Story: Hit it, Ladies!

So I've been working diligently on my latest endeavor, a comic book of my own tentatively titled "Story". It's sort of a "what if" story, as in "what if all of the most notorious Fairy Tale villains were forced to combine their nefarious powers in order to defeat someone with GREATER EVIL POWERS than their individual ones?" So far it has been a great exercise. There are moments where I fall into traps about how I want to tell the story/relying on storytelling devices that I'm comfortable with, but I am really trying to push myself and hopefully it will continue to grow.

Over the weekend, I was able to finally finish putting the four main lady baddies together, and I decided I really liked what I saw. So, here they are:

The Sea Witch: Calliope

She's sort of the main...I don't know if you can label her a "protagonist"...but she is. Calliope is a woman bent on revenge, and she has the know how and the means to do it. The dagger that she carries in a symbol of her past and what she wants to use to finally exact her vengance. Also, she has aqua hair. Which is fun.

The Forgotten Fairy: Vivianne

Beautiful and shy. I hesitate to call her a "Fairy" because of all the glitter/sparkle connotations (which I love, but are not appropriate for her character). She was the 13th Fairy in the tale of "The Sleeping Beauty" that wasn't invited. But was she simply neglected because of a lack of table dressing, or was there something more sinister in the snub? She has Nature/Season based powers, which should be fun to play with/draw.

The Candy Witch: Hexe BonBon

She's often a neglected villain, but the witch from "Hansel and Gretel" was a cannibal in an house made entirely out of sweets. What's not to love? Her name sounds like a drag queen, which is also something to love. Hexe loves being who she is, isn't afraid to go after what she wants. She runs a circus, which she uses to lure more children to her in order to feast upon. She likes them with lots of chocolate sauce.


The Wicked Queen: Marie Adele

I imagine Marie growing up as a princess getting everything she wanted but was never able to make any important connections with humans. The Magic Mirror she has is actually inhabited by the spirit of her deceased mother, a powerful sorceress in her own right. I view their relationship as Toddlers and Tiaras gone horribly, horribly wrong with murder thrown into the mix. The shoes/boots are the metal shoes that were heated and placed upon her feet at the end of the original story. So, part cyborg?





And there you have it. I still need to draw the dashing hero of the story Blue who is in charge of making sure that these ladies don't kill each other. Excited!

Bang: Winter Sign (I'm Back!)

Hello! So, been a while. But, I've firmly decided that I want to make Illustration/Design more a part of my life. I'm going to keep more up to date with my blog as a way to track my progress and keep my art in one place until I have a proper website. Anywho, enough resolution, onto drawings!




So, I was fiddling around in Illustrator and figured out a way to ink that I actually really like. I feel that it's the way I've always wanted to draw, but never could cause I sucked with a tablet and my inking in PS always looked...wonky? Here's a detail:



This drawing was for a large 4'x6' sign for the stores that we manage. The only down side to the inking is that in Illustrator, since the sizing for the brushes is relative, I have to make sure that I create the inked art in the size for printout. I'm sure there's a way to do this in scale, I just haven't figured it out yet. Also, I didn't notice that the girl in the picture looks like Hermione Gragner, but now that I see it I can't unsee it. Enjoy.

Art Dump! I've decided I don't like that term...

Hola!

It's been a while! But I have some things to post:




This is a poster I did for Pembroke Hill's upcoming Prom. Their theme was "A Touch of Class". They wanted "elegant" and "classy", lots of atmosphere. I wanted to make sure it still looked young, so I went with this graphic treatment of a chandelier. I thought it talked about the venue of the Prom and the overall tone of the evening, but the color treatment I felt was still young.







Posters for Sinag-Tala's upcoming concert "Alamat: A Dance Journey into Philippine Foklore". That's a lot to type! I did have fun making these. If I've uploaded these before, these now have all the logos we were supposed to have on the posters in the first place (whoops...)...and the colors are a little more adjusted. Overall, I like how they came out and I'm glad we went with an illustrative approach since we always tend to go with a photographic approach.

