Jamaica D : Blog

Go to Jamaicad.com!

2009-12-05T00:26:00.001-08:00

Hey, I finally got Wordpress together and moved my blog over to jamaicad.com. This blogspot is going to stay up as an archive, but if you want to see anything new you'll want to go here:

jamaicad.com

-j

Dee's Siren Song Gallery Opening Dec 18th

2009-11-29T19:22:00.000-08:00

Mission: Comics & Art presents "Dee's Siren Song" by San Francisco based artist Jamaica Dyer, who's first graphic novel, Weird Fishes, a collection of her web comic was recently published by SLG Publishing. The show opens with an artist reception and book signing at 7pm on December 18, 2009 and runs to January 27, 2010. Well known comic writer and Internet purveyor, Warren Ellis has this to say about Dyer's work "The only explanation for Jamaica Dyer is that she was built by aliens and dropped here to show us all how crap we are compared to her."

Santa Cruz native and recent Mission resident, Dyer's work includes comic books, illustration and animation with an eye to the fanciful and surreal. Her book Weird Fishes, as she says, "is a story about growing up and realizing that all your childhood eccentricities might make you a total outsider as you enter your teenage years, along with the realization that reality isn’t really what it seems. Dee is at the center of the story, and she sees giant talking ducks and other imaginary creatures, and her best friend is a boy from school nicknamed The Bunny Boy has worn the same Halloween costume for years. When he decides to start being cool and stop hanging out with Dee, suddenly the friendly ducks become monsters and her reality changes forever."

"Dee's Siren Song" by Jamaica Dyer
Showing Dec. 12, 2009 - Jan. 27, 2010
Opening Reception and book signing - 7pm Dec.18, 2009
Mission: Comics & Art
3520 20th St. Suite B
San Francisco, CA 94110
www.MissionComicsAndArt.com
415.695.1545

This gallery show follows the progression of Dee from a simple sketch to an estranged teenager, into her adventures in college. For the first time you'll see artwork from the new comic in the Weird Fishes storyline and get a glimpse of what is coming next as Dee becomes an adult and delves into her fantasies about her lost Bunny Boy.

For more information see:
www.jamaicad.com
www.missioncomicsandart.com

Facebook event page here.

Sketchcrawl 25

2009-11-22T17:50:00.001-08:00

I got to go to Sketchcrawl in San Francisco this Saturday! I've wanted to go to these for years, so it was a great first-time hanging out with a bunch of animators, students and fellow artists in Yerba Buena gardens drawing the architecture, drinking tea and drawing people. I even got to break in a new moleskin!

I found this photo of us over at the Sketchcrawl forum.

Signing and SLG Gallery Opening

2009-11-07T17:14:00.001-08:00

My gallery at SLG Boutiki Gallery opened last night! The reception was great, a bunch of cool fans and gallery-walkers came around. If you missed it, you can stop by all month long over at 577 S Market St in San Jose!

My signing at Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz happened last weekend! Joe and Amy and Hillary were great hosts, and big thanks to the better half of Santa Cruz for stopping by to say hi and pick up books. Here's a couple pics:

And, to make it even more photo-heavy around here, here is a gallery of some lovely faces holding my book!

APE Day 2

2009-10-23T13:35:00.001-07:00

(this is one of those few times I'll double post comics here and on Weird Fishes.)

There are so many people to mention that I didn't get to draw! Jon Bean was a great table partner, and Serena and Karl were both fabulous, and Ted played the ukulele! Dan was great. Visit Julien and his comic The San Lukas Arboretum. And check out Lark Pien. Thanks to everyone for making the weekend happen!

Also, check out my etsy store, where I put up some of the wallets and mini paintings that I was selling at the show.

If you picked up a copy of Weird Fishes and want to be famous, send me a picture of you with the book and I'll put you in a gallery!

This Wednesday (Oct 28th) I'll be at Atlantis Fantasyworld signing copies of Weird Fishes. Come visit me there all day!

11/6 First Friday : The Art of Jamaica Dyer at Slave Labor Graphics
Part of the First Friday Art Walk in San Jose, Slave Labor Graphics is hosting a show of watercolor paintings from Weird Fishes. You may have viewed them on my website or you’ve seen them reproduced in black and white in the graphic novel, but there’s nothing quite like seeing the original work in person. Opening reception at 8pm, and the show will be up all November.

Ape Day 1!

