Kevin and the Griffin

The second sketch.

Kevin and the Griffin

Eight year old Kevin lives with his mother, the super of an eight story brownstone in New York. The building was erected in the late 1800s, and as his mother was overseeing some renovations in the basement, a bricked up office was discovered. Decades of flooding ruined everything inside the hidden room, but Kevin found a rusted locket that he chose to keep.

One night while he as playing on the roof, he dropped the locket and out spilled a bright light. A whoosh of air circled him and on the ledge appeared a griffin. Needless to say he was a tad freaked out.

This is sort of a concept sketch for a story that seems to be appearing in my head. I wanted to get it out on paper before I forgot any details. 

The griffin isn't a pet, though at first Kevin thinks of him that way. Early communication is stunted at best and the beast gets irritated with the boy, but he does not seem to want to leave him alone. That and the griffin has a thing for almonds, something Kevin seems to always carry around with him.

Origin of Love progress

This is a project I have been working on since grad school. It was never a grad school project, but I wanted to do an animation to Rufus Wainwright's version of Origin of Love. I have great visuals for it. I'm working on a sequence with Thor now, and have been gutting it to get in some more feeling. I'm liking how it's going, but with all 2D, especially if you are doing it alone, it's slow going.

Fan Art: Lion-o

I love the cartoon Thundercats. Have for a long time. I have a Thundercats belt buckle on my keychain as I type this. I'm pretty much a dork about it. 

I remember watching the cartoon as a kid. Loved it, but even then, I questioned the look of the characters. Lion-o in particular. For those who don't know, when the Thundercats' planet, Thundera was being destroyed, Lion-o was a boy. The cats were put into stasis and found their way to Third Earth, where Lion-o awoke a man. In the cosmic knowledge of cartoon Sci-fi, sure. But what got to me is how this guy woke with all these muscles like he had developed into his body.

I always thought of that growth in the capsule to be stunting. He would be smaller, leaner, almost a runt. What an awesome character dynamic for the lord of the Thundercats, right? I know, I guess I'm reading too much into it, but it was never out of the back of my mind. So I decided to finally put my thoughts into an image.

I know hardcore fans are most likely gonna pick it to death, but what can you do, right?

My version of Lion-o.

Below are some progress images.

The above is probably my favorite passage in the illustration.

To get the sword as close to the cartoon as I could, I took a still shot from the web and did some work in photoshop to get it's angle as close as I could. I then brought it into AI and did the build up to perspective by hand using shapes. Was not easy.

Lion-o has three different faces. Geeze.

While I was doing this I wanted to make sure I paid as close attention as I could to the detail of the character design of the cartoon. I guess I'm a purist that way, but the underwear jumpsuit had to go. Plus ribbed clothing is a great way to add dimension and form to a drawing. I use it a lot :)

Sphinx final

Sphinx progress

Nearly finished. I'm changing the back foot, hence the green sketch.

Freak Show: The Bearded Woman

 I've decided to start a new series of portrait illustrations. Slightly gothic, high chroma but dark in value. It will be an adventure with the color palette for me.

I'm starting it off with a Japanese bearded woman. I thought that was a twist. 

I've finished the sketch and worked on the color comps. I'm going with the dark magenta one and will do the drawing in illustrator.