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The Batman: Season 4 Finale

2007-07-04T22:19:00.001-07:00

Apologies...It's been a long time since I've posted. Unfortunately, I have not had time to draw anything new that I can post, but I will let you in how sometimes things have to change on the fly.

For the Season 4 two-part finale of The Batman, we had to show quite a bit of Wayne Industries, a location that had been designed for a previous season. Since we were spending so much time there, I had to make sure it looked like the headquarters of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. So, I took the basic layouts from the original designs and did some remodeling.

I wish I had those originals handy for comparison along with the Wayne Industries logo, which was basically two V's shaped and placed side-by-side to create an I in the negative space between them. The first sketch, the front view, features the main tower with that "W" logo. That domed shape in the right foreground was one of the main areas of interest, where the aliens would begin manufacturing their war machines, or so I thought.

Towards the end of a season, the design team is dealing with designing off scripts, key layouts from storyboards and late additions for episodes coming back. So, it's not unusual for things to get a bit behind, especially on a detailed action show like this. Add to that continuing script changes, and you can see how changes on the fly can become unavoidable.

From the second sketch, it's clear that the space has been fairly resolved. I had done a series of interior shots to match the exterior shapes. Then the prop designs for the weapons of destruction started coming in. There were much larger that initially anticipated and the script called for more of them than expected. So, I had to throw together the second pass on a warehouse space to accommodate them. The third sketch shows the new space with some scale references in front. The airplane is a 747, which is a very large vehicle. They are on Post-Its because even the scale of this new one had to undergo several changes.

The fourth sketch shows the aerial view of the Wayne campus, the view with which I'd started the entire remodeling. The new warehouse/assembly line is in faint red towards the back. While this particular view was never cleaned up, as it didn't turn out to be needed from the way the scenes were boarded, it helped inform the changes I had to make to the already cleaned-up front view. As if things weren't tight enough on the schedule, I had to start on my next job, so a few interior details were completed serving split duty.

Not the most traumatic on the fly changes I've had to deal with, but they did require some juggling of time and quick thinking to minimize the work required to accommodate those revisions. I have yet to see the final results, as aired a while back. One of these days I hope to catch them on a rerun.

Hyped: Music Video

2007-02-28T14:37:00.000-08:00

Starting with some live footage that just wasn't working and splicing in some stills, behind-the-scenes video and my drawing, the bulk of this music video was put together basically in a few days under the gun. I think it's supposed to air on the MTV-Korea channel through DirectTV. I hope you enjoy the end result of a couple sleepless nights.

To view directly on YouTube click here. Also, check out my friends' Woody Pak & Gloria Lee's label Chaos Theory Music.

Hyped: Music Video Drawing

2007-02-21T06:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a series of images showing my progress with some animated clips (very limited animation with photoshop layers) for my friend Woody's music video. He's launched a new label Chaos Theory Music and it's been well-received so far with some attention from news and radio outlets. The song is called "Hyped" which explains all the "Hype" signs everywhere. Pardon my limited color application. The drawing was conceived and excuted on a very short schedule. I hope the video editor can work some magic with it.

The song's about the good and bad of hype, so I thought I'd say my two cents about how hype with all it's flash can make the rest of the world seem a dull grey. The left side of the drawing definitely resorts to some cliche shorthand for West Coast with the palms and lights into the sky, but some of you Midwesterners might recognize the Sears Tower as you pan right and hidden under the large "HYPE" sign on the right is an approximation of the Empire State Building. Had I more time, I would have fleshed out the morning sky panel with full colors to let people know when the lights turn off and the sun comes up all the full colors start to come out. Alas, time has not allowed me to complete the thought. I hope you enjoy the drawings anyway.

Basketball Shoes, Manta Rays & Basking Sharks

2007-02-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I am able to draw things that actually animate (props and, on rare occasions, characters). Here's some models for Dack's spacecraft from "Men in Black: The Series" season two when Kay and Jay travel to space station. I also designed a cockpit-shifting landing configuration that turned out to be unused because we only see the ship docked to the space station. The original idea started out resembling a basketball shoe and somehow ended up here.

The larger scale, flying wing type plane is a ridiculously large ship (I estimated the wingspan as needing to be over 1000 feet) from the CGI modeled "Max Steel". The premise of the show was a giant plane that flew within an artificially generated cloud and literally swallowed other, high-tech aircraft. I didn't end up finishing out the open dock sequence, but the concept was based on some photos I'd seen of basking sharks and manta rays. I had to logic out the faux aerodynamics of having a giant scoop in front. So, I envisioned the backside venting open like a basking shark's gills open up to allow water flow through its gaping mouth.

It's nice to be able to design different things sometimes, but it made me appreciate the difficulty of balancing shapes, design with what can animate well, not that I ever really got a sense of how well they translated onto screen, but it was fun trying.

The Batman: Season Four: Main Title

2007-02-02T03:58:00.000-08:00

With the addition of Robin for the fourth season, the powers that be decided it was time to include him in the main title sequence. So, they had me crank out this upshot to eye level pan of some Gotham City buildings. Considering the quick turnaround, I was pretty happy with the results. The colors add a lot to the mood of the piece. The line art was also used for the long sleeve crew shirt (white and grey lines over black) to go along with the orange prisoner in Arkham Asylum short sleeve.

