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

Surgeon General

Lol as a kid I remember hearing about warnings from the surgeon general and imagining something of this nature . . . oh the wonders of the English language :) Look out man, he'll hunt you down, blow you up, and then give you a shot!  Of course, if you survive all that he'll give you a grape flavored lolipop . . . :)

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

"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 :)

An olde experiment

This was a piece from last . . . fall?  2d Design Class.  Methinks . . .

The subject is James Goldberg, a BYU professor who is highly active in the local and Mormon art communities.  His other credentials include alsoplus being a way cool guy :)  He has the best gestures, I was sketching him all the time in class lol.  He was a good sport, and very kind to allow me to do the painting.  Thanks again James!

Captain of the Guard

This is part of an ongoing series of assignments in Sam Nielsen's digital painting class.  We are doing character redesigns from classic literature, in this case the Wizard of Oz.  I chose to work on the flying monkeys lol :)  This is a value study of Nikko, captain of the flying monkey guard.  He still needs some occlusion and some work on his hat . . . but this is what I turned in for class.  I'm actually really excited to work on this character, L. Frank Baum gave the flying monkeys a rich and tragic back story that isn't explored that often.

A'ight kids, keep feeding me them patties!

Happy Labor Yesterday!

This one started out as a speed sketch that went a bit farther.  The story of its conception is rather silly.  I saw this amazing old man on a summer-themed commercial; he was so hairy that laying on the beach there that he might have been mistaken for a really gross shag carpet.  It was glorious.  I had to draw it.  Honestly I would have liked to give him more hair, but time waits for no follicle :/ Perhaps I shall revisit it at a later date . . .  I had to come up with a story for why he had his shirt off in the first place, and with labor day coming up, and my perennial beticklement with the concept of dentures . . . man, I really hope no one from NIMH subscribes to this blog.

This painting was kind of a neat opportunity to play with the way slight interacts with soft materials (ie skin, meat, and polymethylmethacrylate (apparently the polymer used to create dentures)).  In the case of meat for instance, which is semi-translucent, light actually penetrates the surface and bounces around inside, creating a slight glow.  In physics and computer graphics they call it "sub-surface scattering".

Rendering out materials is an area in which I can definitely stand to improve . . . I'm beginning to undersand the emphasis the old masters placed on still life paintings of food.  There is definitely a lot to be learned about light, color, texture, and form from those kind of exercises.  The best modern 3d artists still learn by studying in a similar way.  Here's a short video Pixar put out on studying food for Ratatouille: link

Straight on 'Till Morning

This painting was done as a gift for my girlfriend, who is Peter Pan's biggest fan :)  Tinkerbell is painted close to some sunflare artifacts, making it difficult to tell whether she is real or if it's just a trick of the sun.  That way, the viewer can choose whether to believe.  I thought it was deep andyways :)  The composition is intended to be highly disorienting, but at the same time full of energy- conveying the feeling of embarking on an adventure for the first time

(Photoshop CS5, Intuos 3 tablet)

Cap'n Bill Wheedles: Revamp

Cap'n Bill is a character from L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz.  This is a complete redo of a previous design, which the morbidly curious reader may find here

The idea was basically to start from the ground up and create a more dignified character, still with a goofy edge, but someone you could imagine telling epic tales of his adventures on the High Seas.  Last time, the peg leg was audaciously prominent, but this time is understated and partially obscured.  I hoped to show by this the captain's tendency to play down his own wounds and woes, focusing on the needs of others.

Merry Christmas from Santana Claus! waka waka P)

Merry Christmas all!

This was a Christmas Present for my friend Gary Mulder, audio expert and former professional cyclist. Here is his Website for all you musical types, he makes high end audio equipment for bands all over the world.

Lol this one had its genesis in a Christmas present from my Mom.  She gave my sister and a tub full of amazing old CDs that we've been geeking out about for the last 24 hours lol.  Among these were several Santana CDs, and it being Christmas time . . . andyways.  The word association was inevitable.  I apologize for the "Pun"-ishment . . . wakawaka ;)

Helaman 5

Prismacolor and sharpie pen, embellished in photoshop :)

Cap'n Bill Wheedles

Lol this was an assignment for Jake Parker's Character Design class at Brigham Young University. Pencil, colored and embellished in Photoshop. Basically the assignment was to create a character based on this description: "Cap'n Bill Wheedles is an ex-sailor with a wooden left leg from the knee down. His Head is almost bald and what little hair he has is grizzled. His eyes are pale blue with a gentle look to them, and his face is round, rugged, and bronzed".

BFA Portfolio