2009-10-20T12:58:00.000-07:00

An amazing time! Hopefully you enjoy my journal/sketches/watercolor comic depicting the moments I can remember from the show. The artists on the Personal Stories panel are all fantastic, go check out Shaenon Garrity, Gene Yang, Nate Powell, Dash Shaw, Dean Haspiel and Phoebe Gloeckner. Plus you simply must check out Kate Beaton andBarron Storey. I am grateful for all my friends, fans and con-goers who stopped by, chatted, and picked up my book. Here's a spoiler for day two: we sold out of copies. Yay!

Here's some supplemental photos. My friend Traci was gracious enough to attend my panels and take photos!

Sunday comic coming as soon as I catch up on work!

Weird Fishes and sketching

2009-10-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

The Weird Fishes GN is now out in select comic shops! Here the lovely Amy A. shows off a copy at Atlantis Fantasyworld!

Here's my zombie girl halloween drawing featuring my lovely roommates, Ignacio the cat and myself. Yeah, living with a comic artist has perks like this.

Accidentally went shopping the other day. I'm starting to do more sketches in this style... little autobio moments with thought bubbles and paper doll elements :)

Only a few days until APE! Excited and nervous! Info in the post below.

October: APE, book release, signing!

2009-10-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

I realize that I hate writing blog posts but I love writing in my sketchbook, so why not write my blog entry in my sketchbook! Then it's just a matter of getting it so people can read it.... oh here it comes!

Hurray! So here's the links: APE, Weird Fishes at SLG, Atlantis Fantasyworld.

Hope to see you all at the show! Please come say hi and buy my book! Very excited. I have a few artists I've recently gotten into to geek out over, like Kate Beaton and Dash Shaw, so when I'm not signing stuff I'll be trying to get them to sign stuff. Oh APE, my favorite show of the year...

Mini Canvases and Black Orchid

2009-09-24T00:30:00.001-07:00

In preparation for APE, I started working on some TINY canvases that I got at the art store. They're like 2 inches wide. And they will be for sale at the con. I absolutely love working on them. (oh, NSFW!)

I've been working on some children-safe stuff lately, and then I realized how much fun I have drawing sexy ladies on those canvases. Luckily, this week on Warren Ellis' forum there was a thread to recreate the Black Orchid, and I came up with this:

Started a new painting, working on a few new illustrations, and sketching out a new comic! I also went to Dr. Sketchy's, and I gotta get those drawings scanned. Too much fun, that Dr Sketchy!

Sketching in Coffee Shops

2009-08-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

I finally got myself back into the habit of bringing my sketchbooks around with me. In school this practice was strictly enforced, and it's no big surprise that I ended up going out with my school buddy Charlene, who is amazing at finding great spots to do drawings. Plus, this past week my computer's graphic card melted (uh huh!) so I got to spend even more time out drawing people rather than at home working on the laptop. Enjoy!

Oh AND, the Silicon Valley Metro did a big article about Slave Labor and they did a pretty cool interview with me. And they used my art on the cover! You can read the article here.

2009-08-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited about October! It's just been announced that I'm going to be one of the special guests at APE this year, which is pretty amazing. APE has always been my favorite convention, I haven't missed a year since I was 16, and I've done almost every sort of promotion, from being on foot and handing out 'zines from my bookbag, to piggybacking at friend's tables, to various collaborations and table-sharings, but this year I'll be debuting my first graphic novel, be signing at the SLG table, and have a panel of my very own. Whew, it's been a fun journey so far!

Right now at SLG studios they have a jazz-themed gallery, and here's the finished piece I did for the show:

I haven't had much of a break since Comic-con, where I did some promotional work for Weird Fishes, met a bunch of great people that I'll hopefully get to work with in the near future, went to one or three great after-parties, attended Awesomecon and got to see The Mighty Boosh live, which was incredible. It was literally a day packed with Boosh: a great panel and a party that basically everyone who's anyone went to, where Bollo and Naboo DJ'd while Vince danced onstage wooing the girls down below. Ahh, good times.

And here's a kitty.

Weird Fishes Trailer

2009-07-30T12:05:00.001-07:00

Slave Labor put together this amazing trailer for Weird Fishes. I'm really moved by it... you can only spend too much time living with your comic and going through the whole writing process before you forget what you've actually put together. This trailer lets me see the story in a completely new way... now I want to see it as a movie! Wow!

Comic-con!

2009-07-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

Comic-con's arrived in a storm and I did some last-minute planning to get myself there. I'll be doing some promotion at Slave Labor for the upcoming Weird Fishes graphic novel, I am told there will be postcards and I'll bring a pen for sketches and goodies. So far, the times I'll be sitting at the SLG booth are:
Thurday 10-11:30, 5:30-7, and Friday 10-11:30.

I'll be jumping around a bunch of different tables, tracking down Noel and Julien, and trying to sit in on some animation panels.

