Books, Lanterns, and Bones! Oh my!

Hey there everyone! Or anyone? Bah, who cares. Anyway! Nothing really too new to report of my life thus far. Still jobless and without vision or a sense of the future. Still interning at Bunko Studios for the moment, tho I haven't worked myself up to introducing myself to the boss man and asking for some advice on how to become employed or on my portfolio and reel (which I really should get to work on ><)

I recently joined a blog entitled: Tonight We Draw! (hyperlinks ftw) Essentially, a group of friends of mine from SVA decided to get together to make this blog where we post illustrations based on an idea given at the beginning of the week so none of us become too lazy or laid back in our routine of drawing and have items with which to further our individual portfolios. Although, some topics are a tad more tasteless than others (some images not exactly safe for work *coughBRIANcough*) but overall its a pretty cool blog so far and you should check it out for more talented folks.

I was talking with a friend of mine about my submission for this week's topic: "Everything I touch turns to gold"; and somewhere along the way he decided I should draw him as a Green Lantern. I laughed but agreed to it. Three to five hours later I actually started to sketch him as the Green Lantern and I cursed his ridiculously thin frame (contrary to popular belief, thin people are a BITCH to draw ladies and gents. Give it up for all them curvy people!). Below is the sketch I came up with which I know have to ink and color so that he can put it up as his icon (No, I'm not saying where or for what, he's just gonna use it :P).

(I'll finish it soon and re-post the finished version)

I also managed to catch up to the current season of Bones (THANK YOU NETFLIX!) and find that I enjoy it much more than I thought I would. I have a few friends who watch the show as well who were extremely entertained by my commentaries on the show to them as I watched, and my exclamations of "WTF!" "OH TEH NOES!" "WHYYYYYY!!?!?!" "Booth is purdy :3" and such other statements here to withheld as a variety of them contain spoilers for those who have not watched the awesomeness that is this show. Watch it. Its good times. Also, be sure you have a strong stomach as it can get rather gruesome at times (not a problem for me, thanks Dad for deciding to be a surgeon, muahahahaha! ^^)

I've also been reading the Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce. It's a fairly old series of books (I say old because they were new when I was a pre-teen if I remember correctly) so it may be a bit difficult to find. I was lucky one day while I was perusing a Barnes and Noble near where I live and saw all four books neatly in a row, remembered a friend had wanted to read them again/recommended them to me and grabbed them the minute I saw them. I find myself wishing I had picked them up earlier because I believe I would have probably enjoyed them much more as a kid than I do now, though I still find them to be an exceptionally good read. I'm on the third book in the series and might give a full assessment of my opinion of the books when I have completed the series. There are two follow ups to it: The Circle Opens (another series of four) and The Will of the Empress (standalone book). I've already made a note to find these books wherever I can and read them as well.

I've stumbled across another series of books called The Mortal Instruments. I'm not entirely sure how good the books are as in the description there is a loose comparison between them and Twilight (*GAGS*), but I'm willing to give it a shot at least. I'll probably plan a reading day and just head down to Barnes and Noble, see if I can find book one of the series, sit down with a nice cup of coffee or tea and any sort of pastry I may desire and give the book a fair chance to win me over. I'll let you know how that turns out.

TTFN

Tangled up and Espadas

So, I saw "Tangled" the other day. Nothing truly ground-breaking to be completely honest. I can't really say a whole lot about it without giving away story and plot elements and the quality in which I viewed it was not all that great so I'm sure I missed out on quite a few visually enticing elements. Also, I was watching it while doing some interning work at Bunko Animation Studios (cool studio with cool people that I intern at now, not a paying job but a foot in the door nonetheless), which really means I spentmost of my time listening to the movie rather than actually watching it. The story was well developed but the songs within the movie seemed to me to be waaaaaay too forced. I kid you not, almost every 5 to 10 minutes in the movie some character would break out into song for almost no reason at all. Now, if this had been a Broadway musical (not Broadway musical turned movie, just Broadway musical set on the stage) I would have totally believed the entire production because it seemed like it would have fit more as a Broadway musical.

