Danny McCooter

Last week, I went with my brother and cousins to see Third Eye Blind in concert for free. It was AMAZING! We were like 20-30 feet from the stage. The only problem with that and it being a free concert is that people from the back start muscling their way to the front, not caring about people who were there first. One of them was this guy. For some reason he was the one I remembered out of all the people in crowd. Maybe it was his funny dancing moves? Anyway, he reminded me a little bit of Danny McBride from the movie, Land Of the Lost and Pineapple Express. There was also a little bit of Cooter from Dukes Of Hazzard in him as well. With that said here's Danny McCooter!

Dreamin'

As I was sitting in my room flipping through Joe Weatherly's new sketchbook, my dog Kobe comes walking in and jumps onto my bed. I hear some rustling and then a soft thump. I turn back to see what Kobe is doing and he is totally past out. I was inspired flipping through Joe Weatherly's animal sketches that I thought I'd give sketching Kobe a go.

This is dedicated to Kobe who just turned 1 year old yesterday. Happy Birthday Kobe!

Boom Boom Pau

After watching Game 1 of the NBA Finals I decided to do a quick sketch of Pau Gasol. Why?!?! I dunno, I just didn't feel like drawing Kobe yet. His time will come. If Pau plays strong like he did in game 5 and 6 of the Denver series and Kobe is on his game, the Lakers will soon be holding up title number 15!

How does that Black Eyed Peas song go again??

Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, now
Boom boom boom, now
Boom boom PAU
Boom boom PAU

Cards

My parents are throwing a party celebrating my recent graduation. Since I already did stuff with some friends, this is mainly for family members. My mom was going to send out store bought cards but since I just got a degree in illustration, I thought it would be more special to send out a card I designed myself. We're going to have roasted pig at the party so I thought that should be a part of the drawing. When I joked about putting my soon to be 1 year old pup in the drawing, my mom liked the idea.

Here are some of the sketches I came up with
I'm pretty happy with how it came out especially how fast I had to have it done by to get it sent out. Although I was really bummed out when the prints came out darker than what I had. All the small extra things I did like having pastel textures and pushing things back just got lost. I didn't have time nor the money to send it off and get it printed again. So with that said, this is how it supposed to look like minus all the text.

Pimp My Coach

I've meaning to post the stages of our final project in BFA as I finished them but I've been busy working on revisions for my portfolio as well as working on this truck design to do so. Since I couldn't get that done here's all of the stages of the project in one post.
The assignment for our final was to pimp out one of the delivery coaches that was given to us. I chose to pimp out this divco truck for my delivery service.


We first had to come up with 3 international foods. Here are some of the ideations i came up with for Halo Halo, Kufta and Sushi...




We then had to choose one food and develop the idea even more...



Here is my Final Design...

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.