realm of the octobot

Some recent freelance design work for Protokulture, Chicago.

welcome back to space

Revisited this piece I started a while ago. Got sidetracked with work and my surf film. Click to see a lot more detail. Its about 60% complete I'd say. I like to look at drawings in the mirror when I'm working on them. Or hold the piece of paper up to a light and look through the back of the page to see the drawing flipped. Helps to see things differently.

I flipped this one over in photoshop, and I like this direction more. Seems more dramatic to me. The motion is now right to left, which is the opposite of how we normally perceive that act of going somewhere. Usually on screen it's left to right. Think of classic video games in this regard.

I also like to look at an image in black and white just to see how the values are working. In the image below, I kicked up the contrast. In the black and white version I prefer this. But in the color version I like the piece a bit more muted for some reason, especially when viewed at a larger size.

I'm next going to do a few drawings on paper with marker and pen to really nail what I want this spaceman to look like. Then scan that and paint over.

The few people I have showed this to didn't get that it was supposed to be a big space station at first. They saw the illuminated tunnel and slit as a planet. I want to stick with that really simple design though. I feel it's strong. When I'm done with this, pretty sure you'll know its a space station. Hope so at least! Do you see it?

cousins of vader

Some warm-up marker sketches for fun today. Again, quite a bit inspired by Ralph McQuarrie's early Darth Vader explorations.

inspired by b.o.beatbox

Checked out Bob Rissetto's recent Trapjaw(of the He-Man world) illustrations on his blog, and it got me drawing this guy. Bob is a beatbox ninja by the way, thus the title. I'm not into He-Man anymore, but when i was in kindergarten, He-Man was about all I cared about. He-Man and Jenny, my "girlfriend"...me and my best friend at school shared her.

the paranoid android

Personal assistant droid. He greets visitors at the door.

corwin schrader, cousin of vader

Recently I've been looking at a lot of old Ralph McQuarrie conceptual sketches and paintings from the original Star Wars trilogy. Probably my favorite art of all time. Didn't know this before...he was born in Gary, Indiana. A few miles from where I'm from.

far from home

For a few weeks now I've had an idea to paint a huge tunnel illuminated from its core. At first I saw something quite angular and complex. I'd still like to explore that for another piece. I decided to simplify the idea though.

This is my second pass on this work in progress.

1981 - present

above: a sketch from my high school years. I did this on a small Lake Michigan beach in Door County, Wisconsin. My whole family was there, and so was our young friend, Andrew Kora. We got chased by a particularly persistant wasp on the bike ride there if I remember right.

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Today I wrote something new for the bio page on my portfolio website. It will probably take me a long time to get my web designer friend to post this up on my site, so figured I'd put it here first...

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My brother is a year and a half younger than I am, and some of my first memories in life are of him kicking over my creations with one foot while lying on his back in a little reclining plastic baby seat. Toppling my wooden building block towers. It made me furious. I worked really hard on them. They were my little epics. He would later grow into a mischievous little kid, and I suspect even back then he did this on purpose.

Upon graduating high school, I found myself drawing in notebooks while not paying attention in classes at Purdue Calumet in Northwest Indiana. Kind of reminded me of my high school years, minus the antics of my Spanish teacher, “Jeremias!!!!” she would yell while launching my pencil across the room. One day while doodling during a break between classes, it hit me, what on earth am I doing here?

Soon I was on a tour of Columbia College’s very humble animation department. It was on the same day that the Chicago Bulls were celebrating their final championship down below in Grant Park. I could see it from the windows. When the students working the animation cage informed my mom and I that traditional animation is drawn at 24 frames per second, as in 24 drawings per second, my jaw dropped. Standing next to a giant Oxberry animation camera that looked decades older than me, the department head frankly told me, “Ya know, this really isn’t the best animation school…” and he went on to list a few better programs in other cities. “But, as far as here in Chicago, this is about your best option.”

I really appreciated his candid remarks, in stark contrast to the shady recruiters I’d encountered at other art schools in town. Seemed like they’d say anything to get you to sign up…for hopeless debt.

At Columbia’s orientation, I sat across the table from a little Puerto Rican kid from Chicago’s south side. He seriously looked like a kid there amongst all us 18 and 19 year olds; he looked maybe 15 at most. He spoke softly, with a bit of an accent, while we munched on the brown bagged peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that they’d given us all for lunch. “So, what are you majoring in?” I asked.

“Animation. I’m going to be an animator,” he replied, sort of in question form. Yeah, sure you are, kid, I thought to myself. Good luck with that.

