Annihilation.

No art from me today but instead some promotion from some Marvel comics books that I've been enjoying. Marvel is in the middle of a big rennisance in regards to its outer space stories. Marvel's Annihilation stories have been a real fun read for many of us comic nerds. Some even believe it was a stronger crossover than Marvel's much more promoted Civil War crossover which ran at the same time. Annihilation Conquest (the sequal series) has just started and I for one am looking forward to the ride. The cover art by Gabriele Dell'otto is great as well.

It's always fun to draw characters you made up as a kid. Funny thing though, when I was a kid I never showed my charecter drawings to anyone because I was sure people would steal my ideas. I didn't even like talking about them. I guess things change with time and I've become less paranoid.

Anyway this guy is a super hero (those who know me should not be suprised that many of my characters were) who lives in the future on another planet.

Portrait art is an interesting thing. Unfortunately it's not really something that's emphasized in many drawing and animation classes I've been in. I think that's because it's very different then what the focus of many animation drawing classes is. Animation classes don't tend to emphasize the element of capturing the likeness of particular people. They tend to be focused on things like understanding shape, line, and contrast which of course are wonderful. On the other hand I think there are things in portrait art that could really help all of us aspiring character designers. Good portrait art requires probing the sitters likeness and getting sometimes intangible elements of their personality into the drawing. That's something that can really be applied to animation design.

Jenny & Mr. Snuggles sketches.

Some sketches from a project I worked on this past school year. It was called Jenny and Mr. Snuggles.

Animal life drawing.

Here are some sketches from some of my infamous trips to the Zoo and the local pet store. At our local Pet Mart I've become somewhat of an anomaly among the staff there. Sometimes it's even "what are you drawing today" for some of the people who I'm more familiar with. It's odd sometimes I feel more comfortable drawing animals than people.