Ute Lore

Last year, my friend Jesse Draper and I received a grant from Brigham Young University to create a concept art exhibit based on the legends of the Ute tribe of Native Americans. The Ute lived here in Provo, Utah before the pioneers founded our city. We co-exhibited with Japanese American artist Shu Yamamoto, who does hilarious and thought provoking reproductions of paintings in Western art history with all the characters replaced by cats (Shu's site).

A newspaper article about the show by Provo's Daily Universe can be found here:
Article


Below are some of the images I contributed to the show, along with some shots from the reception. You should really check out Jesse's work as well—he's an AMAZING painter and sculptor. His portfolio can be found at: http://jessedraper.daportfolio.com

With Jesse and Shu at the premiere

Thank you again to all who made the premier and reception a success! If you didn't get the chance to attend, the show will be open until April 24th at the Utah County Health and Justice Building in  Provo. For directions, click here. To see more upcoming shows from the Utah County Arts Council click here.

Ceratosaurus

Howdy all, long time no post! I've been MIA largely due to my semester-long BFA final show scramble about which I will be posting soon. In the mean time, here's a dinosaur!

Ute Tribe Legends: Horned Snake

Created in ZBrush and Photoshop

First creature for the Ute Tribal Legends project! The Ute (former inhabitants of Provo) claim that a giant horned snake lives nearby in the mountains. He has poisonous breath and took five hunters to kill. I imagine him at 80 ft long, with a head as big as a Smart Car :)

Stan Winston Dinosaur Art Contest

Tanystropheus

This was a piece for a young dinosaur scientist friend of mine, and it is with his permission I post it here :)  It's amazing how much kids know about current paleontology research. They come into the museum all the time and tell me about new facts and discoveries I've never heard of before.

The animal pictured here is Tanystropheus, a semi-aquatic marine reptile from the Middle Triassic Period.  Of his total 20 foot length, 10 feet were neck.  He was primarily piscivouros, which is to say, he ate a lot of fish (i guess "fishivore" didn't sound sophisticated enough for zoologists).

Some things to work on (Monster of the Week)

I was watching a video about fundamentals by Feng Zhu tonight and was inspired to "brush up" lol.  It's amazing how no matter how long you draw, how long you paint, or how many miles your pencil odometer reads, the basics can always improve.  Lighting, perspective, gesture, color— as much as they seem like elementary principles, they are infinitely deep.

This was a quick sketch from last night that ended up looking not unlike a "Venusaur" from Pokemon lol, though that was not the conscious intent.  I learned a couple of things while working on it, simple concepts, but to me that's what makes them important.  The first thought (echoing advice given me by Justin Kunz recently) was that I need to focus on stroke control.  The second thought had to do with light.  I didn't use a spheretest on this one, and as a result wrangled for a while with my values.  They still have issues.  The thought occurred to me though, that the value patterns on a given isolated object are the sum of their lambert shading (spheretest-based lighting) and occlusion. Basically, in most situations everything lights as simply as a sphere, plus extra dark spots for the crevices.

And that was boring.  Here's an awesome:

Electric Eel Powers Christmas Tree

"Paris: City of Love and Mutant Catfish"* aka "The South Beached Diet"?

AKA also Monster of the Week :}

      So I was driving on Friday listening to NPR and heard a story that caught my curiosity.  Apparently, a species catfish translpanted to France from Eastern Europe in the 1980s has recently developed some rather radical feeding behaviors.  In their native environment, catfish are quiet, nocturnal, bottom feeders.  In the last 30 years, hower, their behavior has changed— they've started beaching themselves to attack pigeons in broad daylight.  Check out the video:

Wow, be careful where you walk your dog! The idea that these fish are changing so quickly intrigued me.  If their behavior could change so completely in 30 years, what will they look like in 30 million?  So I decided to do some doodles.  One of my favorite sketch games is "Projected Evolution"– basically, you take a creature and guess what it will turn into in umpteen million years.  A great example of this is the gorilla bats in the BBC's Primeval.  They project that some time in the distant future, bats will evolve into a ground-based superpredator that still operates by echo-location.  

