Sky Blue Toga? Really?

(Posting early... )

I must be brief--I have to use my skillz to pay the billz. Actually it doesn't take skillz, just basic arithmetic and a paycheck. But I digress. Calibos from Clash of the Titans:

click below for larger view

Flashback Friday, Again?!? WTF?!?

Let's face it. Lately, I have been S.T. Rugglin. Which means that once again, you get something that i drew and colored years ago, instead of a fresh selection from my drawing board today. I'm going to work hard this weekend to get ahead on my blog posts, because I know the 5.7 people who read this blog rely on me for 19 seconds of diversion, twice a week. I promise there'll be all new stuff next week.

Until then, here's a robot that needs no introduction, but gets one anyways--Optimus Prime, heroic leader of the Autobots:

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Current Mood: Gettin' there
Listening To: The Long Black Veil
Reading: Just finished Kiki Strike Inside The Shadow City (which was awesome)
Watching: She-Ra season one
Playing: Possum
Eating: Nothing, I'm starved right now!
Drinking: Vitamin Water

Award news and Elephant Boy!

Yippee! CGSociety.org gave me 2nd place in their CGPortfolio poll for most popular online gallery on their site :) Thank you CGTalkers!!


Other news, "On the Hunt" received a CGChoice award.


Here's a little commission I did in France for our hosts. One of our fan favorite prints is Whaleboy. Whaleboy was a painting I did for my buddy Patrick Morgan. It's a character he created with Ed Acosta and Taesoo Kim. Many times people would ask for sketches of Whaleboy as different versions... Tigerboy, Plantboy, Fishboy..etc. Here's one of those sketches. Look out Whaleboy! It's Elephant Boy! lol... sorry Patrick. Gotta give the fans what they want :)


Here's some insane links!
Jean Barbaud
Bill Cone

It Takes Guts!

(Posting early... )

If your travels don't bring you within certain specific nerdy circles, today's post will be particularly obscure. Basically, in the early 70's, the large sized GI Joe line gave rise to a toyline in Japan called Henshin Cyborg (in which Henshin means "transformation"). Henshin Cyborg eventually gave rise to Microman, which in turn gave rise to Diaclone, and then Transformers. And in fact, Microman's 3.75" scale figures had probable influence on GI Joe converting to that scale in the 80's, bringing things full circle, but I digress.

Today's post is Dokuro King (dokuro is Japanese for skeleton, incidentally), a villain from Henshin Cyborg:

click above for larger view

I drew this some time ago, shortly after the Skeletor sketch that I used to launch this blog. Back then, my thinking was focused on skull-themed villains rather than He-Man in general, believe it or not. The coloring was something I only got around to recently, and hopefully it is clear that his guts are visible through his transparent purple body, as per the original toy. As is my custom, I have given a bad-ass villain a bat-cape, in the hopes of making him even more bad-ass. hopefully you will find this to be the case. In retrospect, I wish I had deviated from the toy and drawn a skeleton under the King's transparent skin as well.

There will be more skull-themed villains and Henshin Cyborg to come in the future, I assure you--though it might not be soon.


For More on Henshin Cyborg and Dokuro King:

• To see a photo of the original Dokuro King toy, go here and scroll to the bottom. And more general Henshin Cyborg info can be found here.
• And check out Visible Innards for an excellent Henshin Cyborg-centric forum.

Blockhead.

It's surprisingly easy to stay up until all hours of the night, looking at people's crazy Lego creations on the internet.

To help you get started: brothers-brick.com

Online Storyboard Class

Storyboarding with Kris Pearn
Course Description: What is the key to success in visual storytelling? A willingness to collaborate, the flexibility to evolve, and an understanding of the basic rules of cinematography…these three points will be the focus of this course. The best way to learn how to storyboard is by storyboarding, and here you will be provided with focused assignments and opportunities to do just that. With Kris Pearn as your instructor/ virtual pretend director, you will learn in a studio environment and feel what it’s like to send ideas rocketing across the room. We all have stories to tell, and whether you have ambitions to tell these stories in live action, animation, or hard copy mediums, such as comics, this course will help you to develop those muscles of communication so that your ideas will have an opportunity to shine.

Lessons: 9 lessons in 9weeks
Start Date: August 5, 2008
Fees: $998 USD
Pre-Requisites: None.

SIGN UP AT SCHOOLISM.COM

Please leave any comments or questions you have about this course and we will be happy to answer them.

The L-word stands for...

... Luigi! What were you expecting?

click above for larger view

Drawing this one was really simple, and I had a lot of fun coloring it up. With the aid of Jacob's sage color advice, I'm trying some new things.

Thought this would be a good one to post, in light of the recent release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. And if you're keeping track at home, Hammers and I were playing a match that went to sudden death, and I beat him with a headbutt from Luigi. BOO-YEAH!

Online Art Class info and Observational Sketches!

