Happy Howl-idays

Hope everyone has a great Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!

Featuring a few of my family dogs
(from Top Left: Bosco - Chocolate Lab, Ruby - Pointer Mix, Gordon - Pomeranian, my lil' guy, Jethro! -Straight up Mutt!, Cecco & Pasqual - twin Yorkie-Poos!)

Adobe Support

Working in Flash used to be slightly annoying for me because of how the line smoothing works. I'd draw a line that fit what I wanted perfectly and as soon as I released the stylus it would warp into something completely different. Whenever I work on an animation project, as I am now, this problem is exasperated by a frequent crashing. Well, I recently spent a decent penny and upgraded to Flash CS5.5 for my most recent job and I must say I am impressed! I didn't think Flash could have crashed more than it already did but bless Adobe, they really pulled out all the stops on this new version. I'd say overall I've lost over 24 hours of work due to crashes, which is 24 hours of pay I'm losing by having to do everything more than once.

Obviously this has lead me to calling Adobe Support on more than one occasion since purchasing the program. The results have been...disappointing to say the least. First of all I'd be very surprised if any of these support technicians really knew the program well. Secondly, even if they did it would appear they are limiting their responses (and usefulness) to a very contrite script. This conclusion is arrived at after a few conversations ending in awkward silence, an assurance that a "higher tier technician" would call me back in a day or so, and repeated suggestions of things we've already established didn't work.

So rather than pitching my computer out the window, I decided to have a little fun!
Since I'm working on another Mo Willems project I thought using some of my favorite characters would be apropos...

More Boardwalk

Okay, last ones for today. Some more of my favorites from Boardwalk Empire; Chalky White, Jimmy Darmody, and Manny Horvitz. Lookit Manny's head, it's like he was carved out of an apple!

Harrow

Doing some warm-up sketches today before I begin my work. One of my favorite shows right now is Boardwalk Empire, it really is a great show to watch! Perhaps the biggest draw to tuning in every weekend is my favorite character, Richard Harrow (played by the insanely talented Jack Huston). So I figured to get rolling today I'd do some character studies/sketches!


Have I mentioned how much I love sketching in pen? Because I really do!

Angry Penguin Jr. 3, The Penguining -- this time it's personal!

Okay, last Angry Penguin post for now, I promise.
It's just that my neighbors are screaming at each other right now, and I can hear them quite plainly through my window! And that makes me think of "angry"! Ahhh child-like logic at its best.

Here's the most recent one I did for the fine folks over at www.theangrypenguin.com!



First-a we pencil d'penguin....


Next-a, we ink-a him up...



Last, we put 'im in d'oven and make him all nice and nice-a! Bon Appetito evr'body!

Angry Penguin Jr. 2, This Time He's ANGRY...ER!

Time for more Angry Penguin!

Gosh I love this little guy... This design is far more recent, and it's the first double-sided
tee design I've done for them.


Original concepts done on scrap paper with ball point pen. BIC fine point blue are my favorite to sketch with...maybe it's because they're relatively cheap? I don't know...


Little Angry Penguin Jr. in his bloody glory!


Poor eagle... caught in the sharp blades of cheese-ball humor *tsk*

Angry Penguin Jr., the First

On the subject of Angry Penguin (see previous post), I realized I haven't posted any
of the work I've done for them! Here's a little behind the scenes of the first shirt design
I ever did for them. They were going with a Global Warming theme, for which I did
a few concepts, and though this was apparently submitted among that bunch I can't
for the life of me figure out why. I think I had just kept the header there as part of a
template used on the other (more appropriate to the theme) concepts. Well whatever
the case was, this was the design they liked the most, and so it went on to print!


Original Concept done in Photoshop


When I went to do the final artwork (which was done in Flash), I realized
that AP Jr was very stiff, so I tried to liven him up a bit! Everyone seemed
happy with the results :)



The finished product! Check it out on their website at www.theangrypenguin.com!

Been A While...

Wow, so I haven't posted to this blog in a while and I figured it's about time I get back to it!
Unfortunately a lot of what I've been working on are things I still can't post. In the meantime though here's a little catching up!

This little number is a piece I did a little while ago for kicks, featuring my favorite irrate little bird, Angry Penguin Jr.! I've been hired to do a few designs for Angry Penguin and they're always a blast, but this one was done on my dime :)