It's been a long time since they've aired those Season Four episodes. The last new one I saw was the sixth one, "The Breakout" which was a play on that stuck inside the Police station film with Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne. I believe the seventh one is the much anticipated future Gotham City episode that features Nightwing, Oracle and a Mr. Freeze with heavy prosthetics, not to mention a sweet Bat Tank designed by Byron Penaranda, our lead Prop Designer. According to the schedule, it will air Saturday, February 3, 2007 at the same Bat Time on the same Bat Channel.

I hope you all enjoy it! (BTW, the character models are there for color reference, not to try out Robin's new utility belt of levitation, that sounds like a WoW auction item...can we say addiction? 8`P).

Teen Titans: Season 2: Underground

2007-01-18T11:26:00.000-08:00

One thing universal among all the "Teen Titans" fans I've encountered was a disdain for Terra. Young and old viewers alike maintain a very strong reaction to her betrayal of the team, even post redemptive season two finale. During her introductory season, the Titan's Tower slowly sinks into an implausibly giant hole underground.

My job as the designer was to make this technological feat look at least passably possible. To cover the enormous space involved I drew this cutaway view, which does tweak the scale a little to keep it manageable for the storyboard artists to stage.

It all worked out well enough, but the overseas studio animating the show didn't get that the view was a cutaway and drew the ceiling exactly as I drew it (click here and view image 146.jpg: special thanks to Titans Go for the shot). I probably should have made a clear note on the design.

Even with such extra effort to make everything clear, something always gets lost or altered in translation. Sometimes the changes can be for the better, but more often, the work suffers. Once it's out of your hands, all you can do is hope the damage is minimal and barely noticed like this instance.

Teen Titans: Prom Ship

2007-01-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

So, one of the more fun and quintessential Glen Murakami "Teen Titans" ideas was that a villain, the ever dangerous Killer Moth, is threating to destroy the city, if Robin doesn't agree to take his teenage daughter to prom. As it turned out, she was only trying to make her spider-headed boyfriend jealous. Another fun part of "Titans" was trying to revive the most obscure characters in DC Comics' along with the numerous insertions of names from the crew.

I designed this prom ship as a prop and BG, and at the time, it seemed to made sense to draw the whole ship in detail. As I went along, the drawing got bigger and bigger. I think the final drawing was about 3 feet wide and 18 inches tall. Fortunately, I still had some animation pan paper, so I was able to avoid dodging tape seams for the long continous lines for the hull and deck.

As you can see, most of the action took place in the front deck, decorated with tables complete with moon and star balloons. The moons and stars were an allusion to the theme for the wedding invitations I designed for my friend, Chap Yaep, a director and storyboard artist on various shows I'd worked on, including "Teen Titans" and "The Batman". That, in turn, was alluding to a time, when Chap and his wife were dating and occasionally he'd sleep over instead of driving back home (50 miles from the office).

One of the letters, his then girlfriend (and now wife) wrote was filled with silvery confetti shaped like, you guessed it, moons and stars. Unaware of the letter's loose contents, Chap tore open the letter (as any enthusiastic member of a couple should) spilling the moons and stars all over the floor. Even after vacuuming up most of it, for years, I would occasionally find something clinging to the bottom of my foot and chuckle when it was one of those very moons or stars.

Perhaps, I haven't said much for my vacuuming skills (and probably not much about drawing either), but it's just funny how the littlest details and filter through years in your life and somehow find their way onto a nationally broadcast television show. Though I doubt anyone could have made the connection, save Chap and his wife (I can't recall if they did), I think it's those little things that not only make the drawing process fun, but add the layers of thought put into any labor of love that shine through directly and indirectly in the craftsmanship.

BTW, the ship's name is and ode to one of the show's longtime directors, Matt Youngberg.

Teen Titans: Season Three: Tamaranian Palace

2007-01-04T08:16:00.000-08:00

This is the Tamaranian Palace from "Bethrothed", Season Three. I'll see if I can get my hands on the colored version, so I can post that along with the incredible space shots Chu-Hui Song colored for the episode. Early on, I figured out that a dual sun or moon was easy shorthand for making the viewer aware of an alien setting, since of course, we only have one of each.

The design began as sort of a blend of Lawrence Alma-Tadema's "Spring" and Moebius, who's drawings always have hints of being alien and really ancient. "Spring" was really more for its festive mood and tone reflective of the emotional makeup of Starfire's people, because the Classic architecture is probably too staid and stoic.

Looking over the drawing now, it really bears little resemblance to the original inspirations, which is just as well, since I do't think I could have done either justice. I don't recall any design discussion of how stark the terrain should be, but I think that was necessitated more by the script calling for a precipitous drop to one side of the palace where a fleet of potentially hostile battle crafts was parked.

Something always bothered me about this drawing, and I think I finally see it. There are too many parallels along the stone walkway. Glen would always emphasize that parallels should be avoided unless you really need it. Especially in what should look more organic, those parallels make what was intended to look natural seem less so. Fortunately, color works like love on our drawings and covers over a multitude of mistakes like that.

