Awww, idn't dat sweeeet.

Happy Valentines day, everyone! :D



Illustration from A Sword of Mist and Memory.

Oh, Creepy Sorcerer-man.

Happy Halloween, dudes and dudettes! :D here is a creepy illustration for you:


DEAD DEAD DEAD!

On a completely different note, anyone who's never heard of the composer Joseph Curiale needs to go check out his stuff right now. NOW! :D

As Tiiiime Goes Byyyy....

....I lose track of it. And I suck! But enough of that! My life is crazy, and so is everyone else's. Let's see some concept art!!

I took on a job a month or two ago to make some illustrations for an independent fantasy novel. It was a super-rush job, so I often had to go with only the first or second version of an idea that I came up with - a challenge, and I wouldn't say I like all of the results, but it was quite fun! Let's start with some characters:


It was a nice change to be able to just work with the face and body type of a character. I'd gotten rather used to character designing for animation, with full turnarounds and detail and prop designs and such. Just going with the flow was lovely.

Here are some page thumbnails:



I drew with whatever color struck my fancy at first, but later I used the different colors as a good way to differentiate my different drafts and ideas, even when I was sometimes drawing on top of myself.

And for a treat, here is one of the finished illustrations:

My clients are working on making the book available on E-Readers right now. I'll let you know more information once there's more to tell! :D

Color Treatment

Today is my widdle brudder's birfday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN YOU ARE 14 WHICH MEANS I AM EXTRA-OLD!!!! Oh wait, it's 1:30 now; so your birthday was yesterday now. Whatever.

here we have color treatments for a teeny illustration in my senior film... for continuity's sake, I was going to use brown; but honestly the blue looks better. what opinions have you, internets?




BLOOD SPLATTER YAY

Build your house on a firm foundation

A series of illustrations for a teeny-tiny little section of my senior film. Thank you Troy for teaching me how to draw water!

Like Lightning page 1

Speaking of "Like Lightning", I just realized I have a finished looking draft of the first page that hasn't been posted. the 5th page also is far enough along to have a look at.

for review, "Like Lightning" is a 9-page full-color comic about a photophobic man who finds a lightning bug in his dark room. when night falls, he leaves his haven to try and find the lightning bug a new home.


and here's a WAAAAY rough sketch of the cover.

Through the Door

Final for Larison's Vis. 1 class. we were instructed to draw in a style not our own; so for inspiration at the suggestion of a friend (thanks Scully!!!!) I turned to Tim Burton.

Note - as for style of figures, his style is all over the place. it's a testament to how versatile he is. so, I picked an odd melding of "Vincent" and "Corpse Bride" looks, with a heavy, heavy dash of Burton textures.

STATIC SHOCK!

Thought I'd show a bit of process from my visual storytelling class.

Start with a script and one pass of thumbnails (2"x3"):
get some critique from classmates; do a second pass of thumbnails:
and then go on to the tight roughs (3"x4.5"):
KIRBY DOTS.

oh and this is a script for the character Static Shock. I've never read those comics and only saw like half an episode in high school. Larison said to redesign all the characters, so that was pretty easy for me. :) hm, now that I've actually looked him up, he looks pretty awesome... might have to pick up one of those comics....

some characters:

Walk the Moon Christmas

for the guys of Walk the Moon. Merry Christmas. :)

ball bounce BG: ROUND 2!

ehhhhh. bleh. we'll see what Jacques says. sleeeeep noooooow.....

ball bounce BG: ROUND 1!

first pass on that background for Jacques: total realism.
this is the black and white rendering (well, just black, worked on gray.) will start the color next. YAY digital painting. (photoshop CS4)

AUGH... BANANAS. whatever possessed me to draw a bin of bananas?!?!?! o______o

Green Girl

self-inspired? perhaps. perhaps.

the best thing about this picture is that total it took less than 2 hours to draw and color. why can't I just be inspired all the time?!??!?!!? oh, but that would be TOO easy. :P

Carlo Collodi is a fun name.

