SCBots Tumblr

 After losing the website for our webcomic, SCBots, Josh and I decided to put them on a tumblr. I'm going to post as many of the old comics at a time as I can. I'm also putting some development artwork just for fun! It is good to have them on the web again. I would love to do another webcomic, I love the quick turnaround and fulfillment I got from them. The sense of completion. It will be hard finding writing as good as Josh Stratton's though.

  SCBots!

 And HERE is the link to the RSS feed page.

 Below is an early page of "Guy" sketches. There are more on the tumblr.

New CGMA Term!

In just a couple of weeks I'll be teaching another term for CGMA. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not sure how many more of these I will be teaching, so if you intend to take the class, I'd do it soon. I have a lot to share, and I think it is a real bargain, especially for those that are out of state or out of the country. I'm also finishing up my first year of teaching storyboarding at Calarts...think about it...Calarts tuition is $40,000k+ a year...Don't miss out on this class while it is around. Sign up now! -S

Saturday April 6th

Hey, for anyone interested in getting their Art of Croods book signed by a bunch of artists who worked on the movie, come to Gallery Nucleus on April 6th, this coming Saturday. I'll be there.

The Croods are Coming!

I've been working on The Croods for 4 of the last 5 years. It was the first project I worked on out of college. I was only on it for about a year before I was called over to work on How to Train Your Dragon. Once that began ramping down I moved back to Croods and I've been on it since.

The movie is due out on March 22nd, 2013, and I will be ending a big chapter of my career.

In August of last year, an email went out asking for some fun ideas for posters for an expo of sorts. I gave it a shot and one of my ideas got picked. Whoo-hoo!

Then a couple of months ago the art department asked me to help out with some poses for the teaser poster. It was fun, although I'm not sure how much help I was. The mock-up I was working from was already close to the original product, so it was more of an exploration of poses and composition/arrangement of the animals.

 

 Here's the final product. Can't wait to see the movie.

Friends' Kickstarters

A couple of co-workers are involved in some kickstarter projects, and I want to support them. I've found there are a lot of challenges in raising funds for personal projects. It is never easy to sell your own work and self-promote it, at least, not for me. In any case, Dave Wolter and Anthony Holden are a couple of fellow story artists and they are always busy with something. Dave is raising funds to do another short, how awesome is that? And Anthony is part of a comic anthology which makes me totally jealous, as I've always wanted to be a part of one, but it is hard to organize such an ambitious project. Check them out:

Dave Wolter's

 Anthony Holden's

Super

This is probably a year old. I think I prefer the rough.

CGMA Workshop!

   I was asked by CGMA to do a workshop on story boarding. I decided to call it, "Story is in the Telling."

   As cheesy as it sounds, I really do believe bad story telling can ruin a great story, whereas good story telling can make a mediocre story watchable and even entertaining.

   For the workshop I demo story boarding a short scene with a couple of characters. I created three versions of the same scene, more or less, and also go over some steps for boarding a scene, like: inspiration, preparation, and execution.

   For those who check it out, I hope you enjoy it. 

(below are some of the thumbnails I did in preparation for the demo)

Korra-te Action Poses

Loved watching the first season of Korra. I did these doodles while watching it a few months back. What an amazing show. I often get the urge, while listening to music on the train, to draw characters running, jumping, kicking, punching, and flying.

These are from a while back. Same idea though. I just get the urge to draw generics in action poses.

And if it's not generics, it's Batman or a guy in a space suit, or both of them together.

I wonder what music I was listening to when I drew these depressed chaps.

John the Pirate

Here's a compiled page from Gesture drawing a few weeks ago. I get very antsy at life drawing classes. I often grab a small board and walk around with it, circling the model until I find something that excites me. I prefer using pencil over sharpie, I just hate the sound and texture of sharpie. I'm pretty aggressive with pencil and I draw with a ball point pen most of the time, so I don't really feel the need to use sharpie at life drawing as well. I also approach the drawing differently with each pose, attacking different aspect of the figure that intrigues me most. I look for things I've never seen before like certain shapes, hand positions, expressions, etc. And then, I inevitably run out of steam and become restless after only 20 minutes. I wish I had the energy, excitement, passion and endurance to life draw like I did in high school and early college where I'd draw for 6 hours classes. That wore me out...even until this day.