'Nuff Said

2007-01-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

Your results: You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man: 85%
Robin: 80%
Superman: 70%
Iron Man: 70%
The Flash: 60%
Supergirl: 55%
Hulk: 55%
Green Lantern: 40%
Wonder Woman: 35%
Batman: 35%
Catwoman: 15%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Your results: You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom: 74%
Juggernaut: 69%
Mr. Freeze: 67%
Apocalypse: 66%
Mystique: 61%
Lex Luthor: 59%
Dark Phoenix: 57%
Venom: 52%
The Joker: 47%
Magneto: 41%
Green Goblin: 37%
Kingpin: 37%
Riddler: 32%
Poison Ivy: 32%
Catwoman: 28%
Two-Face: 25%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Quiz

Teen Titans: Season One: Colored BGs

2006-12-29T03:53:00.000-08:00

Here's three colored backgrounds from "Teen Titans" Season One. The Ops Room is a stock model where the Titans spend most of their time inside the T-Tower. The jungle scene was from the Mad Mod episode when they think there's a way out of his classroom prison. It appeared again in the second Control Freak episode (the popular among my friends, "Hakjoon Kang" chant episode). Finally, Rancid City is the city under the influence of Johnny Rancid. All of my line art was beautifully rendered by the background color crew, which at the time consisted of Chu-Hui Song and Kersti Myberg.

The Rancid City was drawn with shadow and texture using a technique I discovered in second grade when I colored The Great Pyramids over a rough surface to give it a rougher grain than the paper provided. All the textures you see in the other pieces were digitally rendered in by the colorists. Chu-Hui actually spent quite a bit of time generating the brushes from a series of paint strokes on hot press illustration board.

Glen Murakami and Eric Canete recently dropped by the new office, and Glen mentioned how he'd watched one of his (and my) favorites Tadahiro Uesugi do his very undigital looking digital paintings. His art was one of the stronger influences on Glen's art direction for "Teen Titans" Apparently, Uesugi also makes custom brushes in Photoshop, but he does it digitally. If I heard Glen correctly, Uesugi makes unique brushes for each piece and then takes those brushes to do a value composition that he refines and eventually gives an overall hue. He then takes parts of the piece and futher distinguishes the colors from there. I could never have guessed that approach from what I've seen, but you can't argue with the beautiful results.

The Batman Season 4: Waggie Time Dog Food Factory

2006-12-28T20:35:00.000-08:00

This drawing was pretty large (24"X36") and suffered a bit from a shoddy tape job using standard leger sized paper (11"X17"). As is often the case with drawing, the inked version didn't turn out quite as I'd imagined. I still like the rough enough to post it. In the episode, the Joker is thwarted from poisoning the large mixing vats.

Men in Black: Santa's Workshop

2006-12-27T11:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this post is a couple days late, but I thought you might want to check out Men in Black: The Series's take on where all the gifts came from, namely, a basement workshop run by aliens.

The Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot: Promo

2006-11-21T09:37:00.000-08:00

An unused promo piece with shadow guide for "The Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot". Too bad there are so many episodes that fell to a similar fate.

Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo

2006-11-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

Since this has aired on TV already, I hope it's okay to post some of the art from our pre-production design. I don't know why it's taking so long for the DVD to come out, but I hope it's because they are adding some nice extras to it. Enjoy.

The Batman Season 4: Ice Pick Club

2006-11-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

It's been far too long since my last post. Here are some season 4 episode 1 "A Matter of Family" designs for the Ice Pick Club, an out of plain sight hangout for Gotham's underworld.

The Batman: Season 4: Comic Con Preview

2006-09-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed this San Diego Comicbook Convention preview:

Or you can watch from the YouTube site by clicking here.

Teen Titans: Beast Boy's Hakjoon Chant

2006-06-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

For those of you who keep asking me to show you this clip...

For more information on the episode check out TitansGo.net.

The Animation Process

2006-06-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a document I stumbled upon at work. I can't figure out the source and some of the information might not be 100% accurate, but still it's a good primer for those interested in joining our ranks or if you're just curious.

Most half hour animated series (which range from 20-22 minutes of running time) take from 8-12 months to produce from start to finish, from story outline to finished product that's ready for airing on TV.

Sorry, they are just scans of the document. If I had OCR, I would have converted the file to selectable text. Feel free to post any questions, and I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

Teen Titans: Tokyo DVD Trailer

2006-05-27T20:49:00.000-07:00

There's a "Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo" trailer available online. You can view it as an mpeg or wmv. The DVD is set to release in the fall sometime. The complete season 2 DVD set is coming out September 26th. Here's more info on that. And finally, the Teen Titans video game for PS2 comes out June 25th. Here's the listing on Amazon.com. We got to play a little bit of it when one of the developers visited WB a longer while back, and the parts we saw were pretty nice and very faithful to the show's designs. I hope you enjoy!

Special thanks to Titans Go for making me aware of all this.

NewSong: Noah's Place

2006-05-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

This was done in one of those drawing moments where things just flow (a phrase coined by an instructor at my school while I was there). It must have taken just over 2 hours from start to finish, but it seemed about 15 mintues, one of those "spots of time" Norman Maclean (another distinguished instructor from my school) mentions in one of my favorite books, "A River Runs Through It".

I'll leave you to explore (and hopefully enjoy) the multiple narratives I've attempted to weave into the drawing, but my two favorites are, first, the homage to Pablo, the penguin that hated the cold, from one of my favorite childhood books (crossed with my memory of Tennessee Tuxedo sans Chumley the Walrus). Next, the lobster who is annoyed that the PlayStation controllers are not claw-friendly.