Understand that I am aware the Disney made a killing in making musical films back in their glory days but it was not in the same manner as Broadway musicals are done. There was a fair bit of dialogue and exposition into the story and characters before the next musical number was done and was almost always a build up of tension and emotion before doing so. In Tangled, it just seemed like they decided songs would go wherever the hell they wanted regardless of the fact that whatever was occurring could easily have been described within simple dialogue.

All in all, it was alright, but in my opinion "The Frog Princess" (yes, I'm calling it its original freaking title, deal with it) kicked its ass.

In other news, one of my friends asked me to design a tattoo for him and one of his friends (as a surprise) based on the Espada from the anime "Bleach". The goal of the tattoo is to incorporate the number, mask and some third element to aid in identifying the Espada in question. The one that I finished was for my friend's friend and I am still figuring out the kinks in my friend's tattoo. Now, the friend's friend was so impressed by what I made for him, he decided that each person in his group of friends should have one done in accordance with which Espada they most resemble. So, it is my task to now design 10 more tattoos (including my friend's and an extra one for an original Espada character) as awesome as the one featured below. Gods help me.

Espada 6, Grimmjow

Thesis Aid and warm-up sketches

Hey look! I made art! Or sketches anyway. One of my friends who is currently undergoing his thesis year dropped by my place last night in order to give me some files to work on for his super awesome thesis of amazing story fun time. Super secret too. So, sorry, but can't tell you what its about. But, before I started work on it I decided to do some warm up sketches in photoshop with my wacom just to see how rusty I am with it. I also decided I was going to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as I worked on coloring and cleaning up some frames of his animation. So, obviously, I ended up doing some sketches of characters in the movie. And by that I only mean Ramona and Knives and Matthew Patel's very angry eyes before being completely drawn into the movie and beginning to actually work on my friend's stuff.

I am very proud of the way Ramona turned out in particular :)

Too Damn Cold

Hey all,

I was in Puerto Rico for Christmas and New Years to celebrate with the family which I hadn't done in a while so it was kind of refreshing. It was nice to see my grandparents again and my dogs and realize just how old Im getting since now my little cousins are about the same size as I am and in some cases actually taller. It really is quite frightening how time can fly.

I also forgot how freaking cold it is up here. All the wonderful moisture that my skin had taken in from being in the tropical climate in PR is gone now. I can literally hear my skin beginning to crack in certain places and my lips are so freaking dry now they hurt and will probably be bleeding by the time I wake up tomo- well, techincally today.

The flight wasn't so bad, least bumpy flight I've actually been on in a good long while.

And now if you would turn your attention to the right over here, this is one of the character designs for the main character in my Thesis Film "Belief". It is the one design that I liked the most and was planning on refining in order to make it more animation friendly during the clean-up process.

Her wardrobe was inspired by the wardrobe of the angel Gabriel in the movie Constantine. SPOILER ALERT FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NOT SEEN THE MOVIE!!!!!!!

...

Ok, hopefully whoever hasn't seen the movie isn't reading this. I really really REALLY liked how they put Gabriel in the garb of a mental patient with multiple identification tags, each listing the seven deadly sins on one arm and ugh, I can't remember what they are called, it's the opposite of the sins though, of that I am certain. But I just loved that entire idea of just being able to show how far off Gabriel had gone and how twisted the outfit was in general. It wasn't a traditional set of mental patient clothes but more like a pile of them Gabriel pulled out and decided to mix and match and in some cases sew together.

Well, that's all for now. I'm going to go ahead and try to get some sleep at least, hopefully wake up at a moderately decent hour in order to clean the apartment further and commence my day of running around like a chicken with its head cut off (much more amusing saying when my Abuela [grandmother] says it in spanish).

Cheers.

Hey There...

So yea... Hi.

Haven't posted on here in near a year, honestly because I almost never have anything of interest to really say. I'm going to try and post some artwork on here at least once a week and actually get back into the swing of drawing and animating since I haven't done so since the end of my Thesis year. I managed to graduate, have the photocopy of my diploma hanging on my wall over my bed (my mom has the original).

Well, here's the first of (hopefully) many other artworks to be posted. I'm gonna cheat a little bit here and post something I did a while ago but never circulated around the interwebs. This was a character illustration from my Pitch Book from 4th year at SVA. Enjoy I guess.

(Pardon the horrible pixelization of the image ><;)