Tofugu Illustration

The guys at Tofugu (the only blog i actually read ever) are looking for an illustrator or something to draw this weird thing they like. SO I DREW IT. :D



Sadly, since my computer died last year, this is the best I can do. Ah... how awesomely this would photoshop!

Check out more cool stuff (written by them, not drawn by me) at www.tofugu.com

Photo Illustration

it's a fun experiment... though the story is odd...

RESPONSIBILITY

comic strips?!

& The Lion: #1

The first time meeting the lion. This originated as a facebook status update. When challenging my inability to create 3 or 4 frame comic strips, I realized that illustrating those status updates was the perfect solution. The beginning of "& the Lion" however, was a little too long to stay in 4 frames, so here it is in a full page format... :D

self portrait

i've been making lots of self-portraits lately... since i've become a character in many of my own works (making up semi-autobiographical stories lately...) it's become necessary to invest some time in developing my illustrated alter-ego...
with this sketch, i was mostly pleased that the original sketchbook drawing looked good when reversed (a truth test for any drawing) - it was lined and colored in photoshop.

2011: Year of the Rabbit

Happy New Year Everyone! This year's resolution: be more productive! so far, so good...

Robot Santa (ImagineFX competition submission)

y'know... i don't really like santa...

but merry christmas ya'll. :D

Another time, another poster

through the course of less than 8 hours, i made a poster about a new ministry the youth pastor came up with. he has the best ideas: easy to come up with things for... anyway, this isn't the poster: the rest of it was text. but this is the image from the top of the poster. :D

Youth Group Posters

i made a couple posters to promote my church youth groups' summer activities.



made mostly from "tracing" source photos, i had a ton of fun making these. it's the first real photoshop project i've done in a long time~!

i drew a picture of a unicorn... but it's not what you think.

one time while i was in korea, i went on wikipedia and read about unicorns. they think the idea of unicorns came from a sort of ancient rhino... so, i made my own unicorn... that's really more of a pony/rhino... anyway, it turned out kinda cute...



i used a ball-point pen and touched it up with shading and highlights in photoshop.

＊アミグルミ＊

i have taken up another hobby in the past couple months: amigurumi. these are the products of that hobby. i would like someday to sell them to make some cash on the side, but as yet, i can't really make them in any reliable fashion: i can't help experimenting... but let me know if you're interested in anything~ i can even make a special order if you want...

untitled.

and with that, i've posted more in this month than i did all last year...

happy new year again~

Sketchbook: Totoro

here's to a new year. new challenges. new adventures. new resolutions. let's draw.

and for your gift, an artsy photo of a pencil sketch... this little totoro is about 3 inches tall in my sketchy.

onward, january. God speed to thee. lets draw.

2010: Year of the Tiger

a few years ago, a tiger in a zoo escaped from its enclosure and killed a guy... after seeing a rampaging elephant escaped from the circus and an orangutan with a similar affliction, i started to imagine them saying, "i'm mad as hell and i'm not gonna take it anymore!" before being shot to death... (except the orangutan, they sedated and returned him)... but now i always imagine the animals say that when they encounter humanity in unnatural situations...



anyway, happy new year! (hope it's better than last year!)

the future is.... ?

i can still hold a pen, praise be to God...
but what the future holds... who can tell?

just a little late....

happy new year... i guess...

it's been a long time... (shouldna left you... without a dope beat to step to...)

well ya'll, the reason i haven't been around for a few months is because i've up and moved to korea to teach english. that's the short of it anyhow. so i was busy. sorry.

i'll get to work on some goods for you eventually...
in the meantime enjoy this random sketch i just did... using a cheap ball-point pen, copic markers, my camera to get it digital and a little photoshop magics to make it look better/more random.

^__^

what episode is this...

a note to one and all... firstly, this image has been hanging around for a few weeks. i beat it into photoshop a few weeks ago, but wanted to either finish it or atleast modify it enough to make it look good here on the blog. i don't know, am i successful?
anyway, if you've left comments on anything lately you'll notice that they don't show up immediately - i'm now moderating all the comments left on posts, so they may take a day or two for me to get to them.
meanwhile, my friend has recently lamented the fact that we haven't seen anything in "traditional media" for a while. it's true - i miss the feel of paper myself... i still do a lot of work in the sketchbook, but i have no facilities for any serious painting or drawing with anything more than pencil or pen. meanwhile, as much as i'd love to share my sketchbook pages with you, the task of getting images through a scanner or camera and to my computer are arduously discouraging. for that matter, so is uploading images. half the time if i try to upload a CMYK image, blogspot will distort the color. if i convert to RGB, it will load in the right colors, but it takes forever to get it to upload properly... the internet and i have a love-hate relationship.
remember to check out the production blog occasionally. i like to post things there.

speed sketch

less than one hour in photoshop... and hopefully the start of something big.

coming soon...

it's been a while since i felt good about my work, but this one's been waiting in the pages for months...