The oxpecker posed rhino is actually Noah, whose place this is. Noah's Place is also where the kids go at NewSong Irvine.

SD Macross: GERWALK Mode

2006-05-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

Like most my age, getting home from school early enough to catch "Robotech" was a weekday essential. I would only later discover that the three series were actually unrelated with the first one being titled "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" and the favorite of most, including myself. The latter incarnations "Macross Plus" and "Macross Zero" were all beautifully designed and animated, but I've still always had a soft spot for the Lynn Minmay, Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes love triangle along with the Veritech Fighter.

My renditions of the Super Deformed GERWALK (Guardian) mode of the Veritech are from deep in the archive. Did you know that GERWALK actually had a meaning behind it?

The original line art for these two drawings were obviously copied from the Robotech books I'd acquired over the years, but they do mark my introductions to two techniques I'd never really noticed. The marker rendering (if you can really even call it that) came after several 1987 high school field trips i took with Jeff to the art departments at University of Illinois and Northern Illinois University, my introduction to product design and marker drawings. It began this entire journey of wanting to attend Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, where many of my current colleagues got their art education (a lot of them in product/automotive design). I never did make it to art school, settling for some art classes at University of Chicago (which is known more for things other than their art department) while concentrating my studies on physics and then philosophy.

The bitmapped one was from my first year in college (1989) and my first real introduction to computer art and MacPaint. If you can believe it, this was done drawing with the mouse on my Macintosh SE/20 (can you believe we got by in those days with a 20 MB harddrive? but then again Microsoft Word fit on a 800 KB floppy). The output was on my HP DeskWriter ink jet printer, my first time having 300 dpi output at home (well actually at my dorm), but you can tell it's pre-ink jet paper era. Silicon Beach's SuperPaint 2.0 would later introduce me to object oriented drawing, which was crucial to understanding Aldus PageMaker which revolutionized DTP (Desktop Publishing) and a few years later Adobe Illustrator, which I still use all the time.

Now, I never really developed my marker skills nor did I really delve into the possibilities of pixel art, as some graphic designers have wonderfully done lately, but it is always interesting to be able to dig up pieces from the past that so clearly mark important times in the learning process. It's even more interesting that they share a Robotech theme, as the show itself (on a larger scale beyond the personal dramas) was about the introduction of new people, technologies and energy sources (Protoculture) and how it altered the course of human history.

I'm thankful for all those who have taught me, influenced my art and introduced me to new tools or techniques along the way and those who continue to do so. While I'd like to share Robert Frost's confidence that my decision to pursue art has made all the difference, I know that it's these people who help fill in the gaps of my understanding and knowledge who have even made a choice possible. Thank you all!

Super Mario Live

2006-05-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

For those of you who were, like me, reared in part by that cadre of characters (click on the "marioworld.png" link) from the genius mind of Shigeru Miyamoto, I thought you might appreciate this:

or if you prefer to watch on YouTube directly: click here.

Basement: 19 April 2006

2006-05-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

My friend and fellow WB Animation employee, Eric Canete, has been doing a series of 90 minute drawings on his blog, Discard. I was already impressed and amazed by what he's posted, but after trying to do the same, I'm even more astonished at the quality and polish on his posts. My drawing took two roughs and twice the time Eric has been allotting himself, yet is no where near as finished looking. I've got to draw more!

For those of you keen-eyed viewers, yes, that is C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) coming out of the man hole.

Time Lapse: 5 April 2006

2006-04-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

My first "film". Not the most professionally done time lapse, but it was fun trying. It was shot manually using a compact digital camera on a tripod. Like most cameras in that category, there are very few manually adjustable functions, so that would explain the color shifts and inconsistent focusing. Still, I think those automatic functions added to the overall effect.

Sorry, it takes a while to load, but did you notice the bird flying past my window? I can see why they film with water on the streets. It's much more cinematic with the reflections. Since I wasn't about to spray the street, I was fortunate to have woken up early enough on a rainy morning.

Here's a direct link, since the imbedded players seem to be a bit slower.

NewSong: H2O

2006-04-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

These are some t-shirt designs I did for NewSong a couple of Easters ago. The second one was a bit more clever in it's use of the letters, but they opted for the first one which is visually more of an immediate read. Being the geek that I am, I actually looked up the bond angle for the water molecule which, in case you don't want to hit the link, is 104.5 degrees.

As anyone who has made ice before knows, water expands as it freezes. The reason for this (as the article link explains, with visual aids) is that the organized lattice structure of its solid form creates "space" through the weaker hydrogen bonds that occur between the H2O molecules. In liquid form, the v-shaped units mingle and tangle up a lot closer to each other. It's somewhat analogous to a steel bridge with those X-shaped or V-shaped supports versus just a random pile of those same girders.

So, you may ask, "Why do you bring this up Mr. Chemistry/Engineering Geek?" (Actually, I was never too keen on Chem and never studied Engineering.) I just thought they are good reminders for me to embrace more structure in my life, a constant uphill struggle for as long as I recall. Like many artists and slobs, I tend to view structure as being restricting and confining.

