Minto Illustration

Screech

2011-06-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a revisited creature concept that I developed while in school. I thought that it might be interesting to try some wings protruding from the forehead/eyebrow area which would then wrap around the body to attach at the base of the neck and spine. Some orthos may be fun with this one at some point. The idea was that with wings attached to the eyebrows their positioning would be influenced by the creature's emotions as well as providing some functionality (for gliding perhaps). The legs and feet were influenced by some bull and cow bones in effort to take a different look at talons.

Scorps

2011-06-16T13:58:00.000-07:00

Hushpuppies

2011-04-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

Trying out some new brushes on this alien dandy.

I'm only human

2011-04-07T05:17:00.000-07:00

These are some human characters that I'm working on for team design class. They're for a Vegas-themed board game that I'm working on with three other students. Basically, my teammates developed the entire idea and character descriptions. It's just my job to visualize them.

We've got eight characters in total: a businessman, a tourist, a bachlorette, a college frat-boy, a creepy old guy, a stripper, a girl celebrating her 21st birthday and a showgirl. What you're seeing above (from left to right) is the creepy old guy, the businessman, the stripper and the showgirl.

Gunbear Busey

2011-04-06T01:05:00.000-07:00

Finally got around to finishing tightening up the greyscale version of this guy. The infamous Gunbear Busey, slayer of goblinkind, and the plight of the demonites ha ha!

Gatorgoblin

2011-04-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

This is another work in progress character soon to be colored. Thanks for looking!

Chief Handsome

2011-03-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a photoshopped work in progress of a revamped goblin character to be colored later.

Bittles

2011-03-09T15:04:00.000-08:00

"May be innocent, may be sweet... ain't half as nice as rotting meat" -Blix

Pirate Bear Peekaboo

2011-02-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

After two semesters of Illustrative drawing at CCAD I'd filled my computer and sketchbooks with tons of rough character concepts. Since then I've toyed with these designs in effort to practice techniques for new paintings. Now with more experience, one of my goals my last semester at CCAD is to revisit several of these designs and give them the polish that I'm capable of today.

This character was from a project about humanoid, pirate bears, and greatly influenced by the intensity of Gary Busey. The fur is not a texture, but I'm no longer a stickler about not using them; so, he'll probably have some textures in the final.

Proto-Feldling

2011-02-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

Another sketch here working towards a possible body type for some Marty Feldman-inspired creatures I've been playing around with here and there. Just wanted them to appear fairly human, but a little squat with a giant head. Didn't find it necessary to design the nether regions in this case though!

Liverlips

2011-02-17T19:04:00.001-08:00

Thought I might share some sketches more regularly. I may paint this fella at some point. Thanks for looking!

The Prophet

2011-02-15T21:06:00.000-08:00

Here's another creature concept from last semester. I recently touched up some areas and pulled out more contrast.

Ogre Bust

2011-02-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

Well I'd say it's probably high time that I start sharing some work from last semester!

So, this is a "Life-sized" ogre bust that I sculpted in Van Aken Plastalina. He's a big boy, the dimensions are approximately as follows: H- 15", W- 17", D- 16". The resin teeth are temporary placeholders for the final model. After being lucky enough to get some great feedback from Thomas Kuebler at Illuxcon I'm going with some bulkier teeth more befitting those tremendous jowls.

I was inspired by years of observing Brian Froud, Dungeons and Dragons art, The Lord of the Rings films, Hellboy and the like. I studied a ton of work by Aris Kolokontes and Jordu Schell to get a better grasp on sculpting wrinkles. Much of the character was also inspired by mma vet, Wanderlei "The Axe Murderer" Silva!

Here's an in-progress shot of some of the finer wrinkles:

Chesty

2010-08-27T22:21:00.001-07:00

Krang's younger brother.

Photoshoppin'.

HMPH!

2010-08-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

Goblins on the brain! Influenced by the late, great Marty Fledman.

