It's been a while....

some digital paintings i've been working on....







There are also a few things in my sketchbook that I haven't got around to scanning. Until next time....enjoy!

-jeff

En Garde!

So about a week or so ago, sjsu had a guest speaker come in and give a pretty cool demo. His name was Chris Duval, and he was an actor, teacher and fight choreographer with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He was quite the character....pretty funny guy. So he brought with him some actual sword props along with some pool noodles and grabbed a handful of students and taught them a little thing or two about putting together a believable stage fight.

Not everyone was able to participate, and those that didn't (myself included), got to record all of the action in our sketchbooks. There was a lot of movement, so we had to draw fast and just get the gestures. It was kinda like a figure drawing session, only with less posing and more action, but it was fun overall.

As a result, Courtney decided to make an assignment from this experience and made us turn our sketches/gestures into an actual character. So these were a few of the gestures I was able to get.





This is the character I came up with. I really wanted to avoid the typical "hero" character with a sword, and attempt to make use of the prop in another way. I basically wanted to eliminate the use of a weapon all together and have the prop be something else. So, this is what I came up with.







haha, these were fun too. Enjoy!

-jeff

Another One Bites the Dust.....

So this past weekend, I'm pretty sure mexicans weren't the only ones celebrating.



Another victory for the Pacman.

Way Overdue

It's been sometime since my last post, but the end of the semester is winding down and I think the pressure might be getting to me. I don't know. So much stress, anxiety, excitement, nervousness, fatigue, insomnia, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. But even with only a few weeks left, I'm still keeping myself really, really busy. Hence, the very late update.









So this is the most recent version of my tree house project. I spent most of my time revising the exteriors that I didn't have much time to focus on the interiors. I basically bumped up the contrast on a bunch of things and added some details in certain areas. I also did some color studies, but those will probably never be seen. Hopefully I can go back and work on these some more and push them even further. Perhaps even redo the color versions. Enjoy!

-jeff

Animaya...

So this semester, along with vis dev and bfa, im also taking a digital animation class. I originally wanted to take the class just to become more familiar with Maya and animating in 3D. The only other animating that I've done is the traditional paper flipping and vector/symbol based in Flash. I have used Maya before, but it was mostly just modeling and surfacing....barely any animating. So I figured, since I was just taking the class as an elective, I thought it wouldn't hurt to try something new.

So far, the class has been pretty enjoyable. I was struggling a bit at first. It took me a while to develop a steady workflow, just because I had to familiarize myself with all the tools and funcitons, and just figuring out how everything worked. The assignments went by fast....we started with a simple ball bounce, then immediately moved onto more complex stuff. By the third or fourth assignment, we were already animating human rigs. Pretty crazy.

So it's almost the end of the semester, and I'm just now starting to get a grasp of how things work. I'm starting to get the hang of it, and the process is becoming a little bit quicker. We're already working on our final, which is an acting/dialouge test. It's still a work-in-progress, there is a bit more refining I have to do, but overall, I like the way it's going...and my teacher does too.




It's my first semester animating in Maya....I must say, I'm pretty impressed with myself.

More Trees and Houses

So these are the more recent versions of my treehouse designs. I added a bit more to the exterior and completely redid the interior. They definitely still need to be touched up. Some are more successful than others, but I got some good feedback and I really need to bump up the contrast. Make the lights lighter and the darks darker. While I'm working in photoshop, the values seem to read ok, but whenever I have them printed out, it ends up being lighter. Still working on improving my digital painting skills. Gotta get back to work, enjoy!

-jeff

Tree Hizzouse

So these are from Courtney's vis dev class. We're designing a tree house as a continuation of the Gary Soto project. These sketches are still pretty rough, as I am still trying to narrow down my decisions. I have experimented with a little bit of lighting, but I can't really take that next step until I tighten up my drawings and make sure everything is refined and solid. Enjoy!

-jeff


Tree house exterior


Tree house Interior

kitchen designs

This is for Courtney's viz dev class. Our assignment was to design a kitchen based off of the short stories of writer, Gary Soto. The scene takes place in the late 1950's to early 1960's in Fresno, CA. Our requirements were to provide two different shots of the kitchen, each with a different lighting scenario...as well as provide an orthographic view or schematic to show how the kitchen is laid out.

While I was painting these in photoshop, the values seemed to read okay. But when I printed them out, the gray tones all looked similar. I could definitely bump up the contrast and go darker with the shadows. Had a lot of issues with perspective-both linear and atmospheric. I think if I had a bit more time, I would have liked to play around more with the lighting scenarios. Overall, I felt that this one assignment was very beneficial in that I learned a lot about just basic fundamentals and the design process. Enjoy!