However, if you imagine a girder bridge, it's obvious that one with those X's and V's organized into a structure allows space to go through it, poke your head out crossing it, climb it and (for the more moribidly-oriented) even jump off it. Now, if those girders were not so organized, not only would the bridge be more difficult to navigate, but I wouldn't have much confidence in the strength of the bridge to hold up under the strain of any additional weight.

Moving out of Bagley

2006-03-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

I've posted another photo series, this time using my camera phone to document my final day at my apartment of 8 years. You're welcome to view them on my Xanga site.

Jenny from Agoura Hills

2006-03-13T08:02:00.000-08:00

Here's my roommate's wedding video (he has since moved into a new place with his wife). Enjoy.

Teen Titans: Cybrain

2006-02-28T15:33:00.000-08:00

Although I was playing around with the free download, Personal Learning Edition of Maya at the time, I found I did not have the extra hours to learn about nurbs and all the other features in this industry standard 3D application. I had also recently purchased the then newly released Adobe Creative Suite. Illustrator CS has some limited but still pretty useful 3D tools. They are basically: revolve, extrude and map pattern. using those three functions, I was able to knock out most of what we see inside Cyborg. The "Crash" episode called for Gizmo and Beast Boy to be shrunken and injected into Cyborg's inner machinery, ala "Fantastic Voyage" sans Raquel Welch. I have not upgraded to Creative Suite 2 yet, but I look forward to playing with some of the new perspective tools on Photoshop.

Calvin: Birthday Bookmark

2006-02-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

My friends James and Michelle asked me to do a bookmark to give away at their second son, Calvin's first birthday. I did two sketches, one of Calvin wearing a Superman outfit with those "Hulk smash!" fists while his brother, Justin, dressed in a Batman suit is trying to coax Calvin back to the DC universe. I opted for the second idea of a Calvin & Hobbes theme. So, with apologies to Bill Watterson, I hope you enjoy.

Teen Titans: Bruce Timm Art

2006-02-18T10:27:00.000-08:00

Here's two drawings Bruce Timm did for one of the Teen Titans episodes.

Related Link: Here's Pop Culture Shock's gallery of his other artwork.

Teen Titans: Crystal

2006-02-14T11:34:00.000-08:00

There are some designs, where I can say I've really helped shape the enviroment and mood. There are others like this crystal, that show just how much the BG painters improve upon our line art. All I drew were the lines of the facets and some hints of texture. The rest was all Chu-Hui.

Teen Titans: Super-D Tower

2006-02-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

Sorry, for the delay in posting this. I had some trouble posting, but blogger seems to have worked out the trouble. This is one of several "Super Deformed", "SD" or "Super-D", as we usually called it (at the request of Warner Bros., Titans Towers I designed. I'd intended that grid of windows on the side to be colored like a graphics equalizer readout, but I forgot to mention it to the BG painters.

Amazingly, Wikipedia has an entry for Super Deformed, including a Cloud Strife in SD as an example. Many of you gamers will, of course, recognize him from the much loved Final Fantasy VII RPG (Role Playing Game) put out by SquaresSoft.

I recently watched "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children", currently unavailable in the US, but I have my sources. It's beautiful to look at, though some of the facial expressions are a bit wooden. The story suffers some of the same inability to captivate the viewer (even a fraction of what the RPGs seem to) as their first film effort.

Here's a Ranma 1/2 example of SD, an SD Rocketeer sculpture I'd never seen and, one of my old PSX favorites, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo (one, two) along with some Puzzle fighter manual art I'd never seen (one, two). I hope you enjoy the SD mini-gallery.

Related link: Special thanks to The Video Game Museum for the Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and Puzzle Fighter images.

Teen Titans: Moroccan Market

2006-02-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

The series of drawings we did of Morocco for the Hotspot episode, actually called for the lines to not be so straight. So, there wasn't much call for the ruler. The street scenes were at dusk, so the colors went very saturated and lively. It's a bit of a departure from some of the other episodes, but I liked the change of pace. The flipping back and forth between reality and Super-D(eformed: when the characters and backgrounds can get very exaggerated in proportions to convey additional emotion or mood. I'll post an example of a Super-D background this weekend) that Glen utilized on Titans afforded him quite a bit of stylistic latitude and made the show really fun to design.

As a background designer, I enjoy drawing cities and researching different styles of architecture to give them realistic details while adding my own flavor to them. Although, certainly, the rules of perspective apply to such drawings, I often eschew my ruler during the clean up (or inking phase, I'll post a series of drawings that will illustrate this process in the future).

As the years have gone by, I've become more and more reluctant to rule out even my roughs. It's not that I shun the rules and think that my lines are perfect without the ruler, but since your pen or pencil runs along an edge that is constant, there is a sense in which the ruler kills the character of your line. Oddly, even though your hand can run along a straight edge far more confidently and quickly than without it, I find that, mentally, things go faster when I draw freehand.

Still, some lines just call for the ruler. On occasion, the freehand line can get a little too wobbly, especially with any dose of caffine, so there's also the possibility of having to bring in the ruler to straighten things up. Some artists even hold their breath during some of the longer and more crucial lines. For me, this practice was, in part, inspired by an exhibit I'd seen at the satirical Museum of Jurassic Technology. It's down the street from where I used to live and my former apartment manager's husband was it's curator. The exhibit highlighted a man whose microscopic, fully posed and painted dust sculptures required him to stroke his one hair brush in between heartbeats.

