Tim's sketches..

It's been awhile since i went to tim's sketching.. nathan and I went this weekend.. they were renovating the place.. which was ok.. Most of the regulars stoped by for a bit.. And we even found out some of thier names..I also threw in my stickie note memory sketch for the week.. it's the same guy that was in ym last memory sketch post.. he came in 2 more times.. but i didn't have the heart to keep drawing him...

Stickie Bears... Day 2..

Here are some of my Stickie render Doodlez from yesterday.. I think Next week I'm gonna go through all the concepts that nathan and I ahve done and Whittle it down to a final model... should be fun.. There are some on this page that I actually like.. Being forced to draw really fast made me make some different design decisions..

Stickie Bears..

Late yesterday afternoon I decided to draw a quick Polar bear sketch each time I had to render a file. to explore some different possibilities for my polar bear character. Some are only a few seconds sketch.. But I found I played with the shapes a bit more when I knew it'd only be a few second throw away sketch.. some of them are definitally throw aways.. I did most of these on stickies.. Hopefully I can keep doing this today as well... Keep exploring the character...

Happy Valentines Day!!

This is the Valentines drawing I did for my wife. with the caption "You've always had my heart."... Not sure if she liked it. =). she replied to me with " I bloody well Love you too." So i think she got the Joking spirit of it ;) I also sent it to some of my staff mates here at the studio. with a more generic crappy caption. enjoy. Hopefully no one will find it offensive. And if you do... well.. sorry...
Happy Valentines day to all!!.

Memory sketches...

So.. We started a little thing at work where we do memory sketches of anyone that comes in that doesn't work at the studio.. We observe them and as they leave do a quick little sketch of them.. Here's 2 from friday. I'm thinking that I'll stick to drawing them on sticky notes.. I'm trying to get everybody to do it.. But right now It's Me, Nathan, and Kyle..

Again with the Bears...

Some more bear concepts... i'm thinking big mouth... really big mouth. I appologize to Chris Sanders for not only directly trying to ripp off is style.. but for doing it badly. with the top page.. they basically look like furry jumba's.. but i like the way he treats his mouth shapes.. so I tried to copy some of that.... But I'm thinking big and smooshy.. with a huge gaping maw.. Somthing that could basically envelop a seal in one move.. The flash sktches in the middle mgiht be the direction i'm going... but i really don't know yet. They're a bit younger looking than i had in mind for the character.. i also like the top left hand one on the bottom page.. just for how simple he looks... still feeling it out and trying different approaches.. I personally think the one with the pompadore in the bottom page is my best bear design ever ;)....

More bears

Here's a page with a sticky note stuck to it of some bear doodles I did yesterday while waiting for renders.. It's a a page in all it's unaltered glory with random heads and arms and everything. I went for a more shapey approach with most of these.... It's weird how stereotypical and cliche some of these designs can get.. A while back I developed a series idea with some friends of mine that had a polar bear in it.. and I'm trying hard not to make this bear resemble that one. Because it's not the same character.... but in some sketches it does.. And I've seen other polar bear and penguin designs (there was a penguin in the series as well) that have looked ridiculously close to the designs we came up with back then. It strange how as artists we can draw very similar conclusions on how to simply describe a form.. Anyway.. Enjoy the page of weird inconsistant bears =)...

It's been one of those days......

You know the kind.... The kind where you want to break all your pencils.. start a nice big fire with all your drawings and paper.. the kind of day where you're are someone in the studio is going to realize you've been faking it all along and will reveal your secret ineptitude to everyone else.. The kinda of day when you wish you made a career choice that relied more on your burgar flippery skills than your drawing ability... I'm not the only one who has these days right??? right? Or am I????

anyway.. Here are some drawings I did that day... yesterday....Of polar bears... they're development for a short that Nathan and I are going to work on. Not very solid drawings.. And many of them were quite frustrating to do.. nothing really close to what I want the character to actually look like.. but it's a start... and a couple of them are a bit too herobear-ish. And I also realized that I drew them all facing the same way... what's up with that.?? Man.. I need to find the groove again.....

Duker Blog!!

Hey!! My friend and awesome character designer Duker (Jean-Sebastian Duclos) finally got his own blog.. Check it out!! He's got some great work. And he's one of the best people I've had the good fortune of working with... So go.. now...

Nathan..

Here's a quick little doodle I did of our resident Disney-maniac Nathan... It's not much of a likness of him.. But it captures his personality..;).. I apologize for the 10 second photoshop color job..

Mall drawings and more...

Here are some mall drawings and a couple of random people sketches I'v done this week.. In there somewhere is a drawing of Kyle happily animating a sc.. such a cheery fellow... it's weird posting new work next to some old work.. You can really see the concious shift in my artistic direction.. I used to be all about making thing look "real". wheter that be through accuracy of likness of rendering techniques or whatever... Mostly because i was pretty bad at stylization. But once I decided that Animation was going to be the path that I wanted to take.. I started to focus more on getting the essence and character of a person across in a sketch. And flow... rather then technical accuracy.. It's still something I struggle with and have constant hit's and misses with as well... I think most of my approach back then was spurred on by an instructor telling me how crappy my face drawings were... So i felt a need to really shape up in that area... It's probably why i still draw many more facial studies than I do full figure ones.. Anyway.. enough babbling for today.. Have a good weekend!!!

More Oldies...

Here's another old drawing i dug out of retirement.. It was done in '97 /'98 when I was In Visual Communications here at Holland College.. Now anyone that knows me knows I'm huge SRV fan.. He's my musical inspiration and opened my ears to the wonderful world of the blues... So when I got a class assignment way back when to design a cd package.. well.. I went with Stevie Ray. This is the illustration i did for the cover of the cd.. I actually did a photo shoot with my strat and a Stevie like hat for the inside cover.. It was a fun project.. and probably one of the few projects durning my time at holland college that actually turned out ok.. Looking back at it now.. there are many things I'd change.. it still works fine in the context of the cd design.. but as a stand alone peice.. it's kinda lacking.. Everytime I look at it I wish that I had just raised the entire image an inch or so to display more of the guitar. and I wish I would have left out the sweaty piece of hair stuck to the side of his face.... But that was me back then... I planned things out.. but sometimes my execution was off. And I tended to rely too much on referance.. hmm.. It'd actually be interesting to tackle the same project now to see how different my approach would be... Anyway.. it's still one of my wife's favorite drawings that I've done... And probably one of my best at capturing SRV's likness.. .

Old Drawings...

Don't have much new to post so I thought I'd post some oldies. A chance for everyone to see how crappy i used to draw... You thought I drew crappy now!! . .. These were done about 6 - 7 years ago.. Before I took animation in college.. I used to do alot of portrait work.. Mostly for family members and for birthday and christmas presents.. I had no money... They're all done with Prismacolor pencil crayons.. and the color adjustments on the scans aren't that great.. That's my fault.. I'm not the photoshop wizard my wife is. I did alot of drawing with prismacolors back then.. before i got comfortable with painter.. Maybe I'll post some of my old painter work.. if i can find it..

The top one is Indiana Jones.. and the next 2 are my old pals Ian and Dale.. they were in my wedding party oohh sooo long ago.. the bottom drawing is Emma.. I thinks she's in grade 2 now... She's the daughter of my other friend that was in my wedding party.. Jeremy.. I know I have a painter portrait of him somewhere.. maybe I'll find it and post it... Have fun ripping these oldies apart!!=).