Wow

The new Death Cab video is INCREDIBLE. I was awestruck, the character design is simple and childish, but this animation is just blowing my mind. So, very, very, very well done. And the themes in the video are so strongly communicated through the animation, whoever did this will probably be around for awhile. Hot damn.

Grapevine Fires

Obama's Congress Address

If anybody caught the Obama address last night, it was terrific. It is such a relief to have somebody in charge who understands the importance of innovation and creative thinking, especially energy independence and the need for a new mass transit system in this country.

If any of you have read Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded," Friedman makes the case that America needs to lead the energy revolution, and Obama is fully on board. If you haven't watched the address last night, please take a moment (or an hour) to look at what's ahead in the near future for not only we creative thinkers, but for the world.

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Sketchbook Scan

Here are some scans from my sketchbook last semester, I just crammed them onto one image.

New Illustration

For my 'Layouts & Rendering' Class, we had to design a children's storybook cover, which featured us as a kid that also featured something we were into as kids. This was a no-brainer, it was either something with UFO's, the Loch Ness Monster, Dinosaurs or space. My Loch Ness monster idea progressed to my "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' idea, which led me to just draw cartoony ginat squids. The 'Nautilus' was replaced with a generic sub and since my pose had 'legs that were too long for a 13 year old,' i had my 13 year old brother pose. I'm not completely content with this, I'm not used to rendering anything to hell, but I figured I'd just go with it since I already put the time in. Anyways, here it is, for now. "Jimmy & the Uncharted Sea."


And a closer view.



Also, for some reason, this version is extremely saturated and doesn't show the texture I wasted so much time on, but oh well. I approached this project with a few parameters: not too much detail, don't digital paint, use lots of vector shading, etc., and I stayed within them pretty well. The original drawing was on 24x30" paper, and the Photoshop file is 1.9 GB because I'm a layer whore. Anyways, this is going into our CIA Illustration show in a few days, so it'll be printed massive, hopefully not to the extent where I will notice all of the flaws.

It really reminded me of Flintstones era Hanna Barbara, the amount of texture incorporated into the backgrounds was just great.

Illustration Stuff

I will be posting some of my "finished" works as well as a few from sketchbook pages, both of which I never really show anybody, so to everyone (if there are any of you) reading, you're in for a treat.

I'll be preparing for the CIA Illustration Spring Show by revising work that I think is total trash and color correcting work that is "alright." In addition, I'll be preparing pencil layouts this week for a Faber Castell children's coloring book (not as lame as it sounds) that will really test how childish I can draw. Seriously, I need to figure out how to draw farm animals that 5 year olds would be really into in the next 2 days or this job could go to someone else who already draws like a child. Wish me luck, I'm in over my head with work this week, and it doesn't look like it'll be slowing down anytime soon.