Improved Sarah from the Labyrinth

Hey there, Labyrinth fans! Thought I was done with those drawings, eh? I talked to my girlfriend Jen and then got to looking at the Sarah drawing and wasn't satisfied by it. I noticed the previous drawing made her look a bit like a snot nosed little kid. She's 15 in the movie, so I wanted a character that reflected the transitional age. I also like in this drawing that the hair is noticeably disheveled by the orb, which was pretty understated in the original. Finally, I wanted to give a hint that the dress is threatening to swallow her up from being so big and puffy.

Thank you Jen for staying up with me to work on this (she was super tired). <3

It's a Crystal, Nothing More.

...but if you turn it this way, it makes two drawings (had to be done). I think I have a pretty strong foundation here with the drawing and the values. Sarah was definitely the hardest to develop into a drawing, partly because I had trouble getting a likeness that was still in my style. Jareth came naturally because David Bowie is always around me, haha.

I'm imaging a melange of pinks, yellows, and navy blues for the color scheme on both. I think the palette will be the unifying element.

Daily Paintings- Giraffe Plush

After being bogged down in my teaching job, I decided to start painting on a daily basis. I made a list of 40 objects around my house with different textures, shapes, and colors. I'm going to try to paint at least 2-3 of these a week. I'm not spending a whole lot of time of them, about an hour for drawing and blocking in color and then an hour for more in depth painting.

Observations on this first painting after my hiatus: I rely on line a lot to define form and I need to kick the habit. I'm pretty good at spotting vibrant colors but have some trouble with subtle variations and more neutral tones. Overall I'm pleased with this two hour painting and look forward to getting better.

Add: these paintings will be done in Photoshop CS4 to begin with, though I'm open to exploring Corel Painter.

This is a Pika.

Last year I watched 'Kung Fu Panda' and found that the sensei, Shifu, was a red panda. Red pandas are relatively rare, but my theory is that this animated film sparked interest in the conservation of the animal. All of a sudden I saw red pandas at zoos and my natural science center. Not a coincidence, in my opinion.

So my idea is to read up on animals that are threatened with extinction and create a cartoon version of them. I found this little guy, a relative of the rabbit, called the Pika. The pika thermo-regulates quite well so he doesn't hibernate in the winter. Pikas live in the Rockies on the highest elevations, necessary because they are so warm internally. Global warming is causing them to seek higher elevations to find the cold. The pika really is the canary in the coal mine that is our environment.

I don't have the clout of Dreamworks Animation, but I do think it's good practice to find an animal, do reference sketches of it (see above), and start the design process. My favorite sketches are the ones that abstract enough so you're left with a few basic shapes. I chose my favorite and gave it the color treatment. This painting took about an hour, maybe a bit more.

I plan on finding new animals and going through this process each week, kind of a break from projects I'm working on.

digital painting 1 hour 30 min

Life Drawings

I draw in a cartoon style, but I don't forget that cartoons are an abstraction. To do abstraction, you have to know the real thing. That's why I regularly draw from life and take reference photos of what I can't draw from memory. My sister and my brother's dog consented to be models. Let me just say that small dogs are very difficult to draw because they don't stay still! He did well, though, and I gave him a treat after.

iPhone Game Concept Renders (someone donate an iPhone to Tim Mitchell)

Been doing some character designs for an untitled game for the iPhone. Since this is primarily a student project and the production staff is quite small, there's no NDA and I can post these sketches. The premise of the game is a dragon teaching children foreign languages. Here are girl designs. I was told to work simple, geometric, and in the style of flat, cut paper animation.


Here are the boy designs, which were actually done first and show me getting my feet wet and experimenting with form more than character types.

Finally, the big draw of the show. A DRAGON!!! See? Even the caps lock function on my computer is impressed. I like drawing dragons, my girlfriend loves dragons, so this was a fun assignment.


Finally, the project director TJ Liedel decided on these versions of the characters. He made a good decision, these look good as a group. I'll be playing around with minor details to unify the characters and create some strong contrast.
Next up: polished version of the characters as a set and then individual character studies (turn-arounds and action poses). Stay tuned, comrades!