Life drawings from college

Found some life drawings from Sheridan and studies done shortly after getting settled in from moving to Vancouver. Kept as part of an older portfolio I showed when interviewing for digital animation at VFS.

SSX On Tour

SSX on Tour was probaly the most fun I've had on a project to date. Their art team asked me to help give the presentation of the product a hand with art works that resembled a high school rocker wannabe glam shredder!

My friend Rich Curren was the art director responsible for pushing such a daring flavor to this franchise and to the gaming world. Like it or not, we all went for it!
Now we got to remember that at the time when this product came out, there was nothing like it yet towards presentation in gaming. The loosely drawn day dreaming skart style was already an progressive art movement from skate artists, graffiti artists, and to do justice, my own personal voice and friends I grew up with, had not reached the malls yet.
Speaking of which, I actually got my friend Dennis Chow aka GLAM, a true school rocker with a knack for this type of artwork to jam with me and Rich!
I remember rifling off sketch book after sketch book packed with funny little doodles in all types of styles in wacky dispositions. Even took the time at the end to layout an art book for all the drawings!

Heres a few pages from that book.






Below is the intro movie for the game. Some how, I ended up doing all the drawings, poses, initial boards and provided any other 2D support to pull this off. Luckily the best video team I've worked with had a blast animating it all! Props go to Clint Jorgenson, Craig McKewin, Rich Curren, Mark Raham for putting this and the many many other movies together with their magic! We were known as the band. Now a days we're all so busy working on separate projects and places we barely see one another anymore. I guess we'll always have our memories!

Street Smart

While mostly solving production design problems with drawing and digital paintings these days, there's still the side of my resume where I once pursued the art of animation, both hand drawn and digital. I'm not entirely sure where my student film from Sheridan college lives at this moment, might be tucked away at my mother's place somewhere? (If I find it I'll update) However, I do have an digital copy of Street Smart, an animated short I made in 2002-2003 during my studies in digital animation at Vancouver Film School. Below are a few concept sketches, production stills, and 3D model turn arounds that survived from the project.

The movie below is a story board reel used to time out my scenes and animation keys. I remember spending a good chunk of my time tweaking and figuring this out before any 3D animation was touched. Ultimately it made the 3D production a lot easier to manage and execute on with a solid plan done cheap with pencil and paper. No duh sort of speak :)

Ultimately, I ended up with a short film titled Street Smart after months of scratching my head trying to get the software problems solved on top of artistic issues. At the time, it was shown in the 2004 Hiroshima film festival for best student film! Was very flattered to say the least. Here's the demo reel version that was packaged for employers. I ended up taking the first job I got offered and never got a chance to shop around. I sometimes wonder where I could have ended up if I kept my options opened and sent out demo reels. Regardless, I could'nt be any happier than I am today, working professionally doing what I love :)

Cheers to the VFS faculty and classmates for the experience, and a special thanks to William Bates, Paul Tanner, and Diego Bergia "the animation bandit" for getting me through towards the end of the project.

Sketchy skates

Here's a few pencil, pen and digital sketches dug out from a skate project from 2004.
When looking back here, the design inspirations, completely prejudice and guilty of it, crept into these sketches. Lots of fun and enthusiasm to be simply allowed to experiment with all sorts of looks before an art direction was authorized.

Pirates

Here's a few pirate sketches done a couple years back.
I remember truly having fun with these back then, embraced different Photoshop rendering techniques to accommodate the subject matter the best I could.

Quick excercise

I gave myself an quick exercise in breaking down an existing design with a broad problem statement to come up with something ownable that is still related to it's origin.







1st Sketch is usually the most generic, but needed to get it put down on paper and out of my system.
2nd and 3rd started to abstract from it's source quite dramatically, becoming more playful and stylized with personality peeking through.
By the 4th sketch, I felt it was so far removed from the original reference that it became its own identity, within a thin line; retaining the believability of an automobile.
Keeping in mind, the renders were picked out from a few pages of thumbnail sketches, one take at a time.

Overall, I was pleased with the quick exercise and had fun!

I wonder what their world is like? The characters that live in that world? Starting to fantasize about it......

Oh by the way! I love Subaru Impreza's! :)

Blast from the past

Originally posted in an older blog where I separated personal works with industry related works. Ultimately, with encouragement, I'm deciding to have it all in one blog rather than two.

The following sketches were done when inspiration and motivation was flowing, found myself always in my sketchbooks doodling.

Drawings from the wonderful pages of lovelydesign journey books.

Sketchbook center page from yet another lovelydesign book.

Ink and watercolor sketches in the park and off a beach in a small town British Columbia.

A collection of a few oil pastels on cardboard. These were created to be showcased in an group art show in Germany at the time.

Billy, Freddie, and George at the top are 18x24 charcoal sketches and the bottom image is a pen drawing that I played around with in Photoshop. These were both showcased in a book "Sketchbook Black and White" and was later shown at a local art show.

Paper, ink, and Photoshop was used to create these images. These were shown in a book "Cats and Dogs" and the city scape image was shown at a local art show.

City Sketches from the sketchbook that somehow made into Photoshop. The top image was sketched on Robson Street in Vancouver when I first arrived in the city just after school. The bottom image is from studies for a friend's skateboard design.

These two were done for an book and art show called 8-bit. They asked for a take on a old school video game, and this is what I handed to them. These now live in a home in Vancouver.

Character sketches

Here's a few random character sketches all done at separate times.
Learning and experimenting with different rendering executions and plain good Ol' sketchy fun during Photoshop painting demos for students, friends, and co-workers.

My favorite exercise

My favorite exercise!

Ever since my times at Sheridan college, I remember how much life drawing was a key component in my life. Going 5-6 times a week! sometimes even more during portfolio grading deadlines during school, hoping for a keeper here and there while conning myself not to care.
I kept the life drawing up 2 sessions a week when I first moved to Vancouver and slowly tappered into once a week when time got more scarce.

Now a days, I'll love to find time to keep the drawing up, been challenging since adjusting to parenthood. But I wouldn't miss Adelaide's baby year's for anything :)
Perhaps it's time to blow the dust off my charcoal case, flex that muscle again, and making marks for no one but myself for a bit of exhale from the reality of working in a production studio.


These gestures are dated from a few sessions in winter 2005