Rock Poster

2009-05-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

Got a call yesterday that I can do anything I want for the poster as long as it's for a rock show and has the information they need on it and gets done ASAP. So I scribbled up this girl and got to try out some new brushes in the inking and play around with lettering and adding color. Really quite happy with it, and super fun too! These are getting printed as posters and put all over Santa Cruz this week.

Here's another piece I did recently as well, based on some vintage cartoons my client liked. I think the end result was very whimsical, and I like how my hand-lettering turned out too.

Kitty Sketches

2009-05-22T19:08:00.001-07:00

I'm thinking about doing a children's project with kitties, so I've been doing lots of sketches of the ones I have around here. Enjoy!

Persona 3 Girls

2009-05-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've been geeking out over the video game "Persona 3" lately. It's a Japanese fighting game/role playing dating sim where you get engaged in going to school, building up your friendships, developing your traits, and hitting on girls, then you go into the Dark Hour at midnight and fight monsters. Everything about it is so well designed. So the other day while sketching, I drew a bunch of the characaters, and then I had to ink them. Enjoy!

Covers!

2009-05-03T23:56:00.000-07:00

I finished the cover for Weird Fishes! It took me several weeks to get to this image, after several attempts and lots of planning and sketching. I had to consider how to convey the story in the book with one image, along with the style of art that you'd see inside, along with using color in a compelling way along with an image that would draw in the reader. I think this one does all of that pretty well...

Here are two earlier attempts at the cover. The first one became too labored and not interesting enough, while the second one not well-enough planned to be the cover of the book. I like the second one quite a bit and hope to do some small postcards or something!

Also, I did a portfolio over at Krop that I really like!

Cocktail Lounge Illustrations

2009-03-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

I've been working on some menu illustrations for Red and 515, two fabulous cocktail lounge/restaurants in Santa Cruz. Just yesterday they made their way into the advertising in the SC Metro newspaper! Here they are:

For this illustration for 515, I was asked to do something gothic and whimsical like a lot of the sketches they've seen me do at the bar (I can be found there sometimes, yes). This one was extremely fun and I used some stock textures to bring out the time period.

For the Red Cocktail Lounge, they asked for something just like a particular illustration in my portfolio, but with drinks. So I tried to stick to a similar composition and finishing texture but I customized it with the couches and decor you'll find at Red. Inkwashes, paper textures and photoshop coloring brought it to completion.

Here's the sketch for this piece:

Also, separate from this commission but connected to Red nonetheless, I did this postcard for the event my boyfriend and our friend Addison put on each monday, this was a quick ink drawing I did on the spot one evening, and now it's on postcards floating around our town:

I'm happy that I got to contribute work to local establishments that I'm close to, and I'll be sure to take pictures of the menus once they're printed!

Painting Comics for Ages

2009-03-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

So what have I been doing for the past few weeks? Painting my comic. It's been a rapid change from 1-page a week to doing about 15 a week to finish for my book's deadline. I had a couple weeks off to concentrate on the finish of the storyline and planning some new stuff. I've even done a double-page spread! All of this is stuff I can't really share with you until they go up on the site, but I did get a bunch of great making-of shots of one of the pages, and got some help on it, take a look!

Attack of the killer kitties!

Yes, I know, they are hilarious!

*grumble*

Your Music Magazine Interview

2009-02-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

Here's a spread I got in Your Music Magazine #65 about Weird Fishes. It turned out nicely, and copies of the book are floating around the Bay Area. Not bad!

Skiing

2009-02-03T18:30:00.000-08:00

While I may not have had a chance to see snow this winter, I did get to work on this action-packed skiing episode of Esurance! Lots of fun characters in this one, and I really like how the backgrounds and animation turned out.

Weird Fishes page

2008-12-16T16:47:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest page of "Weird Fishes" without letters. I got some new watercolor paper that's pretty nice, and the pad is just about the perfect size for comics. Here's some "in progress" work, I did some rough thumbnails before drawing the comic full-size, and using my lightbox to clean up the pencils. Enjoy!

Nightmare of the Wine Hobo

2008-12-04T14:41:00.000-08:00

Go read the Wine Hobo story online! Thanks to Dark Horse for publishing my weird little story!

Ssssplendid!

2008-11-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

The Happy Tree Friends Episode I worked on is online!

I cleaned up drawings for a lot of the Splendid and Splendont poses, as well as the exploding whale. It was a VERY surreal moment while cleaning up whale guts and thinking about all the years in animation school and how they never did mention the day you find yourself drawing cartoon animals exploding. I probably wouldn't have believed them anyway.

