sketch and story

Strange has gone mad

2012-01-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

A quick one... more Jonathan Strange fan art.

Spider-Man Stuffs

2011-12-18T22:44:00.000-08:00

There is a very short preview of the Spider-Man show I am working on in Disney XD's 2012 line-up teaser. 21 second mark:

Can't wait to see how the season turns out. A lot of talented people's hard work went into it.

Who wears short shorts?

2011-12-07T12:49:00.001-08:00

POSE!

and watch your hand placements...

Lunchtime Boxing

2011-03-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Some gestures from lunchtime today.

Costumed Life Drawing

2010-11-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

I was able to jump into the last 25 minutes of life drawing at lunch. I haven't been to a life drawing session with costumes before. Pretty fun stuff, and there are so many talented artists surrounding you. Here are a few of my measly contributions.

Done with charcoal pencil. I love the line quality it can give.

Wedding

2010-09-03T19:12:00.000-07:00

I play tetris on the internet before bed sometimes, and if I can't go to sleep, I stare at the ceiling and see the pieces stacking themselves. I guess that means I have an addiction.

So this is a story about tetris. And the jerk that it makes you for playing it.

Babies!

2010-08-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

Many of our friends are having babies these days. They are small. They are cute. And they are the reason I have a lot of these pictures to complete in the next few months...

This one is for the Campos's. Congrats guys!

Portfolio Site Up

2010-07-21T05:41:00.000-07:00

I have a portfolio site up and running now with some boards and other work on it. If you are interested, the link can be found to the right, or you can click on the image below to get there.

Pre Viz Test

2010-06-28T03:36:00.000-07:00

PreViz Test from Chris Palmer on Vimeo.

A little exercise.

before bed

2010-05-27T00:32:00.001-07:00

working out

2010-04-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

It's tough to find time to work out in the day. There is so much work to be done and a whole lot of Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus to rent and subsequently sit down and watch.

Hands

2010-04-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

These are some quick sketches to figure out hand positions for a captive in a set of pirate storyboards.

pretend

2010-04-13T23:43:00.000-07:00

Some more old...

2010-04-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

Working on storyboards pretty feverishly lately, so here is some more art from an old game that I worked on for iWin.

This first set of images are thumbnails from a montage concept that the player would see at different intervals throughout the game. Depending on the mode of travel the player had access to (steamboat, airship, etc.) and the area of land they were located in, a different montage cutscene would pop up. This is about as far as we were able to get before the project was scrapped, but it was fun to think about all of the different possibilities.

This is the interior of a hotel in a San Francisco-type western city. Pretty unhappy with how it turned out, but it's a process.

Brush up

2010-02-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

My friend Nelson gave me some new brushes today. I don't know how to use them. I made this drawing with them.

For a great series of Batman sketches, visit Januel's blog.

2 Months pt. 2

2010-01-29T12:55:00.000-08:00

Here are some sketches of the male lead.

2 Months

2010-01-28T18:20:00.000-08:00

I got permission to show some of the work that I did back in October/November for a game that is (sadly) not being made anymore.

This is probably my favorite sketch that came out of the first brainstorm for the female lead.

These next two were the first that I did.

I will have some more up tomorrow.

Old Pirate Characters

2009-11-19T19:20:00.001-08:00

Here is an old sketch from my tablet. I cleaned up the pirate girl and that version is in one of the posts below.

A Little Late for Halloween

2009-11-12T00:05:00.000-08:00

These are some quick character sketches I did for a storyboarding project last month. The story centers around the little witch with the frog. Couldn't figure out what age to pin her at. I think keeping her younger worked better for the story in the end.

monday warm down

2009-10-19T23:58:00.000-07:00

tuesday's witch warm-up

2009-10-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

15 minutes

2009-09-30T23:13:00.000-07:00

Speed paint of Robyn while watching the extras of Children of Men. Brilliant film.

Those are my blanketed knees in the foreground.

Coconut Queen

2009-09-29T19:07:00.001-07:00

A game I worked on for iWin came out in August. It is called Coconut Queen and you can and should check it out here. Here are some development screens for the cutscenes.

*EDIT: There is an interview with the Producer and Creator at this site - http://www.gamezebo.com/features/special-editorials/behind-game-coconut-queen.

100!!

2009-09-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

Ninety Nine

2009-09-28T21:50:00.001-07:00

Variations on a few characters I wanted to fill a pirate ship with.

Ninety Eight

2009-09-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

Part 2.

Ninety Seven

2009-09-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

Making a card for my friends who just brought a baby girl into this world.

This is the outside of the card. I'll post the inside when I finish it.

