Krisitian in the old days

ahhhhhh school...

memories...

A couple in class demos

It was the last day of class so i brought my laptop in to finish up some final work for the students. Happened to demo a couple quick sketches for them in photoshop as well.

It was quite fun - 3 - 5 minutes just to show the students that you can design by just blotting down shapes and pushing and pulling shapes in and out.

*sniff* i gotta admit, i really enjoyed hanging around with them every saturday. all of them improved so much since the first day. am gonna miss them.

Really Roughed

WIP to something hopefully not DUMB :)

drawing heads - needs a...

mirror! and feeling the expression!

Tron Glowy Test!

I'm on my Tron Kick!

:/

Doodle yay!

quickie doodle!

Portfolio review for Academy Art Students

Sept. 27th 6pm - 830pm
Bradley Hall
Academy Art University
Event: Nick Stohlman and crew Portfolio Review

Chuck recently invited a group of us to speak with students about our experiences after finishing our schooling at the Art Academy. It was a great experience and I'm so happy that Chuck made this happen. The school listed us as:

Nick Stohlman (Sega Studios, SF) - yay video games!
Grant Alexander (Pixar Studios) - yay tv & movies!
Chris Carman (Multiverse) - yay comics & video games!
Albert Truong (Fluid/SGN) - yay tv and video games!

Aside from giving our school experiences, we also talked about our work experience - what the industry expects, what makes a good portfolio, and the many pluses and minuses it has to offer. We were also living proof that "YES... you can get a job just doodling all day."

I think one of the biggest points we tried to emphasize was portfolio requirements - the do's and dont's. Starting out is hard - one advice was to have a diverse portfolio to show that you can tackle any job out there. But if you really want that dream job, you would have to spend a lot of hard work to tailor your portfolio in that direction. Make sure to get feedback from other artists, particularly ones working in your industry.

Illustrating is great fun, and sometimes at work I take it for granted - the fact that someone is *paying* me to just doodle all day still boggles my mind.

Here's good ole Chuck introducing us all.

From left to right: Little Nicky, the big Bert-man, Chrissy Fields, and Grantsy.

Here I am with my little mouse for the laptop cuz i had a slide show. Rub Rub Rub!

Oh Noes! I did a little Palin and mumbled incoherently for a bit! I didn't expect to see so many students? Must've been at least a hundred of you guys. Thanks to Grant for helping out and asking questions for me to answer :)

Some students took A LOT of notes :o

Others perused through our portfolios we brought.

"hahahaha Chris, you're silly!"

By the end of it, we had a long Q&A and got a chance to look at portfolios. I was really impressed. A lot of them were VERY good - lots better than what I was doing during their time. 

Wowie Zowie! Again, it was great experience and loads of fun. Thanks to Chuck and Nick for putting this together. I hope the students found our little shinDig helpful for whatever artistic career direction they decide to go into.

photos by Megan Wolfe

noodlin' noodlin'!

an hour or so of casual noodlin'

just relaxin' at home. gonna keep workin on this one. i likes snowy space stations!

should it just be a station? or should i put a little air ship thing in later?

here's a sketch of another mountain i didnt use for a base.

Lunch Doodle cuz i'm a dork

yay lunch doodle!

Meeting Doodle 572...

another meeting doodle: spaceShip!

Speed Painting 1

Sooooo i got jealous cuz SOMEONE has been doing some cool speed paintings (stupid Nick!)... i'm just following in his footsteps is all.

1 hour. HAD LOTS OF FUN :)

SGN Meetings

i'm an artist? what else am i gonna do at a meeting other than doodle????

Our meetings are cool though, they bring in snacks and beer :)

i'm still drawing chicks with huge heavy helmets.

I also still draw coworkers sketching with heart shapes around them. I do that everyday :P

OMFG #2

OMFG Clothed Figure 3 WITH CHUCK PYLE!!!

when i was digging through these, they were labeled under the reference folder. I was trying to remember who the frak did these drawings, then in the corner i noticed a signature and it was ME hahaha DUR DUR DUR DUR.

These were done back in 2003 in the good ole academy o' art COLLEGE!




CHECK THAT OUT! COLOR AND DESIGN WITH ALANA!!! FUGGIn' MANDALA! :D lol!

OMFG #1

OMFG

was organizing my external drive and RAN into a CRAPLOAD of old fan art drawings back in 2002 or somewhere rounds there!

HAHAHAHA FUGGIN' ANIME! and boy was i a PERV!

Returning to your roots

So ends another summer and a start of a new year for art students. For me, it's a fresh reminder that everyone has to return to their roots now and then - this means picking up the old sketchbook and going out and drawing from life. Whatever happend to those days of yore when you're drawing every moment you get?