What a fun cartoon to work on! Thanks Ghostbot!

Wine Hobo / Show Posters

2008-11-17T18:34:00.000-08:00

My latest project is a little comic for Dark Horse Myspace Presents! The story was part of my senior animation storyboarding project and it's pretty cool to see it as a comic... I'll link to it next month when it goes online!

This Esurance commercial is my first big project that I worked on at Ghostbot. A great deal of the drawings were given to me as line drawings, and I cleaned up and colored them in Flash. Crazy to see how the guys at Ghostbot animated the spot, I'm pretty happy with it.

Today I collaborated with RW to create this poster for her show in a couple weeks. She's one of the most talented people I know, an amazing musician, and we based this drawing off of a dream she had. We spend the evening posting these around Santa Cruz, it should be fun!

The Weird Fishes comic is going into second printing!

And in case you weren't there, here's our table at APE.

All the best,

Jamaica

RW's painting

2008-10-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we were standing in the backyard with RW and her dog Chippy and the lighting was so perfect I knew I wanted to paint it. Some snapshots and a few weeks later, here we are! Acrylics on canvas.

I seem to be doing a lot of portraits lately! Along with a completely undocumented caricature session I did for Kid's Day downtown, here's some illustrations for new business cards I got commissioned to do:

Party Scene

2008-09-15T11:44:00.001-07:00

Another look at some of the production stages for a panel of Weird Fishes. I did the panel as a loose sketch, lightboxed it to clean it up with ink and then laid down some color in Photoshop. One of my favorite panels that looks unlike any other pages in the comic and marks The Bunny Boy's entrance into a different world.

Freelance

2008-09-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

Unconventional work habits.

Records

2008-08-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

Here's the new painting I just finished up... SO MUCH FUN to dive into some acrylics! Based off a photo that my mom took while we were in the city last month. Working on some more paintings, finishing up the current comic story line, and working on a new project!

Comic: Process

2008-08-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

I've been having a fantastic time working on my comic! I'm approaching every page with new ideas and materials, so the style is changing rapidly and I love it. I'm a little worried about how this is going to look when it's printed in a book, but as a webcomic it works great to experiment with each page. When I started, I was all about pencilling the pages on printer paper and doing all the coloring digitally, but now that I've been lightboxing on watercolor paper and using watercolors and gouache, it's only in a few instances I find myself going back.

I've been meaning to show some sketches and pencil-to-finished panel scans with the webcomic, so here's a few.

The film noir page is one of the few times that i drew the comic small and ended up scanning and blowing it up for the finished page. I love to be intuitive with this stuff and dive into the finished pages with a bit of fear that I'll mess it up.

The current storyline is wrapping up... then I'll be concentrating on producing it as a book in time for APE. Now that, my faithful artists, is going to be a show not to miss!

The Koi Painting

2008-06-27T23:28:00.001-07:00

Okay, I like fish. A lot. I know I draw/paint/comic them too much as it is. But I got this idea for a drawing and it didn't go away, so I'm doing a koi painting.

It started as a scribbly sketch which lead to this clearer drawing...

And then I lightboxed it and made a watercolor. But it wasn't enough...

And now I'm doing an acrylic painting, shown here in progress.

It's been super fun to dive in with paints again, the precision and effect that's possible is so much better than computer. I think it's getting close to completion, and I'll have a nice scan of it when it is!

See you later, space cowboy.

Making of a comic page

2008-05-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

I love seeing the process other artists go through in creating an illustration or comic page, and wanted to share the various stages I go through when creating a comic. The page I'm showing you here is page 8 of Weird Fishes:

I'm not even sure if I thumbnailed out the page, but I had several reference photos for the location and a clear idea of how I wanted the panels to look, so I dove right into drawing the page on 11x17 printer paper with a blueline pencil. Once I got it roughed in, I went in with my sharpened HB pencil (image 1). After scanning, I go into the blue alphachannel, copy it, and paste it onto a new document (pretty sure there's a better way to do this) and mess with the channels and clean up with the eraser to "ink" the page (image 2). Then I start coloring in Photoshop, I like to start off with a base color (image 3).

These last three look pretty similar, but I spend a lot of my time on the coloring, possibly more than actually drawing. (1) I set in the base colors, and this time I felt like it needed something to add texture in a different, more disorienting way. (2) I took some photos of the sky, did a filter on it and laid it over my colors. (3) fiddled with everything until I got it to a happy point. The day before posting it I am sick of it and change the colors again for the final page.

If you notice, the title for this new chapter changed before I finished, the storyline taking a turn as I scripted out the next dozen pages.