Ninety Six

2009-09-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

My wife and I have been watching a lot of Naruto and Naruto Sihppudden during these long summer nights. I can't believe the wonders of Hulu. We are about 280 episodes in and counting...

Ninety Five

2009-08-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

And a few more coming...

Ninety Four

2009-08-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

Revisiting this pirate lass with some help from Tron Mai and Jan Mercado. I'll have some more later.

Ninety Three

2009-08-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

My wife and I received a couch from our good friends. It is great! We've needed one for a while now.

Here's the thank you card we made for them.

Ninety-Two

2009-08-02T20:43:00.000-07:00

Robyn tells me to update. So I'll update with a sketch of her. Colors didn't reproduce too well...

Ninety One

2009-06-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

In progress layout...

Ninety

2009-05-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

Tried to use some of those last sketches to draw over and make the gestures fit a character.

Catch my error? We'll say that she can hold the sword using either hand.

Eighty Nine

2009-04-29T00:08:00.000-07:00

Bunny and Courtney put together a program today for the Animation/Illustration students to watch or participate in stage combat and theatrical dueling. It was lead by instructor Chris DuVall. Learned some great ideas today like "the illusion of violence" and of course, telling a story withing your fight sequence. When stage fighting, actors must make eye contact, make a preparatory move, evade, attack, and recover. These steps add to the safety of the actors and serve to hold up the illusion for the audience.

Straight lines = Attack, Bends = Defensive

Here are some of my quick gestures from the session.

Eighty Eight

2009-04-21T22:09:00.001-07:00

Eighty Seven

2009-03-18T23:25:00.000-07:00

My parents bought Wii Fit.

Robyn and my dad.

Eighty Two

2008-12-29T22:47:00.000-08:00

Having a little time off has been really nice. I've been spending more time with my family and trying to polish a few 3D animation tests so I can get together a reel. The above image was the front of a card for my wife's family (St. Barbara's head is teenie and St. Lucy's head is enormous). They celebrated Advent this year for the first time, and it was a lot of fun leading us up to Christmas. Next year, both of our families will have to get together and celebrate. It really made the season last longer.

Playing around with colored pencil.

Looking forward to Sketchcrawl next week!

Eighty One

2008-12-22T22:37:00.000-08:00

Some early sketch ideas I did for a friend a few months back.

Eighty

2008-12-17T17:06:00.001-08:00

Seventy Nine

2008-10-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

Pretty darn busy with animation. More and more I've been running into the age-old fact that simplifying solves all your problems, especially in animation. It gets you back on the trains tracks so that you can move forward.

Seventy Eight

2008-09-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

This is a character from a short story I am working on with a friend. I tried my hand at inking in Photoshop this weekend after reading a few tutorials online. Not my favorite method, and I usually like the looser stuff. Never-the-less, this was a fun exercise in Photoshop. Went for that soft gradient look that you see on kid's animated movie covers. Pretty ugly and goes against everything I've learned in school...

Seventy Seven

2008-08-25T08:23:00.001-07:00

A little card Robyn and I made for our grandma on her 80th birthday (the kindest and sweetest lady you'd ever meet).

Seventy Six

2008-08-05T22:09:00.000-07:00

Seventy Five

2008-07-29T03:38:00.000-07:00

Flash animation I did tonight for fun. I'm hoping to surprise a buddy of mine with it tomorrow.

Seventy Four

2008-07-25T22:12:00.000-07:00

Made a trip up to San Francisco today so Brian and I could do some first-hand research for our book. The Festival of Sail was going on this weekend, so we got tickets, hopped onboard some ships, snapped a gig of photos, asked some questions, came home with sunburns and a pair of melted sunglasses.

The Balclutha

This was the ship we wanted to get on for researching the first scene in our story. Kinda funny, Robyn stayed overnight on the same ship in grade school. Anyway, I only post this because I thought someone would enjoy Gordon Grant's pen and ink drawings that were scattered throughout the ship.

Seventy Three

2008-07-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

Found this video again tonight. Jan and Andrew and I made it last year in preparation for D-Day 2007. Good stuff. I didn't do my homework that week. Makes me really miss State.

Thanks for uploading it, Erin!

And lastly, I stumbled upon Josh Cooley's blog via the new Afterworks blog. So much good stuff on both of these.

Seventy Two

2008-07-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

Not sure if time will allow me to take every frame of animation to color, but it was fun to take a break and do this sample test anyway.

Seventy One

2008-07-18T00:53:00.001-07:00

I started working on this one day when I met up with my friend Januel at our old school library. Robyn and I finished it up when I got home and we printed it and made it into a card.

