Tripping Over Shadows

Sculpture - Fighter Aircraft

2009-08-25T17:57:00.000-07:00

After a three day hangout with my artistic friends over the weekend, I got to experiment with clay. It's not as if I hadn't done it before but my first few attempts with it in community college were rather dismal. At the time, I was working with terracotta and grog. This time, it was paper clay (air-dry) and Sculpey clay. Since I like fighter jets, I decided to give those a spin.

The results were better than I thought they would be. It's the beginning of a new hobby.

My next thought is to teach myself how to paint them like professional models. This way, it'll be even easier to get paint schemes that match the aircraft and make them look like their real-life counterparts.

Recent works

2009-05-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

Been burning the midnight oil and Saturday studies on many of these. After shifting from 'FSNS' to experiment with my other stories and to get a better grip on the foundations, 'Ancient Story' and Akira Ishikawa's story have been granted with updates.

Ancient Story - Top: Kaen Watanabe/Bottom: Kageaki Yamamoto

Akira Ishikawa (Assassin)

Akira's last stand

From the looks of it, hitting the books has been the biggest boon of my artistic life to date. Not only am I eager to get perspective down, but hopefully, I can create more dynamic compositions. My resolution so far is bearing much fruit over Bridgman, Loomis, and a cup of coffee at Borders. :)

Beginnings of world-building for FSNS

2009-01-17T22:30:00.000-08:00

"Four Stars, No Stripes" is the very first story that got a 3D model of its main building. Of course, the base complex plays a crucial role and one of the pitfalls of writing without an actual model or plan to look at is that you see things to be much more convoluted than it is. So, being serious about my approach, I drew out the floor plan in my FSNS Plan Book (aka a sketchbook dedicated solely to FSNS):

Then, after getting to this level of detail, I proceeded to use Google Sketchup 7 to create the model of the main level:

I'll be in the process of creating the upper level and basement sub-level over the next few days. The final model should be the entire base on one file, complete and exact.

A fresh start to 2009!

2008-12-31T22:24:00.000-08:00

My New Year's Resolution for 2009 is:

Improve on basics needed to reach illustrator goals
Trim hours of video game playing to squeeze in art
Sketch at least for an hour every day, if not more
Work on finishing the first draft of my original story
Keep an active schedule to complete a FSNS comic

So, to open the brand new year, here are some sketches of the past few days that delineate my current work progress. The story being worked on is "Four Stars, No Stripes", an original that dates back to 1994 and is still in the process of being finalized.

Reaching the realization that American style inking was very effective and being highly influenced by both Ryan Kelly (Local) and the animated French movie "Renaissance: Paris 2054".

Two pages that start pinning down specific images, events, and character interactions.

Recent pages covering more action and emotional moments from the story.

I'll be updating more as the year progresses, hopefully. What I would like is to look back when 2010 finally comes and I have a year's worth of effort to be proud about. Hats off to the artists who inspire me and continue to impress with their hard work and quality.

May they, too, have a Happy New Year!