Photoshop paints and pencil lines.

Ol' Banananose!

2010-08-03T16:53:00.001-07:00

Photoshop fun time!

Bonebeard Sculpture Boards

2010-06-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

Hey, thought I'd share some portfolio pieces with you all! Some of you may've seen these photos during the actual making of this ten foot beast and may just want to skip down to the last few boards.

Columbus Dispatch Pirate Bear Interview!!!

2010-05-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, we finished the pirate bear project and they all came out really awesome. It turned out to be the best experience I've had making art thus far. Mr. Hazlerig, Steve Janusz, and I were interviewed by Amy Saunders of the Columbus Dispatch about the project and here's a link for all that are interested: Columbus Dispatch Link

I'll be posting more process pictures shortly, but for now here's a glimpse of the finished captain:

IPA anyone?

2010-04-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

This was a "food product" design for styles and concepts class. In light of all the bizarre beer labels out there, I thought it would be fun to design one of my own. I drew the heads with pencil and painted up the rest in Photoshop.

Anyone ever had trouble with desaturated images after posting them on Blogger? This came out a little better after making some tweaks, but it is still missing some of the vibrancy I had with the original image. Any suggestions?

Ripped and Hairy

2010-04-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

Well, the Captain's finally grown some hair and I recently finished grooming his massive pythons. I have to say, the fake bear hair that we're using is simply amazing. Here's some shots of how the pattern was made for cutting the hair. It comes in huge, expensive rolls that resemble a rectangular bear skin rug:

This will be similar to the viewer vantage point as he will stand over 8 feet tall:

As with many illustration methods, sometimes the stages in between start and finish aren't always the prettiest. The chest and arms here are no exception. Here's a couple shots of the arms before attaching hands and fur. The skinning was done by taking paper towels that had been submerged in dyed latex and wrapping them over the foam sculpture. The chest does look comically small compared to the arms at this point; however, the chest only serves as an armature because it will be entirely covered by his costume.

The plague of the high seas grows...

2010-03-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, spring break is for the weak! The Captain is growing! Being a mix between a bear, Blackbeard, the Death Dealer and Conan the Barbarian, the captain has recently been deemed Captain "Bonebeard". As the story goes, his nickname was derived from his beheaded victim's bones, which remain buried in his unwashed beard. In the end, the Bonebeard sculpt will have his beard and a slick mustache as well.

Here are some detail shots from the final clay sculpt:

As you may've noticed, he's looking a tad gummy. Due to the impossible undercuts, the teeth have been made into removable plates for molding. Notice the token Arnold gap:

Here's a few shots of the head from the (extraordinarily heavy) molding process. The original sculpture is actually destroyed during the mold-making; obviously, you really can't grow too attached to it. On the other hand, the concrete mold retains all of the details as long as you know what your doing. Fortunately, Mr. Hazlerig is an expert mold-maker and the casting came out great:

The head was cast in a thick layer of dyed latex and then filled with soft foam. The end result is light and fairly durable, almost like a sponge coated in rubber. As you can see, there is a seam surrounding the face, separating highly detailed areas from the rest of the head. While a bear's face is actually covered in fur, I wanted some details like wrinkles and bags under the eyes to show through. So, the areas below the seam-line will be covered in fake fur, and the areas with detail will be covered in much less dense, punched fur. Punching the fur will be a test of will power for sure, as they can only be punched a few hairs at a time.

So, this week I've been building the body. The basic frame was a foam-cast, taxidermy bear armature. These casts are made for real bear hides and were ideal for the project. However a bear armature without fur resembles a large dog standing on it's hind legs. The fur that we're using is just about as realistic as it gets, but unfortunately our fake fur is about a tenth of the length of real bear fur. In order to become less dog-like, the sculpt just needed to get bigger and bigger to make up for the short fur.

