RRRRRROAR! (WiP2)

The funny thing is that I've never seen a whole Godzilla movie before.

RRRRRROAR! (WiP1)

I think the funny thing is that I've never fully watched a Japanese Godzilla movie. I've seen bits and pieces of the older ones on late night TV back when I use to sleep really late. I like how the little sketch turned out to get this. It's fun to make slight variations to get the final look of the piece.

Space Girl - finished

It's been a busy week, but I found some time tonight to finish this up. I like how it looks especially compared to the original piece I did years ago. There's a lot of changes since then (about 5 years ago) and I'm glad I'm still improving with every piece I work on. Now to get started on my next piece.

Space Girl (WiP3)

I always have this odd feeling when I go back to work on a project that I started a few weeks back. It feels odd and I look at the drawing and I don't have that drive to finish it as much as when I first started. It's funny 'cause I've met a lot of artist who work on multiple pieces at once 'cause they go back and forth when the creativity or something dries up for one piece. I find that I don't work like that as much.

Influences

I grew up watching Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball Z as a kid. It is probably one of my biggest influences and I spent years just re-drawing Dragon Ball pictures. It's one of the ways we learn as we grow into the artist we want to be. We copy and re-draw. But the important thing is to one day find our own language as an artist, but it's nice to remember where we came from. To this day I can still sort of draw a kind of Dragon Ball style.

Jazz Casino (CD and CD Design) - Part 2

There is one of the first pass for the colour version of the CD cover as we thought of using black and white with a bit of red to pop it. The design ended up being just a bit too stark with all that white though I did like "see-through" black hair. It just didn't work out so we went with a more full colour though using a limited palette to give it more of a feel of the court cards in a deck of cards. The final layout with the spot illustrations is featured below with the back cover photo courtesy of Kat Rizza of Kat Rizza Creative. It was a lot of work creating the whole CD package, but it was a really fun project. I look forward to having another chance to work with Jen and EAST again.

Dancing Girls

I had the opportunity to help set up and watch the showcase by a program called Roots and Branches. It is a program that teaches Caribbean, African, Hip Hop, classical Indian and Contemporary Dance to kids of various ages. It's more than just a dance program, but a opportunity for kids to learn a part of a culture, the important of communication via dance and to give young people a place to showcase their talents. It's run by a wonderful woman by the name of Tamla Matthews-Morgans, who I can't plug with a website 'cause someone has just been too busy to create one yet, but can be contacted at m_tamla at hotmail dot com. But I was inspired to draw some little dance illustrations. I'm sure my memory has the costumes a bit off so hopefully no one is too offended by this.

Jazz Casino (CD Cover and Design) - part 1

In March or April, I was contacted by Jen Fabico, project manager, of EAST, which is a project divided into three groups that aims to teach youths in the Scarborough area that ins and outs of working in the music world from making music, managing and videographing. It is an excellent program where the youths are guided by professionals to show them how the industry works and gives them the skills to help with their future. I was asked to design the CD cover and the CD design of their upcoming CD (which has launched already and is available through their website: EAST). I was working with the title track of the CD, Jazz Casino. Here are some of the roughs for CD cover, CD Logo as well as spot illustrations on the inside.

Happy Canada Day

So I'm a bit late 'cause I was busy celebrating ... by spending a day relaxing. It's the thought that counts and here's my thought. Okay, I went full cheesy with this. Now to get back to work.