Elf shot the food....

10 points if you get the reference! This is the 3rd of the set I have done and it took me half the time as the others. I really think some pieces just come together exactly as you imagine them, not to mention the fact I actually took the time to sketch this one out a bit on paper which sped up my process since I didn't have to work out the pose in Photoshop. Hope you like it, I plan to do one more for this set but I'll probably post some practice pics before I get to it.

House...

So I watched House tonight and figured I should do another one of these drawings while I'm watching the show. The likeness on these are pretty lame but in all honesty I am just ramping up. I will start focusing more and more on actual likeness once I get a more solid grasp on form and lighting. I enjoy the challenge, and I will definitely enjoy watching my progress. I am already inspired (and a little ashamed) for who I plan on drawing next.

Don't be a Hader...

So as I mentioned in last weeks blog I am going to make an effort to work on more basic and fundamental aspects in my art in order to improve my weaker skills. One such weak point is my ability to draw from life. Aside from a few life drawing classes in college I have never really been much of a "fine artist." I spent a lot of time drawing cartoons and comic book characters as a kid and never really branched out from there until college, so stuff like this is definitely a challenge for me but I have every intention of getting better at it. So without further adieu I give you Bill Hader one of the funnier cast members on the latest season of SNL (in my opinion), and a pretty well-known actor who's appeared in comedies like Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, and Adventureland. He's probably one of my favorite on-screen comedians right now, so naturally while I was watching SNL on Hulu last night he was a good topic for my practice piece. When I started the piece I was going for more of a caricature (little rusty in that department!) but I ended up toning it down and bringing it closer to a more realistic take. I think starting so broad like that and attempting to bring it back to normalcy hurt the likeness in the final pass. Note to self: In the future find better quality pictures of celebrities on the internet! I might try to do one of these once a week from now on and maybe coax myself into doing one a day at some point (Ambitious, I know!).

As always thanks for checking my stuff out and feel free to comment or leave any feedback on the work I post here. I know this piece suffers from some pretty glaring likeness issues but I would love to hear any advice anyone might have on pulling together a more realistic (or at least closer) likeness.

Rock!

Samurai Gundown...

Sooooo, I actually hate this picture. I did this for a monthly art topic with my co-workers: http://ninjabeeart.blogspot.com/. The topic (as you can see by clicking the link) was the movie SuckerPunch, and although I didn't see the movie, I saw the trailer and that was enough to make me say "Holy crap! Was that a Samurai with a Chain Gun?" I knew at that very moment I had to give this guy a piece of art. But I regretfully admit that I have shamed you Samurai with a Chain Gun. Although I managed to finish the piece and post it, this may be one of the single worst examples of everything that is wrong with my art. Now I will admit I didn't have a whole lot of time to work on this guy and put this piece together from beginning to end in one night (roughly 5-6 hours), but he still reeks of failure. Badly exaggerated proportions, poor lighting and an inconsistent level of detail are just a scratch on the surface of everything I see wrong with this pic. Now I didn't just write this blog so I could piss and moan about how terrible my art is, I am taking this piece as an example and I am going to start working on a series of pieces I hereby dub "Back 2 Basics." It has been a long time since I have actually worked on my art elements. I merely just make art on an irregular basis and work on more strictly guided pieces throughout my workday. From now on I am going to make the effort to do 1 or 2 pieces a week that just revolve around basic art techniques. In the mean time I have a whole list of projects I would like to attempt so stay tuned since I plan on posting more work in the coming weeks.

Thanks for lookin'!

Catching up...

So I missed posting in the month of April completely and my goal is to at least post 2 posts a month to keep this thing from going dark. Some people may have seen these 2 pics already but I figured I would post them here and just call them done for now.

This was originally supposed to be a set of 4 but it could be another month or two until I even start those guys so I'll just post these 2 for now and revisit this quadrilogy later. The objective was to create illustrations based on 4 classic RPG archetypes with each class having their own little twist on the "class." All of this was inspired by playing the Gauntlet 2 arcade at my old job. I bet you can guess who the other 2 classes will be!

Settling in!

If any of you are still reading this I thought it would be a good time to update people on how Utah is going. My wife and I are finally settled in and getting used to the newness of the whole situation. It's still only been a little over a month now, but Utah has become far less of a beast then it was when we started. Having a conversation with people about where cities are in relation to one another and actually being able to follow directions given to me by the guy at Home Depot is a small but welcomed victory. The weather right now is beautiful and it's quite a change living somewhere where there is actually weather. In my opinion Vegas had only 2 seasons Hot and Cold. Sure it snowed 1 day a year and rained for a week but out here there is so much more to the skies. I may be singing a different tune come December but for now all the various kinds of weather is welcome.

We are making a few new friends, which has been a little difficult because there are so many big families out here. However, we are fortunate enough to have a little bit of family out here as well to make things feel a little less foreign. Making friends in Vegas was easy because everyone is looking for a good time or a place to hang. But out here people have so much family they don't even need friends. It's funny to me because in Vegas my wife and I got married and we had about a handful of friends who were married as well. We come out here and everyone is married and everyone has kids. Saying that Utah is family centered, or family oriented is probably an understatement, it's more like family-abundant!

The new job has been going great, I am really enjoying the projects I have been working on and I look forward to all the cool stuff lined up. I can't say who we are working with specifically and can't announce what I have been working on quite yet but once it is all public I will gladly post it up on here for all to see. I am really fortunate to be working with a very talented group of individuals and look forward to making more cool stuff with these guys! I was having a conversation with a co-worker at the gym about how respectful, intelligent and humble our employers were and how we were lucky to have such an incredible management team at the helm of this studio. I have had the joyous experience (please note sarcasm) of working for some pretty hot-headed and arrogant management in the past so coming to work for Wahoo Studios is a refreshing change.

All in all things are going good out here and I can see us making Utah work for a long time. I look forward to what this experience has to offer and the new life ahead.

-Casey