Announcement: We're moving!

That's right, guys! I've jumped ship and embraced the magic that is a self-hosted WordPress site. Oh, Blogger, how I'll miss you! Thanks for all the memories ♥

All my previous posts have been exported onto the new site, and as soon as I'm done setting things up over there, I'll perform a URL redirection, so that heading here will take you straight to my brand-new home on the web. Be warned, it'll probably be messy over there, as my knowledge of CSS, HTML, and all that jazz is limited at the moment. If you'd like to know how I did this, or are even interested in migrating to WordPress someday, check out this article: Migrating from Blogger (Blogspot) to WordPress without Losing Any Valuable SEO and Links.

See you later on the other side!

Flower Girl #4

Friday, April 29, saw my sleep-deprived self hanging the above framed painting for the "Family Guy" art show, themed The Art of the Ad. It marked the first time I had completed a traditional painting in over eight years, and the journey was certainly no cakewalk. Painting with acrylics was not as easy as I had remembered, and mistakes were made, bad enough to merit a second trip to Blick for a new canvas. Good and bad news abounded from this particular flub. The good news was that I still had time to finish the painting. The bad news was that I had to put my freelance work with Leaf Trading Cards on hold in order to do it, which, by the way, was completed yesterday and looks great. A post on that will be in order as soon as I'm given a heads-up from them to share that work on here.

My piece pays homage to a vintage advertisement on Liebig Extract of Meat, a highly-concentrated meat stock that was used to make soup in the olden days, as you can see in the comparison below:

 
Credit for the Liebig card belongs to Flickr user cigcardpix, whose photostream consists entirely of vintage ads of the trading card variety. According to him, the title of the card is "Liebig S133 - Flower Girls 1883 #4." Hence, the title of my piece, "Flower Girl #4."

Originally, I wanted Lois to figure in the painting, but as I had done a piece on her in a previous show, I decided to take the less-traveled route and use Meg instead. Both Meg, or her skin to be precise, and the Liebig jar took the longest to paint. For the finer details on the jar, I utilized Prismacolor markers, as experiments with the smallest brush I owned proved fruitless.

Something completely different

I heavily debated whether or not to put this up here for a few reasons, one of them being the possibility of scaring my supposed male audience away with its unabashed gayness. But after having my friend Jeremy Polgar parade it around to some of the artists at Titmouse, where it was received with a mix of amusement and obvious confusion, I figured what the hay? Into the blog she goes.

The hilarity of this being shared with the artists at Titmouse comes not only from its devastatingly homoerotic nature, but its relevance, considering this is a fan piece of one of their shows: "Metalocalypse," the greatest TV show OF ALL TIME. Of course, I'm exaggerating, but I am being very honest when I tell you this is currently my favorite TV show. I own all three seasons, as well as the second Dethklok album, and have even attended one of their concerts. Toki is my favorite cartoon character in general, so it was a dream come true meeting Tommy Blacha, have him do the voice of Toki for me, and get a picture with him during one of my visits to the studio last year.


No one was lying when they told me he was a nice guy. He's definitely one of the most personable industry bigwigs that I've met so far. But I digress.

So, yeah... I like "Metalocalypse" slash. This isn't anything new for me. I've been drawing slash works for a few years now, posting some of them onto my soon-to-be-deleted art journal on Livejournal. In fact, this was originally posted on LJ for user nawazarrio for the 2011 Hearts & Guts "Metalocalypse" gift exchange. Waz requested Nathan/Pickles with brownie points to the artist if they could make "Pickles being... broken and [wanting] someone to lean on," and I could only oblige.

Well, that answers the biggest question among the Titmouse artists regarding my submission: Why is Pickles crying? Not that they really cared so much about getting the answer to that one, haha!

Draw Off #26: Sexy Ladies

Well, just one sexy lady right now: Orihime from "Bleach." Drawn and colored in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. The coloring process was a poor attempt at speed painting within a 30 minute time span. Heh, fat chance! It took me 3 hours to complete, though I'll have to forgive myself for this; most of that time was spent on experimenting with the software's limited brush and color palette, as, prior to this, I had never gone beyond painting in black and white with the program.

Hopefully, we'll be able to see more of these from me before the Draw Off's March 25 deadline.

Summer Superhero Art Show submission

Today is the Summer Superhero Art Show here at Fox TV Animation. As usual, I'm a participant. Aside from that, though, there are a lot of amazing pieces in this one. For the first time, I'm actually bidding for a few, one of them being a "Watchmen"/"Family Guy" piece by Mick Cassidy that I probably won't get because I suspect the bidding competition for it will be fierce.

My submission features Torunn from "Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow," a straight-to-DVD movie that I freelanced on back in '07. It was originally done as practice for the show on Tegaki E. But as I found myself still working on it after a few weeks had passed, I figured that it would make a great submission for the show. When the tegaki was finished, a backwards look at a test print revealed errors that I was not aware of while I was working on it. As a result, Photoshop was used to fix these errors.

There are four different versions of this work, the original being the flawed tegaki that I'm too ashamed to post here. But if you must look, you can find it here. Of the three Photoshop passes, this first one is my favorite:


What I love most about it are the purple hues of the sky and clouds, which isn't as apparent in the final pass. Yet I chose to submit the latter because of a second opinion from my co-worker Dante, who pointed out that it had better contrast, and I feel that it's a more accurate depiction of sunset. Or maybe twilight? Not too sure.

Unfinished: Little Miss Broken 21

Despite the obviously unfinished look of this painting, I am happy with the way it turned out. The painting is of a photograph by DeviantArt user hakanphotography, titled "Little Miss Broken 21," which you can find here. I chose it for its well-dressed subject (girl who likes to draw girls here!), and the way the light plays off the woman's shoulder and the leaves in the background - actually, there had to be bits of green in the picture, otherwise I wouldn't have gone for it; green is my favorite color.

I've had this sitting for months, saved and unpublished, over at my blog on Tegaki E before I decided to drop the ax on it earlier today. Reasons behind this decision stemmed from the difficulty level of the project, lack of resources and interest, and bad timing. Coloring is most certainly not my forte, and the first time I had to paint in a realistic manner, I had to do it on Tegaki E of all places! Everything on one layer with practically zero of the conveniences that Photoshop and Corel offer.

Other roadblocks occurred when my PC died, which still has yet to be replaced, leaving me with only the Cintiq I have at work, where downtime is few and far between (and, anyway, when your job is drawing on a bright screen all day, the idea of giving your eyes a rest at the first opportunity seems very appealing, doesn't it?). Then the studio blocked DeviantArt, which is really ironic if you think about it.

Fast forward to today: I had a bit of downtime, but just as I was about to begin painting again, I remembered the latter, and thought, "Screw it!" Entry submitted. I figured that it's time for something new, anyway.

"Family Guy" art show comic

On Friday, June 12, I submitted the above comic for the "Family Guy" art show, themed Great Moments in History. The strip was a collaborative effort between me and my friend, Andrew Dowis. Andrew was the first and only person that came to mind for writing for my submission, since his sense of humor practically mirrors that of the show. That, and I knew I wouldn't be able to pull off any sort of joke that would feel even remotely "Family Guy"-ish. Not to say that I don't have a sense of humor, but my jokes (if you can even call them that) tend to be more on the innocent and playful, or even disturbing, side.

The strip sold for $100, which was obviously freakin' sweet for the both of us. And Andrew was so pleased with how the comic turned out that he decided to color it:


Coloring completed two days ago with Photoshop. Other materials used were Col-Erase blue pencil and Copic pen on Japanese comic book paper. I can't stress enough how much Copic pens rule. Seriously. They're awesome.