Also, I love the way it looks when I take away the linework, and you get this:

BFA Gallery Show

2008-05-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

My graduating class has put together a juried BFA show, and a handful of Weird Fishes comic pages are going to be on the walls! Printed at 11×17, they look pretty awesome, and they’ll also be playing my “Wine Hobo” storyboards, so definitely try to make it if you’re in the Bay Area. Also: there are so me pretty wicked artists in my class.

Tuesday, May 6th at 6PM.

Art Building, First Floor, San Jose State University.

If you need directions, check out the SJSU website.

Wine Hobo Storyboards

2008-04-23T19:04:00.001-07:00

Here are the storyboards for a project I lovingly call "Wine Hobo." As part of our senior portfolio, we each had to develop a short story based in 1800 Vienna and encompassing the feeling of Beethoven. So, naturally, I did a short fantasy story about a hobo who has a scandalous adventure with a giant bottle of wine. Proclaimed "truly bizarre" by my instructors, I think it's one of my better accomplishments.

Radiohead Music Video Contest: Vote!

2008-04-11T13:58:00.001-07:00

I just finished with my storyboard treatment for a music video for Radiohead's new animated music video contest! It's online, and I'm asking that you please go and take a look at it, and, if you love me, sign up at aniboom so you can vote for it and help me win! (if I win, I'll get funding to fully produce the video!)

Aniboom : Radiohead

Thanks for your help!

CD Cover Design

2008-03-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

Here is a CD package design I did for Birds Fled From Me. It was drawn from Rachel's concept of stylized drawings spreading outwards from the polaroid, and her love for owls. Unfortunately, the design wasn't used for the final product, but it's a fantastic album, available on myspace.

New Online Comic - 'Weird Fishes'

2008-03-25T10:35:00.001-07:00

I've been showing you frames from my new comic lately, and now, with the power of the mighty internet, i'm publishing it on my website in weekly updates. Page 0 and 1 are now online, take a look at http://jamaicad.com/comic/ . I'll be updating with a new page every Tuesday, so please bookmark or rss the page. I have enough material to get us to summer, and there's a lot more on the way.

Thanks for looking! I'll post some 'making of' artwork in the upcoming weeks.

http://jamaicad.com/comic/

Flash Cleanup- Artemis

2008-03-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

Working on cleaning up some animation in Flash this weekend. It's my first time cleaning up pencil tests frame-by-frame, and it's a strange combination of compelling/exciting and excruciating. To keep myself going, I colored one of the frames and composited in the background, and I'm pretty pleased:

Of course, it's at this stage in the game that I wonder: Did I design her too whorish?

It's going to be a long next couple weeks to get our whole short film cleaned up and colored, but the final product will be so worth it. It's super neat to see my character designs go through storyboards, animation, and now to get my hands dirty in the final stages.

As for now, with all the layers turned on, this is the sort of thing I'm looking at:

Wish me luck!

Redrawing old comics and NEWS

2008-03-08T17:14:00.001-08:00

There's always that feeling when you look at your old work and imagine how different/better it would look if you redrew it now. I feel that, especially, with my old comics. Today I actually got a chance to redraw one of my old strips and wanted to share it. This is Dee and The Boy in the Bunny Suit, they appeared in my college newspaper three years ago, and they're the stars of my new book I'm working on. I wanted to start off the book with this original strip where they met, but, looking back at it, I knew I had to make it better. The kids are a little younger, and cleaned up and colored to fit in with the rest of the book. And after our brief flashback, we go to six years later...

This is a panel from a comic page that has been accepted in the Society of Illustrators 2008 Student Show. I'm extremely honored to have been accepted into the show, and I'm double-excited since the piece is a comic page. Comics as art, yeah!

Flash storyboards & cleanup

2008-02-29T14:33:00.001-08:00

I've been working on storyboards lately, drawing them out in flash. Here are a few shots from the Beethoven-inspired ballroom scene we're doing in class.

I'm really finding a love for Flash, and I'm learning about the clean-up process. Here I have my initial sketch, line drawing in flash, and non-line.

And here, a panel from my upcoming comic. I'm thinking of making b/w stickers out of this image, eh?

Dee and The Boy in the Bunny Suit

2008-02-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

Over winter I worked on a painting and began a new comic/graphic novel. Above you can see the painting, an image that captures the overall feeling of this new project. Dee, a girl who sees imaginary things, and The Boy in the Bunny suit, her best friend and companion. This piece is done in Photoshop, using layers of sketches, linework, painting and digital color.

The comic book pages I'm working on are in color, and it's my favorite project so far. I'll start posting frames in the upcoming weeks.

