My First Faculty Box

First day of teaching at the Academy of Art University in the city. Great group of students, I can't wait to crush their souls.

25 days...

Sketchbook Dump

Sorry for the lack of posts, guys. I'm knee-deep in animation on Cars 2, which means I don't have a lot of time outside of work to draw. Fortunately, I've found time INSIDE work to do some sketching. Lots of work means long dailies, so I started bringing my sketchbook.

The Chades Challenge (Winter Wolfmen of Westeros) will be posted next Friday. Everyone is welcome to participate. Just send me a link to your blog, and I'll post your art.

Here's the first group of random sketches. Enjoy!

Puff, the magic dragon. Everett and I came up with this b-string X-man. He's still just a student at Xavier's school, and he's a bit of a stoner.

A skrang, from Earth Dawn. This guy was actually sketched at a gaming session a while back. I just figured, while I was at the scanner....

An orc, giving advice to all those animators still at work at midnight.
Dudes freaking out. I wonder if this is a subliminal expression of crunch-time stress. Or maybe I was just hungry.

And, of course, Batman villains. Aside from dinosaurs, Batman villains are probably among my most common default villains. Especially the ugly ones.

29 days...

Dr. Eustace Plebe

My Gamma World character is quickly becoming one of my favorite to draw. He's your run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic genetically engineered prescient super scientist whose best friend is a walking refrigerator. Needless to say, when it came time to do a birthday card for our GM, Ev, it was easy to choose which character would be popping out of the cake:

(Erick plays our robot Artech)

Ev's take on Dr. Plebe and his blobby pal, Grimm:

Last session we ran into some radiation-shooting butterflies, illustrated here by Chris Chua.

Dr. Plebe took one in the taint.

I even started working out some expressions for a model sheet in case I ever need to animate this ugly sucker.

Neutral/Sour

Surprise/Taint Burn

My gaming group, the Dandies, is filled with artists, so we're always churning character and story sketches out. You can check out the Dandies' gaming blog, Dungeons and Shenanigans, for more of our gaming art and geekdom.

"Dungeons and dragons...it's thirty minutes of fun packed into four hours."

-Victor Lane, Dandy

While I'm in total nerd-mode, I should mention that Spawn 200 comes out today. This comic was a huge influence on me as a kid. Aside from my dad and brother, both artists, Todd McFarlane was probably my earliest artistic hero.

I haven't followed Spawn for a while, but I think I'll pick this one up for old time's sake.

48 days...

Re-resolution

My New Year's resolution last year was to learn how to cook. Aside from a botched batch of chili and the occasional lumpy pancake, I didn't get that far. This year, however, I'm all over the kitchen. My girlfriend even invited me to her parents' for New Year's Eve to help them cook up some lobster.

This was our thank you card to her folks, letting them know that our little lobster pals made it safely to crustacean heaven.

If you guys have any recipe recommendations, send 'em in. If I try your dish out, I'll post the results.

50 days...
(remember to always check out the countdown links...this one's particularly good)

A Stroll Through Gamma World

A new year means a new campaign and the Dandies have kicked off 2011 with a romp through the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Gamma World. The game was DM'd by Everett Downing (left), but fueled by Lanesplitter's and Gordon Birsch.

Our pal Dovi gave us all electronic d20s for Christmas. They light up when you roll a natural 20. It's pretty sweet.


The party approaches a criminal outpost.

The best part about gaming with a bunch of artists is that you inevitably come out with some amazing character sketches. Here are a few from our first session:

The enigmatic conspiracy theorist Karnsen, played by Ross Dickenson. Sketch by me.

The gruff gelatinous mutant Grimm, played by Chris Chua. Sketch by Chris.

The genetically-engineered prescient, Dr. Eustace Plebe (aka "Slit"), played by yours truly. Sketch also by yours truly.

The cyrogenic super-computer Artech, played by Erick Tryzelaar. Sketch by Emma Coats.

53 days...

One Dream Studios Interview

A follow-up to the "How to draw Rex" tutorial I posted last week. The interviewer is my highschool friend Vic Jimenez of One Dream Studios, and we talk about the greatest animator of all time, the best animated feature of all time, and how to get into animation if you never made it to college.

Oh, and sorry about the blasphemy at the 1:13 mark, I get a little carried away talking about animation cycles.

53 days...

Happy New Year!

What better way to kickoff 2011 than with a bit of iPadimation? This was doodled on Animation Creator HD, a must-have for anyone with an iPad and a serious animation addiction.

My New Year's resolution is to finish all the projects I started in 2010 (and prior). For me, creation is impossible without inspiration, so I thought I'd share my top ten most inspiring discoveries of 2010. Now some of these aren't necessarily new, but they were new to me, so lay off.

1. Comic Con
2. Scuba-diving
3. Black Swan
4. Flogging Molly
5. Nerd Fighters
6. How to Boil Water
7. The Venture Bros
8. Red Letter Media
9. The Trip
10. The Jeff Lewis 5 Minute Comedy Hour

Honorable Mention: Twitter

55 days...

CHADES CHALLENGE XLII:
CLAUSTROPHOBIC KELPIES

Kelpies are vicious creatures from Celtic mythology who lure children to lakes, drown them, and eat them. They can take the form of horses or beautiful women. Either way, when you try to ride them, their skin becomes adhesive, bonding you to them, and they drag you to your watery demise. You know, that old chestnut.

Little Kimberly discovers why you should never tear the tag off your pillow.

If you have any kelpie designs of your own, let me know and I'll post them below, along with these fantastic artists. Or you can join us January 14th for...

CHADES CHALLENGE XLIII:

WINTER WOLFMEN OF WESTEROS

Storyman extraordinaire Vi-Dieu Nguyen and I usually come up with a random adjective and noun to form these challenges, and it's odd how fitting they are sometimes. For this one, we also added a random location, for which I (being a huge fantasy nerd) chose Westeros. Those of your familiar with George R. R. Martin's fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire, will notice how fitting "winter" and "wolfmen" are with the location "Westeros."

Vi-Dieu Nguyen

Megan Nicole Dong

Zane Yarbrough

Nate Villanueva

My previous countdown was for Gallery Nucleus's Breath of Embers show, which has unfortunately been moved to October 2011. There was only one event as countdown worthy as a gallery of dragon artwork:

58 days...

How to Draw Rex

Sketch for Japanese fan magazine during Toy Story 3 release

I did a little drawing tutorial for my old friend Vic Jimenez a while back. He said I could choose any Pixar character to draw, so I naturally went with the only dinosaur on the roster. You can catch more of Vic's interviews, tutorials, and short films at One Dream Studios.

17 days...

Breath of Embers
I've been invited to contribute to Gallery Nucleus's next show: "Breath of Embers." The theme is dragons and as you've probably gathered from my other blog, I'm a bit of a gaming nerd, so this is right up my alley.

Justin Gerard's take on Smaug from The Hobbit

The Super Big Micro Show will be up at Nucleus till January 4th, so you've got a few days before Micro Rex and his pals go completely extinct. If you're up in the Bay Area, and can't get to the Micro Show, you have till February 11th to see Micro Rex in his full animated glory at the Oakland Airport "Pencil to Pixel" Pixar exhibit. My friend Kristen sent me this pic she snapped flying back in for Christmas.

So did you guys have a good Christmas? Any uniquely awesome presents? Thanks for everyone who voted on the Christmas polls. The official winners are:

Best popular Christmas carol:
"You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch"

Best traditional Christmas carol:
"O Holy Night"

True Meaning of Christmas:
The Birth of Christ

Best "12 Days of Christmas" gift:
Five Gooooooold Riiiiiiiiiiiings!

19 days...