BS170 Booster Art

A good friend of mine (Neil Oler) was bright enough to design a boost pedal for electric guitars. He called me up one day, asking if I'd be interested in hand-painting some of the artwork on the pedal cases. This is part of the first test-run he sent out already. It was sort of an improv painting of a random monster, and I felt it needed a small bird on the tip of its tongue.



Now that he's gotten a few more orders and things are looking promising, I'm spending more time actually planning out some designs. I'm pretty excited about this project.

Russell Hantz

Bless his arrogant little soul, he makes Survivor 10x more interesting. I sketched this on a Post-it note and added the text and "background" with GIMP.

Playing with Fire

A coworker introduced me to a nifty little Java-based program called Flame. It's a project created by Peter Blaskovic for the purpose of enabling anyone to be an artist in some fashion. It's a very ambitious project, and at first I simply thought of it as a fun diversion. The more I play with it, however, the more I'm learning that you can make some pretty cool stuff with it. Now if he just sells it to Adobe so they can put it in Photshop CS6, that would be cool. :)





Try it out at http://www.escapemotions.com/experiments/flame/index.html#top

Self Portrait

This is the latest little piece I've completed. I didn't exactly use a mirror for this. This is just how I see myself, I guess. I came out looking a little more sad than I originally intended. Happy pictures are boring anyway.

Frog Bath

Yes, more frogs. This time it was to keep a promise I made to Mandi. Our bathroom is decorated with all kinds of frogs accessories (shower curtain, toilet seat cover, etc.), but the wall above the hand towel has been desolate since we repainted in there. So, Mandi requested that I make some kind of frog picture to go there, and this was the final idea. I figured a bath scene is fitting for the room, after all.

I'm still not entirely happy with this piece, but as I have some other important projects coming up, I don't have a lot of time to re-do this one.

Kirppu Sketch/Concept

I needed to sketch out how Kirppu would look. I didn't want the head to be too exaggerated and large, but I didn't want completely realistic proportions either. This sketch (which I later added color to) became the favored and final version of the character.

Watching Fireworks--Kirppu concept

This is a cartoony rendition of Mandi a.k.a. Kirppu (Flea). The mood is just right, and the fireworks illuminate the night. We'll soon see what wonderful adventures await her and Kaze!

Painter Experiment--Snail Traveler

Painter 9 Essentials came with my Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet. I've been messing around with it off and on for a couple months. I really love the water-color effects it can simulate. The digital realm is a LOT more forgiving when it comes to painting. Hence, I am now greatly infatuated with Painter.

I started this one as a simple landscape picture, but decided it was missing something, so I added a giant snail--just like I do when faced with any problem in life. Just add a snail.

Melchoir

This little buddy is Melchoir. He's sort of a scout/warrior frog. He started off as a doodle on a post-it note, but I liked him so much that I decided to finish the lil' guy. I had a lot of fun with this one.

Alrighty. I figured it's time to finally put my artwork in one location for easy access. I've never been much of a blogger, so