Do any of you guys remember those days? We would all be sketching - ALL the time. I would sit in at borders just doodling, and out comes another sketch buddy, who would sit down next to me and we would just draw the people there. We would sketch till the sun drops - a 3 to 6 hour session. "Pencil Mileage"

We all tout the "We draw 100 hours a week! Every Week!" - sure sounds like B.S., but I can definitely say we did just that. We would draw from 8 am till 12 am, and then some more on the weekends! After getting outta the academy, I tried my best to keep up with sketching from life.

It's hard to find time and keep that motivation in check. What really helps me is carrying a small 3x5 moleskin notebook. These are a godsend! I try to sketch when i sit down, but as of late, it's been dragging.

I know for some of you, you guys keep it up easily (GRANT! you jerk!) - I'm just glad to be able to do it when I get the chance. I feel like if I dont sketch from life at all in a day, a little piece of me dies. Hmmm... at this rate, I shoulda been dead long ago :D

So today was nice, where I got a second to actually sit down with the wife, and we both pulled out our sketchbooks and went at it. It's nice to go back to our roots and just doodle. Maybe we can make a zoo run one of these days!?! That would be awesome!


if anyone cares to know, I carry no pencil sharpener with me. I draw with a 6B pencil, not sharp. It's a giant super dull 'nubby end. Makes it fun to do these quick 2-3 minute sketches like what you see above. at the same token, since it isnt sharp, it's hard to lift the pencil and draw accurately, so most of the time i'm just dragging it around until it makes a shape. loads of fun!

SpaceMovers Art

So Space Movers finally launched today and is racking up the daily active users on facebook. I worked with a couple awesome people, one namely a Shaun Pendergast (monkeyspin.blogspot.com) in creating this neato game with neato characters. Along with the help of Mr. Game Designer Marc Wilhelm and the rest of the design team at SGN, we all outputted something we are proud of.

There are lots of characters to pick from, with individual powerups to play on. It's a nice simple addicting game that I hope most people enjoy (I hope people like the designs more!)...

Shaun mainly handled all the awesome art assets and UI design and layout of most if not all the pages.

I handled the first pass mockups and character designs.

There's a lot more designs, so if you're interested, you can check out the game on faceBook. I can't remember the UrL off the top of my head and I'm a bit lazy to look for it... :D

Fluffy!!!!

Sorry for the long delays!!!

I recently found new work with a company called SGN, providing artwork for the facebook applications and games. I am thoroughly surprised at this thing we call "the Internet," and "facebook."

I didnt know there was that much money invested in it? that's crazy!!!!

Anyways, hope to be posting more soon. This is a fluffy little girl i made a month ago. Am looking for more opportunity to doodle and sketch! Picked up that mass effect book so i'm totally stoked about doing sci-fi art :D

WTF? Let's Elf it up byyaaaaatttch!

Yeah that's right foo' - it's an ELF with BIG FUGGIN' ears! Yeah? say what? THAT'S RiGHT foo' - she got some BIG fuggin gloves on too! Those damn elven man hands!

mmmmm yeaaah, yummy! and she's like "Hey, is that elven bread i smell? *SNIFF* SNIFF* Mmm mmmM mmm"

now she pull her sword out, and she gonna get some o' dat bread! YEAAAAAH Das right! Cast lvl 1 magic missile! MMM yeaahh, now she can nibble some o' dat! yeah... nibble away at that you crazy elf b****!

Valkryie Grayed up!

being uncomfortable with just a line drawing, i grayscaled up the valkyrie a bit!

she just didnt look finished standing next to the other two.

Yay chicks in armor!

wooooo!!!!!!!!!

I R have blast draw chicks in armor!

So i have a 4th chick in armor not posted, but i was thinking - welp i have one barbarian chick, i got one valkyrie, and i got one that is sorta goth'ish so i says she is the Sinister warrior. with the forth one she's like a pirate ... sorta....

so i was thinking, warrior of the north, south east and west... the valkyrie protector of all goodiness, the goth chick lives like in a volcano castle or something... the barbarion in the forest... and the pirate chick is in line at the optometrist because she's lost stereo vision.



ehhh ok i include 4th warrior here. I didnt include her to begin with cuz she wasnt that great - i dont like her much. She kinda like a chinese mongorian "gole damn schitty wall" pirate chick:

Welp, time to put that port together.

YUP!

Rough times, and i dont blame my company for any of it. this sorta thing happens and all you can really do is look up and hope for the best.

Hate the big L-O... but what can you do?

here's a piece i was working on today.

Diggin' through the old 'bin!

rummagin' around the old bin looking for some additional portfolio material and i ran across a couple old norman rockwell studies! WOW these were large pastel studies i found just lyin' about on my hard drive :)

no new drawings as of now :( been mostly retouching old ones most have seen... man... i was a lazy ass back in the day. Look at all those nonsolid blacks!

***IT LOOKS SO GOOD SHRUNKEN DOWN OMG! i'm gonna print stamp sizes of these!***