A year later at age 20, I landed my first interview as an artist. It was for a rather new educational game studio in town called JRL. Started and run by a crew from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was packed to the brim with an unruly bunch of guys and gals all about my age, drawing at homemade light tables and painting with Photoshop. There was a cute small Filipino gal nearly bouncing off the walls and letting out high pitched squeals. There was a bigger Korean gal with fake birds in her pink and black hair painting away at a computer. Everyone around her seemed ok with her really loud music. I saw Javier there, who I knew from Columbia and who told me about this place, drawing away. Javier and I had been in the same drawing class first semester at Columbia, taught by a woman who, no joke, did not have a clue about perspective, “…ya know, how if you look at something, and then look at it from a little different angle, and it…looks, uh, different? Yeah, that’s kind of perspective…though, I don’t really like to get into the technical side of…”

I saw stacks of really nicely hand inked drawings of characters. And I said,” Wow, how do you guys do this?” Keith, who hired me, I think was 21 at the time. When he told me they were going to pay me 10 bucks an hour to draw, which was 4 bucks an hour more than what I made stocking shelves at Osco, I felt my heart thump against my sweater. 10 bucks an hour?!?!?! I tried to play it calmly. “Sounds good.” I said with a smile. Driving away with the windows down and radio blaring in my 84’ Monte Carlo, I tilted my head back and let out a really big happy yell.

Over the past ten years, I’ve worked as an artist, traditional animator, and wrist for hire. Work includes storyboards, conceptual art, character design, environment design, background layout and painting, and traditional character animation. Some of the places I have worked for recently are Calabash Animation, Teamworks Media, Protokulture, and Digital Kitchen.

above: a few sequences I recently worked on for Calabash Animation in Chicago. Eric Meister designed the little rabbit.

About the kid I met that first day at Columbia College. Dan is his name. We ended up working at a few of the same places in Chicago. The core group of artists I still hang out with or keep in touch with are mostly friends from those early days at Columbia. Dan is so passionate about animation it’s almost strange. He married a lovely gal he met in the animation department at Columbia. Of course, she had to have an animation name, Jasmin. And he’s now a cg character animator working on feature films out in L.A. Guess I should have believed the kid.

I continue to work as a freelance artist, and am also traveling around the world some and shooting my own independent Super 16mm surf film. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy taking a look at some of my work. -Jeremy

above: an ink and brush sketch from a recent surf trip in Indonesia.

Double D Surf School in Bali

This post is at least water related...I want to put up a few good words on the world wide web about the surf school in Seminyak, Bali, locally owned and operated by my good friends, Dedik and Deduk. Its called Double D, as in Dedik and Deduk. If anyone out there wandering the web is looking for somewhere to learn to surf in Bali, check out: http://surfschoolbali.com/

There are many surf schools in Bali, and almost all of them are owned by foreigners. Double D however is owned by these two Balinese twin brothers, born and raised in the same town that their surf school is in, Seminyak. Its close by Kuta, just to the north. Everyone working at the school is local. And the instruction and attention you will get is top notch. Deduk and Dedik have been surfing their whole lives at this beach, and they absolutely rip. Everyone at the school speaks excellent English as well. And the equipment and surfboards are excellent too. Not too mention they are all a friendly and welcoming bunch.

You can often find one of Indonesia's best young female surfers, Dia, hanging out at the school, too, or surfing out front. She's a cousin of Deduk and Dedik, and she's been winning competition after competition here in Bali recently. I remember being out in the water three years ago watching Dedik teaching her how to surf on a longboard, pushing her into waves.

If you are visiting Bali, the school is located right on 66 Beach, also known as Double Six Beach. Where Jalan 66 meets the beach, its right there, a quaint two story blue building with a thatched roof. When you contact the school, you will likely be corresponding with Ayu, Dedik's lovely girlfriend who coordinates scheduling and helps direct business at the school daily.

The school offers very personalized lessons, unlike say, the Australian owned major surfing brand school just down the beach where they seem to put 50 students out in the water at once. You can also rent boards at Double D.

So if you come to Bali and are going to take surf lessons, try out this local surf school. You will leave smiling! The photo above is a shot I took of Deduk three years ago paddling out at Turtle Island.

2B

The gal at the sandwich shop forgot about the sandwich I ordered, so I had some extra time to draw at lunch today. Didn't bother me. My friend George and I have been drawing a lot during lunch breaks recently. Kinda feels like back in the art school days. George is one of these cats who if the option of a bigger table is available, will always choose to sit diagonally across the table. The killer crossover. Heads down, scribbling away before and after the food, a few words diagonally tossed back and forth. George is on a mission, and I'm trying to keep up. I've been quick sketching with pens a lot, because you can't second guess with a pen, once a line is down, its there for good. And so that helps me draw quickly.

Decided to switch things up today so I loaded my pencil up with some good ol 2B lead. This started as a quick sketch at lunch, then morphed into a train sketch, then I added to it some more at home after work. Here's what it looks like so far. You ever just stop and stare at your city? Namor in Atlantis.