Now, before I start off some young artists on the wrong foot, I should add that I did first learn correct perspective with rulers and strict rules on creating the illusion of a realistic depth. Repeated use of these techniques then allowed me to tackle more complex perspectives with angled and curved planes, multiple vanishing points & a bunch of other jargon filled aspects. While I can't say I've fully mastered perspective, I can see that I have improved in my understanding of it. The understanding has, in turn, provided the solid foundation that enables me to produce convincing perspectives in freehand. Others may discover their own way of coming to this point, but that has been my process thus far.

Child prodigies and budding Mozarts aside, most musicians must learn how to generate notes on an instrument along with scales and chords and some way of remembering them in sequences (most of the time by learning the language of notes on a staff with the various markings), as they tackle the basic harmonies and melodies of simple songs. With practice, reading those notes and commanding the body to respond accordingly become second nature allowing the focus of a performance to shift from those basic concerns to more complex ones that might add to or accent certain points of a piece. Even the timing and understanding of those things can grow, until that musician is performing the most difficult of concertos in front of a captivated audience. Of course, not every musician strives for such mastery nor can everyone attain it, but I am confident that those who do have suffered long hours of practice mixed in with various triumphs & failures, that refined their skills and demanded a piece of themselves to pour into its artistry.

I hope to draw "concertos" some day.

Teen Titans: Road Runner

2006-02-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

This wasn't the most sophisticated background, nor is it indicative of the "normal" Titans style, but I thought I'd post it for nostalgic reasons and to give props to Chu-Hui for matching the color so well. I really enjoyed emulating the style of the Warner Bros. cartoons that were my Saturday morning and weekday afternoon staples. I am an ice cream fiend, and my addiction to Rocky Road and Cookies & Creme began with my grab-a-half-gallon-tub-o-ice-cream-and-a-spoon Saturday mornings camped in front of the TV watching them. Studying what had been done on those old Road Runner cartoons, I was amazed to find that I hadn't noticed just how different some of the eras looked. Even the cacti leaned different directions during the running scenes. Utilmately, I opted for the Chuck Jones era look.

For those keeping track, the sequence was called for when Beast Boy turns into a green Wile E. Coyote as he is chased by Control Freak in Episode 257-494.

Teen Titans: Clean Room

2006-01-31T17:03:00.000-08:00

This first season drawing of the clean room from the teaser of the Masks episode (the first appearance of Red X) was never fully shown, since most of the melee takes place on the lower portion. Anyone who has seen Chris Cunningham's video for Björk's "All Is Full of Love" will quickly recognize the influence of the music video's aesthetic.
I don't know if the directors of The Postal Service video "Such Great Heights" are Cunningham fans, but I can see some similarities. There's been a bit of press lately on how everyone saw the influence of The Postal Service video in the new Apple Intel ad, but all that was put to rest, when it was revealed that the same directors were behind both.

Related Links: Special thanks to Duncan for making the "Such Great Heights" video available on the Apple/Intel page of his The Last Minute Blog.

Teen Titans: Launch Pad

2006-01-30T09:24:00.000-08:00

Here's where the Titan's T-Ship is launched into space, beautifully colored by the BG paint crew. The ship was designed by Norm Ryang. It was cool to see it made into a toy. It's rare that a background element gets made into a toy, however, one of the 1.5-inch figure series includes a T-Tower that can be completed by collecting all three sets in the series. Also, Ben bought the giant tower toy, so I can no longer maintain that my designs never get made into toys. In any case, Norm has a post with another view I did of the launch pad (scroll down to T-Sub Layout).

NOTE: While the ship was originally designed as a submarine for the Aqualad episode, this launch pad appeared in the Starfire transforms and runs away, so everyone flies into space looking for her episode. So, the sub became a space ship. I'll post the launch tube for the submarine mode another time.

Teen Titans: Destruct-O-Tron™ Color

2006-01-29T04:19:00.000-08:00

Here's the Destruct-O-Tron™ in color. Our BG painters (Chu-Hui Song, Kersti Myrberg and Jenny Gase-Baker) did such a great job of bringing our line drawings to life. I'll be posting a some of my favorite colored backgrounds from Titans over the next few days. I hope you enjoy them.

Related Posts: Teen Titans: Destruct-O-Tron™

Teen Titans: Crew Photo

2006-01-29T03:52:00.000-08:00

I posted some Teen Titans production photos on my Xanga site:
be4be4 @ Xanga.

Related Posts: A Day at Work

The Box: Alleyway

2006-01-29T02:52:00.000-08:00

Here's some alley drawings for a test animation called "The Box". It was for a start up flash animation company called 3 Birds. The original 3 birds were Jeff Matsuda, Sam Liu and Sean Shimoda. You can see a clip from the 3D animation Sean did for Jeff's wedding featuring his wife, Cindy, in a full Lakers uni (character design by Jeff).

High School Jam Piece

2006-01-24T07:27:00.000-08:00

Jeff and I met in between my freshman and sophomore year of high school (his sophomore and junior), during summer school. Some of my art geek friends I knew from junior high school had raved about this guy with freakish skills. During the year, we would somehow consolidate our lunchtime, study hall and school newspaper class times into a long 1.5-2 hour break in the middle of the day. We'd spend most of that time hanging out or drawing in the Oakton Lobby, as our friends would go off to class and return, wondering if Jeff and I actually attended classes. This drawing of each other along with Wolverine and Colossus was the result of one of those times.

