Post 87

This is the 87th post of the year. Which is the most post for a year that I've ever had in the six years I've kept this blog. The numbers aren't that important to me but it is fun to see the numbers go up for some reason. Here's some paintings I did for sake of being creative one afternoon.

30 Days of Nintendo 30

"I'm Bad!" Yep I'm finishing of this 30 Days of Nintendo sketches with one of the characters from Bad Dudes. What a terrible story, but it still warms my heart just thinking about it.

30 Days of Nintendo 29

I hate to admit it but that Dog from Duck Hunt laughed at me a lot. Man's best friend. HA!

30 Days of Nintendo 28

Does the lizard creature from Rampage have a name? Does he need a name? I say no.

30 Days of Nintendo 27

I know Simon's main weapon is the whip. So why would I draw him with a boomerang that doesn't even look like his boomerang? I was away from my computer and couldn't look up the boomerang and I wanted to keep to the same portrait format and didn't want to mess with the whip. There I said it. I'm lazy.

30 Days of Nintendo 26

Another game that I liked a lot but either never passed or just don't remember. Maybe I did beat the final boss. I don't know.

30 Days of Nintendo 25

The Amazon! Anyone who has the word "the" in their name has got to be dangerous.

30 Days of Nintendo 24

Starman from Pro Wrestling. I think this has been my favorite redesign so far. Anyone who disagrees with me will have to deal with Starman.

30 Days of Nintendo 23

Don't get me wrong, I like Mega Man and all but I bet he has a hard time going to the bathroom with a gun for a hand. All I'm saying is unzipping his pants has gotta be tricky. One false move and . . .

30 Days of Nintendo 22

I think I might be running out of things to say about these characters.

30 Days of Nintendo 21

Go E Honda go!

30 Days of Nintendo 20

Bullet Bill.

30 Days of Nintendo 19

I feel like I'm in a groove the last couple of characters have turned out much better than the first several.

30 Days of Nintendo 18

I didn't plan on painting the piranha plant that color of muddy red. That's what happens when you are watching The Walking Dead and painting at the same time. The zombies got me.

30 Days of Nintendo 17

I'm really happy how Luigi turned out.

30 Days of Nintendo 16

Battle Toads is a hard game. I'm not ashamed to say I couldn't pass that stupid hover board level.

30 Days of Nintendo 15

Of all the Super Mario Brother's games I think Mario 2 was the weirdest.

30 Days of Nintendo 14

A Goomba with wings! Not the best of the series but hey, it's a Goomba with wings.

30 Days of Nintendo 13

Here is Jimmy from Double Dragon. Double Dragon is an awesome game. I remember that my brothers and I rented the game when I was in the fifth grade for the weekend. That Friday my brother was "sick" and stayed home. The jerk got to play Double Dragon while my other brother and I had to go to school. Yeah I had it pretty rough as a kid.

30 Days of Nintendo 10 - 12

Playing catch up here. I haven't had access to my scanner so I've fallen a little bit behind. To make up my lack of Nintendo posting here's Bowser, Ryu, from Ninja Gaiden, and Billy from Double Dragon.

30 Days of Nintendo 9

Blanka was my favorite from street fighter because I couldn't master the Ryu's dragon punch. With Blanka all you had to do is mash the buttons.

30 Days of Nintendo 8

I admit that I didn't play Bomberman back on the NES. I've only played it on the Wii. But that doesn't mean it isn't a really fun game.

30 Days of Nintendo 7

Don Flamenco, what more can I say!

30 Days of Nintendo 6

I don't know why I wanted to draw Von Kaiser from Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Maybe it's the mustache.

30 Days of Nintendo 5

King Hippo is awesome. I still remember the first time I beat him rather vividly. I wish I could spend a little more time on each one of these characters. They're a lot of fun to do.

30 Days of Nintendo 4

Of the four choices in Super Mario Bros 2 my favorite was Mario, but Toad was a close second. I mean look at that hat!

30 Days of Nintendo 3

My brothers and I never owned Ghosts 'n Goblins but we must have rented or borrowed the game from friends. I remember it being really hard and Sir Arthur the funny little main character always stuck in my head.

30 Days of Nintendo 2

Day number 2 of 30 days of Nintendo. I was a little disappointed how Little Mac turned out. The boxing gloves are the wrong color for example. The nice thing about these 30 days projects is that there is always tomorrow. That helps me be a little less precious with things and that's a good thing in the long run.

30 Days of Nintendo

So I've started my 30 days of Nintendo project. The idea is to draw a different Nintendo character every day for 30 days. I plan to stick to NES characters but I may cheat a little and draw some Super Nintendo characters. We will see.