Something on my mind...

happy new year

by the way, it's the year of the rat.

(and i don't care if it's 2 days late. check out the production blog for the First's doodle.)

CrosSwords Presents

HaHA! the new year almost made a December post impossible! But the wonderfulawesomecoolness that is David Moore posted such a good script on the facebook group site that i had to post it here immediately as well as giving you your first look at some of the frames in sequence. Now, i know i need to work on my fonts, and i know the frames are a little close together - bear with me- and i know some of the words are all crowded in their little bubbles... (that's about half my fault - one of the problems with blind scripting, but i'm making it work...)
but maybe, just maybe, this little bit of my love will make your new year a little better....

happy reading and happy new year. and shout out to David Moore.





PS: I even altered the size of the bubble, but Dave gave Punkin a lot to say...

CrosSwords Characters

enjoy these rough, free-hand sketches of the CrosSwords characters. they're just about to scale compared to one another, and the color seems to help describe them as well. generally, the comic strips will be in black and white, so color won't be an issue: it's more in case you were wondering... let me know what you think!

Still Here

I'm working on something new... and somewhat simpler than most of my other ideas... after chewing through a few dozen ideas and having them left in the dust due to my own lack of interest, ability and/or time, i've come up with this one. Currently, I have 27 frames sketched of 'CrosSwords,' a nearly plotless story revolving around a hero, a villain, and their respective sidekicks. Among it's many features are purposely blank voice bubbles. the mood and dialogue is only vaguely suggested - making an internationally readable "comic strip"...
I'll be back with more later.

Bridefight Poster

If you've been watching the production blog, you'll know this has been coming for a while.
If I had really set myself to it and not had other work to do it probably could have been finished in a week. As it is, this has taken about 3 months! I'm thinking of doing a few more versions though, I'm not completely satisfied with this... but it could take me a few more months.

Interested? Contact me to learn more or to convince me to print posters: cynocephaly@gmail.com

The Abbey Gate Murder

my latest commission...



and where i've been spending most of my arting time lately...

Interested? You can purchase reproduction rights or convince me to print posters: cynocephaly@gmail.com

Standing Water: Sketch

Goldfish

an hour and forty-five minutes in photoshop... i got carried away, i was supposed to be doing something else...

FlishHorse Project

I was recently commissioned by Flishhorse, a professional software analyst company based in Oregon, to do some illustrations and digital paintings to help upgrade their image.
The ideas sprang from the company's unusual name, and much of the appearance is owed to a rather bizzare cross between Tristar/Columbia's pegasus and Starbuck's two-tailed siren which I used as inspiration to steer clear of the more traditional hippocampus...

Carpe Diem Sketch

Recognize the couch? I had hit a slump in my creatvie abilities, so decided to go back and do something over again... This motif is something continual for me... it's a growing experience...

Street: First Attempt

This is my first attempt at adapting the style of Craig Mullins (www.goodbrush.com). If you look at his work, you'll notice I'm far from it. but that's okay. this was my first serious attempt, and for that, it didn't do so badly. I'm now working on a new one. It looks very similar, but better... maybe...

I'm starting a new project, and simultaneously will be multi-tasking other projects I've got floating around, so be on the lookout for updates on those. and send me some feedback. I'm only posting this 'cuz my friend told me too - i'm a pushover for a good fan. :)
anyway, this is the first image of the new project, which is something of a story, but not quite... I have a habit of giving up on projects lately, so i'm trying to revive as many recent ones as seems feasible... This one is a brand new idea... well, it's sprouted from an odd rant i wrote about dreams a few months ago. ... and i think that's as much info as i can get into without you thinking i'm totally mental...

purple couch

i'm not going to make a habit of putting lousy work on my site here, but i figured i'd let this one in since i'm still learning to use my new tools. I was multi-tasking today, so i actually did this one in photoshop on my mac (which i've been bogging down with work all afternoon, but unlike the stupid dell, it hasn't frozen up) :D

My Summer Workspace

Here's a change of pace. For all of you who've been wondering what I'm doing this summer, here's a picture of my "studio space." You'll notice it's not really a studio, it's the kitchen table. There is no space left in my parent's house, and there's no money to get me out of here yet. (by the way, the books and panda aren't usually there, I was just staging some photos)

Dragon

As payment for my latest project, I got a Wacom tablet and the program Corel Painter X. it's a heap of fun, but my Mac has some rotten internal problem that makes it so it can't run the program. :(
So, i'm running it on a stupid dell.
Anywho, this is the first thing I made with Painter. I was just playing around, and this didn't take long.

