Tom Hanks and some ball point doodles

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks is known for his roles in Apollo 13, That Thing You Do!, The Green Mile, You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, Charlie Wilson's War, Catch Me If You Can, A League of Their Own, The Da Vinci Code, and as the voice of Woody in the Toy Story movie franchise. He has earned and been nominated for numerous awards during his career, including winning a Golden Globe for Best Actor and an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia and a Golden Globe, an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a People's Choice Award for Best Actor for his role in Forrest Gump, and earning the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from the BAFTAs in 2004. Hanks is also known for his collaboration with film director Steven Spielberg on Saving Private Ryan and the mini-series Band of Brothers, which launched Hanks also as a successful director, producer and writer. As of 2012, Hanks films have grossed over $4.2 billion at the United States box office alone, and over $8.5 billion worldwide making him the highest all time box office star. Here is my finished rendering of Tom Hanks, originally a sketch done for Jason Seiler's schoolism course, followed by some quick ball point pen sketches of random citizen pics provided by Jason as well. Thanks for checking it out.

Morgan Freeman

One of my personal favorite actors. He always puts on a great performance. Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, film director, and narrator. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby. He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Freeman has appeared in many other box office hits, including Unforgiven, Glory, Seven, Deep Impact, The Sum of All Fears, Bruce Almighty, the Dark Knight trilogy, March of the Penguins, The Bucket List, Wanted, and RED. Here is my caricature of him, Thanks for stopping by:)

Morgan Freeman WIP

This one is almost done. All details and minor adjustments from here on out.

Forest Whitaker

From wikipedia: Forest Steven Whitaker (born July 15, 1961) is an African-American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television series, The Shield. Whitaker won an Academy Award for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker has also won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. This caricature was done after watching Jason Sieler's lecture on coloring a portrait using a split - complimentary color pallet. I been wanting to paint this mug for awhile now. Done mostly in Corel Painter 12 as an excuse to experiment further with the new real bristle brushes. I also posted the ref pic:) Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

Forest Whitaker W.I.P.

Here's a quick screen grab of a Forest Whitaker caricature I'm working on. Done in Corel Painter 12. I really love all of the brushes in this version. I spend a lot of time playing around with all the brush variants and settings to see what they all can do today. I'll post the finished piece soon.

Jason Seiler's Caricature Course

So as I mentioned in the last post, I started Jason Seiler's 9 week caricature course at the schoolism site. You can check it out here: http://schoolism.com/?share=r0qv2 I'm having a great time already. If you have been to my site or this blog in the past , then you know I have a passion for drawing caricatures of celebrities. I have been wanting to take Jason's course for awhile now, and since I just wrapped up Anthony Jones's creature design course, I thought now is as good a time as any, plus they are currently having a fall sale on classes, which is a plus. In my opinion, Jason is one of the best in the business when it comes to this topic and I am super excited to learn his techniques. These are a few of sketches I did for the first assignment. Jason supplied a few pics of citizens for you to sketch and a couple of pics of actor Tom Hanks. So for the first assignment, I did a few rough sketches of the citizens and a slightly tighter sketch of Tom Hanks. Then for fun I decided to do a quick color block in of Tom Hanks that I may use as a guide for a finished piece. Tom Hanks is one of my wife's favorite actors, so I may just go ahead and finish that up soon for my portfolio. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy!!!

Prince and Aliens?

So as the title says, Prince and Aliens, or An Alien. What do they have in common?, well for now, only the fact that they both got painted by yours truly:) First is my caricature of Prince, who in my opinion is a musical genius. From wikipedia: Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson; June 7, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. He has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. He established his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of the instruments on his recordings. In addition, he has been a "talent promoter" for the careers of Sheila E., Carmen Electra, The Time and Vanity 6, and his songs have been recorded by these artists and others (including Chaka Khan, The Bangles, Sinéad O'Connor, and even Kim Basinger). I have just started a new caricature course at the Schoolism website with instructor Jason Seiler. Jason is an amazing painter, and I am excited to learn under him and improve my caricatures and portraits. This Prince caricature was done before I started the class, but I'll be sure and blog about my experience with the course as I finish the assignments throughout the next couple of weeks. Next up is an Aquatic Alien concept design that started out as a z-brush sculpture than refined in Photoshop. I did this one shortly after watching a few demonstrations by Artist Eric Ryan. I just watched his workshop at the CGMA online workshops site (Computer Graphics Masters Academy) in which he shows his process of character creation. For the workshop he created a Boar/ humanoid creature. I also purchased Ryan's Gnomon Workshops dvd, in it he takes you through a similar process, but this time re-imagining film creature, The Fly. So keeping his techniques in mind I set out to re-imagine The creature from the black Lagoon, but as I started sculpting I started to go in another direction and came up with this guy. Definitely check out Eric Ryan's workshops and downloads, you won't be disappointed. Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

The Creature from out of the Mist.

