Vampire chic

Today's daily doodle was a warm-up sketch I did before diving into another page from Scott Madden's vampire queens story. I can't wait to be able to speak out some more about this project, for now though, here's another teaser.

Fantasy girls

Here are a couple of fantasy girls and a vampire who seems to like bondage. These were done using some hair style magazines as reference. The style was highly influenced by one of my favorite Japanese artist, Katsuya Terada. I had a good friend of mine pick me up a ton of his art books on her trip to Japan. This guy fills up way more sketch books then I do, so he defenitley influences me to keep the pencil moving. One of my favorite collections of his work is a 1,000 page sketchbook called RAKUGA KING. Rakugaki is the word for doodles or scribbles in Japanese.

Animal caricature

As always , Daily warm-up sketches. This time I decided to do a few animal caricatures, experimenting with pushing and pulling to explore the shapes and lines. I highly recommend David Coleman's books on this subject matter. His animal art is great and he has awesome insight on his technique and execution.

Faces

More daily warm-ups. Working on stylizing the faces. Just like warming up for a work out, sketching before I work for a client is a must. It loosens me up and it's fun.

Morning sketches

Today's warm up sketches

Happy Father's Day

Happy father's day to all the dads out there. here is another daily sketch.
A post apoc orcish character.

Dudes and chics

Some more daily scribbles.

More Daily sketches

Here are some more daily warm-ups. More chics and Grafitti. Enjoy

Girls and more Girls

Some more female sketches.  Keeping myself sharp when I got time in-between work.  As always I experiment with shapes and pushing the curves as much as I can without the design falling apart.

Kung-Fu Hustle sketches

Here are a couple of exploratory sketches from the movie Kung-Fu hustle done in a cartoony style.  I plan on doing an few digital sketches soon, these were done in ball point pen, just a few minutes each. Really rough just getting the characterization down.
Kung Fu Hustle is a 2004 action comedy film directed and produced by, and starring Stephen Chow of Shaolin Soccer fame. 
The movie follows the antics of Sing (Stephen Chow) and Bone, two wanna be gangsters.  On his path to break in to the axe gang, Sing discovers he is destined for much greater things.  This movie has a great cast of characters, and is hillarious to watch. 
Kung Fu Hustle makes references to a wide range of films, animated cartoons and other sources, drawing on ideas from Wuxia novels. The housing arrangement of the Pig Sty Alley is similar to that of a 1973 Hong Kong film, The House of 72 Tenants.   (When Sing arrives at Pig Sty Alley, he shows fancy footwork with a football, then says, "You're still playing football?". This refers to his previous movie, Shaolin Soccer as does the scene where a Clerk beats Sing up on a bus. The clerk also appeared in Shaolin Soccer as the leader of an opposing team who used hidden weapons to beat up the Shaolin Soccer team. During the altercation between Sing and the hairdresser, the hairdresser states, "Even if you kill me, there will be thousands more of me!". This is a parody of a saying by Lu Hao-tung, a Chinese revolutionary in the late Qing Dynasty.  The scene where Sing is chased by the Landlady as he flees from the Alley is a homage to Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, characters in Looney Tunes cartoons, down to the pursuer's (the Landlady's) ill fate. In the scene were he robs the Ice Cream stand, a poster for the 1935 movie Top Hat is in the background. As Sing arrives at the door to the Beast's cell in the mental asylum, he hallucinates a large wave of blood rushing from the cell door, similar to a scene in The Shining.

A major element of the plot is based on a Wuxia film series Palm of Ru Lai released in 1964. Sing studied the same Buddhist Palm Kung Fu style from a young age and realised it at the end of the film. In reality, it does not leave palm-shaped craters and holes on impact. Instead, the user delivers powerful punches using his palm. The Chinese name of the Beast, the Evil God of the Fiery Cloud  and the fight with the Landlady and her husband are also references to the film, where a mortally wounded master strikes the patterns of his art's final techniques into a bell so that his apprentice can learn from it.  There are direct references to some characters from Louis Cha's Wuxia novels. For example, the landlord and landlady referred to themselves as Yang Guo  and Xiaolongnü  from Cha's The Return of the Condor Heroes when they met the Beast.
An aerial shot of Sing fighting the Axe Gang. The fight is reminiscent of The Matrix Reloaded.
References to gangster films are also present. The boss of the Axe Gang, Brother Sum is named after Hon Sam , the triad boss in Infernal Affairs. The Harpists imitate The Blues Brothers, wearing similar hats and sunglasses at all times. When they are flattered by the Axe Gang advisor, one of them answers "Strictly speaking we're just musicians", similar to a line by Elwood Blues.  When Donut dies, he says "in great power lies great responsibility", a clear reference to Spider-Man, said by Uncle Ben before his death.  Afterwards, with his dying breath, he gets up, grabs the Landlord by the shirt and utters in English, "What are you prepared to do?", a nod to Sean Connery's character Jim Malone in Brian De Palma's 1987 film The Untouchables. The final fight between Sing (who has been reborn into "the one" paying homage to Bruce Lee by wearing his costume in Enter the Dragon and using his fighting style) and the hundreds of gangsters imitates the fight between Neo and hundreds of Agent Smiths in The Matrix Reloaded. The scene in which the Beast prompts an axe member to punch him harder is reminiscent of a similar scene in Raging Bull, with Robert De Niro's character prompting Joe Pesci's character. The last scene, in which the beggar tries to sell martial arts manuals, refers directly to the greatest skills in Louis Cha's Condor Trilogy (Nine Yang Manual, Divine Finger Skill, and Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms), Thousand Hand Divine Fist, and The Smiling, Proud Wanderer (Nine Swords of Dugu). The scene where the landlady confronts Brother Sum in the back of his car is a homage to Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon, where he cracks his knuckles and gives a fast upper nod to the bad guy, telling him to back off.

Some more Graf

Here is another graf piece taken from a scan of a sketch in my sketchbook.  The color style was heavily influenced by Graf artist Can2, and the model was reference from an ad in an old fashion magazine.

Alien Creation

Messing around with a technique I read about in Scott Robertson's book, Alien Race, published by Design Studio Press.  He mentions in the book that he and creature designer Neville page were messing around with the mirror function on his web cam and came up a great way to design alien characters for the book.  This is an awesome way of coming up with some iterations of aliens , but can also be used for Props, weapons and just about anything else your imagination can come up with.  I recommend picking up the Alien race book as it is full of inspiration throughout.  I own many of the books published by Scott's Design Studio Press, and I have a few of Scott and Neville's Gnomon Workshop DVDs.  Both these guys are awesome artist/ teachers.  Thanks to Scott, Neville and the rest of the artist featured in Alien Race for sharing your techniques.  I'll be posting more of my experiments with this workflow in the near future. 

Self Portrait caricatures

Here's a few self portraits I worked on as an experiment with my laptop's webcam. Using a  program called photobooth, I snapped a few shots of me and used the filters to distort my picture. I then used the pictures as reference to paint some goofy caricatures of myself. Below are the original source images followed by the paintings.  Sebastian Kruger is one of my all time favorite caricature artist.  Check him out on the web, if your not familiar with his work.  I have a few of his books in my collection.  Amazing stuff.