Here's one way to play this sketch-game yourself–  you can take 2 very different animals and say "in 30 million years, elephants and rhino beetles will switch ecological niches."  Read up on what they eat, any particular behaviors they have, and look at pictures to learn what is unique about their anatomy and how it helps them survive. Then, as you draw, you start with the elephant's current design and ask yourself questions about what anatomical changes would need to be made for it to function as a matchbox-sized organism.  For one thing, elephants have evolved to have sparser hair than most mammals, as they easily maintain heat by virtue of their enormous bodies (partial mass homeothermy for you nerds).  If an elephant were to shrink, it would need more hair, as it would have much less mass to maintain heat.  Rhinoceros beetles are insects, which means the materials and structures in their bodies will only carry so much weight,  Even in prehistoric times, land based arthropods would max out at 2.5 feet (and those were scorpions, not insects).  What needs to be changed in the Rhinoceros beetle's body if it's going to be 13 feet tall and support 7 tons of weight?  What changes in the shapes of its legs will the elephant need to burrow and scurry? These are the kinds of questions that will lead you to new, creative solutions and fun creature designs.

Projected Evolution Doodles

The image above started as a 4AM flashlight doodle, which I played with more the next day.  I projected that the Catfishes' beaching behavior and desire for land-based food would lead it further and further on to land, paralleling the way amphibians developed in the Devonian period.  Its ray fins would become sturdier and stubbier to pull it along like a crocodile for excursions of increasing duration.  In the doodle at top left I evolved the catfish into an entirely land-based predator, but kept his fin because I thought it looked cool (which is allowed lol).  Obviously these aren't to be taken as serious scientific projections, but it's a fun exercise in creature design.

Listen to the aforementioned radio segment at TheWorld.org:

http://www.theworld.org/2012/12/pigeon-hunting-catfish/

See the never-mentioned cool spikily catfish picture:

http://www.aqua-fish.net/imgs/articles2/bristlenose-catfish-4.png

Watch as catfish tries to beat the unmentionable Dennis Rodman's NBA rebound record:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/catchfish.asp

*Technically not paris, but the Tarn River in Southwestern France.  It made a better title Q:{)   (a frenchman with a berret.  Or a coonskin cap).

Proof of Concept

Huzzah for my first ever full body full color zsculpt!  He's a Camptosaurus dispar, one of the major land herbivores of the late Jurassic period.  We're looking at incorparating some 3d into some of the exhibits at the BYU Museum of Paleontology, and this is kind of a proof of concept :)  Below is the Camptosaurus I used for reference, which is on display near the main entrance.

PS— Time lapse video!

A time-lapse video of the sculpt.  My apologies, I forgot to press record at the last part, so it kind of jumps from 3/4-done to all-done.  With regards to the music—  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFhGzwSN_aQ. Oh. yeah.

Sketch Prompt

This one was a sketch prompt from a fellow student: "Disoriented Ocean Kangaroo of the Wasteland"


Those were a difficult few concepts to combine, but eventually I decided that 26 million years in the future kangaroos have evolved to be the dominant sentient life forms on earth,as well as becoming semi-aquatic. They can hold their breath for extended periods of time and grasp things with their baseball glove-like tail/fin (an adapted  "heterocercal" tail fin, which is a new word i learned the other day!). Far more technologically advanced than our society, they build futuristic atlantean cities in the deep. As for "disoriented", i put a GPS in his hands. My Dad's GPS always does a good job of disorienting him :)

Monster of the Week Nov 28 2012: Tapioca Golem

 Lol I was inspired this week upon review of one of my favorite childhood TV shows to try something new.  It struck me that the Power Rangers had fought a brand new villainous monster every week since I was 5– and I was curious if a list had ever been compiled.  It turns out that a certain self-sacrificing, saintly geek has been laboring for years, like a limner monk in a monastery, to compile a complete Power Rangers bestiary.  The resulting tome can be found HERE.  It turns out that in 19 American seasons (ie not including the Japanese show, which dates back to 1975) the effects artists on the Power Rangers shows have designed and fabricated 1026 separate monsters. Mind. Blown.

I thought about all the monsters in my sketchbook that never see the light of day, and how some of the earliest ones I ever drew were inspired by the Power Rangers'   "Monster of the Week" formula.  So here's one from this week :)

This first monster, true to Saban camp form, is based on my culinary arch nemesis: Tapioca pudding.  I always had my suspicions about tapioca; though I am not a picky eater I could never manage to stomach more than a few spoonfuls.  Maybe it's the texture, maybe some long forgotten traumatic childhood experience, or perhaps it's the uncanny resemblance tapioca has to this guy from the aforementioned show.  However, tonight after scanning the drawing I looked up tapioca on Wikipedia out of curiosity and felt justified.  Did you know the Tapioca plant is a natural source of cyanide?   Lol it's perfectly safe for human consumption, but I bet my 8-year old-self would have taken that bit of trivia and run with it.

