So I moved home to Colorado for couple months, and a lot of my friends have been asking what I've been doing with my time.

It's hard to believe how seamlessly that green lego platform merges with nature.

And isn't it amazing how the woodchips look just like Sherwood Forest?

Incidentally, if you dig legos you should check out this guy. He's got some neat stuff. Oh, and he happens to have been a supervising animator on two of the best animated films ever made, Wall-E and The Incredibles.

Hooray Robots!

This is a birthday card I did for my friend Greg. He likes the Simpsons. And the color orange.

I recently came across some photos of live caricatures I did while working at Six Flags this summer:

As soon as I finish this post I'm heading over to CalArts to drop off my portfolio for the character animation program there. Here's everything I'm including:

Merry Christmas y'all!

I got to paint Santa on a window last week and it was awesome!
I'll bet you didn't know Santa sometimes rides an aerobic exercise machine and drinks tasty smoothies! Well he does. Here's some process:
Incidentally, the owners of this establishment are good friends of mine and if you live in the SCV (what what) you should check 'em out in Old Town Newhall.
They've got maniac exercise equipment and tasty/healthy smoothies and teas. (I can personally vouch for the bananna split smoothie and raspberry tea, respectively: DE-lish!)

vo2nutrition.com

Some pictures from a
top secret project I'm working
on with some friends:

pictured:
greg smith
alden underhill
mike butler
austin underhill

more to come...

I recently had a chance to do some logo design for a good friend. Here's a basic premise for his company, "Crushed Butterfly:"

Crush an iridescent butterfly wing, and you will see a shocking blue colour turn into a dull and muddly mess. This is because iridescence, such as is found on the wing of a Morpho butterfly, relies on a finely-tuned, multi-layered physical structure to produce its otherwise impossible colours.

Crushed Butterfly operates on the belief that, similarily, hidden in the visuality of everyday things, is a physical infrastructure that can give new dimension to common ideas; a language that relies more on architecture than memory to achieve communication. Our aim is to produce graphics with 'structural colour', graphics that, like the wing of the Morpho butterfly, make intelligent use of space and structure to brilliant effect.

It's a pretty intriguing idea, and I'm looking forward to see how its implemented!

Doodle-doo Doodle-doodle-doo Doodle-doodle-doo Doodle Doo Doo Doodle-Doodle-Doo (The Office theme song)





I heart The Office.

A while back I said I'd post some process images from the Animalympics, so here's a step-by-step overview of the Falcon Sprinter.

The falcon was unique because i didn't use any reference for the body. All the bodies and poses on the sprinters, the bulldog, and the warthog were from imagination. I still used extensive photo reference on the heads and coloring. The other animals were taken from actual photos and videos of ahtletes from various books and the internet (Go YouTube "Hammer Throw" if you've never seen one before! It's bannanas!)



Steps 1-4 were the exploratory stages. I draw looser and smaller in this stage (2-3 inches) to get a better feel for the overall visual impact. At this point, I'm mainly thinking about shapes, proportions, and what I want to emphasize. He started out very muscular but after watching some of the Olympic sprints I knew he neeed to be elongated. By the last drawing I feel like I have a good feeling for the relation of the shapes and some level of appeal. It's now time to work full size:



Step 5 is my first light pass, I'm thinking about making the angle of the line of the shoulders oppose the hips to create visual interest. While I like the drawing, it's a bit too Cheeks, so I lightbox another drawing over top of it (Step 6) that feels more organic, and more alive. At this point I move to a blue Col-Erase pencil.

After flipping this drawing over on the lightbox to see my mistakes in construction and perspective, I find a different pose that I like a little better. Feels more kinetic, as if he's mid-stride. (Step 7) Step 8 cleans up and ties down the anatomy from Step 7, and Step 9 is the final cleanup, emphasizing clean, dark lines, and enclosed spaces to make the coloring process easier.



Step 10 - Adjust levels to turn the blue lead to a solid black line
Step 11 - Flat colors to give me a base to work off of
Step 12 - Rendering the basic forms, giving a sense of volume and solidity
Step 13 - Adding incidentals like feather markings and sunglass tints.

(Color decisions influenced by photo reference at far right)

Romans 1:16 "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."

These are from the project I spent most of October on, a "Gospel Walkthrough" at my church. We built a large structure that kids could walk through consisting of six separate rooms, each one telling part of the story of the Gospel.

It was a great project to work on for a couple reasons. One, I got a chance to try my hand at environmental design and work on my compositional skills. And two, as a Christian, any chance I have to explicitly glorify God with my art is great.

These were drawn in pencil, colored in photoshop, and then printed as 8' by 15' canvas murals for four of the rooms.

The Garden of Eden: (God created us and wants a relationship with us)


The Fall of Man: (But man sinned and as a result our relationship with God was damaged)



The Person of Jesus: (In His love, God sent His Son Jesus to pay the price for our mistakes)


The Promise: (We are promised eternal life with Jesus when we believe in Him as our Savior) (Turns out heaven is eerily similar to the Lion King. You try drawing heaven! :) )


It's a very simplified version of a message that has had profound impact on me as an artist and a human being, and to try to communicate some small part of that profundity in drawings was an incredible challenge.

Animalympic Championship Results!


Final results are in!

And to those who accused me of rigging the contest by inserting the bulldog at the last second, I plead the fifth. Look, I just post stuff and let the people vote. The fact that the bulldog is my own personal favorite had nothing to do with it. At all. Yes, really.

Thanks to everyone who voted, and my apologies for taking so long for this post. I've got five blog posts lined up and ready to post in the near future to make up for my recent neglect. Thanks again for visiting and for everyone who stopped by and voted! I had a lot of fun with the project and hopefully you did too!

Here it is! The final voting event of the Animalympics!
The Cheetah made a big enough deal about the unfairness of a two to one fight to the Committee and as a result was allowed to choose a partner for the final round. And change his costume color. Just for fun. His back up muscle may look familiar.