Counterfeit Confidential.

Just another Microsoft video. Art Courtest of Studio Revolver, animated by Lustre Communications. I mainly worked on the storyboards and some of the background illustrations.

Storyboard Project

Here are a few frame from some recent advertising work.. But these board were for only use for a presentation that in the end was animated using flash( this part was not done be me.)

I haven't done storyboards for quite a while, and previously markers were my medium of choice.. It didn't seem right to do these with markers, so I figured out a way to emulate my marker technique on computer.. It worked fairly well for me, but it definitely wasn't as fast.

But I did get more efficient towards the end.. And I think this will be the way I'll do them from now on.

Star Trek Reboot

I did this just because.. I wasn't crazy about the whole movie. I loved the first half, but the latter half seems to move forward only at the whim of the plot( even when things didn't quite make sense) Also time travel is one of my turn-offs.

But I think it was a great film for Star Trek fans, and it definitely was fun. I loved the new characters. And I'll go see the next one too( I just know to dial back my expectations a little)

Urban Shogun

I realized I've never placed this sequential work on my blog.. It's old, probably predates the blog, but it's not ancient..

I did this for James Mason, creator of Urban Shogun. If you haven't been there, you've got to check it out.

James and I went to high AND college together, getting the same degree as well. But don't fret, we took very different track in college, so we ended up being in different classes in college.. And I got out a year before he did. But, we've been drawing together since high school, so I expected him to put together a story for me to draw.. James took my BW pages and added color to them( I love the colors)

And here it is..( if you want to know what happens before and after, you gotta go over to Urban Shogun and find out.)

ArtOrder: The Usual Suspects

Another ArtOrder challenge. Create silhouettes of four iconic D&D characters, Leader, Striker, Defender, and Controller. I think that says it all. It was an fun exercise, I have to admit, it took much longer than I expected. And it was a challenge to get across subtlety with only the outline of the figures expressing everything.

Comics and Sketchies

Nothing groundbreaking.. Just some fun drawin's today. I did this sequential page "just to see" how long it would take me.. From concept to this finished page, I totaled about 3 hours.

The other sketch is a somewhat quick doodle that I did. It definitely was inspired by Henrich Cley. I haven't even looked at his stuff recently, but his work s always great to think about when you're talking about ink work and putting life and motion into that work.

ArtOrder: Way Back Machine

Sorry I've been away for a week.. Just been getting things done.. I hope to get back on a semi daily schedule now. on to the weekly sketch challenget.

This weeks ArtOrder Challege was to imagine that you took a time Machine way, way back into the future.. What would you find.. Specifically, focusing on the Gnome, what you their distant, far back cousins look like.

Go over to ArtOrder and vote for my entry. It's not perse a contest of whose is better.. It more about who can get the most people to clap for them. Kinda like some "idol show" many people look at every year.

Here's my interpretation:

Random Sketches

I was looking for some artwork today, and came across some random sketches that I like. I did these before I had a blog..

The Cap piece I totally forgot about doing- I must have inked it with a brush. It looks like it.

I have no recollection of the others either.. Probably why I'm posting them; They a bit of a treat for me too..

The Legal Edge

Another spot that Studio Revolver created with Lustre Communications for a Microsoft project.. I'f youl'd like the nitty gritty details about this project, looks two posts below..

Artorder weekly sketch: unfamiliar familiar

Did this for the Weekly sketch over at Artorder. This weeks subject was unfamiliar famaliar.

I have to admit.. Not being a gaming kinda'guy.. I had to look up what a familiar was.. And It's just an animal, but one that strengthens a sorcerer or wizard.. And there are some usual familiars that are used.. And basically I had to find an animal that's not a standard familiar..

I chose the ram/goat cuz I initially wanted to do something cool with his horns.. But I got caught up in mother's day and my time got eaten away, so I had 30 minutes to do the complete drawing.. and I really wanted to participate this week-end( I think it's a great weekly event) and I cleaned it up a little bit in photoshop today..

Okay.. here's my unfamiliar familiar.

riq.

The Black Market Blues. (Working for The Man!)

A few years back, the studio( Studio Revolver, which I've been a part of for 5 years now) got a project working on a Microsoft get genuine promotion.. Basically, these comic animations warn businesses that their dogs will die and wives will leave if they don't make sure they paying big bucks to have non-bootleg Windows operating systems.

We did a total of 5. My part of the process was mainly storyboarding and digital backgrounds.. John Christopher and I were the conceptual team, and when scripts came in, we would brainstorm now the sequence should look and flow visually. We would send the storyboards to the production studio( that did all of the animation and sound) and they would get edits, we'd make changes, repeat.

So finally, we would have a final, approved storyboard sequence, and from there Georges Jeanty, of Buffy fame, would pencil the final art, and Dexter Vines, of Civil War fame, would ink the suckas. And finishing up the duties was Tom Feister.

All of the final animation was done by the amazing guys at Lustre Communications. Check out their work, it's super-tastic.

I would do any detailed backgrounds in illustrator to we could keep them hi res. In fact I'm going to post a few of the background that I did..

I don't want to dump all the animations at once, so I'll post a couple here and there over the next weeks.

The first one I'm posting is the last one that we did..

More Sketches

Just an assortment of sketches of past..

Mellow Mushroom Drink and Draw.

Went to the Mellow Mushroom Drink and Draw. Here are the results.. Chris and Miracole burns were the models.. She was rouge and he was Zombie Spider-Man.

Studio Revolver Sketchbook available for purchase

If you haven't noticed on my sidebar, there's a link to the Studio Revolver Sketchbook. When I first posted this, we didn't have a way to order it before. But now you can give us money for a book of collected paper, thru the internet no less.

