Metro-North

Rooskie!

I've been wanting to start taking my practice sketches in a more creative direction. I usually practice from photos, but I want to start using the photo as a starting point and adding in a more fantastical element. Here's a first attempt. Below is the original photo, as usual from Jimmy Palmiotti's super fun blog. The cell phone turns into a prop gun so easily!

Practice sketch: 2 women jogging

Today I finally forced myself to steal 45 minutes when I should have been working and do a practice sketch! I guess I haven't done any personal work all summer, but in the meanwhile my technique has been evolving a great deal in my professional work. It's ironic--though typically self-defeating--that I stopped doing personal stuff just as I started developing the tools to do something more interesting with it.

Image source: World of Stock

Storyboards: "Inkmaster" round 3

This is the last of these I have, so I'll move on to something else, I swear. I thought the third round was kind of interesting because it's less conceptual, it's trying to better convey the story of this tattoo competition. I liked the idea of the tattoos emerging in time-lapse as the artists' hands moved across the skin ghost-like.

Storyboards: "Inkmaster" round 2

Another round of surreal images of people peeling off their skin to reveal tattooed skin underneath. Sometimes I'm given a full script for a project, and sometimes I'm given a concept and asked to riff on it, and this is the latter. Behind-the-scenes tidbit: I did a bunch of these during "down time" at my table at New York Comic Con 2011. (It quickly became apparent that weekend that freelancing was the only way I was going to make any money.)

Storyboards: "Inkmaster"

More recent storyboard stuff: early concept art for the opening credits of a reality show called "Inkmaster." I think the final credits didn't bear a lot of resemblance to this. We actually did two more rounds of these, so if I can't come up with anything better for the next couple of days (which is sort of a given), I may just put those up too.

Storyboards: "Fuel"

I usually have a rule against recycling freelance work here, because the whole point of this page is to "force" myself to produce extracurricular art. But I've been so quiet lately on that front that I'm willing to put up anything at this point. This is an advertising storyboard gig from a few months back--I was told that the pitch crashed and burned in short order, so I think I'm safe in putting these up on a public site.

Without going into any detail, the brief was to tell a story demonstrating how new, innovative technologies are usually met with ridicule, so we skip through a few different eras showing people responding to the electric light, the television, the cell phone, and finally the new-gen electric cars.

I tried to come up with ways to really sell the idea of the different eras. It's clear enough to convey the different eras through the characters' clothes and hairstyles, but I also tried to use a specific color palette and lighting design to help differentiate each era.

Practice sketch: students

Image source

Stan Lee

Click to read: "The Inquisition of Mr. Marvel: On the (surprisingly complicated) legacy of Stan Lee "

Louis CK

These are some frames from a little sketch exercise I did recently for my own amusement: an illustrated version of the opening credits for Louis CK's show "Louie" on the FX network. I'll try to post the full version soon, whenever I get around to uploading it to YouTube.