The Wind Rises Contest Entry

deviantART had a contest this week to create a piece of art in tribute to "The Wind Rises", Hayao Miyazaki's final film. It was a tight 5 day deadline, most of which I had to prepare for my next con which is this coming weekend, but I took a day off anyway to do it. It was my first time entering a dA contest and I felt I really needed to pay tribute to Miyazaki has he's been a big inspiration for me over the years. Anyway, hope you enjoy! Can't wait to see the film this weekend!

Pokemon Fan Arts

Have this guy just in time for Thanksgiving! One of my favorite parts about Thanksgiving is Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I wake up each morning on the holiday just to watch it. Some day I'll make it to the actual thing T_T. Anyway this was a fun project to tie that parade in with Castelia city from the most recent Pokemon games, which is based on New York itself. It only seemed fit the Pikachu balloon was showcased there too! With some of my most recent Pokemon fan art, I've been attempting to make the world feel more believable. Hopefully that comes through! I'm going through a huge fan art phase right now so expect more on the way soon.

In addition, I recently started a new mini fan art project called the Pokemon Watcher's Sketchbook. In line with trying to make the Pokemon world more believable, I'm imagining myself in the role of a Pokemon watcher, attempting to capture Pokemon in the field on page. Here are my first two examples and I hope to update with at least 1 new page each week.

Yuki-onna

I am very excited to finally post this painting! I did this as a submission to Anime Boston's Yokai Art contest. If it wins, it will be used as advertising for the convention and I'll secure a free Artist Alley space to sell my work! Even if I don't win though, this piece was a major leap in my creative career. I don't think I had created a single piece before this one with so much unity and technical skill. I'm really pleased with it and excited to use it as a benchmark for future work.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, it did not win. It did make Honorable Mention though. Here's the results: http://forums.animeboston.com/viewtopic.php?t=15942

NYCC 2012 and San Francisco coming up

Just got back from New York Comic Con last night. Man was it crazy. It was my first time going and I really wish I had read a survival guide. I've been going to cons for a long time now but never one as big as this. First time I've been overwhelmed by a con since my first Otakon in 2009. That was nothing compared to this! Sensory overload. There were sadly some events I couldn't make it to because the capacity filled up in the rooms or you just couldn't make it there in time due to traffic. I was also only able to go for Friday and Saturday so I feel like I missed out on a bunch of stuff. But over all I had a pretty fun time. Click here to see more about the cosplay side of things. Here were some of my highlights:

First, I got to see Yoshitaka Amano speak at his panel! He's one of my favorite illustrators so this was really big for me. Unfortunately there was no way I could get there early enough to get a ticket securing an autograph, but I still felt fortunate to hear him speak. Turns out he's really down to earth and didn't know what to say lol. He said that's part of why he communicates visually, because he's not good at speaking. But I really liked how he responded to people's questions, and one thing that really stuck out to me was that he gave some advice to not follow too closely to rules or standard conventions, and just to draw what you think is beautiful. I think that ideology definitely comes across in his work.

I brought my portfolio with me and submitted it to DC Comics' Talent Search, and showed it around to a few people. I was really excited to see Bobby Chiu in the artist alley, as I really love his work. I was fortunate enough to get my portfolio critiqued by him and am delighted to say that he really loved my first illustration. As soon as he opened up the cover of the folder to that first piece, his eyes lit up and he simply said, "cool". That was so liberating for me, because this is the first time I've ever had my portfolio reviewed by a professional digital artist. Unfortunately I can't show that illustration publicly yet but I should be able to in November. Overall he really liked all my ideas (which is great since I want to be a concept artist). He also thought my execution was good but could be better, and gave me some suggestions on improving my fabric textures and diffusion of light on skin.

After that I met up with some fellow artist friends and had a really great time both as an artist and an audience. One thing I was a little bummed about was that I did an illustration for the folks at Podcast Beyond (a Playstation news podcast) over at IGN, but I couldn't make it to their panel, again because they capped the line! Myself and many others were bummed about it, but it really stunk cuz I had been carrying this drawing around all day! It's fulfilling a request Ryan Clements asked of the listeners on the special video episode 250.

As it turns out I'm leaving for San Francisco today for a 2 week vacation, and since that's where their offices are located, I'm going to try to drop it off there! Even though it's a vacation, I'm going to be doing some job hunting. Got a lot of people to call and email. Networking is really key. Maybe the folks at IGN will hire me on as an editorial illustrator?

Other than that, since I probably won't be able to post again for a while, I'm gonna dump some of my recent work. None of it is completed yet - it's all for my concept art portfolio project. I'll be resuming this in November. Around the time I get back I'll try and do an upload of all the sketches I plan to do while in SF. Wish me luck!

Vampire Llama

This was a quick silly painting I did in about half an hour. It's of Vampire Llama, a character I made up with a friend during a class we weren't paying attention to in college. I did this as a birthday card for her yesterday.

I've been working avidly on my new portfolio geared towards a job as a concept artist. Now that my seasonal job has ended, I can devote my time to the project fully. I should be able to post the first images in the next couple days! :D

Self Portrait - Adjustments

Quick post - did some much needed fixes to my self portrait from the previous post, namely fixing the mouth, darkening the facial shadows, and lowering the jawline. It looks waaaay better now. I don't look like I'm giving anybody the :/ face anymore!

Self Portrait

About time I did a new self portrait. I had been sorting through and deleting a lot of brushes in Photoshop that I don't need and I came across one that gives a great oil-painted feel. Definitely want to experiment with it more in the future. Plus I've been looking at Kent William's work a lot lately so that was some direct inspiration. All these combined into an in-the-moment need to paint this! I used a reference, but it was taken long before this was painted and not designed with lighting in mind so unfortunately it's not the most flattering lighting. It was mostly for me to experiment with this brush and style of painting, and I'm pretty happy with it!

ebook cover

My first book cover! It's for an ebook called, "Easter from the Perspective of Contemporaneous Jews" by Anant Raut. The author wanted the cover to be a parody of the Last Supper (Da Vinci) with Jesus walking back into the scene and freakin out all the apostles. It was just put up on Amazon's kindle store so take a look! It's short but really funny and only a buck!

I would really love to do more book covers in the future.

11.11.11

Been a long time since I've posted anything. Been working on a lot of different work but this is the first thing I've really finished in a while. Today is the release date of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a very highly anticipated game, and I'm a big fan of the series. I ordered it and I'm waiting for it to arrive on my doorstep as I write this lol. The original drawing is 18x24

A few pieces from last year

Here's a few pieces I did digitally last year. I had actually forgotten about them up until now but I thought I'd go ahead and upload them:

This last one was a design I did for the parents of my late best friend, Dean Renner. They started a Scholarship fund in his name for Nantucket High School students and graduates, and wanted something nice to promote it with visually. There's a lot of Star Wars reference on there as Dean was a big fan.