Happy Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving, I did this quick drawing/sketch, for I wanted to share a nice image whither the things I'm thankful for: I'm thankful for all the good things in my life: my family, my fiance, my friends, the great people I'm inspired by and got the chance to meeting, the different teachers in life (not only by profession), the opportunities given to me and the ones by chance, for being me and for the life and talent/skills I am lucky to have been born with. But I am also thankful for the bad things in life as well, because it is a chance to see the other beautiful things and potential there is in life and gives you a chance to also appreciate the precious things one once had. Happy thanksgiving everyone!

My Imaginism In-House Workshop Experience

Hello everyone!

I just came back from the amazing experience of the Imaginism In-House Workshop. I finally got some free time to write a bit about it and show what I was up to.

I still can't believe I got chosen to be part of the Imaginism Workshop family. It is such a great honor and a really unique experience. First day, I was the first to arrive to Toronto Airport, where master artist, Thierry Lafontaine, picked me up and took me to the Imaginism Workshop House. After getting my stuff a bit settled where I would be sleeping for the month, we went back to the airport to pick up one of my fellow peers, June Shieh (from LA). While we waited for the other two apprentices, we accompanied Thierry to buy a foosball table, which I found it a pretty fun and weird way of starting this workshop. And let me tell ya, that foosball table got used and played a lot during the duration of the workshop.

Thierry also taught us so many awesome tricks and plays, while relating it to our painting lessons, visualizing our goals and life itself.

Later that day, the third apprentice, Ryan Van Eyk (from Johannesburg, South Africa) arrived to the Workshop house and finally, Sergio Tomo (from Sao Paulo, Brazil) arrived the next day.

When Thierry first took me to the Workshop House, I was blown away. Just being inside, with all those walls full of the amazing paintings from Thierry, Bobby Chiu and Kei Acedera I got inspired right away.

Pictures of  what would be my bedroom for the month, the staircase and the creative/learning area.

The workshop was what I was waiting for a long time and much more than that. I was looking for a way to keep studying, improve my painting skills, and more importantly, I've been looking for a physical place to work on those things where me and other artists would inspire each other in a stimulating and creative environment. This was exactly what I've been looking for.

All of us would normally be working till late, but pushing each other and getting creative.

Not only I got to improve my skills significantly, but I also got to meet great people and some of my idol artists which I always look up to for inspiration in art and their philosophies.

From left to right: June Shie, Ryan Van Eyk, Bobby Chiu, Kei Acedera, me, Peter Chan, Thierry Lafontaine and Sergio Tomo.

The first day, we had a lecture with Bobby to start the Workshop. He gave us as a small gift his book "The Perfect Bait" autographed by him. By the way, I really recommend you to get this book, since it talks about how to become a successful artist by doing what really is a passion to you and becoming your own brand.  But as I was reading it, I realized it can be applied not to only artists, but to any kind of professional out there. Because it talks about how to get over the million reasons to give up your pursuit of whatever your passion is, motivate yourself and take all those bad things to bury them and build up above, overcoming them and succeeding.

On that first day, he shared some of his life experiences in the industry, how he came about, and what he did to overcome some of the bad things life threw at him. He also got us really motivated and pumped up, which was a perfect start to this workshop. He also did a small motivational exercise at the end of the lecture. It was such an intense feeling what he made me feel from his words and what he helped us envision what could be part of our future. I literally cried from that intense feeling, because it felt so real, I could grasp it right then and there and realized that I can achieve whatever I draw as my path. It blew my mind away. There is a video by Bobby that talks a bit about this things and a similar exercise to the one at the workshop here. Check it out.

After that day, we started the drawing lectures with Thierry. That first week was about the very basics of drawing and art being a form of comunication. Also the fact of really understanding something before drawing or writing about it. We drew from lines, to squares, to boxes. I didn't realize how hard it really is to do that, trying to maintain the same spacing between each other and drawing perfect squares by hand. And realizing that everything is based of a line, square and ultimately a box and how everything we see can be based off a box. Also mind blowing. That first week was all about getting a really solid ground to build up and improve, to later applying this techniques when creating new art.

Here are some of the exercises and paintings I did at the Workshop:

You can view three of the other paintings I did at the Workshop here.