Quote of the day:
"You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.”
--Walt Disney (from this kinda cool LIFE photo essay)

A month or so ago I was with Matt at Half-Price Books, and picked up Carlo Collodi’s original Pinocchio story. And then I drew this.



(ink and marker over blue line)
YES. In the original story there are creepy ghost bunnies who come and wait for Pinocchio to die and take him away because he won’t drink the medicine the Blue Fairy makes for him. Pinocchio was a BRAT. But he’s not, by the end.

I still love the film Disney made of this story. It’s art! It’s BEAUTIFUL animation, and though they changed the story a lot, it still is a great story. *suppresses the urge to gush and geek out.*

However… in the film, Pinocchio is just naïve, rather than a real brat. (I know why Walt said to change it though - the original story treatment was very like the book. but, they way ol' puppet-head is at first, you kind of hate him, and Walt's all about the sympathetic characters.) Stromboli was called Fire-eater, and he wasn’t really that bad. Pinocchio himself was both the bad guy and the antagonist (at first). Somehow, with him being so awful at the beginning and slowly changing throughout the fairly long story, it’s got a bit more weight. Leastwise, that’s MY humble opinion.

Ta.

oh, rain

storming outside.

I haven't drawn fairies in a long time. when I first started REALLY drawing (early high school) it was mostly fantasy stuff, heavily inspired by lord of the rings and .hack and the legend of zelda and comics by CLAMP other random sources. then in college I tried aiming for a more realistic style, which I think I accomplished somewhat. now I'm devolving back into cartoon/stylization, though now the cartoons are much more informed. darn it, Mr. Stocker was right. :)

so here's some fairies. I don't know what they're looking at, but it must be somewhat... shocking. you tell me.

and this one, I think will be a moth fairy, all brown and gray. there were actually a couple moths in the kitchen this morning, and I got pictures of one that sat still on the ceiling (had to climb up on a chair) but the other one flew down around the floor and I think the cat ate it.

and for kicks, another of Blanche. woot.

MI

from camping a few weeks ago. :)

old comics!

ok dudes, i'll be in michigan with a lot of crazy children for the rest of the week. so here, have some comic strips I did for Larison's class year before last. should be amusing, on multiple levels. (and are all true stories. or at least inspired by.)



on a completely different note, the Animation Mentor webinar hosted by Bobby Beck and featuring DON HAHN talking about Walt Stanchfield and his two books was AWESOME!!!! (who's Don Hahn? look him up on IMDB and be intimidated.) i think one of the most fun things was seeing Mr. Hahn on a webcam in an office, and not in a studio-lit environment on a Disney DVD. there were lots of good questions, and i took lots of notes. maybe I'll post those later. :)

some dogs

yeah, posting is slow. there are lots of drawings that can be posted, but they are still either A. cannot be released yet, due to secret plannings etc. B. are good drawings but just haven't been scanned yet due to computer-obsessed siblings and/or utter madness, stress, and other work and commissions.

but this is finished. :) a commission for a friend- evidently it's an inside joke, and that is why it makes no sense. I just drew what he told me. so, initial drawing (complete with victorian bathtub and funky perspective!!!!)



ink, via lightbox:

final watercolor.

shadows came to be a lot more purple than the intended blue (and the scanner made the colors look even worse than they are), but I suppose it turned out well for having been rather rushed. ok, "work" is starting. bye! :)

an old book

I'd completely forgotten about these!!! I found them when I was going through old request/commission files. original creation date: may 2007.

so yeah, these aren't that great, but they still make me smile. my roommate kristen at the time had a graphic design class, and for an assignment she had to write a story and illustrate, color and print/bind it. now, kristen's a graphic designer/photographer; she doesn't draw all that much. so when she found out it was allowed, she got me to draw the lineart for the story she'd written, and she did the rest. so here's some old lauren drawings; laugh and say i've gotten better at least. :)