Also, for those of you in the Bay Area, the movie I helped with last winter, "Glory Boy Days", just came back from Slamdance and is going to be showing at San Jose's Cinequest in early March! I helped work on almost every set/location in the film, and /may/ make a brief appearance with my fellow art department, so definitely take a look. I'll be there Friday night March 7th, and you can buy your tickets here.

Veldt Character Sketches

2007-12-31T22:00:00.000-08:00

For the final project last semester I did character turnarounds for the family in The Veldt.

Dada Hyena

2007-12-06T17:51:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine, Aidan, is creating some of the best comics you can read online on his site Dada Hyena. And to make it even better (and winning my fandom forever) I appear in the latest strip as a gender-ambiguous narwhale. Yes, he's that awesome.

Comics!

2007-11-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

I did a short comic for Women's Review of Books, which is available now. I haven't seen a copy yet myself, butmy comic is a 1-page life story of a fictional female writer in the 20's.

While we're at it, Juicy Mother 2 is a graphic novel currently available on Amazon. I have a comic in there about comic book geek girls falling in love on the internet.

I still do comics!

2007-11-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

So I've been keeping busy lately. Completely reworked Artemis based on some aniamtion requirements given to me from some pros, and started doing character sketches for Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt". My first pass was a ton of crazy loose emotional sketches, and this round I played around with textures and colors for the characters. I feel like I need to do dozens of more drawings for each character, but it's a start. Learning that character design is a lot of WORK. It's not just fun and games but takes a lot of thinking and acting and posing and drawing. I might be in the wrong business.

But Seriously, what have I been up to? I've been shooting aliens with my gent:

Greek God Character Designs

2007-10-10T20:47:00.001-07:00

For our latest assignment, we're working in groups to design a short film based on the 2008 Olympics. My group decided on a story involving the Greek gods Zeus, Artemis and Hermes, and I've been designing the look of the characters. We're going for something graphic and simple, based on a warm color palette. Take a look:

This is one of the more accessible styles I've tried, and it's giving me a good insight into how the creative process works in a group, and how my work is received by others. Here, for example, is the initial character lineup sketch, along with the revised, lineup in color.

And lastly, this assignment started with a vegetable-based character design exercise, which gave birth to Mina Baroo, a supermodel and star pole-vaulter. She's also a great great decendant of Hermes, if'n you couldn't tell.

The Duke's Bedroom - process

2007-10-04T12:37:00.000-07:00

This has been one of the more intensive pieces I've done, finally utilizing every step of the process, from thumbnailing to photo referencing to scanning thumbnails, blowing up thumbnails, drawing over thumbnails, and lightboxing a finished drawing, and then doing all the coloring in photoshop, and even doing inkwork over the photoshop printouts. It never would have come this far if we hadn't been forced to re-work it every week for a month after thinking we were finished with the project. However, after showing this piece to a few pros, composition/character posing issues were brought up and now I'll probably be redrawing it. However, while this process took me over a month to complete, I think it'll go much faster and look better next time. Starting to "see" what I want and how to do it, which is exciting. And also managing to get some nice paint effects in photoshop.

So I'm considering changing the time period for the new bedroom picture.... maybe 1920's flapper fight? I could make a series!

My Last Duchess

2007-09-23T18:37:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the pieces I produced for our first BFA project "My Last Duchess". Experimenting with various mediums and styles, working on the final one right now...

Last Duchess __ Sketch

2007-09-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

2007-09-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Two art books that came out this past month that every artist should have:

James Jean: ProcessRecess and Pulp Hope

Both are beautiful, inspiring crazy books.

It's the third week of BFA already, we're working on a project for Robert Browning's "The Last Duchess" and I'm putting together 5 environment/visual development/story illustrations for next week. Currently it's a mass of reference pictures, rapid sketches and thumbnails (see desktop). I'm studying James Jean's work and learning how to take my raw scratchy pencil drawings into fine, clean-lined illustrations. I'm not sure how to deal with color... I think I'm going to stick with gouache and acrylic for the most part, there's not quite enough time to experiment with Photoshop this week.

Yesterday I went to the premier of Glory Boy Days, the movie I worked on the art department for last winter, and it was an amazing turn-out, everyone who worked on it was there, driving from San Francisco, flying from LA, bringing our family and loved ones, and we all got to wait on the sidewalk outside the theater for three hours because of technical difficulties, and then got to see 10 minutes of the film before the audio went out completely. Still, despite the premiere being a bust, we talked about those 10 minutes for half of dinner afterwards, and it was great to see everyone all together. (optimism,optimism)

Illustrating, illustrating, more on that later.

