3 Little Pigs

HI!

If you think words and process are dumb, you can check out just the images at my new portfolio site, woah cool, far out!

This is some work I did on our end of the year assignment, the "Three Little Pigs" Pitch. We had to reinterpret/reinvent/incorporate the story of the three little pigs and pitch it as a film, video game, tv series, franchise, etc etc. Trevor and I pretty quickly jumped to the idea of a samurai flick for some reason. I was in charge of character concepts, so, there ya go. Also, not to make excuses or anything, but most of these were done the day it was due -____-

#teamprocrastination

poster by Ryan Peters

At the very beginning I was inspired by art books by Disney/Pixar to develop a strong shape language for the film. The designs would be immediately distinguishable from each other, and hopefully reinforce the characteristics of the pigs. Large & boisterous, tall & stern, stout & balanced

costume research for the main protagonist, codename "Wolf" 

upon Trevor's recommendation, I had fun scouring the work of Yoshitoshi for inspiration 

(we have a great book on his collected works in the library)

"Wolf" a peasant farmer in feudal Japan. He was an ex-soldier in the Imperial army, from where he retained his armor. He has since become rusty at fighting, but his soul burns for vengeance

Wolf Battle-scarred (aka DBZ Wolf)

Pig of Straw

Story: Violent, stupid, corrupt, gluttonous, powerful, the first pig is a dangerous foe. The youngest of the Brothers Pig, he has inherited his Imperial power and abuses it to no end. Money, women, food, all are his to do with what he pleases, as he rules through sheer brute force and terror. While he brings shame to the Imperial name, he is royal by blood, and so his two brothers turn a blind eye to his blatant disregard for law and order. The Pig of straw is the one who burns down Wolf's village and murders his family, a crime that will not go unpunished this time.

Design: I wanted this guy to be massive, a force of nature. At his belt are two beautifully crafted imperial swords, which look ridiculous on him and which he obviously never uses (they're more of a status symbol, like a corrupt off-duty cop waving his badge around). His weapon of choice is the haymaker he lugs over his shoulder. He is never apart from it and never at a loss for reasons to swing it wildly at any who anger him, or even those who do nothing at all. The kanji on his knee pads, as far as I can tell, say "Gluttony"(I'm still not sure about this choice since I don't think he would self-identify as such. He's a pig but thinks himself a noble) The gourd at his side is presumably filled with large amounts of sake

The Pig of Wood

Story: The middle brother of the Brothers Pig, he is the official commander of the Imperial Army. Ever since his older brother went into exile, he has ruled the land with a firm and disciplined hand. He values  strict adherence to law above all else. He trains equally with the sword as with the brush, incessantly seeking to improve his skill. His dogmatic reverence to ancient texts and customs will ultimately be his downfall, when the Wolf uses underhanded tactics to surprise and overcome him. The idea is that he is strong but ultimately too rigid, and what cannot bend will inevitably break.

Design: as the middle brother, tremendous responsibility has fallen on the Pig of Wood. His elder brother in exile, his younger a gross blemish on the family name, he has had to carry the burden of the Three Pigs Empire alone. In order to escape what would otherwise be a crippling dysfunctional relationship to his siblings, he has forsaken his brothers and dedicated his life to the sword and the rule of law. He has surrounded himself in customs ancient and hallowed, seeking meaning and purpose in tradition. To this end, I gave him a noble's kimono, with imposing shoulder pads and rich fabrics. I gave him only one sword, presumably of the highest quality, perfectly crafted and blessed in every way known to his culture. Somewhere down the line, his costumes got more and more elaborate, and now he has lost mobility and utility in favor of decorum and status.

The Pig of Stone

Story: the Pig of Stone, Wolf's final adversary, is a monk who lives in self-imposed exile. Though he seems unassuming, he is extremely wise and powerful, a sort of Yoda-esque figure. He defeats Wolf in combat but spares his life, even though Wolf has taken the life of his brothers, setting Wolf down the path to redemption. "Hate begets more hate", says the Pig of Stone. "The cycle must be broken."

Design: Pretty much Yoda meets Gandalf meets Buddha...meets pig. Not the most groundbreaking design but a good foil to the two other brothers.

If you get a chance, check out Trevor Williams' environment designs on this project, killer work.

Jessica made a sweet sculpture of the first pig too, pretty awesome.

Figure with Fiore!

Here are all of my figures from the second half of the semester. We finally got to do longer poses, most of these are 45min-2hr, some more successful than others. I feel like I grew tremendously in this class, and I really (finally) clicked with charcoal and especially chalks. I'll try to make little notes about these and what I learned along the way. Enjoy!

This one is the shortest pose, probably 20min, and the most inaccurate/stylized. Still, I felt like it captured the essence of the pose and the model so I included it.

should have probably drawn in the stick he was holding so he doesn't have that awkward floating hand...

Ink gesture

Obviously not the most appealing use of inks, as I was too impatient/inexperienced to layer properly, yet I like the noise/texture that the ink lent this piece

Not enough time to bring this to a cohesive finish, so the whole suffers. Spent the most time on the chest, and left the whole head for the last 15 minutes, a bad habit I need to kick. This piece also brings to light my lack of understanding in the anatomy of knees and legs in general.