Just say "I want the hot stuff", "I want the hot stuff", "I want the hot stuff" three times, or just click this link- Studio Revolver Sketchbook

IT CAME FROM THE SKETCHBOOK AGAIN!!!

This resulted from a trip to Charlotte for Free Comic Book Day... Back when Mark was part of Revolver Studios.. But we weren't even named at that time...

Why so dramatic.. I have no Idea.. just more sketches that I like from the past..

The White Stripes

I had to do a marathon 3 day back to back all nighter in the studio to finish a hot( hot as in they need it ASAP, not hot as in top secret, cool) storyboard project. I ended up listening to a lot of music, and on Pandora- my music service of choice, I ended up with a lot of White Stripes..

Anyway, all done now, and I did a little peeking into their history, and it was very interesting.. More importantly, they themselve are very interesting characters.. So I did a quick picture.

That's all.

more from the Sketchbook

It might seem that I'm trying to "get over" and just pull old sketches to fluff of the blog.. But I have to admit, these life sketches are some of my favorite artwork, and I've never shared much of this with anyone before. and without further ado.... Oh.. I have added a market sketch I did last night.. I've just about finished my collection of the cool gray Copics.. They almost like working with paint..

BTW. this sketch was probably done around 2004 when I was working caricatures at Six Flas.

It Came from the Sketchbooks

Publish Post

I have some ideas brewing in my big ole' noggin, and quite a few of those Ideas are related to making this blog a little more interesting.. Well to begin something only a little different, I'm bringing it back old school..

Actually not really that old, and nothing to do with school. I rummaged thru some old sketchbooks, and found some stuff I really like ( and have never, ever shared with anyone..

So here's the first sketch, done when I was doing some time drawing caricatures at Six Flags.. During that time I did a lot of sketching, as you'll figure out in the next few weeks.

Redeemer Final pages.

I was holding off posting these until I could at least get through all of them.. At least present the first few sequentially.

But I'm still working on them, and I don't want to rush.. So I'm just posting the first two that I've finished.. If you want to see the breakdown of the story, click on the sketch or comic tag; I put up the breakdown for this story at least a year agon.

I'll talk more about my approach and whatnot when I have more energy tomorrow..

Later,

t.

Ringslingers Cover sketch

Was cleaning up yesterday and found this cover sketch I did for Ringlingers.. I didn't use it cuz I didn't like Morgan's face, the girl in the up front, and I didn't like that Eric, the guy in front, could be seen as shorter than Morgan.

Surfer Card breakdown.

As you can see... This wasn't much of a "sketch" card.. I had a concept and wanted to know it was going to work out..

Initially I sketched out this concept and just threw some markers on it.. I really like the Silver Surfer but wasn't that hot about Galactus. So I spent some more time working on the Galactu s Face that you see in the pencil sketch.

I actually use the old "graphite-rub" technique to get the drawing as close to the original as possible.

I used a purple "Pitt Pen"( from Faber Castell) to ouline all of the shadow areas. This is the technique that I learned from Brian Stelfreezes water color workshop. You fill the shadow areas with a strong purple in the starting stages. That's the only part of the technique that I used on this. The card really resisted any watercolor pigment soaking in.

So I figured I'd have to rely on gouache. This is when the real fun started.. The pain went down very smooth and even. I made sure not to use too many colors on G's face.. I felt that three values would honestly say everything I wanted.

From there I just noodled away. Did a lot of color mixing, but I would completely cover up the previous color to keep the number of values down to around three on the face..

I keep mentioning G's face, and that's because I feel that's what pulls the composition together.. SS is cool, but he's kinda easy to do.. G's face really grounds the image into reality. And I keep mentioning the number of values because if you start getting too many colors on the pictures, it starts to fall apart.

I feel that a painting should be able to look very good with only 3 or 4 colors. If it's not looking good, then you just haven't used the colors the right way.. The inclination of most beginning painters is to find that special color that will make it right.. It doesn't.. It just makes a mess. So that was my philosophy as I searched for the right colors for this. And I definitely did some trial and error.

The cool thing about gouache is that you cn re-wet it and smooth out the colors. BUT another mantra I paint by is that you don't get honest gradation only by a smooth transition between two colors.. You need to have a honest transition between the right harmony of colors.. Or course I've limited myself to only three- but I kept searching for those three that played well together.. So in the end.. I didn't do any smoothing of color.

No colored pencil on this on either.. Which transitions into the Doc Strange card.. It was started about the same way as the SS, But I used a collection of Pitt pens to add a little more color at the beginning.. I threw in as marker as I could then shifted to gouache and then colored pencils.. It was a very mixed media experiment.

(BTW, the thing that makes Pitt pens so grand it they are pretty much like writing with transparent acrylic paint.. They play very nicely with watercolors, acrylic, and gouache.

That's it..

*edit* I just noticed.. It's not just my monitor.. Blogger lightens up any pictures that I upload to it.

Marvel Masterpieces Round 3: Silver Surfer, Galactus, and Dr. Strange

I've decided to start posting some of my MM's artist sketch cards.. I've already finished them all, but I didn't want to throw them all out at once.

I'll be posting a couple of new one's each week.

*edit* I just realized how badly my monitor is calibrated. I fixed( as best I could) and cleaned up the colors with some levels and curves.

Quick Sketch

Nothing more to say. but it wasn't actually a quick sketch.. I really noodled at this over the past week and a half.. I was inspired after looking through Massimo Caneavale's website( he does the cover art for Northlanders).

that's all.

Cover for proposal

I finished out a proposal job with this final mock-up of the cover.