Unsung Filipinos (Test)

A project test.

This time utilizing some "background" photos I took during my 2009 trip back to the Philippines. I really liked how the layout of the electric posts and wires came out. It's also gonna have a bunch of monochromatic character (s) on the foreground featuring Filipino characters.

 A street vendor and her kids.

Another street vendor and a bunch of street kids.

A policeman letting a bunch of kids crossing the street.

I'll post the final ones when I finish. I might attempt to silkscreen these too.

Girl Test

Another test on overlaying colors for a silkscreen project. There are 6 transparency colors that, when overlays each other, creates new colors.

 

This one is done in Photoshop. Undone and is simply a test.

The sketch has a more detailed face which I'll ink later on once I get the color tests right.

I have a series of these kind of sketches. Mixing realistic and stylistic.

Keggus Scyllas

 This is the finished digital illustration with text.

I have no clue what the name means. I had to come up with a name at the last minute... This was my second Silkscreen project. The "guide" was illustrated by hand, scanned to, and colored in Photoshop.

 The finished art without text yet. 'Sat on it for awhile cuz I didn't know what to call it/ him.

Close-up. I really liked the detail of the coloring.

During the Summer and the Fall, I was getting obsessed with vintage movie posters and pulp magazine covers. So, I thought that I could emulate that coloring and layout style with silkscreening. I did 10-12  separate color screens on this poster which was way too ambituous.  But a great learning experience nonetheless of what NOT to do next time...

The sketch version.

This is the actual silkscreen. The way it works is that you have to print one color at a time. For every color, you have to make a "screen" through a grueling process. The colors and details did not come out as crisp and exact as the digital illustration as it was pretty hard to mix the silkscreen paints to match the guide. Some of the finer details did not match up perfectly, but it still came out pretty cool. I'll probably sell it sometime during the summer.

Kind of a bad lighting on this photo.

I did about 50 prints, but only about 30 came out great.

(Oldie) Crazee Monsters

An unfinished animation I did when I interned at MTV during the first half of my thesis year. I never got the timing at the end quite right, but I still liked how it came out. They are put together with Adobe After Effects. I especially liked the multi-eyed monsta.

During the internship, I was asked to make a 10-15 sec animation but I didn't get the timing quite right.

Here are the character/ background designs for it. They are mostly done in Adobe Illustrator with the background shading done in Adobe Photoshop... This is before I learned about Flash.

ClyCards.com

Freelance gig creating mnemonics that depict memory points that will hopefully help people remember vocabulary words. It's mostly recommended for SAT Prep.

This is a collage of cards I've done.

If you have an iPhone/ iPod Touch, there is a free ClyCards app. You can see more at http://www.clycards.com. The way they work is that there is a word in the picture that helps you associate it with the vocabulary word.

 MILIEU (n.) atmosphere: "I like the atmosphere and the *menu*."

VOLATILE (adj.) explosive: "This *volleyball* is explosive."

Hell Hath No Fury...

This was my first silkscreening project. A basic 3-color print.

   These are the digital illustration that served as my "color guide".

 

 

The way it works is that for every color of the picture you have to make a "screen" for it. You can overlap the colors to make new ones, but for this one it was a basic 3 color: light, medium, and dark magenta. But, unfortunately once you get into the printing, it's hard to perfectly match the colors of the silkscreen paint to the digital guide. 

This is a photo of the actual print.

After a series of emulsion coating, dark room drying, light shooting, actual printing, and screen washing (there's a LOT of steps), this is the final product. Once I printed, the light and medium magenta ended up becoming orange. The darkest ended up being dark brown that looks black. But either way, it looks great and not bad for a first attempt.

The drawing, done in photoshop, was supposed to be another attempt to digital paint a portrait. This time of supermodel, Caroline Trentini. But I never got around to finish it and simply prepped the sketch for the silkscreen.

I'll probably end up selling the prints in the future. once I figure out how to do that . The next 2 projects were a whole lot more ambitious, but was still a trial-and-error kind of deal for this first timer.

3 Year Absence?! geez...

Well, I'm back... The last 3 years (eek) has been weird...

I held back on drawing on that first 2 years and really just saved up. Which was my basic plan a year after school and interning. Here and there, I got a few small freelance work that kept me busy but nothing that led to something major. But it was great experience in terms of the work process in the field. I also sketched out various designs and wrote down notes on various story/ character ideas that, mostly, only made sense to me. But nothing really completely finished.

After a great freelance gig, I was able to afford a Cintiq which makes future digital works much easier.

For the latter of that 2 years, I worked a full-time non-art job and got great benefits that got me medical and dental coverage. But I had to work a lot of hours that left me exhausted, depressed, and really in no mood to draw. Before I completely lost my passion to draw, I decided to go part-time so I can focus on drawing again. It sucks giving up the benefits, but in the long run, I want to be an Artist, first and foremost. And ever since, I've been doing great work that expanded my artistic range. Which is great, because I never felt like I got my point across in my art when I was in school.

I was always leaning towards what was going to get me a good grade and what I felt like my peers wanted to see. But unfortunately, at least for me, what got me a good grade and what my peers liked was not always what I wanted to show. I regret not sticking to what I liked and not being true to my creative instincts, but now I get to pursue that.

These digital illustrations ended up becoming my "design" for silkscreen, but the colors on the final prints did not come out the same.

One of the types of art I was always fascinated about was Silkscreening. It was great since it was completely different from animation and digital illustration. Everything was done by hand- through screenboards, paints, and different kinds of liquids/ chemicals. The process is definitely very hands-on and I got the hang of it towards the end of the class. I only did a few works during the class, but will pursue it again this summer when I take another Printmaking class.

Some of the hands-on steps of Silkscreening.

I also got into vintage movie posters and pulp magazine covers. The way that they were painted and laid out. Right now, that's my primary style-inspiration on my personal projects combining it with my usual stylistic/ anime/ comic book-y style which I'll share soon. Also, thinking of taking a digital painting class.

Anyways, that's my recap post... I'll do more comprehensive art post in the next few days.

ok.
Alden.