Probably my favorite figure of the semester, the model and lighting were really fun to capture.

Got to feel like Sargent for a second on this one when I made the necklace ;)

This piece was a breakthrough for me in unifying values, restricting the value range of the skin, pants, hair, etc

besides the awkward "man arm" thing going on here, I rather like this one

knees.........how do they work?

drew this one with my glasses off, tremendously helpful in simplifying/seeing the big shapes, kind of a fun exercise for anyone out there who's myopic 

and here's a portrait I made of my figure instructor: Patrick Fiore

Oil Painting: Semester 1 Part 2

Hey guys, here are my paintings from the second part of the first semester (and a better pic of my first ever painting, the white still life). Thanks to Anna for helping me photograph/crop them. They feel a little vivid but I think they're fairly true to the originals. I don't have them in front of me so I can't calibrate them properly...

Regardless, I think I can say this has been the most useful and enjoyable class I have ever taken at Ringling. I loved waking up in the morning and calmly setting up my paints, either downtown or in the studio, and just focusing super hard for three hours, getting lost in the painting. Sometimes class would end and my brow would hurt because I had been squinting or focusing so hard, haha. I can't wait to keep going next semester with the illustrious Hodges Soileau!

 Vic <3

Heroes' Tale

Hey guys, as some of you may know, I was fortunate enough to work on a really cool project these past few months: A Heroes' Tale. I was asked not only to illustrate the final card art to present during the kickstarter, but also to conceptualize and design the characters, environments, and props that would appear in said cards.

I probably had the most fun designing the staves and painting the sword. Looking back I'd change quite a few things, definitely learned a lot on the way. It was interesting balancing freelance and schoolwork, and it taught me that I still have dubious time management. I'm thankful to have been able to work on this under my good friend and art director Andrew Theo, and director Chris Merlino. If the project gets off the ground I'll hopefully be doing more of these so if you're interested, you can contribute here.

Thanks for looking :)

Blurfday Card for Blanna's Blurfday

just Dexter the cat bein cray and up to no good...

be happy be happy

Process // Thoughts

This piece was about creating a mood, and it evolved in a pretty organic way. It was a pretty quick piece, about 6 hours start to finish

thumb/value study-->line-->b&w painting-->color

I don't usually work in layers like this but I wanted to possibly animate it later so we'll see...

hehe, Blitz was a bit of a rush job, 3 hours total. No room for hesitation but plenty of room for mistakes. maybe I'll polish this one up some day...

This piece was very straightworward: semi-tight line drawing, colored in photoshop. Came out without a hitch, about 5 hours

This piece evolved a lot obviously, and honestly I feel like I spent too much time trying to fix it when if I had done maybe one or two more passes on the drawing, a lot of the issues could have been resolved ahead of time. Every piece I make that lacks a good drawing tends to turn into a hot mess, and this was just that. I managed to reign everything at the last minute, but it still has a lot of issues and I definitely learned my lesson on this one: lock down the design/drawing first or be prepared for your painting to fight you every step of the way...

Well, there you have it, feel free to leave questions / comments below and as always, thanks for looking

PS just finished up my first freelance gig and hopefully I'll be able to post up images in a month or so!

Run For Your Buns

at first the title was kind of a joke, but I can't think of anything better and it kind of fits the mood honestly...

2-Page Spread

large view

The King of the Forges

Bowed to none till the day

When the Dragon came down

And took the Forges away

Presence(s)

I would also like to shamelessly point all of you to my various new online presences:

porfolio-for my most professional and up-to-date work
tumblr-for easy navigation/viewing, I always appreciate new followers/reblogs :)
twitter-still getting used to this, but I try to post stuff on there every once in a while if that is your preferred way to keep up on my activities

and as always, you can check out my deviantart, vimeo, and threadless accounts all through the nifty new links bar I have installed right under my banner.

Peace and love guys, and as always, thanks for droppin by and taking a look at my bizz, means a lot.

Tabula Rasa

So you guys are probably getting tired of these but there really just happened to be two dragon challenges in the same month...what are the odds. Anyways, Crescent Crown was for the William O'Connor hosted Dracopedia Winter Dragon Challenge (though from a design perspective, I feel like my entry ended up having very little to do with winter, my bad).

This new piece is my entry to the ArtOrder Dragon World Challenge (regrettably done start to finish in one afternoon :-/). It seeks to answer and illustrate the question "what would a world be like if dragons existed?"

 After much discussion with the braintrust that is my awesome circle of nerdy friends back home, I arrived at the conclusion that, for the sake of this exercise, it would be more interesting to portray a sentient dragon (rather than the more feral and often mindless specimens that have been running rampant in popular media), and that such an intelligent being would not stand for the hubris and petty wars of feuding human factions. I imagined that such a beast would end all wars, even through a show of sheer force and firepower. In this illustration, the dragon has just razed all major cities to the ground, and human warriors of all creeds and banners are laying down their arms in a giant bonfire of dragonflame, forced and terrified into a pacifist state. The loss and dread is palpable, but they have also been given a rare opportunity: a clean slate. Without further ado...

Tabula Rasa