Velociraptor sketch

A quick Velociraptor sketch from imagination. In retrospect the 2nd 2 fingers should be longer, but overall I'm happy with this one. Maybe I'll fix it in a paint up :)

Draw Snoop Dawg Tuesday

Hi all! Someone posted a notice in the studio declaring it "draw a dog tuesday." And so, smart alec that I am ....

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 :)

A Halloween Doodle

I have to say, out of the classic Halloween Monsters, I think the werewolf is my favorite. Lol the idea here is that this werewolf, when he's a human, works at a very busy McDonald's. It's a good job, the only issue is there is a high demand for working nights. He's filled out shift requests asking not to be scheduled at night, even medical requests, but his manager isn't buying it. Little does he know . . . :)

Peter Pan Sketches first round

David Preliminary Sketch

You know you're a nerd when . . .

Entirely too excited about a new box of hilighters . . .

Some breakdancers I sketched live outside BYU's Wilkinson Center last spring. Highlighters are my favorite— it's like having conté crayons on the fly, in terms of being able to control line width and sculpt form. Also, they are a much less expensive alternative to copic or prismacolor markers, if you're just wanting a substrate for your line. OK, the 'nuff nerding.

Valentines , and if "Marxist" meant Glasses and 'Staches

Valentine's shoppin' at our local grocery store :)

A proposal my wife and I witnessed at the Wilk food court on Monday. It made us smile

Our romantic Valentine's dinner :}  Cyrano De Bergerac (hence the Groucho Marx noses), candy, and completos. I love you Emily <3<3

Kids are the best

Some quick gestures taken having dinner at our cousins' the other night. Kids are the best! They are always exploring and having adventures, and they don't care whether anybody is watching or what anybody thinks- they just be. Which I think is what makes them so fun to draw :)

A goofy drawing from Adult Session of Stake Conference yesterday.  Because I'm an adult :}

Costume

I've always struggled with costume, largely because of a lack of knowledge/ visual library to pull from.  However, this semester I'm taking a history of costume class at BYU, and it's helping a ton. It's amazing how, while technique is important, so much of art and creativity is just about having something in your imagination to pull from. I'm a big advocate of not only educating your hands and technical skills, but educating your imagination. Study outside fields and dabble constantly in new visual material, so that you always have fresh ideas.

These characters are intended to be Nephites from the Book of Mormon.  As we don't know exactly where they lived or what their clothes looked like, I've based their clothes on a combination of Greek, Middle-Eastern, and Argentinian ideas. Not that these cultures would have had a particular influence on the Nephites, it just felt like a believable look.

Dino sketch (Ceratosaurus nasicornis)

Sometimes I leak dinosaurs . . .

Life-Hack for Starving Artists

A great life-hack for starving artists! Make a sketchbook 12 times cheaper than some you might buy! After which I spend entirely too much time introducing my sketchbook stack . . . lol the next one will be shorter :)

"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).

First Round of Designs for PWN

     The first round of brainstorm sketches for our new senior film, which stars geeks, kung fu masters, and babies.  I am so psyched to work on this :)  These sketches are primarily face design ideas for the prideful video-game geek character, who gets his come-uppance from a controller-chewing toddler.

(Posted with Wes' permission)

Marshmallow Matey

As much as I love pirates, I've never understood what possesses advertising agencies to use them to promote their products.  Particularly those relating to food and hygiene.  One time in Wal-Mart I saw hanging on display  Pirates of the Carribean chapstick.  Nothing says "kiss me" like a yellowed pirate skull.  I mean, the thing didn't even have lips!    I can't imagine anything a skeleton pirate would be less qualified to sell.  Except maybe Citizenship in the Community merit badge booklets.  Also,  "Marshmallow Mateys".  I can get why the kids like it, the sugar+pirates= uncontainable hyperactive bliss. However, one would think that when trying to sell a parent on a sugar cereal it would be wiser to choose a mascot with more teeth . . . or a dentist maybe.  A fallen dentist, willing to sell his visage to promote the spread of oral decay.

This sketch was inpired by Allen Ostergar's pitch last night for the new BYU Animation department film.  Ultimately it was't chosen, but it had some fantastic ideas and lots of beautiful, beautiful, ugly pirates.  Awesome pitch Allen!

Burrito

 In my subject's defense, his proportions are highly exaggerated, though I was kind to the burrito.  I witnessed this in the Wilk today.  I'm not sure what this guy's major was, but I'll venture to say sword swallowing; most units of measure have a fixed standard, but "bite-size" is a relative term.

Walt Stanchfield once said "let your sketchbook take preference over your camera."  At first it seems harder to capture a moment, an emotion, a character on paper than it is through a lens.  However, the point isn't necessarily to capture a likeness– it's to capture life.  Too many people treat a sketchbook like a curated exhibit.  It shouldn't be; if it is, you're losing most of the benefit.  Sketchbooks are for practice, to be sure, and they can contain nice drawings, but more importantly they are to stretch your imagination and capture life. Life isn't always likeness. Have you ever shown someone a photo of an experience and said "I wish you could have been there, the picture doesn't do it justice"? Now, technically the camera captured the scene with complete technical accuracy.  Due to the miracles of modern physics and chemistry, everything you pointed the camera at is represented with exactness.  What then is missing?  It's life, it's heart, it's emotion.  A good photographer will capture all of these things in an image– but not every time, and they will certainly not make every passerby stop to set up lights and have a 2 hour studio session.  No, they move in and through the experience, never stopping. They open their eyes wide and try to find the story in every moment.  A good photographer will snap hundreds of pictures in ravenous pursuit of the one that will immortalize the experience.  A good photograph isn't just for the eyes– you can hear, smell, and taste every element of the experience.   It's the same with drawing.  If you are seeking to capture life, it can't be done by mere likeness; there needs to be something more.  To catch it, you have to keep moving, and I mean moving. Too often I think we pick our subject based on who is sitting still long enough to draw.  That shouldn't be the deciding factor.  Try looking instead for where the life is, for which subject has the most interesting story.  Draw those people, even if your pen can't keep up with how fast they're moving.  The point isn't how pretty your sketchbook is anyway— it's whether you've caught a bit of life in your mind to breath into future characters.  At first these drawings will be nasty, as in pull-a-paper-bag-with-eyeholes-over-your-sketchbook-and-another-one-over-your-face-nasty.  This is a good thing.  It means you're stretching yourself.  And every so often, something nice will come out.  As you gain more experience, as your sketchbooks stack up, the number of nasty drawings between the good ones will shrink.  Best of all, your drawings will start, in some inexplicable way,  to come to life.   

     Remember, your job isn't to create an ink-jet likeness.  It's to "animate"– to bring to life. Sometimes you will want photographic accuracy, but often the most emotionally accurate drawing will be a caricature.

I've ranted long enough, but before I take off my "self-appointed-guru fez" I want to share one thing:

Link

If you are at all serious about sketchbooking, buy this book.  The above link is a free preview on google book, which is a taste, but I would highly recommend getting the 2 volume set on Amazon. Best drawing book ever.

Ok, i need to sign out, my fiancee has confiscated my fez lol.  But no joking, get the book!  You will be happy you did.

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 :)

A quick sketch

Just a quick sketch, I think it has something nice though.  I'm working on the cover for a recipe book entitled "Eating Our Words" with my English class, and this is one of the development sketches.  I thought it would be fun to play off of the old elementary-school procrastination excuse "A dog ate my homework".  Maybe that's why they don't allow pets in college dorms . . . :)

I don't know that this is the direction I'll end up going, but it was a fun idea

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.