Then, there was the issue of reassembling the armature into different poses. The captain couldn't just be standing there lifelessly. He will be holding a massive axe above his head for the final display, so I had to cut off the arms and add about a foot and a half of foam to spread the width of his shoulders. Of course, there's also the bulging muscle factor, or Conan-factor, and the width of the arms had to be extended as well:

Well, the foam carving should be finished soon and I'll post some more updates during the next few weeks. With only a little over a month to go it's crunch-time!

Monster in the Mud Puddle

2010-03-15T17:32:00.001-07:00

Here's my final to a children's book project I've been working on. Colored pencil and acrylics on illustration board.

Just a few more days

2010-03-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

The captain cometh!

The Monster in the Mud Puddle

2010-02-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

This is a quick snapshot of my sketch for a painting I'll be finishing in the next two weeks for class. We're working on children's book concepts and it's a pretty fun project. Even though it's not my primary focus, I'd love to give children's book illustration a try before it's all over.

In my story, a boy named Preston Dupomp comes across a mud puddle with a pair of eyes starring back at him. Needless to say, this leads to some nightmares like the one pictured above. In the end, things are not always what they seem and the pair of eyes in the mud puddle is only a harmless frog.

Work in Progress: Pirate Bears in 3D!!!

2010-02-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

First off, I have to say that I'm blown away by CCAD right now. I'm so thankful to have Mr. Hazlerig as my instructor; without him, none of this crazy project would've ever happened. Unfortunately, his web presence is just about nonexistent but I did find this great little blurb about him on James Gurney's Blog: link

Last semester I approached Mr. Hazlerig about a large scale sculpture project. Something that would involve a team of students building something huge for his dimensional illustration course. I really enjoy sculpting at any scale, however I prefer life-sized (or bigger) sculpture. In my opinion, it just has an overwhelming presence that the viewer can't deny.

So, I'd been trying to come up with an idea that would get a few other students involved and excited, but also the support from Mr. Hazlerig. Throughout Mr. Hazlerig's History of Illustration course it had always seemed that his ongoing favorite themes were bears and pirates. As bizarre as it sounds, pirate bears had suddenly made so much sense.

Now with 20 to 30 classmates lending a hand in the project, it has developed into something simply massive. We're in the midst of sculpting somewhere in the realm of ten life-sized, pirate, anthropomorphic-bears. We have people in charge of costuming, building weapons, sculpting, mold-making, the list goes on and on. I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to play a role in developing such a large-scale endeavor, and very thankful that I attend a school that will actually fund such an expensive project based on a 3-dimensional, illustrative idea. It's still very early on but there's so much enthusiasm and dedication pouring into the project that I can already see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here's a sneak peak at the rough sculpting stages of the Captain I've been working on:

We have yard upon yard of fake bear fur to cover these guys in, but there's still plenty of sculpting to do. My captain will also have a long braided black beard. The captain character is a based off of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian, the infamous Blackbeard the pirate, Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer, and (of course) a giant bear. I'll be posting more work in progress photos as the bears evolve. Here's a couple links to two of the other head sculptors that you should be sure to check out: Tyler Bolyard, Graham Erwin.

Hammond Piggins WIP

2010-02-26T22:29:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't you be sad if you looked like a pig?

This is a work in progress, but I just wanted to give you all a glimpse of what I've been working on in the 3D illustration lab at school. He will be much nastier in the end!

The sculpture was made from Van Aken's Plastalina (oil based modeling clay). What you're viewing here is a cast of my sculpture in soft foam and latex. I'm primarily using thin acrylic washes for the paint job, but it may be time to break out the air brush soon. Mr. Piggins is only about a third of the way painted, and I'll post some updates later on down the road. Thanks for looking!

Jack Black Cat

2010-02-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

This was called the "famous person as an animal" project. I ran across this photo: link while searching for a good celebrity to morph into an animal and just felt the man had a very cheshire cat look about him.