A Day at Work

2006-01-22T03:27:00.000-08:00

A photo essay of my work day can be viewed on my Xanga site:
be4be4 @ Xanga.

Teen Titans: Ops Room Rough

2006-01-11T00:15:00.000-08:00

This drawing captures the "feel" of the operations room (or ops room) better than any of the others. Inking this and the other roughs stripped a bit of the 70's styling we were trying to incorporate. As with this and many of my other posted roughs, several colors delineate some of the planes and surfaces. In other drawings, the colors help separate levels, layers, objects, or just about anything else that would otherwise be easily obscured. I learned the technique from a rough drawing Michael Golden did with 3 colors to show the foreground, midground and background of a cover he was doing. I don't recall what the title was, but it made an impression and helped me learn how to create a sense of depth in my drawings. This was all during a time I'd been inspired to start a binder collecting the various and often obscure covers of Michael Golden (after enjoying that of my friend, Wayne). For the next few years, I spent a good portion of my visits to conventions and comicbook stores rummaging the 10 cent and 25 cent bins for bargain gems sporting the Golden signature symbol (look to the lower left), which had replaced the script "G" he used in "Micronauts", and appears to be an amalgam of the letters in "GOLDEN". I've filled two 3-inch binders with covers, jam pages, cards and some copies of precious B&W art and a set of DC Comics stickers. One of the most unusual finds was a couple of panels featuring Captain America on a page of a Beavis & Butthead comic. As if this makeshift "Art of" collection was not enough, I even recall dreaming of a published "Art of Michael Golden" book. Yes, crown me king of the geeks! In any case, Jeff would always talk about how you don't fully appreciate the signature symbol until you see the "E". As far as I can tell, the 1982 publication of "Transformers" issue 2 (the signature is on the lower right, but partially cut off in this image) was the first time he used it. But Glen might know better; he has two binders of his own. It's really hard to confirm though, since many times it is hidden or obscured. One of my favorite instances was from a "Body Bags" (this is the re-release with Jason Pearson covers) cover from it's original run. It was hidden under the title in the final cover layout, but I saw it through an ad sans title logo in the blood spatter.

Teen Titans: Destruct-O-Tron™

2006-01-10T23:31:00.000-08:00

Sometimes there isn't enough time to rough everything out in detail. As you can see in this rough of the Destruct-O-Tron™, which is powered by cows, ala "The Matrix" (Season 4: Episode 257-498: "Employee of the Month"), much of it was fleshed out during clean up. Overall, I think the drawing works, but upon closer inspection, the stowed flying saucers (used to populate the power cells with cows) are a bit on the "wonky" side. The exterior of this chamber was hidden for most of the episode under a generic building behind the "Mega Meaty Meat" store and doubled as a spacecraft designed as an homage to the classic Weber® grill.

Ofivinite: More Alien

2006-01-05T00:22:00.000-08:00

I made some changes to the Ofivinite illustration. There were several who felt the previous one was too turtle-like. I agreed and consulted, Jeff, my friend and character designing foo for some advice. He suggested a larger cranium, slanted pupil-free eyes and a less turtle-ish mouth. Photoshop saved me some time working with the original line art. With the addition of reflected stars in the eyes, the illustration grew into what you see here. I like that the head is football shaped, because it is my favorite sport (much props to Vince Young & the Longhorns, whose dethroning of USC almost made up for Notre Dame's loss on Monday). The shape also reminds me of the Dracs from "Enemy Mine" though sans some of the details, including the memorable pulsing cheek bubbles. I used to jokingly call my friend, Johnny, Zammis. I know that's messed up, but I hope you enjoy the illustration anyways.

Related Posts: Ofivinite: Alien, Ofivinite: Illustration Only

Teen Titans: 25 Towers

2006-01-04T00:21:00.000-08:00

Comment on your favorite unused concept for the Teen Titans Tower (it's a 5 part posting prior to this one). The final design was very much guided by motifs from the "small t" design and the one that looks like a glass and steel box imbedded in concrete slabs. It was the one that Bruce Timm singled out as most interesting. He happened to be in Glen's office, as I was trying to get feedback on the ideas. They both liked the idea of a structure at the base of the building, and told me to lose the fussy details using the "squint" test, which basically, is excluding anything that doesn't read correctly or clearly when viewed squinting your eyes. It's the only time I recall getting direct comments on my art from Bruce, who also did some art for the show himself in the form of a comicbook cover (Robin as a giant robot) and some panels from inside the book (Robin & zombies).

Related Posts: Teen Titans: Tower Concepts, Teen Titans: Tower Exterior

Teen Titans: 25 Towers (5 of 5)

2006-01-04T00:20:00.000-08:00

Teen Titans: 25 Towers (4 of 5)

2006-01-04T00:19:00.000-08:00

Teen Titans: 25 Towers (3 of 5)

2006-01-04T00:17:00.000-08:00

Teen Titans: 25 Towers (2 of 5)

2006-01-04T00:16:00.000-08:00

Teen Titans: 25 Towers (1 of 5)

2006-01-04T00:15:00.000-08:00

Kenya: DVD Cover

2005-12-30T01:47:00.000-08:00

Here's the cover I designed for the DVD of slideshows and interviews I'm still trying to finish up for my roommate Charles and a group of people from NewSong. They spent two weeks in Africa volunteering at HCI-Kenya (Homeless Children International). The team adopted the nickname "X-Men", so each individual also chose one hero to be for the training and trip (I know it sounds kinda geeky, but I'm sure it allowed for a bit more fun than some of the other missions teams).

