Highlight of SuperCon

Supercon was all right this year. I was hoping they'd have some booths selling animation cells like they did a couple years back. But nope, no dice. I did meet some pretty cool artists while walking around though. It was cool seeing other peoples styles and what they are working on.

The highlight of Supercon for me though was finally meeting Sean "Cheeks" Galloway . I've been a fan of his since I first stumbled upon his work about four years ago. I've seen him at some Cons but never got to talk to him due to huge crowds or time constraints. I bought his latest book and best of all I got him to do a quick sketch of me in HIS style!

John Steinbeck's Cannery Row

For this project we had to read John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. We had to develop and design the interior shot of Doc's Lab as well as Lee Chong's Grocery store. I had a lot of fun working on this project. TONS of work but I found it pretty interesting. Before getting into the project my friend and I went down to Cannery Row to gather up reference photos. I thought it was really interesting that the places that Steinbeck mentioned in the book was actually real. Not only that, all characters were based off of real people too. Doc was based off of Ed Ricketts and Lee Chong off of Won Yee.

The best part of the research was visiting the sites that still exist today. I got to visit Doc's Lab also known as Ed Ricketts Lab in real life. I also got a tour of both floors of Lee Chongs, which not that many people get to do. It was such an amazing experience to be in these places that had so much history behind it. I go to Monterey almost every year and I never knew about these places. It makes me wonder whats in my home town that everyone just seems to overlook.

These are the interiors that I've designed for the book. I tried to balance what I saw in each place with what I thought of when I read the book. I also designed Lee Chongs Truck just for fun.

FREE Caricatures at Cannery Row

I've been wanting to do free caricatures with my friends since last Spring Break but the day we wanted to go it showered in SF. We decided to postpone it til Summer time but then everyone was busy. Fast forward to last week, when my friend Virgil and I we're at Cannery Row taking reference photos for our current BFA project. We decided Cannery Row was the perfect spot. After a week of practicing caricatures we finally got to use our skills yesterday. It was such a BLAST! We got to meet some really cool people and their stories. One couple just got married!

Being that it was my first time doing caricatures live, I never knew how hard it was. Not only is it hard getting their likeness with exaggerations, but even harder when they're constantly moving around. I have to say kids and babies were the hardest to draw.

Here are some of the drawings I did. Thanks for everyone who let us draw them.

The place where we were located, we had no idea was private property. Turns out that spot was run by this man right here, John Lawrence. We thought we were in HUGE trouble but man he was really cool. he let us stay for the rest of the day but we couldnt be there in the future because it wouldnt be fair to the people paying rent at that same location. So to help us out, John introduced us to a bunch of restaurant owners where we could set up in the future. THANK YOU JOHN!
After 7 hours of caricaturing we finally called it quits. We decided to take a pic with our new friend, John. We'll DEFINITELY be coming back in the future! GOOD TIMES!


I wasn't happy with a couple of drawings I did, so I decided to redo some in my sketchbook. Since I had pictures of everyone I drew, I thought why not just do them all again for fun. I tried to do these as fast as I could pretending it was live. After that I just took it to photoshop for some quick color.

Animal Farm

We just wrapped up our project of Animal Farm. The project was to design characters based on the book Animal Farm by George Orwell. I have to say it was quite an interesting book. For those who are not familiar with the book, its based on the Russian Revolution. Instead of making it obvious, the author takes the concept of the Russian Revolution and places it in a Farm in England.

So here are my characters; Napoleon (Joseph Stalin), Ivan (the KGB) and Boxer (russian workers).


My environments are based on two story moments in the book. The first one is when the animals are trying to build a windmill. The second is a shot of the farm when some animals are put on trial.


The artist I was trying to emulate in this project was Steve Brodner.