I had to start off with Mario. As a kid I loved Mario in all his incarnations.

A Very Happy Unbirthday To You

Sorry for the silence for the last couple of weeks. I've been working away on personal and work related projects and haven't gotten around to posting anything up here. The plus side to all this blog laziness is now I have a nice back log of stuff to post. To start things off I thought I'd post some birthday cards that I made for some family members. Enjoy!

Painting

I just watched Herb & Dorothy on Netflix's watch instantly feature. I love watching documentaries. And any documentaries that has anything to do about art get me excited about being creative. I've loved watching Art of the Steal, Art & Copy, I.M. Pei: First Person Singular, Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?, and many more.

After watching Herb & Dorothy I had the urge to get out my acrylic paints and do some painting. This is what I came up with. I don't know if you'd call it a successful painting, but I think it was a personal success in that I'm starting to think about value. I have a ways to go before I understand it, but I'm making progress.

It's good for me to just be creative and not worry about the results. I don't think you can grow as an artist if you are too worried about the results.

Swordfish Sketch Club

Theme: Firefly

Kevin Days A Week

The quest strip I did for Kevin Burkhalter's Kevin Days A Week is up on his blog. Go check it out right now! Kevin's journal comic is a really great read and gushes personality and fun. Plus this guy is a comic making machine. Go check it out now!

Queue Lessons

Now that I've printed up and put together the first Queue mini-comic, I've had some time to think about the whole process. This being the first mini-comic I've ever made I knew there was going to be a learning curve to the process. I'm really happy with how everything turned out, but I've learned somethings and I don't plan to do everything the same next time. I've already got a story outline for my next mini and I'm looking forward to starting. I thought I'd take some time and write out some of the lessons I've learned to help remind me for next time.

-Stapling is a chore with a typical stapler, so I've order an inexpensive long arm stapler to make the whole process smoother.
-The text needs to be bigger than you think. The text in Queue is legible in the mini but I had to post the images larger than planned online so you can read some of the text in that version.
-Work on a size closer to final format. I'm not totally sure about this lesson. I wasn't totally happy with what shrinking the art did to the line work. The line work lost some of the spontaneity when I shrunk it down 35% in Photoshop.
-Include more backgrounds. I think some more backgrounds and atmosphere would help draw the reader into the story more. I ended up redrawing page three for compositional reasons but when I redrew the last panel I included more of the background and I think it really made the page better.
-Don't skimp on paper. Cheap computer paper or copy paper just doesn't look or feel right.
-Make your layouts as clear as possible. If your editors/first readers are using too much of their imagination and are guessing what's going on that's NOT a good thing.

Like I said I'm really happy with how things turned out but every time you tell a story you should learn from the process and be a better storyteller because of it.

Jobs: The Baker

Found this fun short on Keith Lango's blog. Enjoy!

JOBS : THE BAKER / LES METIERS : LE BOULANGER from lam le thanh on Vimeo.

Queue

Here's the first few pages of my freshly completed mini comic Queue. You can read the whole thing on my web page. The comic wasn't originally intended for the web but I feel it works pretty well online. A big thanks goes out to my wife, Mike, and Kevin for help with the editing/story process. I Hope you enjoy it.

Mini Comic Update

I wanted to post some of my mini comic I'm working on so you all know I'm not being lazy. It's been a crazy summer. I planned to have this mini done for SPX but because of my grandpa's funeral I wasn't able to attend and I didn't finish this mini. My plan is to finish the mini in the next two weeks.

You might notice that I'm still playing with my inking style and that the level of cartoonyness is still evolving. Ronald Searle's work has been a big influence lately. And I've been digging the blog/work of Stacy Curtis and the mini comics/blog of John Martz. Also my next 30 days project theme is going to be Nintendo. I'm looking forward to starting that once I've got this mini done.

Yum Yum Short

I hate it when this happens to me.

Swordfish Sketch Club

Theme: Stick Figure

Duel

Animation awesomeness. By Birdbox Studio.

Animation Test

Another animation test done in Flash.

Comic work in progress

I got the first draft of my new mini comic done. I still have some more characters to design and I'm sure I'll continue to play with the layout and panel flow but the first story obstacle has been crossed.

Vacation Sketches

While vacationing in California I set the goal to draw at least one quick sketch of my surrounds a day as a way of recording my trip and work on my skills. Some where successful and some weren't such a success. I've posted some of the success and failures below and left out the ones I deemed a waste of your time. Enjoy!