Mermaid again...

EEE! Did some work on it...

I like the way the shading/blocking came out...still working on the background...
process is a little different for me since I'm not exclusively using Illustrator. There's
some things that I do miss but some things that I actually really like. Hopefully I can
experiment some more.

Pigs, and Mermaids, and Cakes, oh my!

Latest page from "Fastest Pig in China". A little trickier than most. Lots of going back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop. Liking where it's going. I'm hesitating on doing the screentone for some reason. So far, I've liked how the grey tones have been coming out, but I'm still trying to find a balance between all of the pages and how I use it.



I thought this just turned out really cute and it makes me want to design my own cake! I've been helping Tita Inday with her upcoming 25th wedding anniversary...and here's her cake! Well, it probably won't end up looking like this...Tita Inday and my Mom probably won't go for the red and purple tiers, but I think it gives a cute, modern twist to the cake without losing the classiness. That's their monogram in the upper left...I think that my dream job is branding weddings...



And lastly...my little pet project. I've had this sketch in mind for about a year now (in fact I've lost the original...I tried to recreate it as best as I can). It's my little tribute to the now closed on Broadway but starting a national tour "The Little Mermaid: A New Musical" musical...dorky dorky dork! This picture is sort of a spoiler alert, but Ariel's sisters (who were all women from different cultural backgrounds, which I wholeheartedly applaud) play a beautiful role in her final transformation from mermaid to human which was so beautiful it deserved some fanart...right now I'm doing color palette...I'll probably desaturate some of the colors, and keep Ariel in focus. I'm trying a lot of different techniques (for me at least) in this one, so I hope it turns into something interesting.

Fastest Pig II: Door and meeting continued!

I checked with Randi and this is still okay to do! So I'm going to do it...It's more of a chronology thing for me at this point and I like it that people can see what I'm up to : )

So. These two pages have taken the LONGEST time. I think it's because of all the screentone that I'm dealing with, even though it's fake screentone. That being said, I do like the way the pages turned out. I still need to add the one speech bubble that is going to be on these two pages. I can't wait to just crank out the rest, even though the next few pages after this sequence may be the hardest ones yet. Yergh.

Fastest Pig II: Door again...and new page!

Working on the climax still...

Here's more of the door and here's the next page where Jimmy and the Monkey King face each other FOR THE FIRST TIME BUM BUM BUUUUUUM!

Yeah, I need to bust my buns on this one...I do like how the door works and the way the vines work. I think I'm just not looking forward to drawing all of the backgrounds that the page with the door is going to need.

Woot...

Fastest Pig II: Big scary door!

So, still going at it...

In the text, while they're in China, Jimmy storms away from the village after he sees that his cousin, Tiande (who needs to make an appearance on this blog!) and Grace are getting a little too close. Jimmy truly is the jealous type. So he goes into the mountains and stumbles upon this huge boulder with all these "do not enter" signs on it and he goes ahead and enters anyway...he comes upon the Monkey king and they have a very fun baseball-themed battle (which hopefully will look cool...the panels so far are kind of meh...).

Instead of boulder, I thought of this idea that it could be a huge door carved out of the rock face that, over the centuries, the villagers have come and adorned because they recognize that this space is very special. They call it "Monkey King Rock" (at least the grandma's sister does) so I'm sure that the villagers are aware of it and would want to honor it...

Maybe I just wanted to have cool dragons in the panel, but I thought the door would be kind of a cool and visually interesting twist...I have noooo idea how Randi will react to it, or if Bill won't like it but I hope they do. If not, I'll do the boulder and hopefully it'll turn out cool.

This is just a small .png file so quality probs won't be that great, but enjoy anyway!

Fastest Pig II: 5 to 6

Still playing with grey tones...
I figured out how to do screentones today
on Photoshop and it is so ridiculously easy,
and that's probably where it can go wrong.