Dinosaur Spelling Bee

A flyer I made to for the BYU Museum of Paleontology, for a promotional event I'm helping to coordinate.  If you're in the Provo area, come join us!

More Gorilllas!

More work for the Oz concept, redone from (link) to better convey Nikko's character.  Sam gave me some more notes on this one, which hopefully I will apply soon

Color Study: Nikko's Anguish

A redesign of the flying monkies from the wizard of Oz, incorporating some of their oft-forgotten backstory.  I kind of like it, maybe I'll come back and finish it eventually, but for now i'm leaving it rough

Cabbage Creature

1/2 man, 1/2 lizard, 1/2 fish, 1/2 cabbage–  a creature so beastly, it defies the laws of fractions!  This one was kind of stream of consciousness lol :)

It's October, and I think I may have monsters on the brain . . . hold on to your poppin'-corns, this may not be the end ;)

"Reality not Included" Illustration– Cowboy Centaur

Lol this one started as a doodle in class from a few months ago, I kind of liked it so I scanned it but never got around to posting.  I came across the scan of the pen drawing this last week and decided to paint it up :)

Along with the short comic I've been working on, this will be my contribution to the BYU comic compilation project "Reality Not Included".  Basically, students from the animation and illustration departments are coming together to make a rad art book to take to a big entertainment industry networking even later this year :)  We can use all the support we can get!  Our basic publishing appears to be covered at this point, but we can still use help.  If you're interested, we are still taking pledges up through October 13th at:

Our Kickstarter Page

Even if it's just a dollar or two, every little bit counts.  And there are great pledge incentives, from copies of the book to original art! check them out on the right side of the page :)

Hammerhead alien sculpt

A quick zbrush sculpt from this afternoon :)

The Prospector

This one was kind of stream of consciousness lol, but fun.  And fun. :)

The basic thought is that he's looking for a rare mineral inside of an asteroid honeycombed with tunnels.  He's a member a hardy alien race with an uncanny ability to discern the properties of substances by touch– hence making them very good miners, prospectors, and chemists.  They spend a lot of time underground, and have developed both biologically and technologically to a subterranean environment.  While not unintelligent, the enlarged forehead is not brain mass, it is primarily bone– a thick pad that acts as a shock absorber in the event of a cave-in.

Because he works in space, there is very little gravity or heat.  Still, he needs physical contact with the rock in order to do his work.  Instead of a traditional space suit,  he wears on his back a localized gravitational unit.  The pack houses a very small and specially shaped piece of neutron star to lock atmosphere and heat close to his body when he leaves his ship.  As gravitational force exerted on objects closest to the source increases exponentially, and the core of the apparatus is located next to his lower back, the pack must also act as a protective brace. It uses physical support and advanced counter-gravity technology to prevent the gravitational force from causing strain or injury.

Rhino Bug

Today's speedpaint for Conceptart.org's daily sketch group.  The prompt was "Emerging from the rainforest haze and heat . . . a giant beast."

This one started out as a giant rhinoceros/ rollie pollie creature, but I ended up pulling in some ideas I got at a museum the other day from a South African Porcupine.  They have these crazy striped quills that I find rather beautiful. I think there's some Jurassic Park influence in there as well lol :)

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day all! Man, we live in a great place :) If you didn't today, I'd invite you to take your next chance to go outside, even for a few minutes, and take some time to soak in the sights, sounds, and smells of the wonderful world we've been given.  And if you can manage it, it's even more fun with a camera or a sketchbook :)

I celebrated by going out this afternoon and oil painting some nature in nature, aka "e plein air" for you sophisticates.   Actually, I painted from a parking lot, but.  It was fun :)  The painting is done, but will wait for a future post

This picture is unrelated, just a doodle from church today that was kind of fun.  It's of the tortoise and the hare.  And they say I don't pay attention! ;)

Mud

A couple of mudbox sculpts, George Washington and an alien.  No relation whatsoever ha . . . or is there . . . I'll leave that one up to the conspiracy theorists ;)

A turnaround of the Alien: