far below

the boy hero

2012-01-11T23:01:00.005-06:00

I digitally painted this one for my brother.

ganon

2011-06-25T23:52:00.023-05:00

Click to enlarge.

"His breath can be seen, it is forceful."

I drew the top half of Ganon first, on a pretty big sheet of paper. I decided to add on, so I taped another sheet on below. I do this all the time. I think this take on Ganon gives him a lot longer legs than usual, but I like how this makes him look powerful and giant. I thought of Clayface from Batman: The Animated Series when drawing his upper body, especially in regard to the creases and bumps on his skin, and how light and shadow would show his form through strong, interesting shapes.

I have finally figured out how to adjust the settings of this blog so that I can display images larger in the post. I've gone back and enlarged a lot of images from previous posts. It really helps with the wider compositions. Take a scroll down and check it out.

On an unrelated note, this Russian animated version of Winnie the Pooh is really awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqdiEUp6s4E

kaboom and friends

2011-02-17T20:09:00.006-06:00

More of the bug designs...these were all the initial exploration drawings, before I did the final character design and turn around posted below.

kaboom

2011-02-16T18:38:00.006-06:00

I named this guy Kaboom, as he's a bug whose endgame is maximum carnage in your kitchen at night. I designed this guy for Protokulture in Chicago. They made the 3D model based on my designs and are planning on animating him. www.protokulture.com

I purposely did not make him symmetrical. I don't like how a lot of 3D models are perfectly symmetrical. I doubt any living creatures are perfectly symmetrical. I tried to play it up a bit with this guy.

agave

2011-02-05T22:17:00.012-06:00

I drew these for Digital Kitchen, Chicago. They ended up making a 20+ foot high installation piece. It's inspired by an agave plant. It was lit up from the inside and changed colors. This was for Jose Cuervo. They took it around the country on a tour.

The drawings above I drew really big with marker. My job was to come up with the initial visual direction for this installation.

First off a I drew a bunch of thumbnail sketches, four of which are here. The art director liked the ones on the right, so that's what I based the top and front view drawings on.

I even made a little model out of wire, plastic, and wooden rods to help visualize how each petal would intersect the base. For the final design, I had the nine petals protrude from the base/core in a spiral pattern upwards. When I looked at photos of the core of a real agave, this is how they grow out, in a spiral pattern around the core. I had about two days to come up with this stuff(there were a lot more exploratory sketches involved also...the ones in this post were the selects).

Digital Kitchen had a 3D modeler make a cg model based on my designs. They took this out to tequila headquarters, along with my drawings and the little model, and Cuervo liked it. DK then went to work modeling a version that would be able to be easily put together and taken apart, have visuals projected from the inside. as well as withstand storm force winds.

This is how it finally turned out. They ended up adding a few extra petals. It's not exactly what I drew, but I really dig how it turned out. It won some award here: http://www.ifaipublications.com/iaa/articles/1401_cuervo.html I wonder where it is now...wouldn't mind having this in my backyard someday.

www.d-kitchen.com

cartoon network

2010-12-14T23:59:00.012-06:00

Cartoon Network Cinemedia from Chris Green on Vimeo.

Here's something I did some initial concept sketching for earlier in the year. This was for DK in Chicago. I had a day to sketch designs of how the interior of this storefront could change shapes to include in their pitch to the client to try to get this job. I first did a bunch of small thumbnail drawings. Then Chad, their cg art director, picked which ones he liked and I drew the three key frames bigger, that's the first image at top.

DK got the job, and so the next day I came in and in the morning they asked me to kick out a few designs for the exterior of the storefront. I did draw the one they used for the spot...I don't like my final drawings of it though, so not including those. Didn't scan the thumbnails of it yet, and those quick sketches I actually liked more. This was for theaters, a commercial before the previews, the ones I always complain about while reminiscing of days gone by when their were only previews before films.

Fun fact, ya know why those previews are called trailers? Because they used to be shown after the movie. I remember those days too, my brother and I were always excited to sit through credits to see what kind of cinema magic was to come next. I might be remembering the early days of movies on video tape though, but one way or another, I remember as a kid we'd wait for the trailers at the end of a movie.

the dead city at night

2010-11-18T01:38:00.005-06:00

Messin around with gouache tonight. Had fun with this one. Expanding more on the world I've drawn some of in some earlier posts. This is supposed to be Denver in the future.

neon fireball guitar solos

2010-11-16T20:32:00.016-06:00

click images to see super-mega-ultra-up-sized versions...

Earlier this year did some preliminary character design work on a project at Calabash Animation called Eternal Descent. These guitar god characters battle each other with guitar solos and lightning bolts and neon pink atom bomb feedback.

02/03/11...added some more development sketches to this batch.

kaleidoscope street

2010-10-26T22:42:00.006-05:00

Here is another page in my sketchbook that started as a couple different thumbnail drawings next to each other. As I looked at them, I thought they might blend well together, and then I just kept adding on. Did not at all plan on the trippy multi-dimensional intersection. But I dig how it turned out.

wider

2010-10-26T01:40:00.007-05:00

I wanted to expand on this and so brought out tape and marker paper scraps. I often work like this. This started as three different little small sketches on the same page in my sketchbook. One at the upper left, then another at the upper right, and the girl below. At first I had no intention of making this one composition. As I kept drawing, it seemed like it could all fit together. And after I completed the page, I felt like it could keep going.

skyway

2010-10-23T19:18:00.006-05:00

Train sketch from this week.

girl in gloves and the red robot

2010-05-16T16:19:00.005-05:00

Some recent stuff fresh outta my sketchbook.

Squid vs. Whale

2010-04-19T17:11:00.003-05:00

The colossal squid vs. the sperm whale.

daniel jones

2010-03-13T17:14:00.005-06:00

This is a brush and ink drawing I made recently for the surf film I'm working on, hangs upon nothing. This one got published in the last Surfer's Journal overlayed on a photo sequence of Daniel's brother, Mikala. I just made the mat this weekend.

Imperious Rex

2010-02-14T16:31:00.005-06:00

Here is a portrait of Namor I kicked out over the last couple days. Inspired by some of the really impressive portraits I've seen over at conceptart.org recently, I decided to try and dip back into a type of more realitic drawing I really haven't attempted in over ten years. Trying to go back to the basics, and relearn or learn for the first time the foundations of drawing and painting.

I did most of this from imagination and looking at some previous sketches I've done of Namor. I also used a WWII US Army portrait of my grandfather as reference. He was seventeen or eighteen in the photo(he lied about his age to get into the Army to serve in the war), and had the looks of a movie star. In the photo he's turned the other way, and its a happy, proud looking portrait. I just used it for a bit of reference in regard to the nose, cheeks, eyes, and neck. This drawing doesn't look like him, and I didn't try to make it look like him. But the nose is pretty similar. I find that there is something timeless and magical about old photographic portraits. Hard to describe, but they just often have such a strong prescence.

In other news, my grandpa, still alive and full of kick, is now on facebook. He's beat me to it. I guess that means my grandpa is hipper than me.

Namor

2010-02-12T03:15:00.002-06:00

silos

2010-01-31T00:09:00.003-06:00

Exploring color ideas on translucent yupo. This translucent yupo stuff is pretty interesting as you can lay it over an existing drawing and do an overlay without using a lightbox. And it will also take watercolor without warping. It is tricky to use though! Ink does not dry quickly on yupo as it does not absorb. And going over an area with a wet brush that already has dried paint on it can lift that paint right off, depending on how you hit it with a brush.

the great stairway pt. 3

2010-01-30T02:36:00.005-06:00

I'm trying out doing a watercolor wash over the drawing on translucent yupo. This is my first thumbnail color sketch.

the great stairway pt. 2

2010-01-24T22:40:00.011-06:00

Here is the finished drawing. I blew up my thumbnail, transferred to marker paper. And did this with prismacolor greyscale markers and a .25 pilot hi-tec c pen. Also a little bit of pencil to help lay out a few of the tighter details. Pilot hi-tec c pens are my new favorites. I stumbled upon some in Indonesia this year. They are made in Japan, and hard to find here in the US. There are a few websites that carry them, and a few stores here and there it seems. Mainly in Japanese stores.

The image above is about screen size when clicked on. The lower image is 2x the size when clicked on to show more details. I drew this at about 24 inches wide.

the great stairway

2010-01-18T17:59:00.008-06:00

Paper, marker, pen, and tape. And vanishing points. This is the rough thumbnail drawing of the current piece I'm working on.

gold dreams

2010-01-17T00:16:00.012-06:00

This is the town I grew up in, a hundred years or more into the future. Kids still skate in the future. Some cops still get upset about it. Some kids get upset back at them. Yes, there's some Akira inspiration in this one.

a girl and her gorilla

2009-12-26T21:48:00.005-06:00

A quick sketch of a couple characters from a story idea I have had brewing for years.

sketchbook page 1

2009-12-24T19:08:00.003-06:00

realm of the octobot

2009-12-08T21:21:00.012-06:00

Some recent freelance design work.

welcome back to space

2009-10-27T03:50:00.014-05:00

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?

inspired by b.o.beatbox

2009-10-19T13:47:00.010-05:00

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

2009-10-18T08:27:00.003-05:00

Personal assistant droid. He greets visitors at the door.

corwin schrader, cousin of vader

2009-10-16T23:37:00.007-05:00

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.

1981 - present

2009-08-09T09:56:00.025-05:00

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.

____________________________________________________

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...

____________________________________________________

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.

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

2009-07-26T03:33:00.010-05:00

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

2009-03-06T00:56:00.000-06:00

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.

teeth

2009-03-04T12:20:00.000-06:00

A closer look at the jaws.

the sea beast

2009-03-04T12:13:00.001-06:00

Here's an ink and brush sketch from last night of Namor and the sea beast in battle. I almost feel sorry for the beast here, but hey, what would you do if this thing was attacking you?

pillar

2009-02-26T22:16:00.000-06:00

ruins

2008-07-27T17:31:00.001-05:00

When I'm working on something I'm enjoying, I'll have visuals just come to me. And if I don't get my ideas down on paper really quickly, in some form, they sometimes vanish. I liked the way this one was looking in my head, so I grabbed my brush and jotted it down in that same old sketchbook. Here's a quick sketch of Namor cruising above some ruins of ancient Atlantis.

roar

2008-07-24T01:45:00.001-05:00

How would this sound underwater? I'm trying to approach these drawings in terms of shapes, and not really lines. I usually draw thinking of lines. Its how almost any drawing starts. And working as a traditional animator, you work almost completely with line drawings. I feel that drawings indicating blocks of light and shadow are stronger. And that's how I want to approach this. So I really have to unlearn a lot of what I am used to doing. This drawing is halfway there. But I still fell back on using lines to define some areas, as opposed to relying solely on shadow and light. And since there's no background, its hard to not throw in some outlines.

And yes, I think Namor will encounter a sea beast of some kind in this story. This was my second try at the beast. The first one looked more like a big carp. Started this on the train yesterday with a refillable brush, and then at home taped some other pages of my sketchbook to it and added the rest.

first drawing of Namor

2008-07-22T20:11:00.005-05:00

For quite a while now I have been thinking of trying to make a Namor comic. Just for the fun of it. On the train home yesterday, I got an idea of what I want him to look like. And so I went home and drew and painted this. Its pretty much what I was envisioning. More to follow...