quickie sketches for the night

been inspired by all the great's in the blogosphere lately. My daughter playing in the snow today might of helped with the lil sketch of her playing. Thought Id share. Here goes, hope to stay inspired and draw more, so easy to get frustrated and give up, but alas I keep coming back for more punishment :D

Superman Returns Teaser Online!

Brings a tear to the eye...Wow, this looks amazing just with the short bits and pieces, but man, this teaser gave me chills. I love Singer's work here...Summer 2k6 cannot come any sooner...

Thanks to my other Superman homey Ravo for pointing it out!

Who's awake at this hr?

Hey friends, what's up? Wow, a whole month has gone by without a post by me... My lack of posts are for good reason, Ive been super busy at my day jobby doing animations of Jack Sparrow kickin bootay, and by night Ive taken on helping out Liquid Development on a game currently in production (that I can't talk about) hehe gotta love this industry...Get to see stuff before it comes out to the masses. Ive felt like I should post something just to let people know that Im still alive and still doing the art thing animating to my hearts content. Getting lots of animation practice in, which is helping me get better, which I need, but Im very critical of my work, so this is a good thing. I recently made a demo reel, which is how I got work with Liquid. If any would like to see it please let me know and I can send you the link personally, I dont want to just give it out to the masses quite yet, plus I dont know what kinda bandwidth I might get tagged with. Dont want to be paying out the nose in bandwidth fees. It's around 30 megs or so.

I mainly use Maya at Amaze, but Liquid uses 3dStudioMax which is nice to have to get used to all over again, but it's just like riding a bike. It was funny I totally forgot how to copy a key in max, had to go to the help file to remember. It's nice knowing both programs though and will be good since Autodesk bought Alias anyways, just hope they keep Maya up and going for the long haul, it's such a way nicer program to use. I was very reluctant to switch over in the beginning to Alias, but now that I use it, I would miss using it to anything else.

ps dont know who came out in the sketch but just wanted to draw something so at least im coming with something...hehe

Modern fine artists!

WOw, long time, no blog friends. Whats up! Anyways, here are some recent finds that Ive come across that I find inspiring right now.

This guy can paint! Check him out. Morgan Weistling
I got Morgan's link from one of his friends that Ive recently started to read his blog. Very friendly chap! I found this guy from TheWardOMatic, his name is David Darrow and here is his site David Darrow David is another great painter himself. Check him out.

Morgan just released a DVD that Id like to pick up once I find $200 laying around. Also, been fooling with the notion of picking up some paints myself and trying my hand at the ol oil painting. Looks like fun.

Speaking of oil painting, a former co-worker has recently launched his site and his still life's are pretty amazing. I happen to own the pomegranate painting David is a super cool dude and hope his stuff takes off. Super talented cat.

The internet is so dang cool that artists and others as well can connect with each other. Thanks to those checkin my blog out. Hopefully I can be less sporadic and post more stuff I come across or post more of my work. I have some recent figure sessions that I can post, just need to get them scanned.

sketch8-30

quicksketch for the night. On the left is a caricature of myself. Kinda liked it. Simple but efficient.

Hot links!

Some really recent links to some really outstanding artists have been posted on various internet forums and other blogs that I go to check out that I thought I would share the one's that I've really been checking out a lot.

All the links are something special imo.

John Neverez is a Disney artist that recently had posted to the Drawing board, and he's also done a blog. Really appealing stuff he has. You can tell he's been at his craft for a long while now
http://john-nevarez.blogspot.com/

Stephen Silver is another really amazing Character designer who recently started blogging himself which is awesome to see. Looks like he posts to 2 blogs, his own and sketchclub which is with another artist by the name of Marcelo.
http://sketchclub.blogspot.com/
and
http://stephensilver.blogspot.com/

Harald Siepermann is another awesome character designer for all kinds of great films that I find inspirational. I came across his gallery site browsing the Drawing Board at one point, Thorsten Hasenkamm pointed out his gallery. Here that is
Harald Siepermann gallery
Also recently started blogging as well.
Harald Siepermann blog

Justin Ridge I just recently came across his work. Awesome stuff.
Justin Ridge blog

Definitely stuff to aspire to, makes me want to get out the stick of lead and draw, which is what it's all about. Inspiration. Hopefully they inspire you too. Good day!

Badly drawn right arm

drawing for the night. Dont know where the right arm came from but Im drawing, and that's a good thing.

Figure drawing

My pal Tony Ravo posted a figure drawing from his blog which is located here It made me want to post some of my figure drawings that Ive done semi recently so here goes. I still need lots of work, but that's the point of figure drawing, to be a better artist which I can sure use. Thanks to work, we have access to figure drawing every week. I use to go pretty faithfully but as of late Ive not gone. I need to get back in the habit. I made it last week so that's good. Non-clothed figure drawing would probably get me in there more often. :P Our session at work is clothed and the some of the models like to wear really dark leotards which make it hard to see some lines when they wear them. Im not all that fond of drawing dudes either. I find the female form way more appealing and more enticeing to draw. Anyways, here are some of my drawings.






