Whoa! Another animation! I was really excited to be a part of this animation. I got to develop the character and do all the cell images for the animation. Daniel Perez, animator extraordinaire, put it all together and directed and animated it. Megan Lardner was the producer. Click on the title above to view the video!
My Amazing Students
I have to say, I am very lucky this year. I teach at Pratt Institute and this semester I have such an amazing group of talented, creative and hard-working students. I was floored today at the work of my Drawing II class. We just finished up a unit on Pastel Portraiture and they all did an amazing job. Here are three of the top students. The first, of the child in the snow, is by Napasawan “Nan” Sirisukont. The next of the model is by Seungeun Lee and the last, of the lady in a hat, is by Jonathan Lai. Keep an eye out for these budding artists!
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Animation!
Last Fall I had the great opportunity to work on an animation for 2 Revolutions. I worked with animator/art director Daniel Perez, and under the direction of Ryan Senser, we created a great little informational animation. Each frame of each character’s movement was created in Illustrator and then synched up using (Daniel using) AfterEffects. Special thanks to those of you I roped into letting me tape your motions so I had a video reference to base these little guys on. It was good fun. Enjoy!
Black Bear Rampage
I was hired recently by the nice guys who own Soctt’s Bikes in Tennessee, to create an image for a racing event they hold. I was asked to create an image of a leprechaun riding on the back of a black bear. Far, far away in the city lights of NYC, this made no sense to me at first. However, the company mascot is a leprechaun and they are racing through the woods, which in Tennessee is full of black bears. The racing event is called ‘Black Bear Rampage’, so it all makes complete sense now.
The fist difficulty I ran into was how to make this black bear look aggressive. I did my research and found images and videos of black bears before starting on the drawing. And what I found was that black bears are super cute. Their cuteness levels are up there with baby seals and the little abandoned dog at the end of that subaru commercial (watch it here!) But I imagine that if asked, I could probably draw an ‘attack’ baby seal too. So, I did some preliminary pencil sketches, piecing together the leprechaun and bear and swirls in photoshop and then dropped it all into illustrator and started the finishing process. So here is a slide show with some of the stages:
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At any rate, at this point it is in it’s final stages (I’m pretty sure) and am only debating about the color of the background swirls. Personally I prefer the brown one, but perhaps the red is more race-y and agressive?
Proud Mama
So this past fall semester I had the honor of teaching only two students for two different classes. What what what??? That’s right, it was a wee wee class- and while they missed out on getting critiques from a large group, they performed extremely well and I believe benefited overall from the smaller class experience. After all, there is no hiding in class when there’s only you and one other person. They did exceptionally well! And now that I am preparing for the spring semester, it reminded me to show off some of their work here. These pieces are done by Ru-Mei Hsieh (1st 6) and Babs Webb (last 6) in Pratt Institute’s AOS department, in my Illustration III and Digital Illustration II courses. Such great girls, such talented artists!
To view more of Bab’s work, go to www.crackart.tumblr.com
To view more of Ru-mei’s work, go to www.rumei29.pixnet.net/blog
POW! Right in the kisser.
Recently someone told me I am an angry person. I don’t believe this to be true. I think that sometimes anger is justified and it’s ok to get angry- nay, in some circumstances, you SHOULD get angry. Are we doormats? passionless drones?? IS THERE NO JUSTICE IN THE WORLD???
Besides, I only draw punches in the face, I don’t actually throw them.
So here is my latest piece in stages. And yes, I plan on finishing up the other, more involved boxer piece. It’s on the resolution list.
First, the pencil sketch
Next I do blankets of basic color on the face.
Then I add some other blanket colors… the shirt…
… the gloves…
I start to detail, adding highlights and shadows, warm tones and cool tones.
Detailing the highlights of his necklace, because a guy who deserves a good solid punch in the face wears a silver necklace. Plus it helps to show motion.
And then a few finishing touches and it’s done.
The Process
I’ve finally gotten a client who didn’t have a non-disclosure agreement. However, I think his story is great and very sellable, so I won’t talk about it publicly. I will however talk about my process.
So first, I was mistaken about the target age group and presented him with this rough sketch:
The Client let me know that it was WAY too young. I had missed the mark. He was great about giving me a better description of what he envisioned, and so I produced this rough which he was pleased with:
As you can see the characters are for a much older audience. I also cleaned up the text using Illustrator. I didn’t want a freehand look to the words, but more of a blockish poster look. From here I took it to color. I generally work dark to light, dropping in the overall shadow color and texture first.
I put in the base colors first, and then layer, layer, layer. And then I add more layers. Once I get it to a point that I like and feel ok committing to, I’ll consolidate my layers so that my file isn’t ginormous, but all the initial layering of thin opacities help create a more painterly feel.
At this point it’s starting to take shape, but it’s in it’s midway stage. And here, is the final, which hopefully the client will be pleased with:
More Eww where that came from
Where have you been? Not illustrating any more? What ever happened to that boxer picture?
I actually HAVE been illustrating – like MAD! So much work that I’m finishing up at 11pm on a Friday night. So where is it?? It’s all been signed away into silence in the form of non-disclosure agreements, so I can’t show any of it for a while. However, I didn’t sign anything with the medical illustration work that I do with my brother Jon, so here’s another in the tongue cutting series. This one shows why it’s always good to have a solid base stitch before cutting your fabric- I mean, tongue.
Oh, and the boxer got put on the back burner for a while. Sorry. :/
For more in the tongue cutting series, click HERE!
Calling all Mobsters! =
Thanks to Robbie Martin + friend and Roy Graff + friends for submitting angry mob photos! There’s still time to be part of the mob! Just grab a camera or grab your friends and a camera, and get your frustration out! Hard to make ends meet? Relationships going awry? Take it out on camera! And then email the photos to me.
You may not end up looking exactly like you- and you most likely won’t be wearing the same clothes, but your soul will be in it, and how fun is that?
Here’s a sample of some mobsters so far…
And they (and you!) will be inserted into this final image:
Feel free to improvise with actions and body positions. Thanks for your participation!
Brotherly Love _ EWww!
I’ve just built my brother his very own website and hooked him up with a wordpress blog. He still needs to upload more images, but I’ve created an easy way for him to do this using Webassist‘s Power Gallery! (Though we got it when it was on sale. From time to time it goes on sale for 50% off.) My brother’s site (drumroll and horns): www.JonathanPYoung.com
You may be saying, “Whoa, that looks an awful lot like your site, structurally speaking” and you’d be a keen observer. I’m not a website-building-guru, and he didn’t actually give me any sort of insight into what he wanted. I knew he wanted his Chinese name in there, so I asianed the site up a bit. It may change once he tells me how he really wanted it to be completely different and all the time I put into it is a waste. Sort of like hanging the Christmas lights. Each year we say, “Jonny, you’re so picky about the lights, why don’t you just hang them this year”? And he says, “No no, you guys hang them”. And so we do. We take our time, hang it all up, start to put the ornaments on even. And when we’re almost finished he wanders into the room and says, “WHAT?? You did it like THAT???” takes everything off and restrings it himself. So once he figures out dreamweaver I’m sure he’ll restring it, but his current official take on his site is, “I guess that’ll do for now”.
I’ve also hooked him up with a blog. He’s leaving for Kenya in the morning, so hopefully he’ll figure it out by then and post updates and photos with his new and trusty wordpress iphone app. And here is his blog: https://theartdoctor.wordpress.com/
And here is the photo for this post- a book cover he and I did together a few years back.
For my brother’s bio information, click here and scroll down. The one for his site is “coming soon”.