Oh, and I was inspired by Daniela Strijleva's The Girl from Ipanema. So simple, yet so solid and beautiful. Wish I knew color and lighting like her.

Seventy

2008-07-07T01:01:00.000-07:00

Not giving up...

Sixty Nine

2008-06-01T15:23:00.001-07:00

Tried out figure drawing twice this week. Rusty, rusty, rusty. But had a lot of fun and got to catch up with friends, so all in all... I'll be making a habit out of it.

Sixty Eight

2008-05-14T20:36:00.001-07:00

Finished up vectorizing designs for the Luchador project. Here is one "final" of a design I showed a few posts back. It's been a fun ride. I was able to get some pretty clean looking work with Illustrator thanks to my friend Tom's method.

Sixty Seven

2008-05-07T22:41:00.001-07:00

dance... dance

run... run

Sixty Six

2008-04-21T23:01:00.001-07:00

Went up to Emeryville last night to watch my friend's band finish up recording their guitar tracks for their new album. Of course I had to keep my eyes open for Pixar while I was there. Here are some sketches from the session. Kind of fun since it's hard to catch guitar playing at a normal concert when all the lights are so low.

And this one is Robyn finishing an ice cream cone out on our porch.

Sixty Five

2008-04-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

Working on some Luchador designs for a company. Here's one:

and another

(Posted with permission.)

Sixty Four

2008-04-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

I finally have a free weekend, so I am posting some old sketches. Thought it would be appropriate since it turns out I completely missed Sketchcrawl 18. I don't know how I forgot. Terrible...

These are mostly gestures from Barcelona.

Sixty Three

2008-03-30T01:53:00.000-07:00

Sleeeeeeeeping.

Sixty Two

2008-03-11T20:05:00.000-07:00

YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!

Sixty One

2008-03-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

Barcelona.
(The cleanest city ever.)

It's been a few weeks since we returned home, but Robyn and I have both been so busy working that there had been no time to post these. Hope they're fun! Maybe I'll post some sketches from the trip, too.

Sixty

2008-02-13T08:42:00.000-08:00

Visited the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelonia yesterday. I've been hovering around the place for a few days now as it sits above the Mobile World Congress halls where Robyn's company Synaptics has a booth. Exciting place, with quite a bit of wonderful art.

I think the modern art section was my favorite. A few reasons why:

Josep Llimona's Desolation (1907)

Granada Woman by Hermen Anglada Camarasa (ca. 1914)

Woman in Red by Ramon Casas (1900)

I have a few photos of the impressive exterior to the gallery, also known as the National Palace of Catalonia, which I'll add to this post once I get back home.

Fifty Nine

2008-02-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
(EDIT)

Fifty Eight

2008-01-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

Gilbert Norrell, the egg.

Robyn working on a design. We're watching Harry Potter and computing at the same time. Jan and Andrew were right, Harris was a perfect Dumbledore.

Fifty Seven

2008-01-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

My finished design for Jonathan Strange. Wellington, Norrell, and Arabella next... after I finish up Strange's dialogue test.

Fifty Six

2008-01-18T14:17:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Strange sketches from Susanna Clarke's novel.

Fifty Five

2008-01-07T00:50:00.000-08:00

Christmas break is officially over for me. As per request from our apartment complex, the holiday decorations had to be taken down today. Always a sad time, indeed.

My friend Tim put up a few photos from his wedding that took place a couple of years ago. Here's a picture of my dad and me. It was an honor to be Tim's best man. He's such a good guy, and he and his wife are a blast to hang out with.

Fifty Four

2007-12-29T13:06:00.001-08:00

Sketchbook cutouts. Mostly from my niece's birthday party and Sketchcrawl in San Francisco.

More sketches. This time little ideas for a character from a short story I'm writing.

These are some sketches that would end up a painting for my mom.

I also gave my sister-in-law, Brand-di, a watercolor painting of some of her favorite characters from the Justice League. They're sharing a moment in a cafe (actually a hot chocolate shop, coffee's gross). I wish I would have had time to scan in the final before I had to wrap it and run it over my parent's house. Below are some of the initial thumbnails.

Now back to the unfinished Robin Hood tests.

Fifty Three

2007-12-20T00:07:00.000-08:00

We had a Christmas party tonight with the gang. I'm going to go and watch their semester films tomorrow and am so excited. Post party, I am the proud new owner of a Street Fighter II commemorative t-shirt that I won in the white elephant gift exchange. Cheers to everyone for coming down to Morgan Hill for the visit!

Fifty Two

2007-12-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

And here's the final for the Creation Engines "Barbarian/Fairy" challenge.