These were taken with my crappy camera phone. The newsprint is kinda hard to get scanned in without scanning in pieces and putting it back together in photoshop. Big pain. hehe Que sera...

Beautiful Canada!

120-2006_IMG
Originally uploaded by newsquirt.

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted eh. Ive been busy with work and life in general, that I havent taken the time to post to my blog. This pic was taken the weekend before last up in Harrison Hot Springs in BC, Canada. Such a sight up there. Tree's and mountains surrounding. It's beautiful up there. Living in the NW is pretty dang nice itself, but man this place is somewhere you need to see if you can make it. It's only 3 hrs away from the Seattle area. Not too bad of a drive. It's a great drive really. The beach there is really really nice. Like having the ocean beach right there on the lake and the water wasnt too bad. It was a little chilly due to it being glacial water from the mountains. Mid Aug is not too bad, considering it was 90 degrees up there too. It felt good to get in the water.

The also have some great sand castle building up there. Coming up very soon in September they have a sand castle building competition. I think I may have to take the family back up there to see that. They have a website which shows some of the past exhibitions. Pretty dang sweet what they can do what that sand. Here is the link Harrisand.org

If you follow the pic above there are a couple of other pics that I took while up there. Some good ones of some of the sand castles they have on display right now.

One plus is that the American dollar is worth more than the Canandian dollar so our money is a little easier spent there. Another plus to Canada is the chocolate. :P I had one of the best candy bars Ive had in a long time up there. I heard someone say that they put a waxy like substance in American chocolate. Im not sure if that is accurate or not, but I did notice a different taste to the chocolate up there.

Anyways...Take a look up there if you are in the area, it's worth the trip.
Harrison Hot Springs

Amaze Golf Tourny yesterday

This was my posse that I rolled with for the day. We shot an 8 over for the scramble. The winning team shot a 2 over so we didnt win... :( I had a great time hanging out with pals from work on the course.
I won $50 for the longest drive. Ya gotta like that...It was a good day.

These pics were taken by my pal Lawrence. Swiped em for my own use. :D Give him a holla in the Seattle area for picture takes.

doodly doodle

more drawing time. Just trying to go with the flow of course. I need to really get working on my posing and try to get full body gestures going. I need more figure drawing and more sketchin. Keepin it real yo! heh

as my buddy Todd would say "Keep on truckin"

Purrrrrple!

YO!

Bustin out the wacom for a dust off session. Im really anxious to start drawing way more often that I do. I get so much inspiration from so many sources I really need to start putting some of that to use and just go with the flow. My mind likes to tell me I suck, and I need to get over that. So Im going to try and sketch a little something everyday from here on out. As an artist, the only way to get to the good sketches is to get the awful piece of crap sketches outta your system. I know someone has said that. Was it one of the nine old men or someone else. Ive heard it before.... Well I gotta get the crappy sketches outta my system. May come across some goodies...who knows...It's a process....

Heres what I busted last night...or this morning...tired...must sleep...

Google Earth

Holy smokes, what a time waster. Ever since I downloaded this thing it has sucked up some time. You can get some great imagery of places all over the world. It's pretty dang exciting what google is doing with this. I can see tons and tons of potential with this new tool. You gotta check it out for yourself if you havent played with it yet. You can fly directly over Mt St Helens and get a really good view of it. Really amazing. Ive also looked at the house and street I grew up on as well as my current residence. Ive looked up work as well for some unknown crazy reason. Just good fun surfing around on this. Ive read on some blog about contests on who is able to find national landmarks the fastest with it. :D

Here is the link to go and download it. Google Earth

Been gone for a bit. Back into Seattle safely! :D

Blue mountain pass in Oregon
Originally uploaded by newsquirt.

Hey there friends. Long time no post. Glad to be back safely from my vacation that I just got back from. My wife and 2 kids just recently packed up the Tahoe and took off down to Utah to spend some time with my family and to get a nice break from work which was much needed on my side. We were also able to spend some time in Boise with my wife's family also. It was a good time had by all to go out and enjoy life for a bit and not worry about work.

Some of the things I was able to do over the time away was to go boating in my sister and fiance's boat, which was great. I also was able to play a couple of rounds of golf. The round I played in Utah I shot a 99 for 18 holes and the round I shot in Boise was a 47 for 9 holes. Not too bad for being the first 2 times out this year on the golf course.

One of the other highlights that I didnt get a picture of was being able to ride my Dad's Dyna Wide Glide Harley, which was a joy and made me want a motorcycle even more so than ever. Thanks Dad! heh

Got to also see all my nephews on my side of the fam. Which was cool. Ive posted quite a few pics on my flickr site.

One of the other things I noticed while away was that Ward from the wardomatic posted a link to my blog off his. Thanks Ward...Didnt have a way to say anything at the time. heh Hopefully I can post something cool that will be worthwhile for some of the new traffic from there. And a big ol hello to ya all.

When we were in Boise Id, we got to go to the waterpark there. Pretty much spent all day on the 3rd at the waterpark. I think I was having too much fun that I forgot to put some sunscreen on or I forgot that I was a Seattle whitey who needed to be lathered up in sunscreen. Anyways....Ill spare ya the painful details unless you want to see a great pic of the blisters I was able to get tagged with. I do know this, next time I go and spend a whole day out in the sun, that Im going to make sure that I put the sunscreen on and not try to be tough. Beats getting skin cancer.

