African Dog

Last semester in my storyboarding class we did a project based on a myth that teaches why man lives as long as he does and why he goes through the phases of life that he does. I had a lot of fun designing characters for this story and wanted to do it in a sort of African, tribal, cave-painting kind of style. This character is the dog (which we later traded out for a jackal instead), I'll add this and the other character designs to my website. They include God, a man, a donkey, and a monkey. I really enjoyed this project.

I Love Photoshop

So Photoshop has all these neat filters and effects that are supposed to do all these cool things for you like make lens flares, make things look chrome (that's a fun one), etc. If you can't tell I am being fairly sarcastic, the filters usually make things look lame. Until recently, though, I couldn't figure out another way to achieve the look that I wanted any other way; that has all changed. With this piece I just used some custom brushes, custom textures, and a lot of layers to achieve the aged photo effect. I am particularly pleased with the wood behind the photo, however. None of that is a photo that is all brushes and textures. All told this piece consists of 4 photos composited together : The dancers, the foreground, the background mountains, and the sky. All the other elements were created.

Character Designs

I should have posted this a long time ago. These are some character designs for a story that I wanted to pitch to Disney as part of a storyboard class I am taking at BYU right now. The story and characters were later scrapped and we went another direction, but I still love how the style looks. I'll add all the character sheets to my character page on my site if you want to view them.

Presidential Race 2008

So I was just doodling and it wasn't until I was finished sketching this guy out that I realized how much it looks like Mitt Romney. Even though I am not a Romney supporter, much to the dismay of the majority of my right wing Republican extended family, I liked this picture so much I thought I'd post it.

I may even do caricatures of all the front runner candidates.

Family Portrait

I drew a picture of my Brother-in-law Robbie during Thanksgiving. It's simple, but I like it and I think I may do the whole family.

Bored

Here's a sketch I did on my Brother-in-law's tablet PC one day a while back when I was bored. I don't know why the fat guy is dressed like French aristocracy from the 1800's, but I bet that's the reason that the skinny guy is freaking out.

I call him Lavell

Here is a sketch I did recently in my sketchbook. It's an old guy that seems to vaguely resemble someone that most BYU Football fans should recognize.

My Amazing Class

I am teaching a class of 5th and 6th graders art twice a week at a local elementary school. Some of these kids are just amazing. I gave them the assignment to use simple shapes to create recognizable animal silhouettes and they did fairly well. Then I gave them the assignment to make Halloween decorations for the school party and most of the class promptly forgot everything we had talked about with shapes and went back to trying to noodle out details and shading on a really poorly drawn skeleton or jack-o-lantern, but one girl surprised me. She did a simple paper cutout of a mummy in a coffin that was so fantastic because of it's shape that I had to draw it in my sketchbook. Here is roughly what it looked like. I think it's pretty sweet (especially since it was designed by an 11 year old).

Hillbilly Character Design

I did this hillbilly character design for a class that I ended up not getting into. I like it, though, so I thought I would share him with everyone. Let me know what you think.

Emergency

I wanted to do a new illustration for this week's Illustration Friday, but this one was perfect and I don't know if I'll have time to do a new one.