I fell asleep a few nights ago while watching Stephen king's The Mist directed by Frank Darabont. This guys been dying to get out of my head ever since. lol This one started out as a z-brush sketch done with dynamesh option turned on in z-brush 4r4, then painted in photoshop cs6. Towards the end of the piece I uploaded Anthony Jones tool presets (which you can get for free and watch a quick video demo at the schoolism site. http://schoolism.com/?share=r0qv2 The presets were cool to play around with. If you have CS6, copy and paste the link above and check 'em out. I have been enrolled in Anthony's creature design course for the last few weeks, and I must say it is so much fun, and I am learning tons. I highly recommend the course to anyone who wants to step up their creature designs. Plus Anthony is super talented, so your learning from someone who is very good at what they do. O.K., so here's my creature, Thanks for stopping by:)

Ball Point pen doodles

It's been awhile since I sketched with Ball Point pen. I have dozens of Hard cover blackbook sketchbooks filled with ball point pen sketches in nearly every color. I forgot how much I like that medium. I been hooked on Prismacolors col-erase line , but I think I'll start sketching in pen more often or at least alternate between the two. The sketches are followed by some character development thumbnails that I did for a few clients as style test. Enjoy:)

Silver Cord Villian

Here is another piece I worked on today for The silver Cord. This guy is named Ibog, he is the boss if you will, of the Dregs in the story. Ibog is one of the top villains in the story, and in front of him is our star, Tasi in her astral projection form. If you haven't checked out the first issue yet, you can read it for free on the site. www.silver-cord.net I was asked to do a new treatment on the Ibog character and change him up a bit from the original version. Below is my take on the character followed by the original concept by ILM VFX art director Alex Jaeger, and a page I colored with the Dregs pursuing Tasi. Pencils by Steve Masseroni. Thanks for stopping by:)

Prince : Work In Progress

I'm working on a bunch of cool stuff lately, some things I can post soon, and other stuff I can't. So in the meantime here is a Prince caricature W.I.P. screen grab. I'll post the finished piece soon. Thanks for stopping by, enjoy:)

Some more speed sculpting

Here is some kind of wierd Alien mutation thing I came up with during my breaks at work today. just kind of sculpting away and testing different brushes to see what they do. No real direction was planned, but I kind of like the shapes that I came up with. I think it's pretty freaky looking , so I am sure I will want to render it out in photoshop. From the side it looks like an alien pooping out another alien, lol I guess I want it to be more of a morphing mutating thing.

Centaur

Messing around in z-brush 4r4 again. This time a centaur creature concept. I am starting to get a little bolder with my sculpts now, but not quite there yet. It serves it's purpose though, as I'm gonna carry the sculpt over to photoshop to come up with variations and textures, and renders. Below the face variations are the turn arounds and the process shots showing the z-sphere , z-sketch, and some early sculpting and shape exploration. Thanks for stopping by, ENJOY:)

Nicolas Ferrand Art Study

Here's a piece I did last night for practice using some custom brushes made by the talented crew of SteamBot Studios. You can pick up the brush sets at http://www.leboxshop.com/Downloads_s/23.htm There is an elemental set and a structural set, or you can by both as a bundle. The illustration was a copy/ study of a piece artist Nicolas Ferrand A.K.A. Viag did for the Exodyssey concept art book. You can pick the book up on the site also or head over to the Design Studio Press site and purchase it there as well. I learned a lot studying this piece and using the brush sets. These guys know how to work fast and efficiently. Some of the games Viag has worked on include: Splinter cell pandora tomorrow, Ghost recon 2, Splinter cell chaos theory, Prince of persia 3, Splinter Cell double agent, Assassins creed, Far cry 2, Avatar (game from the movie), and Assassins 2. If your not familiar with his work, head over to his blog, you won't be disappointed http://redwhirlpool.blogspot.com/

color keys and Z-brush 4R4

This is a paint over and texture pass of a crude Google sketchup model. I gave it a few different color passes to experiment with time of day and mood. Below that was some practice using my new upgrade to Z-brush 4r4. This creature bust was the same model with features morphed and pulled a bit. loving this new upgrade and looking forward to trying out the rest of the new features.

Biomech Creepy Critters

As always, I am exploring different techniques to generate concepts. Here are a few bio-mechanical concepts that were conceived from a few scribbler too sketches. You may recognize the shapes from some thumbnails in an earlier post. These designs were inspired by the Ridley Scott film Prometheus and the concept art for the film Battle Los Angeles done by artist Paul Gerrard. www.gerrardart.com I also want to credit and give a shout out to artist Miguel Lopez http://devilminercom.blogspot.com/ He was kind enough to share some of his goodies with me and inspire me to explore another avenue to generate more art. If your not familiar with his work ,please do yourself a favor and check him out. Miguel is very talented and I am sure we will hear more about him in the near future. Oh and lets not forget the Godfather of Bio-Mech design: H.R. Giger:) Gotta give credit where credit is due:)