I had an amazing experience there. I got all boosted up to keep at my craft and keep pursuing my goals as a professional artist. Little by little I'll be posting more and more often with new creations and hopefully get really god at it for what I want to do.

Here's a blog post about the Workshop I attended and other interesting things by Imaginism here

I hope this post inspires you to keep at your craft and pursue your passion. If you wanna ask anything about the workshop or anything in general, don't hesitate to contact me. :)

Thanks for reading!

Candy Viking Chief

Hello everybody! Sorry for not really posting that often, but I'm hoping I'll get some more spare time now, because I really want to work on my personal projects.

But for now, I though I should post my last 2D piece I made at the Imaginism In-House Workshop i took in June this year. I'll be posting soon about my experience in the Workshop.

I hope you like it. 
Thanks for reading!

Red Temptation (Excercise)

Hi everyone!

This post is to hopefully committing and posting a lot more often.

My purpose and objective is to really commit to practicing and improving my art level for all art forms I love doing really. Being sketching, drawing, painting, sculpting (real life and 3D sculpting) and anything in between. And at the same time, receiving feedback to have a better view of all angles to how I can improve.

To restart my posts in my sketchbook, I’ve decided to finish this piece. It was originally an exercise from a seminar I attended in Mexico called “Objective, Hollywood: the 10 techniques used in visual effects for the film industry”. Basically the goal of this exercise was to try and achieve realism, painting from a photo reference as a guide and try to get it as close to the real photo as possible. This was made in Photoshop.

I know it’s not the most amazing piece, nor the most original thing out there (the original picture has been seen so many times all over the place). But I decided I should finish what I’ve started, and start like that with all other projects that I’ve left pending overtime. And then from there pick it up and do more ambitious projects one step at a time.

C&C are most welcome.

Thanks for reading.
Cheers!

Fight Night Champion Work

Hey Everyone! It's been some time since I've had anything to post of my artwork. Anyway, I finally came around on preparing some screen caps for my portfolio. I'm pretty proud to have worked  in EA Canada for the game Fight Night Champion, back in 2010. Being part of a large team with such great artists was definitely a joy and a privilege. It was truly and exciting adventure. If you haven't played the game, you're missing out, go play it!!!

Anyways!! Here's a list and screen caps of some of the things I worked on at EAC. My main tasks were to model and texture boxers' heads, being new characters for Champion Mode (or Story Mode).

-Designed look of new characters and boxers for Champion (Story) Mode, some of the boxers are : Mike Walker, Ricardo Alvarez, Raul Castillo, Dwight Cooper
-Modeled and textured multipurpose shorts wear, main character Ace's took hat and main character Andre's head bandage.
-Cleanup and/or fine tuning of main/secondary character, props/accessories and final art assets in general. For example: Ace's color correction on skin texture, Meagan's makeup texture, and technical fixes like geometry cleanup.

Thanks for reading!

Barbie, Princess Charm School Work

At the beginning of this year, I had the opportunity to work at Rainmaker for the movie Barbie, Princess Charm School. Even though it was just for a month, I got to do some character work, and it was a great experience as well. I learned lots from the great artist that formed part of the art team.

My main role was to create multiple types of surfaces and textures, maintaining desired surface look and feel for characters. Here's a list and a couple of screencaps of the things I got to do at Rainmaker:

-Created texture maps and surface look for Blair's Mom outfit and accessories.
-Textured some of the princes head and hair textures, as well as the shader surface look.
-Cleanup and/or fine tuning of some of the princes geometry when there were geometry issues.

Thanks for reading!

How to Draw and Paint Sci-Fi Book Is Out!!

After a long time and hard work, my good friend and wonderful artist, Geoff Taylor, has accomplished a great achievement. He has finished his first book “How to Draw and Paint Science Fiction.” And it’s now available:
“I spent the bulk of 2010 writing and illustrating an instructional art book for Barron’s Publishing. I’m happy to say the book is available for pre-order online, and will hit shelves in early October! Should be available at Chapters and most art supply stores. It was a great experience- big thanks to all the artists who contributed!!!”

It is a complete course in building your own futurescapes and characters .

I was flattered to be asked to contribute to the book  with a render of my Alien “Princess Zoethomae“. Which made part of the Anatomy section of the book.

I’m pretty excited for Geoff, and whish him great success with his new book.

Thanks for reading!