4th of July

2007-08-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

A date on 4th of July... watercolor, gouache and ink.

Set Design

2007-08-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

Over the past month I got a job designing sets and just finished the process of designing a set in Sketchup, then working with clients to get the look they want, and then seeing the set built and shot. One of the greatest, weirdest experiences I've had:

The Summer Set

2007-06-23T11:22:00.001-07:00

A follow-up to my last post, the 3-part summer beach series is finished! This was my way to get back into the swing of directing myself through a project outside of the classroom or freelance environment. It's a completely different feeling, and, I think, very fulfilling.

My website's gone through some updates, I've uploaded some new images and now four of my comics are available to read online!

cut-out beach scenes

2007-06-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

This summer I'm focusing on doing a series of illustrations for more of an all ages audience, dealing with innocense and curious emotions, set in beach environments reflecting my stay in santa cruz. First came a series of sketches, which then led me to start building the scenes and characters piece-by-piece, drawing and painting on different sheets of watercolor paper and then collaging them together. Here's alligator boy without his background, and the first finished piece.

Al's Monumental World of Popsicles

2007-05-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Our last assignment in Visual Development was to design interesting popsicles, and I came up with a set of popsicle shapes and flavors based on monuments like the Taj Mahal, Mayan Temples, Easter Island Heads, Buddha Statues and the like. Then, we developed the character who would sell them and the cart s/he'd sell them out of. I came up with Al, a retired high school History teacher who, after his wife's death, decided he wanted to benefit the community by educating the children about the multicultural world through treats. Despite his great aspirations, the kids don't listen to his lectures and only want the ice cream, but he continues to hand-make the popsicles and sell them out of his ultra-tacky cart. He's extremely sad and lonely, and only seems to feel ebtter when selling his creations. His daughter, Gertrude, is 15, entering puberty, and mortified by her father. A daddy's girl her entire life, she still feels an obligation to him, and will sometimes run the cart during the summer, but she's dedicated herself to her social life: boys, short skirts, and stuffing her bra. Al, of course, is completely terrified of the boys she gets attention from, and usually scares them away with voodoo-popsicles. Al and Gertrude share an uncomfortable, awkard bond that I don't think we've seen the last of yet.

sketches for queen/prince designs

2007-04-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

2007-04-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

Rough sketches for the very flamboyant and wicked queen of an African-influenced fantasy story.

Viz Dev Kitchen

2007-02-22T01:41:00.000-08:00

Our first Viz Dev project: create a kitchen for the short story "The Ordinary Son" by Ron Carlson. We took some liberties with the kitchen, seeing as the family never used the kitchen, didn't own furniture or a fridge. Here we have the younger genius brother making his mathematical ramblings on butcher paper, while the ordinary son tries to read to make himself genius. I wanted the eye to wander between the two of them. Drawn with pens, gesso and pencil. I've never felt both so happy (because I've never drawn anything like this) and unhappy (because I can't achieve the level I want to) with a piece before. And so the semester begins!

Windows/Doors/Saltshakers

2007-02-08T16:59:00.000-08:00

The Spring semester has begun. A lot of my work is going into Visual Development (or advanced illustration). At this point we're doing studies of windows and doors. And salt shakers. (to the left) Next we're designing a 1960's kitchen to go alongside a story.

I'm also working on a music video project, designing sets that are going to be built in the next couple weeks. Doing some more work in art direction for films, and getting a kick out of it. The documentary is moving along on the backburner. I'm making some side cash doing graphic design work. Glory Boy Days is almost completed filming.

2007-01-20T09:40:00.000-08:00

Two new pieces, one ink, guache and collage, the other guache, watercolor and ink.

2007-01-17T00:30:00.000-08:00

Since December I've been working in the art department for upcoming indie film Glory Boy Days. It's been a great experience seeing how the look of a fim is generated, from our Art Director Erik Otto's initial color swatches for the different characters, to actually going out and finding/buying the colors of cloth, weird lamps, posters, clothing, etc for a scene. Every little prop and detail has to be thought out, and while the average viewer won't notice it, it has to be there for the right feel for the movie. You can see some of my production photos that I've been snapping (no unauthorized photography, right) on flickr.

2006-12-06T17:23:00.000-08:00

I'm longing for summer, when I had time to sit around coffee shops in SF and paint all day!

One more week of classes, then I'll have my pencil tests for my new short film ready to show, images of my latest works, and other good stuff. I also want to start a new, winter sketchbook, so that should be all kinds of good.

'till then, no sleep!

2006-11-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

One bit for the latest illustration...

Figure Drawing

2006-11-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

Figure drawing... beautiful new model to SHM. Playing with pencil and watercolor.