I'm aching for traditional media at this point. Been doing a lot of sketch work lately. I'll have to post that up next.

Fifty One

2007-12-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

This a a little work-in-progress for the Creation Engines blog. I like how it's turning out so far.

Fifty

2007-11-14T15:08:00.001-08:00

Today, for lunch, I ate mushy cardboard from the sea. Subway calls it a Tuna sandwich.

Forty Nine

2007-10-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

A little thank you card by Robyn and I.

Forty Eight

2007-10-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Love that messed up right leg.

Sketches for a card.

Forty Seven

2007-10-18T18:43:00.000-07:00

Big things coming up.

Forty Six

2007-09-29T21:55:00.001-07:00

Another one from yesterday.

With some thumbnails for a current dialogue test.

Time to draw some gentlemen.

Forty Five

2007-09-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

Autumn... I dunno.

Old sketch.

This was a quick design for a story I am developing outside of work. It deals with Slavic mythology. This character looks like all the girls I draw. Hurrah.

Gotta get all the obvious ideas out and now comes the experimenting, especially in story and styles.

Forty Four

2007-08-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

Here is another older pirate sketch.

Should've went with the earlier ones.

Incredi-Card

2007-08-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

A little card I made for Robyn and Brianne.

So tired.

2007-08-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

Goodbye, Mike.

2007-08-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

Mike Weiringo, one of my favorite comic book artists passed away yesterday. He was the current penciler of Spider-Man/Fantastic Four and has drawn just about every superhero you can name for DC and Marvel. I'll best know him for Spider-Man and his creator-owned book Tellos. He was a frequent visitor of the Drawing Board , where he always took the time to comment on anybody's work. He was a great guy and a superb artist. If you are not familiar with his work, look it up here: http://www.mikewieringo.com/

Hats off to a kind human being.

Another Pirate

2007-08-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Working.

Chloe's Birthday

2007-08-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

I'm heading over to my neice's birthday party. Can't wait to sketch all the kids. Hopefully I'll get some fun drawings out of it and they'll all have a fun time. I remember the days.

a pirate and princess party

More... More...

2007-07-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

Matias Hannecke
Angelo Libutti
Bruno Werneck
Jesus Iglesias
Sergio Martinez
Craig Harris
Rob Thompson

Eat 'em up. Time to get down to work.

Recently I...

2007-07-13T13:22:00.001-07:00

Two sketchbook pages.

Not too much work to post, but I've been in the planning stages of the Robin Hood tests, thumbnailing and working out the broad acting poses.

I'll have to get the final water color of this sketch. It's for Robyn's sister. A departure from what I'm usually working on.

Found out about DeviantArt yesterday and here are a few artists you and your family should check out after dinner. I highly recommend them all, and hopefully each of them have something creative to inspire you with (I know they did for me).

Dan Shoening | love this animator
Valentine Pasche
Thierry Doizon
Louis
Brinson Thieme
Kuru | french illustrator
Eliza Ivanova | fantastic illustrator
Jessica Plummer | great animator
Stanley Lau | anime-type illustrator
Cat Anett | russian illustrator

Dwindling Resources

2007-06-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a great resource went under, thanks to legalities...
RIP: The Disney Animation Archive

Hello: The Dreamworks Animation Archive

Drats.

Space Cowboy!

2007-06-17T21:13:00.001-07:00

Sketch Dump

2007-06-11T23:19:00.001-07:00

The Rusalka, from Slavic mythology, are female ghosts that dwell in a body of water until their deaths are avenged.

The Page O' Andrew Harkins taken from two sketchbooks. Don't ask why I was sketching his backside.

Uvas Canyon, from Sunday. Two bugbites to prove I was there.

Robyn sketched the crazy gal on this page in my sketchbook. Since she put it down on paper, quite a few friends have drawn their own take on the girl. I'll post those up once I get a good collection. My try:

More to come with the progress on the Robin Hood test...

Robin Hood

2007-06-04T23:10:00.000-07:00

I'm starting 2 animation tests in my free time using the fantastic character designs in Disney's Robin Hood. One will be a dialogue test, and the second, a fight scene between Robin and Prince John's guards. Should be fun, and a challenge to follow Milt Kahl's character designs.

I started working on turning Robin Hood. Here are some sketches (tablet and pencil).

Check to the right side of this page. Over this summer I'm going to start posting character designs and development sketches at the Creation Engines blog (made by my friends Nelson and Jaime).

