San Franciso Weekly

Cops in San Francisco are confiscating deejay equipment right out of the clubs. Darrick Rainey of the LA Weekly, pinch hitting for the SF Weekly, asked me to make this quick illustration, which ran in black and white.

Posting Some "Office Wrestling" Images

A while back I was involved in the development of a game proposal for "Office Wrestling", a game idea brought to us by Emmy Award winning animation designer Dan Krall. While the company where I worked percolated on exactly what they might do with this proposal, another company announced a frustratingly similar idea, so that effectively ended "Office Wrestling". I'll post a couple more concept sketches here as soon as I can.

For the record, Dan was none too crazy about this direction for the visual development himself. I'm sure we could have made him happier with the full project, hopefully working with him on a more sophisticated approach, but unfortunately we never got the chance.

Kids' Stuff- Image From A Book Project

Revisting a Character Design

The top guy is a reworking of the guy on the bottom. That's enough said for now.

Newspaper Illustration

From 2006.

Small Halloween Show Drawing

I haven't had a lot of time to make new Halloween show contributions this year, but I did do a couple of small things. This is one of them. A little cartilage man!

It looks better in person. >shrug<

Tattoo Shop Suggestions for Flowplay

This was a rejected direction for the building designs for Our World done for Flowplay. The gently wonky perspective was intended to make the designs look warmer and more like miniatures, like tilt-shift photography.

This was another take on the same subject, incorporating the then-writer's insistence on a Frank Gehry-meets-The Muppets take.

Old Show Poster Illustration

I made this image for a show poster some time ago. I no longer have a hard copy of this, but the type design was no great shakes, let me tell you.

More Kids' Book Work

Drawings for Things

I'm doing some drawings for tee shirts now, and this one is an early possibility. This is a first run-through, before refining it and doing any inking or coloring.

I'll post another couple of these drawings here as I finish them.

Dogs and Cats, Living Together...

Wrapping up Best Friends work. Click for the embiggening.

Coming Soon

I'm thick in the middle of things right now. I have some Dr. Seuss-styled illustrations coming up in the Seattle Weekly (perhaps they thought of me as the Curious George guy as seen below, and thought I could do it justice), I have a watercolor painting that was to be finished already but when it started coming together I realized that it was going to take more time than I thought to finish. Thank you Sandra for the extra time to make it better.

And I'm hoping to wrap up the work on the Best Friends stuff. Plus retool my portfolio a bit. A busy week into the weekend for me.

I leave you with this creepy guy I did as part of the development for a comic I'm working on.

Another Newspaper Illustration for the Weekly.

Oxycontin robberies article.

Part of the reason doing newspaper illustrations can be so much fun is that often art directors will be inspired to make a change in an image as it goes to page. Color has been added to some of my illustrations late in the game as color ads were sold to the paper and colored inkes became available. I don't know if that's much of a consideration these days, since there seems to be color available on almost every page of most weeklies. I always enjoy seeing the changes to my work. I feel like I'm more a part of a team.

The green and red (orange?) here was added after the illustration was turned in, and it's intentionally off-register. It looks great! Thanks to Jane and Co. at the Weekly.

Avatar Designs

I don't think these are going to be used in this form at this time. We're probably going to go with inked drawings colored digitally, but I like these JP Miller style images too.

This Week In Your Seattle Weekly

Careful! Clicking this will only make it bigger.

I'm glad to be back in the local papers. I have another illustration coming up this week, also illustrating a crime story. I'll post it once it's finished.

First Post- New Portfolio

I'm starting to build a portfolio of images for a robust project pitch. This is the first one; the astronomer's club meets here. More to come.

Character Concept for Cyberspace Mountain

A long while back I worked on a project for Disney Interactive, through Zombie Virtual Entertainment, doing some concept designs and helping to storyboard the action. It was a virtual rollercoaster called Cyberspace Mountain, and this was a concept design for a host character who would test the impossible coaster you'd design before you took a spin on it yourself. This character at the time was named "Krash". That's a plumb bob kind of thing on his chest to help show the effect spinning upside down and being flung around would have on the rider. The heart monitor would flash at exciting opportune moments, and his body could fly to pieces if the ride was too intense. It was a simple crash test dummy robot, and nothing more. At least I got to design some options for them.

I have no idea if this character or if any similar character was ever included in the final project, but Cyberspace Mountain is still available somewhere in Disneyworld, with youtube videos online to show how it works.

San Francisco Weekly

This piece was done for the SF Weekly a while ago. The original illustration was a simple black and white line drawing, but the color treatment is flashier, no?

Illustrations for BestFriends.org

I'm currently working on a collection of characters and illustrations for BestFriends.org's new children's web site sections. Kids and animals.

Fairy Tale Story Sketch

From a still-gestating original "classic"-style fairy tale I've been working on. The troll king gets his comeuppance. This scene will be staged very differently in the final.

Upcoming Tee Shirt Design

On its way. It's got some tweaking in its future. The rings on the pigeon's neck vex me a little, for example. that lone fry there on the bottom looks a little anemic too.

New Project Peek

Penny!

Band Logo Designs

I made up these logo roughs for my friend Demian Johnston. His band's name is Hemingway, and I thought I'd take a crack at designing some tee shirts for him. I did these a while ago, and just rediscovered them. I suggested the designs to him again,unfotunately just in time for the band to change their name. (Sigh).

The concept revolves around polydactyl cats being colloquially referred to as "Hemingways". I especially like using an x-ray image for the black shirts. That's a real six fingered x-ray, by the way; thank Google for that. The fleshy six-fingered hand I did myself, using collage and illustration to make it look more convincing.

At the time I even suggested kids' tees with five-fingered Mickey Mouse gloves under the type. I thought it would be one of those jokes that you either got, or you were dumb.

Another Ne'er Do Well

Click above to enlarge image.

They're finally out of my system. I've had an incomplete version of this image on my HD for months now, building on a drawing posted below. This is it for the Bat-nonsense for a while, and none too soon.

Vampire Enforcer

I was thinking about the Hildebrandt Bros. today while painting this. I think it influenced the colors somewhat.

Night Creature

This was originally begun as a mood and character concept illustration for a game pitch for Amaze Entertainment, but it wasn't used at the time. I was moved to another project before I could really get involved. Of course, by that time I couldn't help but work up some images on my own.

Old, Old, Oooold Illustration Job

I found these while going through some old files recently and I thought they were worth posting here for fun. I did this series of illustrations for a story in the San Francisco Weekly years ago for Mr. Darrick Rainey. I don't remember the story at all anymore, but these Curious little guys somehow fit the bill. Apologies to H.A.Rey, of course.

My illustrators' group had a show of drawings- very last minute- and believe it or not all of these monkey pictures sold. Ten years in a drawer leads to money in the pocket.

The show was a lot of fun, and was a rousing success. Good for us!

Spooky Scarecrow

This is a self-rejected bit of background imagery from a game pitch I am recreating. It may make its way into the doc yet...

Character Design

I'm going forward with this character for a new kids' non-fiction idea I'm putting together. It pretty much came together with no fuss at all, so I'm taking that as a good omen.

While I was doing this color version of the design below, I suddenly realized that the sleeves were completely incompatible with movement or normal wear, and were completely different from one another. If this were animated, I thought of a number of ways the penciled design might work, but since it's a one-off color concept design, I decided to redesign it a little. I can't believe I never noticed it in the original pencil!

Comic Book Character Sketch

This heavily armored gentleman is about to put a beating to somebody.

When will I get these comics done?! There's just too much to do!