Schoolism Classes Open for Registration:
Digital Painting Techniques with Bobby Chiu. Start date March 25, 2008.
Character Design by Silver. Start date June 3, 2008.
The Art of Caricature with Jason Seiler. Start date April 29, 2008.

Storyboarding with Kris Pearn will open for registration this coming Thursday March 20, 2008. Class starts in August.

Registration for Drawing Fundamentals With Marcelo Vignali - Coming soon.

For more information or to register, click HERE

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And here's some observational sketches I did recently. Most are from the Toronto Subway Sketch Group.

Kei

Flashback Friday!!! (AKA I am a slacker)

Here's an illustration of a fox spirit ronin that I did a number of years ago (2004 to be precise), for a now-defunct art challenge:



On the one hand, posting old artwork makes me a lazy and horrible person. On the other hand, I think this piece holds up pretty decently, and since only a handful of people ever saw this anyways, I thought it was worth sharing. Your mileage may vary.

Tim Burton Painting Demo

Hello everyone. A week or so ago, Ryan Wood and Mark Behm shared their painting process on their blog, so I was inspired to do the same. This is a video showing my process when painting digitally. I painted this using a Split-Complementary Palette, a limited palette yes, but you will see that you can get plenty of colors from such a palette, and the nice thing is that it creates a mood as well as harmony within your painting. Hope you enjoy. The music is The White Stripes, I really like their new album a lot. Many thanks to Thierry and Bobby Chiu at Imaginism Studios for helping me get this video up and running so I can share it with everyone here.

He's Small But He's Scrappy

(Posting a l'il early, cause I'm a l'il tired)

L'il Logan!

My non-l'il version of Wolverine can be seen here, if you care to compare the two.

On the hunt

If all the animals of the world were cute and cuddly, would we still see the act of 'hunting' the same?

This is a piece done for the Calgary Expo art book this April.
I wish I had more time on this one but I like the idea.

Things have been quite busy these past few months... many great and exciting things happening this year.

- Marcelo Vignali will be starting registration for his Schoolism class on Drawing Fundamentals soon.

- Kris Pearn will be starting registration for his Schoolism class on Storyboarding soon as well.

..and did someone say something about vinyl toys?? Coming summer 2008 :)

Very exciting times... and more news to come!

New Designs

Last February 2007 I was hired back at Disney Television animation to redesign the second season of the Replacements, The first season had already be designed and is still showing on the network and I believe the second season will start airing next month some time. The objective for the redesign of second season was not to completely change the main characters so that they weren't recognizable as first season, but to streamline the look of the characters so that there weren't so many angles which made it hard ro animate and of course simplify them more. I have seen a few shows already and must say that they look alot different from first season and I am pretty happy with what we did. Alan Bodner the art director had a hand in changing the backgrounds and color styling of the show as well. Alan and I worked together on Clerks the animated series and Kim possible. he was also the art director on Iron Giant. So as a designer for this show we are given 2 weeks to design an episode, we first get a script and then a breakdown of all the characters that need to be designed. So during the first week I will rough out all the characters the way I want to draw them. once there approved by the director, I will then clean them up on the second week. I prefer to use a Mars graphic 3000 duo brush pen. that is my favorite. it is made by Staedtler. Anyway, here are some of the new designs that will be appearing.

The Die Is Cast

Gary Gygax (creator of Dungeons & Dragons) died this week.

Given my many nerdy ramblings, perhaps it will not surprise you to hear that throughout my teenage years (and beyond), the pursuit of adventure and treasure, via tabletop RPGs, took up a significant amount of my free time.

This one's for you, Gary!

click above for larger view

Memory Sketch

a couple standing in line at the theater that stood out to me.

Horrible Post Title #085367: Fangs For The Memories

You're reading this impossibly dorky blog, and asking yourself, what kind of a person is this enigmatic J.Ho? Well let me tell you something--the other day my boss gave me a Transformers pencil (because it's well known throughout the office that I am a zealot for Transformers), and the first thing I did with that pencil... was sketch a Transformer. I did it, as if compelled by some greater force; as if inaugurating that Transformers pencil appropriately with a drawing of a Transformer was ensuring that all was right throughout the universe--nay, the multiverse. That is the kind of person that I am.

Here's Grotusque, one of the Monsterbots:

click above for larger view

Though I never owned the Grotusque toy, I always thought the character looked cool: (sabre-toothed tiger) + (dragon) = WINNER, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, because I don't own the toy, I have no idea what color it really is--in various photos I found online, the main torso appeared anywhere in the range of magenta, maroon, or burgundy. In the end, I think my colors skewed too close to the magenta end of the spectrum. Oh yeah, there's also no rhyme or reason to the light sources in this pic.

Close-up photos revealed that Grotusque's face was molded with a slight texture--in my mind, this implied fur, so I decided to give my interpretation an organic face.

The wing is cut off because that's where the paper stopped. And on that awkward note, I will end this post.

(Exeunt)