A "Cheerful" Fellow

I'm currently working on a project where I have to design characters for the book Animal Farm. The artist I chose to emulate for the project is Steve Brodner, who is an amazing illustrator and caricaturist. In order to get used to his style of drawing I decided to draw some humans before jumping into caricaturing animals. I remembered telling a friend a couple months back that I would draw him, so I decided now would be a perfect time to try this style out on him. I still need work in this style and not be afraid to exaggerate features a lot more like Brodner does, but with more practice I think I can get there.

The Magic Chalk

For our BFA Final we had to develop concept art for the story 'The Magic Chalk" by Kobo Abe. The story is about an artist, Argon living in San Francisco, struggling to make his way through life. He lives in a run down apartment, leaving him with little or no money at all to get food. He soon finds a magic chalk that magically turns anything he draws to life. For my concept I decided to set the story in 1965. The artist i tried to emulate was Neil Campbell Ross. I still have a lot to fix, but good thing we're on winter break.

The Da Vinci Project Part Dos

I got caught up with our Final project that I forgot to post an update on the Da Vinci Project of ours. The style I was trying to emulate in this project is that of Neil Campbell Ross'.

Da Vinci Project

Here are some of my latest drawings from the current project I'm working on. Its based on Boccaccio's DeCameron. To give you the cliff notes version of the story, its based on a plagued city, with several characters characters forming a group to leave the city behind and flee to the countryside where they believe it is more safe .

These drawings are part of my second pass of the project. They all still need A LOT of work especially the ones that I'm not showing. Just thought I'd show them so you hopefully see the difference later on.

The Country House that the characters flee to.

Filostrato is one of the characters I'm designing. He's an inventor who idolizes Da Vinci. He's a shy, quiet type character who's always focused on inventing new things. The Plagued City of Paris in the 1900s.

Water For Elephants

Here is the final pass for my first BFA assignment of the semester. For the project we had to read the book "Water for Elephants" and design 3 characters, 1 animal and a couple of environments these characters would live in. In addition to that we had to choose from a list of artists, and try to emulate their style into our designs. The artist I was looking at was Sean "Cheeks" Galloway. Below are just a few of my designs.

Meet Kobe

I'd like to introduce you all to Kobe, the newest member of our family. We just got him a couple weeks ago. For being 2 months old, he's pretty small but man does he have a lot of energy. He takes up a lot of my time since I have to make sure he doesn't soil or chew up the house. I worked on this piece mostly when he would be sleeping.

Magic Trick

For the people who haven't seen the film yet, I wont say much. Lets just say, its one of the moments I'll always remember about this movie. Fun Times haha

Ha Ha Ha!

First off I just want to say that The Dark Knight in my opinion is the best Batman movie to date. I've seen it a couple times already and loved it! I don't know you about guys but I save my ticket stubs when its something memorable (ex: Concerts, Sporting Events, Movies) . More often than none, I usually just end up misplacing or losing most of them. Since its hard to lose a sketchbook, I decided to place my stub in there and paint something related to the movie.

Iron Man 2.0

I know I already posted an Iron Man drawing but that was before the movie ever came out. I just had to do another after seeing the movie last month. I started it a couple days ago and worked on it during breaks from animating and modeling in Maya.

Self Portrait: Homage to Norman Rockwell

For the final in our Figure painting class, the assignment was to choose a master painter and try to emulate his/her style either by color pallet, brush strokes, technique etc. I chose Norman Rockwell mainly because of his use of story in all his paintings and the color pallet he uses.
Out of all his paintings, I went with "The Letterman". Back in the day, I wanted to play high school football with some of my friends but my Mom just wouldn't let me do it. I figure since I couldn't play football in real life why not make it happen through the world of art.

Just a side note, I added the background because my teacher stressed throughout the semester about having a background so I didn't want to risk leaving it white especially on the final even though Rockwell kept his white/off-white.

Watercolor Portrait

A couple of weeks ago I discovered I still had watercolors when I did a piece for class. I've been working mainly with oils and acrylics this past year so it was nice to use this medium again. I decided to take a break from my Maya project and do a head study using watercolors. If you can guess the celebrity then Kudos to you