I used some modified techniques I learned from Dave Groff, starting with a fairly tight value drawing and then adding thin washes of color. It's basically a grisaille painting. Acrylics and colored pencil on illustration board. 9" by 13.5".

Pirate Bears!

2009-12-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

This is a little warm up to a massive project involving life-sized pirate bear sculptures I'll be working on very soon.

Mr. Happy

2009-12-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

Just a little zombie action used in a poster design. Painted in Photoshop.

Ratraven

2009-12-16T11:41:00.000-08:00

This is a Photoshop study of 3-value compositions.

WIP: Bocephus & Delilah

2009-09-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

This is a video game character I'm developing for my Styles and Concepts illustration course. The direction is being heavily inspired by Wes Burt's concept art for a new multi-platform game called "Ride to Hell" (Link).

Book Cover Illustration

2009-09-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

Here's some of my process in creating a book cover illustration for my "Styles and Concepts" class. The face was inspired by the late actor Henry Irving who was supposedly Bram Stoker's primary inspiration behind Dracula's appearance.

Almost went realistic. In the end, I decided to head towards a more caricature-like direction as I did in the beginning.

The final was illustrated in acrylics and colored pencil, then Photoshopped to hide some massive heaps of matt medium. Please excuse the non-vector text on this promo version...

Revised Goblin

2009-05-18T20:25:00.000-07:00

I made a lot of changes to my "life-sized" goblin bust in order to give it a more organic/natural feel.

Playing Card Designs

2009-05-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

This is part of small set of fantasy art inspired playing card designs for my electronic illustration class.

The last image was a result of the brainstorming sketches for a possible Joker card. The king and queen were pen and ink drawings scanned into Painter and Photoshop.

DeVries Mixed Media Makeover

2009-04-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

Here's one of our last assignments from Mr. Groff's Illustration Methods class this semester. We borrowed from David DeVries Monster Engine and revamped a new batch of monster art by second graders.

Final work:

Marker & Photoshop color study:

Original art:

3D Illustration WIP

2009-04-27T23:58:00.000-07:00

CCAD Semester II

2009-04-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

Commercial Figure Drawing

2009-04-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

CCAD Semester I

2009-04-27T22:51:00.000-07:00

Here are some pieces from my first semester attending CCAD:

Basic Design II

2009-04-27T01:21:00.000-07:00

These are more pages from another process book that I created under the instruction of OSU professor and interior designer, Heike Goeller.

OSU Sculpture

2009-04-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

I hate to say it but this project was lost in the void. Pity, because it would've made a great armature if nothing else. It mysteriously vanished from Hopkins hall one night. I imagine it was either thrown away or stolen. This was a 3D wire contour drawing of a hen skeleton.

We were studying cubism in our 3D Art class and we were assigned to replicate a cubist piece out of wood. This was a 3D copy of Picasso's "Woman with an Artichoke" and it was 5' 6" tall.

Wire and tracing paper (conditioned with wallpaper paste). We were assigned to create a body extension sculpture based on an animal horn and we had to be able to wear it.

This sculpture was made out of one sheet of paper which can be folded flat. No adhesives were allowed, only constructed connections.

This was another body extension project. The box that restricts the wearer's arms was made of poplar wood and lap joints. The masks were hand-carved basswood. The top cross-hair shaped element spins on a dowel joint for the observer to decide which mask/emotion is worn.

This was a 3D contour drawing (in wire) of a 4" gargoyle-shaped candle holder I'd bought back in high school. All of the joints were wrapped (we weren't allowed to soldeir), and it stood around 8 feet tall.

As you may've noticed from these photos we were all very exhausted by the final day of the critique! Unfortunately the quarter system at OSU didn't usually leave much time for sleep and many of these projects were actually built in a week or less following a week or two of planning. This robot below was (for the most part) put together during the course of a single night. This was a project from my Wood Construction Sculpture class and all of our connections had to be some form of a constructed joint. Except for the mouth and arms, all of mine were hidden dowel joints.