Fastest Pig II: 11 to 12 and grey tones!

I need to figure out how to do screentones...but for real...

Fastest Pig II: Type test!

Check out the fail!

I tried with the type...I really did!
It's a little clunky, but hopefully it
sort of looks like I know what to do
with type...

This is a spread from "The Fastest Pig
in China" the Manga I'm working on
for the Center for East Asian Studies.
Time's running out! I need to get a move
on...blergh!

Blood Knight

Blood Knight // 12.03.08

ANIMATION STEALS MY SOUL! AND SO WILL THIS BLOODKNIGHT

WIP...

BAH! FIRE WHEEL!

Fire Wheel // 11.17.08

I haven't posted anything in forever! Hope this works, I've never
posted a movie before...





still chugging away at animation, but I got this done today. I really need to
work on tweaking it, but I think that it'll turn out ok...BAH! 3 WEEKS LEFT!

Oh. Concept wise, this is an idea for my manga, "Queen, Please". I think the
title sums it up. Magical girl series...blah blah blah my needs. It should be fun.
I need to finish the transformation sequence. I'll put it up when I'm done.

Simón Sedillo Revision

Simón Sedillo Revision // 10.06.08


Hopefully they like this one...just had a few more text edits.

Simón Sedillo poster

Simón Sedillo // 10.05.08



Something that's still a work in progress for this film thing at
KU...yeah...



They MADE me add more text! I swear!

America, F*** YEAH!

America, F*** YEAH! // 07.04.08

Why Wonder Woman? Why not.

It's the fourth, and I wanted something patriotic. But, I didn't want to do Captain America, since I like Wonder Woman better. Big surprise, huh?

I really like that this came together how I saw it in my head. I know that a lot of the US doesn't look like this anymore, but just call it a symptom of my growing up in the Midwest and my love of having Hollywood tell me what the Midwest is supposed to look like. This was fun. I wonder what I'm going to do tomorrow.

I promise I'm not being lazy...

I promise I'm not being lazy...I had a sketch explosion yesterday and didn't actually finish the finished one for today...If I can get it done before 2:00am then I'll publish it, but if not I'll just publish two tomorrow.

These were just some quick sketches from yesterday. I have some from my sketchbook too and I might upload those later. The first is Princess Tiana from Disney's upcoming The Princess and the Frog. Just wanted to try my hand at her, although final character art hasn't really come out for her yet.

The second is another story idea I'm working on. This is Guinevere. Just trying some costume things. I think I need a new tip for my tablet because the lines are coming out all wonky.


Lots of princess stuff right now. Yes, I know I'm obsessed and I really do want to move on. When John Hendrix was here a while ago, he said to try and distance myself away from drawing in that obviously recognizable manga/disney style (which then leads to the question, um, then what do I do?) because animation companies aren't interested if you can draw in their style but if you can think and "draw the walls out" or just be pretty damn good.

While I want to push my own visual vocabulary,Tanya, my wonderful painting teacher, says that the only way to get through obsession is to work through it. It works with relationships, it will certainly work for Disney princesses. The big eyes and pinched waists are staying, for now, but I'm really going to try for some inanimate objects and backgrounds. And how bout some male characters huh? (I don't think yesterday's counts).

True(r) Love

True(r) Love // 07.02.08

I just looked at the date...OMFG IT'S JULY!

So, another in this "Love" series thing. Credit to Omer for this idea. It's genius. For those who don't get my vague mythology reference, it's Narcissus and the Tin Man. A little guy-on-guy nymph action. He's so shiny O_O I think that's why I like it hehe. Again, trying to do more with background, so BEHOLD GRASS!

True Love

True Love // 07.01.08

Love is blind.

Also, love is corny. Even if it is true, has love just become cliche, even when its sincere? But, regardless, corny is better than nothing. I was a little stuck on new ideas, but I like this idea of couples that just make it work despite their differences. This was going to be a line drawing, but I do like the colored version. I should play with textures next time.