Graduation and Kalamazoo Update

2007-05-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm 25 and I'm finally finished with school. The next few months will be spent interning at Lightsource Studios in San Jose, CA. It's been a grand 2 years in the program at SJSU. I wish I could have another year to graduate with all my buds, but things work out for a reason. I've met so many great people this year, and my professors have been amazing, really pushing us to to grasp every bit of information before we head out the doors. My parents have been so understaning and helpful with every bit of my education, most the time, without seeing my artwork.

As for the Kalamazoo trip, the Cartoon Challenge was one of the most special and exciting events I've ever taken part in. My teammates are all great friends, so that helped make KAFI the experience it was. Our advisor and great friend Dave Chai kept us and others laughing once the Challenge ended and the Festival began. While this was one of the first festivals I've ever been to, and was not sure quite what to expect, I was a little disappointed in the lack of narrative animation. It's hard to sit for hours on end without storylines to follow. I hope 2009's festival will note that and be open to more diverse work.

Dr. Sketchins.

Joel brings us burgers at 2am.

SJSU and our buddies from CCS Detroit.

Jan and Laguna.

We were lucky enough to hang around with Disney's Deborah Stone and Mike Belzer.

Valerie Eisenberg was the head of the Cartoon Challenge at this year's KAFI. She was one of the most generous people we met in Michigan, never leaving the challengers hungry.

We survived a tornado (though we never actually got to see it).

Sadly, we had to leave. But it was such a great time, with such fantastic people. I hope in the future that I'll be able to make another trip with all the guys.

KALAMAZOO!

2007-05-12T22:16:00.000-07:00

Myself and 4 colleagues are off to the Kalamazoo International Animation Festival in Michigan for the next 8 days. It's an honor to respresent our school at the festival as part of the Cartoon Challenge. In the challenge we have 3 days to come up with a fully-animated and finished commercial spot based on a topic given to us at the festival! I love the guys in my group and I can't wait to tear it up boarding and animating. Januel, Andrew, Chris, and Saul are the most talented guys and it's going to be a great week.

Wish us luck (unless you're competing against us -- in that case I can't ask that of you, can I?).

And Congrats to all the CALARTS guys and gals who had their work in the producers show on Thursday. The show was fantastic and humbling.

3 weeks left

2007-04-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

School's out in 3 weeks. At this point it's more scary than exciting!

Workin' on it

2007-04-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Well, there's been way too much going on as of late. It's coming up to the final weeks of school and things are getting pretty intense. Here are a few little sketches done in the past week.

Quick picture for Brianne.

Robyn's sketch of me playing guitar instead of storyboarding.

The rough of the back layer of a current project.

Lost and Found

2007-04-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today while sketching with the TV on, I decided to actually draw what I was watching on the screen. It's a nice exercise and though I wasn't actually getting out in the open air to do some life observation, it was better than making life-less poses up out of my head.

Then I stumbled on to Mark Kennedy's blog where he has a few posts about sketchbook drawing (that everyone should read). In one of the posts he talked about not wanting to draw after a hard days work, that point when one simply wants to veg out infront of the TV; then addressed how he now sketches what he's watching.

It's all part of those magical little life-affirmations. Take 'em when they're given.

Out the window.

2007-04-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Meet the Robinsons

2007-04-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

Seen it twice. Good both times. I went into the theater with pretty low expectations, and was actually surprised at how much I liked it. Most people will think it bombs, and I've heard people say it's too sappy, and that there were too many characters who came out of left field. I like all the characters. They're wacky and don't have very much screen time, but Disney stayed true to the book in that way. And where the story differs from the short book, I think Disney did a great job.

NOTE:
Thanks for stating the obvious man.

And more Duke...

2007-04-04T00:41:00.000-07:00

Well, say so long to the Duke (at least for now). I'll be coming back to him in the future, but I have to give him up for a while to put something else up here and in my portfolio. Here's two last little sketches I did today for fun. So long friend.

My new tablet PC!

2007-03-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

Aw, my parents just treated me to a tablet PC as my graduation present! I've been fooling around in Sketchbook Pro and love the feel so far. I'll start storyboarding with it tonight. Hopefully it will speed up the process and not slow it down...

More of the Duke of Wellington.

March!

2007-03-18T03:07:00.000-07:00

canceled psd project

2007-02-18T18:18:00.000-08:00

Learning how to use Photoshop.

San Francisco

2007-01-31T01:03:00.000-08:00

Nearing the end of the semester break, Andrew, Januel, Chris, and I decided to put aside our two short films and head on up to the city. We were pretty excited about all of the amazing things to do in San Francisco, before we realized that it costs $20 to park downtown for a few hours.

Amen.

Which works best?

2007-01-30T12:10:00.001-08:00