was dusk and the whole place was illuminating. I used a lot of gradients and transparent color and transparent color on top of gradients on top of solid colors and so on. I really dived into this piece. I pulled as much reference as I could find at Magic Kingdom, WDI, and DDG resource center. and worked and reworked the whole thing. This was one of those sink your teeth project.

It's all about Process, Process, Process!

Here is another example of my process. This particular job had some interesting added bonuses that I had to take into account. One interesting thing was that this piece had to be able to be taken apart and re-arranged to fit multiple hardgoods. Another interesting thing was that characters needed to be seperated as to be used on other items. So with out further ado. Let me explain this process.



I always start out with a sketch. In this case I submitted three sketches, all very similar. This was the winner. There are various colors used in this sketch because when I was drawing it I was working out problems via tracing paper. I had the characters on one piece of tracing paper, the buildings on another and the sign on another. I was moving them around to figure out the right spots for maximum character exposure. So I marked the spots and scanned the different tracing papers in the computer got them in photoshop and proceeded to move them around some more and resize and all the other fun stuff. When the sketch was approved. I moved onto phase two.




Phase two was to draw all the individual parts of the illustration. These are tight line drawings. In this case it was the background only. I later took this sketch into Illustrator and broke down the buildings into individual parts. I put each building in its own layer. A little tedious at first but well worth it later when the client ask to move things around a little.




I drew the characters seperate as well. Making sure that the pose was okay and the character was correct. I scanned him in and inked him in Illustrator. I copied and past into a master document that has the background buildings and the Vegas sign and the other characters.




This is another sample of a tight line drawing before I scan it into the computer and ink up in Illustrator. I do a tight line drawing to take the guess-work out when I am inking in the computer. The less guess-work the faster I can ink.

After I get all the different inked pieces together in the same Illustrator document. I make sure that all the pieces are on there own layers ans situated right. I will make any adjustments neccessary for positions and I apply color and start to render.




This is the final. It was for a towel. The characters and the sign where on other items. This is a little more typical of how my process goes. I always have to think that no matter what this piece is going on it will need to be adapted to anything else. So it is crucial that I seperate the elements. A side note: When I ink, I set the document up that there is a scan layer, dead-line layer, stroked-line layer, and expanded layer. So if the element needs to be changed in some fashion, such as thicker line weight or an arm moved slightly it can be done quicker.

I got your Process right here

I have been asked by several people to show my process of how I work. My process changes a little depending on the type of job that I am working on. So this is the first example of a process that I have used.




I start out with a sketch. It does not matter to me if I am working on an illustration, logo, direct-mail piece that needs a lot of graphic design, or a snowglobe. I always start with a sketch or thumbnail.





In this particular piece a did color comp that was just a corner. I usually color comp the entire piece for clarity of how to approach the color in the final illustration. However in this particulr piece the client asked that I only do a corner to save time. Not going to argue, they are paying the bills. I digress.





If the sketch is approved I move onto to final pencil sketch. At this point I have worked out all the details and composition problems. Now I have a pretty good idea of color pallette I'm going to use.






I have collected a little reference to help out in the sublty of color for some if not all the elements in the illustration. This particular illustration was for a t-shirt, so I had to consider the color of the shirt when I was thinking about the color pallette for the piece. To finish the piece I threw some type in there. I tried to use something that was blocky enough to read from a distance but still had an island feel. Who better to use than the Tiki fonts from House. Illustration done, client happy, moved on to next project.

Fiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrreeeeee!!!!!!!

This was a sign for a business. The client was a mechanic that specializes in fire engines. Plus he liked that cartoony "Rat Fink" style. What a coincidence, I like the 'Rat Fink" style as well. So I worked up a concept for the piece and the client loved it. I did a final drawing of the fire engine, scanned it in the computer and inked it in Adobe Illustrator. The type I manipulated to several ways. First to get the curve to go around the truck and Second to put in elements of tools. I render the whole thing in Illustrator as well. Some of the effects you see are a combo of transparent colors on top of gradients. So I could get the desired effect. The client was happy with it. The final size of the sign was six feet high by twelve feet across.

In the beginning there was DCA...

I thought I would start with this piece because it was one of the first pieces that I did at Disney. A whole merchandise program was created around this peice of art. It was the first holiday program for Disney's California Adventure. I like this piece not because it is some kind of masterpiece but because I learned a lot about taking a piece of art (for merchandise) from start to finish. These particular pieces have to be broken down so that one can spread them across lots of different types of merchandise. From mugs to pads of paper to posters to collectible pins and T-shirts. This was also the first time I had done the main piece of art for a program. I guess there is some sentimental value to it. The whole creative process worked its magic(no pun intended), from research to concept drawings, marker comps, final line art, inking and rendering. All done by me. I thought it was a neat accomplishment at the time. It was fun.

Welcome To Hard Kink

This is a test of the Hard Kink Broadcast system. This is only a test. If this were an actual posting you would see and illustration and an explanation of it was all about and the process taken to complete said illustration. Please stand by for future Hard Kink broadcastings. Thank you and good night.