Preserved Brains

Calendar progress

2006-12-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

Its been taking up my life for a month now and I'm the only one who notices. It probably won't sell to anyone but my mom and my close friends but at least now I have the start of a brand new portfolio. I had long thought I had the ability to digital paint, but that was before I figured out two things.

1. Light sources are important to focus (DUH.)

2. Photoshop is the best program for digital painting. Period. Seriously. Don't whine to me about your Corels or your Paint Shop Pro's. Photoshop is THE painting program.

I haven't posted in this thing in forever because I've been too busy and stressed to just do plain sketches or pictures that won't go in a portfolio, but I hope to get back to that soon. I noted that two of my favorite artists in the whole wide world both have art blogs now. Vera Brosgol the internets own child star(who works over at Laika in my hometown...small world!) and Lissa Treiman http://www.lissabt.blogspot.com (shes going to be famous someday you mark my words)

Over the next few days i'll finally be posting some calandar images. In the meantime...a picture of Death, Evermore and Claudia. yay.

Hey lets go!

2006-09-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

a lil page of totoro sketches. This movie has been one of my very favorites since I was tiny. It was one of those you say inspired you into the profession you are in today.

Big Ole Post

2006-09-05T03:27:00.000-07:00

Character Designs for a comic project about Werewolf Gloves. When asked how she lost that arm the werewolf girl up top tells people it got trapped in a car door and she had to gnaw it off.

Childrens Book sketch. Part of an old African fable about how the Zebra got its stripes.

Random creature sketches.

Big inked image with several different kinds of Irish Fae. I like the Pooka (goat monster) and the hedgehog monster.

So good its SCARY

2006-07-24T00:26:00.000-07:00

Here is a color layout I did for a scene from Felidae's second book Felidae: On The Road
The cult of wild blind sewer cats are amassing here to worship what little light they get in their underground world.

This color layout is from a scene in my comic Portillo: Horse Knight the cottage he is looking at is actually Baba Yaga's fabled chicken hut just before it rears up on its legs.

In cartoon news I saw Monster House and DAMN...

It is in a word fantastic. It's a shining light in the abyssmal land of stagnant popular culture riddled scripts that we see so much of today. The writing was a breath of fresh air there was no band of the week songs, no fart jokes, no obvious product placement or pushed celebrity voice endorsements. And best of all, it was scary. I don't think kids get scared like they used to be when I was a kid. We coddle them with soppy goo goo toons that look pretty but have no heart to them at all. The movie did have some problems with its motion capture process sometimes most notably with its secondary motion. But all is forgiven for its beautiful ending and...morbidly strange twists.
(Fun Fact- Rob Schrab the mind behind comic Scud: The Disposable Assassin was a co-writer on this script. http://www.scud.com/)

Felidae prt 1

2006-07-13T23:36:00.000-07:00

An illustration and two Character designs for two of my favorite books, Felidae and its sequal Felidae: On the Road (written by Akif Pirincci). They books are both out of print and extremely hard to find in english (they were originally printed in German) The first Felidae book was actually made into an animated film in Germany(also hard to find but WELL worth the effort to locate and purchase, its good in every sense of the word.)

In the top illustration Francis the Cat Detective (Felidae's main character and narrator)encounters a GIGANTIC eyeless persian cat named Rhoades. He is part of a cult of blind cats that roam sewers and catacombs rescuing unwanted kittens people try to drown.

The last two images are of Pascal and Bluebeard, cat characters from the first book. The author is always very specific about breed, I think it adds to their character overall and makes it even more fun to design them.

Portillo 06/26/06

2006-06-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

All drawings and character concepts for a comic book I've been working on off and on entitled Portillo-Story of the Horse Knight. I hope it gets somehow magically done and published eventually. The top three designs for the Tax Collectors horse, the Lady in Waiting's horse and the Black Knights horse were all done in flash. Color and all.

06/22/06

2006-06-22T23:35:00.000-07:00

The first design was made for a friend's website idea which has not been created yet. The website will be entitled "ReallyBigHorns. com" I liked the visual so much I created a logo that eventually should be colored and placed on a t-shirt. If you are interested in said shirt tell me about it and I'll pass on the information.
The second image is a page of daily sketches. You have no idea the sheer amount of horses I can doodle in one day. Stick around and I'll prove it. You won't even be able to fathom it. I'm serious. It will scare you a little.
The last image is a painting in its first stages. It was just a daily doodle I liked enough to paint. Eventually I will sell the finished painting as a print. I love drawing animals with gigantic googly eyes going different directions.