Rocks

Another quote from Andrew Wyeth: "...there are no rules in my thinking about painting. That's why I hate to teach because my theory is to have no theory at all. I don't think you can be fenced in. I don't particularly like teaching because I have to go through things I have already done. To be a good teacher you have to stick to fundamentals. I've had a good many fundamentals in my life, but I want to go beyond and be experimental and be always eager to look around the next corner. I feel there is such a wide opportunity in what I'm after that it's more a matter of boiling something down to the thing that is closest to me in my heart. And I am not talking about technique, which rather bores me. Technique will take care of itself. I've read reviews that say Wyeth has reached an excellence of technical quality, and for that reason he's just standing still. They're not looking at my work in the right light. Because technique is not what interests me. To me, it is simply a question of whether or not I can find the thing that expresses the way I feel at a particular time about my own life and my own emotions. The only thing that I want to search for is the growth and depth of my emotion toward a given object. In that way I free myself from the bonds of routine technical quality. I don't think one can develop technically in new ways unless one's emotions dictate it. To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me. If I have an emotion, before I die, that's deeper than any emotion that I've ever had, then I will paint a more powerful picture that will have nothing to do with just technique, but will go beyond it." (Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth, pg.30-31)

Batman Index 02

Here are a few more. And yes, they are very much inspired by the amazing, Andrew Schick, but mine are not as good ;)

Batman Index 01

A while back I was doing these little Batman drawings on index cards for my kids to play with. Whatever they wanted me to draw, I drew.

Desert Ghosts con cor

Finally, here are the colored versions of the previously posted sketches. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I am from the desert. I love the desert. I like that there's space out there and you can see for miles and miles. For many it may seem likes there's no life in the desert, but there is.

I used to imagine, while looking outside the backseat window of the car, these types of figures running and jumping over things, like telephone poles, as we sped along.

-S

(oil pastel, kids crayons and pencil)

More Desert Ghosts

Some colored versions of these, coming soon.

I thought this was a neat quote from Andrew Wyeth:

 "To me, pencil drawing is a very emotional, very quick, very abrupt medium. I will work on a tone of a hill and then perhaps I will come to a branch or leaf or whatever and then all of a sudden I'm drawn into the thing penetratingly. I will perhaps put in a terrific black and press down on the pencil so strongly that perhaps the lead will break, in order to emphasize my emotional impact with the object. And to me, that's what a pencil or a pen will do."

 "You must not be afraid of it, though. Pencil is sort of like fencing or shooting. You make a thrust at your opponent yet you must be ready to recover into the on-guard position, and when you thrust you must not think that you will miss the mark. Your opponent may parry, so when you thrust you've got to put your heart and soul into it and then, in a split second, withdraw. This is very much to me like pencil drawing. You've got to dart with a sharp point and hit it. Either you hit it or miss it, but you must have no hesitation."

 "When I'm out walking, searching, observing, I am almost like a sharpshooter when I see something, I put my sights on an object and pull the trigger, so to speak, with my drawing. Sometimes my hand, almost my fingertips begin to shiver and this affects the quality of the lead pencil on the paper. It becomes dark and light, dark and light. The thing begins to move. The drawing begins to pull itself out of the blank piece of paper. You can't concoct that."

 (Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth, 1976, pg. 31)

Desert Spirits

Here are a few quick sketches I did for a show earlier this year. I'll post some more of this later. They were inspired from a road trip I took last October through the desert. I'm also a big fan of Miyazaki.

Comps for Later

Some thumbnails compositions I did on the train this morning. Hopefully I can make time to turn these into bigger pieces, like these.

CGMA Story Class 2

Computer Graphics Master Academy (CGMA) is having me teach again. The first class session went great. We covered as many story topics as I could think of and I think the students and I all learned a lot together. The Q & A time was really fun and extremely productive. We did some exercises/demos using pictionary cards and created beatboards, storyboards, and some gag drawings.


Some of the things we cover in the class:
-Cafe/Quick/Gesture Sketching
-Brainstorming and Coming up with Gags and Story Material
-Movie Structure
-Scene Structure
-Feature Storyboarding Pipeline/Process/Techniques
-Story Portfolios
-And more...

I must say, teaching has been a very fulfilling and rewarding process. I will not forget my students from the last session, they challenged me and I hope I've challenged them to become better story tellers. CGMA is a very professional group, and like I said before, it is an honor to collaborate with them. The website is very organized and allows for easy feedback and critique for the students work.

Basically it works like this:

1 - A one hour video is made available to watch at the beginning of the week for you to watch whenever it is convenient.

2 - At the end of the week you turn in your assignment.

3 - You get a video/written feedback within 48 hours.

4 - Tune in for a one hour Q & A every week at a specific time, or watch it afterwards whenever it is convenient.

The link to the story boarding class can be found HERE. Registration ends in a week, so sign up fast. It is a great opportunity to be exposed to the terminology/vocabulary/process of the industry.

And for those who were able to attend that webinar last weekend, I am in the process of cleaning up the boards. I thought it might be helpful to see the roughs and clean-ups.

For those who missed it, below are the rough designs and thumbnails I created for myself just for this little moment/sequence. I try to give myself the character designs, locations and any prop designs, much like you'd ideally receive when you are given a sequence to board.

Like I said, the story boards are still to come.

zombie spacemen

Just some doodle during a lecture...