Ted.com: Ken Robinson

Been watching Ted.com alot recently and came across this one. It really hit home with me. Amazing.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

Star Wars: The Clone Wars DVD/Bluray release

With the release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season One on DVD and Bluray, my sketchcards are now out there somewhere in the world. Sadly, the chances of you getting one of mine are slim; something like one out of every 1,000 decks. So I've posted them up in their entirety on my portfolio. Go to my Illustrations page and click on the thumbnail with Captain Rex!

Fullmetal Alchemist

During life model sessions in one of the courses I'm teaching this quarter I allow music and sometimes play what students bring in. One student had us listening to lots of music from anime shows. Most of it is pretty horrendous. No surprise there. However, it did remind me of Fullmetal Alchemist. It's a strange balance of kiddie and mature. Leave it up to the Japanese! Anyway, I needed to draw something for myself so took the opportunity to do the Elric brothers from the show.

Class Demo

This is from a class demo on achieving a James Jean appearance but making the file editable rather than destructive with some retouching tricks thrown in for good measure. The first image is the original drawing I did and the second is the digital processed one. Approximately two hours including explaining each step for this. Needs lots of polishing but not bad for it being so quick.

Vamp

Between the Star Wars: Clone Wars sketchcards and my home computer dying I've not been able to do much digitally lately. This has been good for me! Anyone that becomes to reliant on anything is one who welcomes weakness to breed in themselves. I'm happy to see my old, old marker skills aren't completely gone. For years growing up this is all I would use to draw and it's been a nice revisit to the medium.

For October the Temple of Cartoon Mojo is doing all Halloween themed sketch challenges. Here's my vampire! Not my usual monstrous version but a '50s, well-to-do, housewife vamp. The combination works rather well I feel.

Star Wars Sketchcards

It's been a long time since I've been this happy about any work I've done, large or small, client or personal. And I am so freakin' happy! I hope I get to do more. This has also solidified my decision to go after a Star Wars comic title and see what happens.

Star Wars Sketchcards

The fall quarter at SCAD-ATL started up this past week so that's kept me busy but I also received materials for a little freelance job. I'm doing "Star Wars: Clone Wars" sketchcards for Topps! Specifically, it's tied into the release of "Clone Wars" season one on DVD and Bluray in widescreen format so the cards are also widescreen, which is pretty damn cool. This also makes me an official Lucas Arts artist and a little dream come true. Here's just a hint at a few but no details for you! Go buy the cards if you want a chance to own one.



A coworker, Roy Richardson, asked me if I had ever considered doing Star Wars comics. Initially I said no but I'm having so much fun with these maybe I will indeed throw my hat in that ring once "Lion of Rora" is done. Would you read a SW comic drawn by yours truly?

MAD MEN

I don't like shows about people doing stupid things and knowing they are stupid but do them anyway. This removes a LARGE portion of television from my interest. Mad Men was one of them. Plus, it's all about advertising which I worked in for ten years. To quote the show, "Been there. Done that."

However, my wife was watching it so I gave it a chance. It sure has lots of stupid shit but much of it is due to the rules of society in the '60s. She tells me that the amount of smoking and drinking on the show is very accurate to the time period and I can tell you the amount of drinking and adultery in advertising is just as accurate. Yuck. I've become fascinated with how the hell could people live/act like that and think it's okay?

But this fascination isn't enough to keep me watching. Joan Holloway is. My God. This is what women should look like. (My wife being one! RAWR!) Move over twigs! Go eat a small truckload of ice cream! Now I just hope the character doesn't turn into the back stabbing bitch I think she is. At that point, no amount of curve will make me want to watch. For now though, if I can ignore the smoking, happily. *cough*



UPDATE: Just found out she went to the high school I was supposed to go to if we hadn't moved away from Fairfax, VA, and was a goth girl. Be still my... heart!

Thumbnails, thumbnails, thumbnails...

I've got thumbnails coming out of mah brains! I'm officially 1/3rd of the way through the screenplay. I was hoping to be more like 2/3rds at this point but breaking up a screenplay is a ton more work than thumbnailing a script that gives you page breaks, panels, etc. Still, it'll all be worth it in the end!

Lion thumbs

My To-Do List has been put on the back burner for the foreseeable future so I can focus on "Lion of Rora". I'm working from a screenplay so there's no telling how many pages the comic will be in the end. That's both good and bad. Good: pacing and storytelling are mine to control since there's no script. Bad: no concrete deadline can be made since the page count is undefined and I'm estimating it to be much larger than planned. That means I'm focusing on a balance between keeping the page count down and doing what the story needs to make it successful. That's not easy but, to use a marksman metaphor (bows and arrows on the brain), I feel like I'm clustering nicely around the bullseye with few stray shots.

Here's a couple of thumbs. So far, this is the only scene with royalty in the book. Lotsa dialog. Say hello to the Dick... errrr, Duke of Savoy.