Ofivinite: Illustration Only

2005-12-30T01:29:00.000-08:00

Here's the illustration sans brick wall (which was also a stock photo from iStock).

Ofivinite: Alien

2005-12-30T01:15:00.000-08:00

This illustration was based on a concept by my friend Marco. He had some ideas to promote Ofivinite, a musical event he's helping plan with some others from NewSongLA. The idea that I liked was an alien fishing in a body of water that resembled space. I let the idea brew for a few days as I sketched out some ideas, but the actual execution took a few hours thanks to a plethora of great images from the Hubble Site. The starry pool is an collage of 5-6 Hubble images along with a stock photo of the water ripple from iStockPhoto (a decent but very reasonably priced source for them). I drew the original line art of the fly fishing alien, complete with four three-fingered arms and tentacled legs, on an 11"X17" paper, my usual drawing size.

Edwin Gale: Concept

2005-12-29T10:54:00.000-08:00

Edwin Gale involved a city where a meteor struck and altered the lives of all who lived there, but they all continued on as if nothing happened (kinda like season one of Smallville, as misguided as that Kryptonite-freak-of-the-week approach was). I loved the idea of the actually geography being altered with all the buildings being tilted and city hall unrepaired but shored up with planks. I don't even know if the show went into production, but I was never asked to more than these and a couple of line drawing versions. Regardless, the notion resonated with me, as it is often how many of us choose to handle life's difficulties and unexpected turns.

Teen Titans: Glen's Comicon Drawing

2005-12-28T20:50:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned, I liked our take on the Titans. Here's a drawing Glen did for San Diego Comicon colored by our own Chris Hooten.

Teen Titans: Tower Concepts

2005-12-28T19:50:00.000-08:00

As promised, the never-seen-by-anyone-outside-the-crew "t" tower. Since George Perez always drew the Teen Titans looking much older than actual teenagers (especially Starfire), it didn't occur to me that a blocky, corporate "T" would not be the building of choice for a bunch of teenagers. Our show never really got into how 5 teens have their own island and building, but during the design process I figured, if they had any say in its design, the Titans would prefer a small "t" along with a halfpipe (as the show developed, video games and eating turned out to be the activities of choice; two of my personal favorites). In addition to exploring uppercase and lowercase, I played with the idea of serifs. I have about 25 more variations, which I'll post later. I give much due respect to what Marv Wolfman & George Perez did along with what Walt Simonson, one of my all time favorites, did in one of my first comics, "X-Men/Teen Titans". Overall, I still favor what Glen and the crew came up with during (see Glen's postcard above) our five season run. Look out for direct to video release of the team's adventure in Tokyo in 2006 along with the video game (the GBA version is pretty fun, especially using the powers of the individual Titans). We got a preview of what the game will be like on the PS2, and we were all really excited and impressed by what we saw.

Teen Titans: Tower Exterior

2005-12-25T09:41:00.000-08:00

This remains one of my favorite drawings for Teen Titans. It's pretty close to the final that appears just about every episode, but a bit of the 70s styling that Glen originally had us consider in the early designs was lost in the inking. I'm very thankful I've had opportunities to draw things I grew up with, like the T-Tower. I also got to draw the X-Mansion in an issue of X-Men that I helped Jeff draw (#49 which introduced Jeff's take on Bishop's outfit). There are quite a number of alternate designs for the T-Tower that I will post someday including a crew favorite small "t" with a half pipe at the base of the building. They ultimately went for the more iconic and recognizable "T" shape, but it's also understandable since the "t" doesn't read the same from both sides.

Teen Titans: Outdoor Mall

2005-12-25T09:38:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed designing this outdoor mall for the Mother Mae-Eye episode of season 4 (257-503: aired 25 Jun 2005). I believe I was heading into a week off to attend some weddings in Chicago (where I grew up), so I was bummed I didn't get to clean up the final, but Ken Yi did a good job with it.

Jackie Chan: Style Concepts

2005-12-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

I don't think I ever appear in the credits, but I worked on the early visual development of the long running Jackie Chan Adventures. You can see traces of what ended up being the actual style in the version that was also inked on this image.

Big Guy & Rusty: Launch Bay

2005-12-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

It was fun roughing out this view of the launch bay including the Big Guy's streamline era style aircraft in its dock, which I'd admired from the comics. The hangar was inside an aircraft carrier, so researching those floating cities was interesting as well.

Big Guy & Rusty: Darrow Base Wireframe

2005-12-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

"The Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot" by Geoff Darrow was made into a show produced by Sony Animation while I was there and aired for about 6 episodes before it was pulled never to be seen on TV again. I've only heard rumors as to what prompted this ill fate, but it was a shame to know that the other 34 episodes went to waste.

Jumanji: The Series: Inside a Tent

2005-12-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

This is where I got my start in animation. I think it was good to get on this show instead of a more realistically drawn one, because the focus was more on style and composition, things you'd learn from a more formal training, which I lacked.