2006-10-31T16:23:00.000-08:00

"Hello, this is Jamaica, broadcasting from San Jose..."

(shot taken from our weekly (Halloween Edition!) tele-broadcasts with ACME, where we present work over the air, get critiques and talk to Disney, Dreamworks and Pixar artists. Highly, highly professional.)

2006-10-31T10:21:00.000-08:00

Two pieces for Barron's class, based on the mother and the Misfit from Flannery O'Conner's short story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find". The mother is done in a 1940's ad/candid style, while the Misfit is done in a woodcut motif, looking at Barry Moser for inspiration.

Kitty/Rat Sketches

2006-10-20T17:04:00.000-07:00

These are some of my early character sketches for my next film. They're designed in the style of Preston Blair and 1940's cartoons, as instructed by John K, but they're kinda slutty and sleazy and are going to take turns hitting on eachother in a little dive bar. More to come!

What Barron's teaching me

2006-10-18T17:11:00.000-07:00

You'll regret it if you do it, you'll regret it if you don't.

Rhinos!

2006-10-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

So after 2 years in illustration school, I think I'm finally learning construction. Yes, they've tried to teach it to me up till now. I've studied Vilppu, I've taken anatomy. It's made its way into my drawings but not strongly enough. But now I'm studying Weatherly's animal drawings and Preston Blaire's lessons and it's finally working for me. I've been doing enough animation lately that I'm realizing my original tactic of making my illustrations move is just too unreliable. The solution? Construction!

But aren't rhinos cute? I have this thing about their butts, but I'll tell you more about that later.

For those who may not have seen: photos from Ottawa!

2006-09-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

I'm learning to do something new. Some things never change, I have the same characters flooding my brain, same wonky perspective and such, but I feel like things are starting to come together a little better. Still gotta learn more about layout, viz dev, lighting, contrast, character design... but, you know, that's what I'm here to do.

Ottawa Sketches!!

2006-09-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

Lots of time spent in airports, meeting tons of awesome animators, eating lots of Canadian pizza and fries, meeting some heroes, and lots and lots of drunken dancing. Oh yes, and animation screenings. Lots of those, too.

2006-09-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

I'm off to Ottawa!

2006-09-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

Today I saw on John K's blog that it was Katie Rice's birthday, and I had to draw something for her. John K's been influencing me with his cartoons from a young age (probably too young), and Katie has been total inspiration over the past year, so I guess it's finally time to crawl out from my rock and introduce myself. Hi Katie! Hi John!

Also, my friend Wilfred took a wide-angle night shot of my workspace. check it out.

+ I created an account over at 1001 Journals.

bits

2006-09-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

Under the direction of Barron Storey, I'm putting together a collection of 'bits' around the subject of women through history who've been writers and artists goign against rules of their time. That's a very broad topic but I chose to center it around Colette, beat female writers, and women comic artists. Here's the latest:

'In the shadow of Jack Karouac'

'Vintage Colette'

'Alison Bechdel'

... Fun Home lead me to discover Colette's writing, and around that time I was roaming the library and got involved in some beat writing. So... it all ties together, loosely. Speaking of tying, I started a new sketchbook:

2006-09-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

This summer I've developed an obsession for Colette and her life and writing, and now I'm using her as a subject for my first assignment in Barron Storey's class. Here's some shots of the progress I made on this portrait last night. (click for larger)

Gesso, ink, gouache on cardboard.

Animation!

2006-08-30T02:41:00.000-07:00

So I've spent the past two nights working on this animation for the assignment "create a walk cycle":

Fish Don't Walk.

Here is my final film for intro to animation: Bird Drop.

I'm back at the animation table, so there will be more to come!

theatre

2006-08-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

pencil sketch soon to be colored! for comic project!

Character Evolution

2006-07-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working on a short comic and I've been developing ideas for the main character:

The first headshot.

The drawing on the left is the right idea for what I want to do with the character, but the age isn't right.

Getting closer...

The finger instruments appear, that she'll use to make beautiful paintings.

And younger still...

Here, I almost have it. And I love the hat...

And here we have the fish hat.

more hats.

Here, I have come up with the final design for the character.

Finished character design.

Brown Paper Bag

2006-07-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

I love drawing on toned paper, especially paper bags. My current sketchbook is made out of cheap, brown paper and I'm loving it.

1st Page

2006-07-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

To start off this new blog, I present you with some of my latest sketches. I'm going to be doing this a bit. Posting sketches. And ideas. And events. That sort of thing.

character and clothing design

to-do list

musicalfag

old friends come to play

"

copycat.