-jeff

Animal Farm Pt. 2

So today was our final for our Animal Farm character designs. Everyone's work looked amazing. Even Bunny and Courtney seemed quite impressed with the outcome of everyone's work because of the big jump in progress that everyone made. But...there were still a couple of issues that Bunny and Courtney had touched upon, making some general comments and critiques that pretty much applied to everyone. This is the work that I turned in...


Boxer-the big, naive, hard-working Clydesdale draft horse. I was pretty happy with the drawing, and I was anxious to take it to color. But when I did, I don't think it was as successful. Bunny brought up a couple of things that need to be addressed.



Squealer- a manipulative pig. In my opinion, I felt that this was the most successful of the three. I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out, but I think I can go back and fix up the overall design/look of the spread itself, as well as the others.



Border Collie-one of the security/guard dogs. Acts as a bodyguard for the pigs. During the preliminary sketches, a lot of things weren't really working, and I felt this was one of the more difficult animals to draw and convey, but I was actually impressed with the way this turned out. I'm pretty satisfied with the end result, just some minor fixes.


character lineup

Overall, I felt that these were only fairly successful in that, I haven't quite captured the style of reference artist, Arthur Rackham. His style was definitely a challenge to emulate. I didn't even think I would come relatively close. But that just goes to show how much one can achieve, if you put in the time and work. Enjoy!

-jeff

Animal Farm Madness!!

So for our bfa class, we read George Orwell's Animal Farm. If you're not familiar with the story, it's pretty much about a farm that gets taken over by the animals that inhabit it. From this story, we have to do character designs for 3 animals: an equine, a pig, and one of our choice. On top of that, they had to be drawn in a style based off of an artist who is not in the animation/film industry. I chose to follow Arthur Rackham, not only for his distinct style, but also because I felt that it would be the most challenging. And that's exactly what it turned out to be--sheer madness!!







These are just a few of the drawings. A TON of preliminary drawing were done to get to this stage. At one point, Bunny(instructor) made us redraw our previous one's because the entire class's work was just that disappointing! Even now, I'm still trying to get a grasp of Rackham's style...and it's gonna take another ton of drawings to eventually make that progress. Enjoy!

Back to work!!

-jeff

Kinda late.....but New Semester!

I know I haven't updated in a while. Ever since the semester started I've just been really busy. I'm taking 3 studio classes...again. I somehow managed last semester, so I thought I'd give it another shot. It's my last semester, and the anxiety is slowly kicking in as graduation steadily approaches. I've been super busy trying to put my portfolio together, and keeping up with my regular assignments. But just a quick post before I get back to work.

These are from Courtney's VizDev class. I felt I needed to take it again and work on more fundamental stuff, as far as basic shapes and composition, plus I felt I needed to improve my environment drawings. Anyway these were from a short story we read in class.



For this assignment, we were to focus on the environment and not so much the character. This is an interior shot of the character in his office. For this, I wanted to have everything relatively close together to get a cramped/enclosed/claustrophobic feeling. I also tried to incorporate a lot of vertical/horizontal parallel lines to get a dull/boring feeling, while still maintaining a sense of depth with fg, mg, bg elements.




This is an exterior shot of the character running through the woods. During this particular part of the story, the character is at a point where he is completely uninhibited. He just lets loose and becomes euphoric, essentially becoming free-spirited. I tried showing that by having an up-shot of the character as he is leaping. I had some difficulty controlling the values, as foreground and middleground elements kinda got muddy and blended together.

That's it for now. Hopefully, I can find some time to update more frequently. Enjoy!

-jeff

jim.

John Kransinski as "Jim Halpert"

After my girlfriend saw the previous post, she wanted me to do this because she is a big fan of the show and this character.

"Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica."

A head study painted digitally. About 2 hours. Rainn Wilson as "Dwight Schrute" from NBC's The Office. Check it out...its pretty funny.

Hello 2009!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I celebrated the new year in Vegas with family and cousins from San Diego. When I first left on Dec. 29th, we got to airport a bit late and weren't allowed to check-in. So the girlfriend and I were put on "stand-by" for the next flight out at 7:45pm. So we had to wait around for about 3 hours at the airport. The weather in Vegas was similar in that it was nice during the day, but very cold at night. I ate A LOT...during the week I was there, we ate at three different buffets, and they were all awesome. My girlfriend and I also went to/ate at Hooter's for the first time and they're chicken wings were great! And even though we didn't get to do everything or go everywhere we had originally planned, overall, I thought it was still an enjoyable trip.

These are some sketches I did during the trip.

When I first boarded, the walls of the plane had black lights, and they had these touch-screen monitors where you could watch tv/movies, listen to music, play video games. Really cool.


This was after we were done eating...everyone was just sitting around talking, so I decided to draw my parents.


This was at Hooter's. It was on New Years Day, so the wait in line took a while. These were some people in the casino and the restaurant.