Also we spent our 4th of July in a small po dunk farming community outside of Boise, Id called Melba. It was real small, had that home town feel. They had a cool, very small parade that they threw out candy to the little kids kinda thing going so my kids were super happy just filling their bags with candy. Then they also had a small carnival that the kids were able to go and do some fun stuff. After the little carnival we were able to head back into Boise for a bit to hang out then we headed back out to Melba to see the fireworks. For me personally I enjoy seeing my kids have fun and be around thier cousin's but I think Seattle's fireworks are tons tons better in quality and quantity. Gotta figure the market is so much bigger up here compared to down there. Get what ya get...But anyways...We had fun.

You can follow this pic to my flickr site to see some of the photo's or the top pic on the right should take ya there too. Check em out.

WORD!

Im known to throw out the word "word" often due to me running with the wrong crowd as a teenager, and when I said it today to one of my pals at work he showed me this. I thought it was pretty funny. Guess it's been around, but I had never seen it. Maybe you havent either.

Adding my workspace to the mix.

My workspace at Amaze
Originally uploaded by newsquirt.

I love seeing other artists workspaces. Ive seen workspace thread's on tons of threads all around the net, and Ive never took the time to take the photo's to share. Well I was inspired this time by Ward from "The Ward O Matic", and I also noticed one of the guys that I work with posted his new space on his blog too. Danny is one of the new animators on Pirates.

We just moved over the weekend into cubeland. So all my pictures and artwork are not displayed. But I was able to add a bit here and there.

If you click on the picture it will take you to my flickr site which has more photos and notes added 'splaining some areas. Man I really dig flickr, you can really add nice touches to pics. Im thinking of moving on up to the pro account. The free account only gives you 20meg upload room. Not all that much room, if you plan on sharing tons of pics.

Fencing project over Memorial Day weekend

Here is a glimpse of what I did over Memorial Day weekend. All day Saturday was taken up by doing this fence, mainly by myself til my neighbor came out and helped later in the afternoon. I did a majority of all the hard work like digging the post holes and mixing the cement and placing the posts in. I also put up all the 2x4's and the 1st 3 sections you see I put all the cedar boards up. Lot of work. The last 3 sections had to be taken down 3 times, cause things got lopsided, and another time we decided to try and step it down, then I contacted my contractor friend who came over and took a look and said why not just cut it with the skilsaw, so that's what we did. I also cut all the posts to match. It was a lot of hard work but so worth it. The price I was quoted by some fencing co. would've set me back $1200, but I was able to put this up for about $500. Big difference. Damn labor jobs...They kill ya, but they get the job done a lot faster than some scrub who's not sure what they are doing :) Here is another photo

Star Wars Ep III Revenge of the Sith books

Art of Episode III

The Making of SW Revenge of the Sith


2 books that are amazing and should be in your library if you are an artist. Holy smokes I love the Art of book a lot. So many wonderful pictures to look at. I think this is the best book out of all the Art of SW books that have been published imo. So many really amazing artists like Ryan Church, Iain McCaig, Feng Zhu etc etc... I name those 3 because I have their DVDs from gnomon online that are really dang cool too. Awesome to see how they work.

Ill definitely be posting my review and take on the movie once I see it tomorrow. Some pals from work are heading out for a 12:20 showing of ROTS. CANT WAIT CANT WAIT!!!! Im such a dang SW geek... :) Happy to say too! Im not your typical Lucas basher, Ive been a big fan of all his work, cept for Howard the Duck (just gotta make that point) lol Though plot holes abound and yes the dialog will be total cheese and ugh but, I think Georgy is a visionary! We would not have ILM, THX, Star Wars, Pixar, were it not for the man with neck! :) Anyways, more to come as I see the film and geek out over it. Reviews have been mostly kind so that is good to hear. My review I already know will be glowing unless he really f's up, which I doubt.

GO VADER! woot

Amaze Entertainment!

All the published games I've worked on while at Amaze!

This is what Ive been doing for the last 8 years. Just kind of a little retrospective. Kinda like my little resume in graphic format. It sure is fun to look back and see what has been accomplished in the time Ive been doing this art career. Onward ho.

The Drawing Board

One of the sites that I check pretty regularly and frequently get a daily dose of inspiration from is The Drawing Board There are a lot of pro's working in the art industry, ranging from Movies, Games, Graphic Art..You name it artisticly and there is someone from that group represented at the db.

Anyways, part of one of the sections in the drawing board is called drawing jam, in which the mod posts some new photos that are to inspire and all the artists who want to participate can. The new photo that was posted up inspired me Friday to drop my work that I was doing for a bit and do a quick sketch. I kinda liked how the sketch looked so I decided to email it to myself and paint it at home when I got off work. This is what came about.



Still working on all my dang drawing flaws. The remedy to that is to freakin draw! Gotta remind myself daily to pick up the pencil. Can only get better if I practice, practice, PRACTICE!

Out!