OSU Design

2009-04-26T19:57:00.001-07:00

As a design student at OSU I was very privileged to study under Peter Megert, the Swiss graphic designer and professor at OSU. Here are some pages from a book I put together in his class:

Early Sculpey Projects

2009-04-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

Plaster Sculpture

2009-04-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

This is a plaster sculpture of a fossil with some minor abstractions. Just over 4' tall and weighing easily over 200lbs (probably much more) from OSU's Beginning Sculpture class. We learned quite a bit about the large-scale sculpting process, and in this case, from building initial models to building proportional armatures out of wood, burlap and chicken wire. This is a giant replica of... well... a small rock; however, the purpose of this exercise was much more about the analyzation of form rather than content. Each tiny detail was carefully chiseled and sanded into a thick coat of plaster over the course of a week.

Art & Technology

2009-04-26T17:46:00.000-07:00

During a brief stint in the Art & Technology program at OSU my work was exhibited in two shows, Technology Expanding the Horizon being one of them. Here are a couple samples from Art 350 (a foundation course in the program with an emphasis on Photoshop):

Both images are relatively abstract, and were intended to depict futuristic landscapes. Photomanipulation created in Photoshop.

Black & White Oldies

2009-04-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

This is a collection of black and white works from my time at OSU.

Work from 2D Art from the OSU fine arts fundamental coursework. All three are 8" by 8"; ink on illustration board:

This is my final illustration from Beginning Design Drawing. Graphite on bristol; 11" by 14":

This is the mid-term from Beginning Deign Drawing. Graphite and ink on bristol; 11" by 14":

A contour line assignment from my Beginning Figure Drawing class. 18" by 24"; graphite and charcoal:

Another assignment from my 2D Art class at OSU. 15" by 15"; black and white acrylics on bristol. One of the first paintings I finished in the last ten years. I'm painting quite frequently now at CCAD, and I plan to do many, many more!

Another early painting for Basic Design I. 10" by 10"; black and white acrylics on bristol. I used a scan of the reference and posterized the image in Photoshop to help decipher the greyscale planes. Then from the new reference I was able to paint a more "loose" image than the posterized filter was capable of:

Beginning Design, OSU: Illustrate a "scream". Cut black paper on Bristol; 11" by 14":

Another Beginning Design asssignment. 11" by 14"; graphite on bristol board:

These last three were visual problem solutions from The Ohio State University Design Department Entrance Exam '06. Some constraints were: 8.5" by 11" sheets, graphite or pen only, and no words whatsoever. The last was to be rendered in no more than two pages, illustrating the prompt: "How to change a tire on a car".

Butter Cow Internship

2009-01-06T15:54:00.000-08:00

Last summer I had an internship opportunity from professional sculptor and OSU Sculpture instructor, Malcolm Cochran. I worked with a group of commercial sculptors from Cincinnati and Ira Tecson, a recent graduate from the Sculpture program at OSU. Ira and I assisted Bob Kling and his team in creating the giant "butter cow" exhibit over the course of one week for the 2008 Ohio State Fair.

Ira and I spent most of the time slapping fistfuls of butter onto an armature and making sure that there was no visible evidence of the armature to the audience below. I can assure you however, even though there was an armature beneath all that butter 95 percent of the sculpture was truly hundreds of pounds of cold butter. Mr. Kling and his associates where in charge of the fun stuff like rendering all of the details and basically all of the "real" sculpting.

Overall, it was an interesting experience but I felt that the highlight of the project was discussing action figure sculpture with the pros, as Mr. Kling's team had all either worked for Hasbro or Kenner. On the downside, I'm regularly reminded of the project in a bad way through a few articles of clothing that still smell like rotting movie theater popcorn after sliding around in pounds of Ohio butter for several hours.

I wasn't present for the interview, although I was mentioned in this article form the Lantern:

Butter up: OSU alumna spreads art at State Fair - Campus