Wanna' buy it? Contact me about purchasing reproduction rights or convince me to print posters: cynocephaly@gmail.com

A Walk in the Park

The walk in the park series was my senior year's masterpiece. It took most of the semester and caused severe muscle and joint pain through my wrist, arm and shoulder! (I'm all better now).

Anyway, Walk in the Park is about more than just a walk in the park.

During the Fall of 2006, I was studying abroad in Japan. While there, I took the time to become more acquainted with the medium commonly known as the graphic novel. Even though I want to illustrate comics, I have had little exposure to them. Japanese comics are unique in how they use the visual image to immerse the viewer in the mood of the setting – everything about the image intentionally attempts to express and convey the feeling in the story. I wanted to try my hand at this kind of story telling.
The Walk in the Park series became a gamut of self-imposed problems and challenges. Every element had to be thoroughly planned and choreographed to fully stretch my capabilities and push me to the limit of all I could do.
This is the most complicated and in-depth piece of sequential illustration I have ever attempted, and it is this kind of work I would like to continue to pursue: ever challenging my abilities and pushing the limits of possibility.
Beyond challenging my abilities, the Walk in the Park series is also very personal. As you may have noticed, it is a continuation of a watercolor painting I created almost a year earlier titled “Self Portrait.” It is meant to be a description of who I am: not what I look like (I employ similar methods in many of my works). This series is an expansion of that concept.
While I was in Japan, I tried to come up with words to describe my style. The words I came up with were “Lighthearted Darkness.” This is where the concept of strangers in the park and three-headed dogs become less ominous. I have learned that life is full of imposing and serious matters, but all are surmountable with hope, joy, faith, and a bit of humor.

Page 1


This first page introduces us to the main characters: a boy named Higashi and his 3-headed beagle dog Cephyroth.




Page 2



Page two takes us along with our favorite characters on their walk... where they meet a rather imposing figure...



Page 3



Here we meet Argus the centaur. And the red balloon.



You may have noticed the red balloon in other of my works. Well, this it what it means. It's a symbol of the future and the unknown. And it's not just the balloon, but the act of taking the balloon and who it comes from that makes it symbolic. Argus is symbollic as a messenger: mysterious and intimidating at first, he turns into quite a surprising character.



Page 4


Meet Lilith, Argus' wife (a faun). She's the most outwardly light-hearted character of the story and birds always seem to be singing whenever she comes along. Enigmatically less symbolic than the other characters, she becomes more of a support character, complimenting the others, and making them more whole.



One question I haven't gotten much of is what the 3-headed beagle symbolizes. Well, it's long and complicated:
You'll remember from the piece called DOGFACE (etc) a character with the head of a dog. This is an actual medical condition (sort of) called Cynocephaly (my email address is cynocephaly@gmail.com). Cyno means dog, ceph means head. The three-headed beagle is named Cephyroth: a corruption of the name of the popular Final Fantasy VII character, Sephiroth- it's pronounced the same- but Sephiroth is actually a villain, and a pretty good one at that. And of course, the idea of the three-headed dog comes from cerberus, guardian of the underworld. Dogs are, in certain mythologies, something of a bridge between the temporal world and the after-life, and that's why they lick people (I can't remember exactly, go look it up on wikipedia like i did).
SO, with all that in mind, Cephyroth is a harmless beagle (in contrast to his namesake and the traditional cerberus), he's a happy-go-lucky, absent-minded, squirrel-chase-loving, boy's best friend kinda' dog. He may have three heads, but he's still one dog. It's a hard concept to grasp, but in honor of it's complexity, I've decided that Cephyroth is an illustration of the Holy Trinity concept (three parts, one whole): but Cephyroth is by no means divine. He's a dog.



The Walk in the Park series is for sale!
Each of the pages is matted and framed at a whopping 30"x40" (76cmx102cm), they are designed to stand alone, or look very snazzy side by side, with a few inches between them. They are not for sale seperately.

The 4-piece series is for sale at $1575 (plus shipping when applicable).