06/20/06

2006-06-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

I've fixed it so I have a place to store all my daily sketches and Works in Progress. Sweet
Happy Birthday to me.

The sketches up top led to the second image. In the original version there was a flying squirral chasing him but I cut it out. The idea I was working with was "Cowardly Werewolf"
On the bottom is a logo I did for my good friend and fellow artist Marusia(http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/30506422/). She has been trying to sell prints and custom stuffed animals under the company name "Laughing Manticore" and my version of the mascot is based on her original designs.

06/19/06

2006-06-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

If you have tried clicking on the below images you will probably see a big NO message. I'm sure this is because Jessica got tired of people stealing her bandwith. So i'm just going to purchase my own webspace. That will by my birthday present to me.
I've been piggybacking on her uploading my images to her domain anyway.

Wow what a weird day. So I went to work expecting the worst and lo I did indeed find out there would be no work for me there this week. Sad. There should be work for me next week if this project can just pull itself up on its own two feet. Its a shame i didn't get to start today because from the look of the character libraries so far it should be pretty fun. The film we just finished should be out in a few weeks. It's a short thirty minute childrens film with a moral lesson about not trusting strangers. It's put out by Mills Malls and since we are pretty much done with it I think its safe to post about it.

http://www.muggsysmeadow.com

This is the property but this site is kinda outdated and the work has improved drastically since the shorts were made. We had some really great production team especially our background artist.

In good news I met our studio's new summer intern and was suprised to find it was the exceptionally talented http://beastofoblivion.deviantart.com/
Its a small world after all. Miss Allison is a lovely girl who draws snarling Hellbeasts. (How is that not a funderful combo?)

6/19/06

2006-06-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

This has been a pain. I've tried to post from the server space my friend provides for me on her domain but i think I'm stealing her bandwith in the process so i'll just upload from my comp and hyperlink to the larger picture. That being said, you want to see these bigger? Click on them.

The first of these pic's I really like. It was entitled "Lorry and her family" and centered around a Wooly mammoth who was raised among a herd of prehistoric three toed horses. It was a cute idea for a kids book, Till I went to see Ice age and realized that they are somehow watching me and stealing my ideas. Actually I take that back, I stole mine from Bill Peets " Lambert The Sheepish Lion" so I guess I wasn't being very original to begin with.
The tiger isn't one of my best pen drawings and the feet look horrendous if you stare at them long enough but I bothered to ink it because I liked the shape of his face.

I've been on three weeks leave from the animation studio I work for and I somehow dread to go back. I called Friday to confirm I was indeed coming back today but was suprised to find the investors in the commercial project I was set to work on pulled out at the last minute because on of their supervisors on the project was fired.

That is just my luck.

Needless to say the project is on hiatus until the investors can step back in. The good news i'm told is that they have already put money down and pre-production was just getting started when all this mess happened. Once they put money into something they usually come back to it. That dosen't help me really but its a bit reassuring to know its not totally out of the picture.

6/15/06

2006-06-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

After years of posting my art on Deviantart I have long been watching the online art scene and hungered for my own sketch blog. Believe it or not the only reason that I have waited this long to get the damn thing is because I couldn't think of a good name.

I went through dozens of name ideas but I settled on this one because it kinda of expresses what i'm going for. I like older ideas and sensibilities while using new mediums. Obviously if you are using the internet well enough to find this blog you have an inkling of what the word digital means but if you don't know what Automata is I'll share.

Automata

1.Any toy or decorative item that has movable parts which are usually powered by a clockwork mechanism is known as an automaton.
(This goes back to how much I love penny arcade machines with tiny moving figures like "the drunkards dream" or "the spanish inquisition")

2. Noted in the 3rd century but popluarized with the automated birds in a cage and has now come to mean toys with a clockwork mechanism including japanese wind-up toys and cars. Many copies of these popular toys have now been produced.
(Tons of these exsisted in the victorian age and man are they cool)

3. a self-operating machine

The word also refers to the sci-fi scene of the 1950's. The Automaton was a popular word describing the clunky strangly designed robots that decorated the covers of space comic books and terrorized beautiful blond women in sci fi films. Another reason the word clearly rocks.

So that explained I plan to post here everyday. Hope someone eventually comes to look.