(I really liked his head, and then I added the wattle/flap and he sort of looked like a chicken, so I felt like I had to continue. I don’t much like his body, which is why there isn’t much of one. Since this is just a sketch, I should be able to give him better treatment in painter…)

In other art-y updated, I’ve been working on some concept sketches for a private project I’ve been sort of pondering. Over at Concept Art.org, there was a Character of the Week (CHOW) challenge to re-design some of the wizard of oz characters. I didn’t really get around to doing it, but once I did, I sort of took the idea and ran with it.

I’m thinking of a different sort of oz, where dorothy (who might not be named dorothy in this version) doesn’t get the ruby shoes. Anyway, haven’t gotten much further than some character designs (and a monkey), but there will probably be more. In my version, the cowardly lion isn’t actually a lion, but a prince (with a hamlet-y backstory and his family crest is a lion-SYMBOLISM!) exiled to oz; the tin man is a golem of sorts and dorothy doesn’t wear a dress. The scarecrow I’m still sort of working on, but will probably be something undead…

Oh and the winged monkeys aren’t called winged monkeys (but you know that’s what they are…). I imagine they’re more of a prosimian-esque species, probably cave dwelling (or at the very least nocturnal- hence their overlarge eyes). They’re a smallish scavenger/predator (probably about jackal size- but lighter, seeing as they have to “fly”) that dwell in caves and deep forests. They are notable for their modified wing arms- though they’re much more like flying squirrels than bats (hungry, terrifying flying squirrels…)- which they use to glide between trees. They have prehensile tails with a single claw on the end that they use both for stability and defense. They are also notable for mobbing behavior when they encounter a potential predator, which has given them a reputation for malevolence…

*my only major gripe with that film was the final, big bad dragon. While pretty to look at, it’s wings were WAAAAAY too small for it to believably make it into the air. The dragon itself was way too big to fly (as are most fantasy dragons, but they’re allowed some leeway), at least the other dragons in the film were designed with at least a small nod to aerodynamics and to a lesser extent, physics. Magic only gets you so far, your wings have to be believably large enough to get you off the ground. Apart from that, the movie was beautiful and adorable, and the dragon animation was fantastic. Definitely worth checking out.

Also, doodled RhinoBot. Really need to work on my mechanical stuff, it’s just not something I have a natural aptitude for. Figured I could try to ease into it by taking an organic concept that I am comfortable with (a rhino) and turning it into something mechanical. Rhinobot is generally used as a siege weapon- its snout is actually a diamond edged drill that can be used equally as a ram. Its single “eye” is actually a high powered light- so Rhinobot’s drivers can see where they’re going. Essentially, it’s a slightly more modern version of a trojan horse (but with ramming power, reinforced metal sides and the ability to cram a whole army inside instead of just a few greeks). So actually, more like the bastard child of the USS Monitor and the Trojan Horse…

need to do something more interesting with its legs, maybe with more of the prosthetic cheetah style- since you can do more innovative things with robots than you can with organic creatures…

sky kraken

and a gryphon:

still working on it. this is the tutorial/speedpaint I’ve been following.

Messing around with different painting styles in photoshop, trying to achieve that fun scratchy look and ended up doodling these guys. Kind of liked them, so I kept going with it a little bit. Originally I was thinking something semi-more cliched like “he’s off to battle she doesn’t want him to go” junk but now I’m thinking it’s more like they both fought in major battle and now comrade is dead, yada yada yada. Added the bloody bits mostly because I’ve been playing a lot of DragonAge lately and one my favorite touches in that game is after you fight anything, your whole party is spattered with blood. So you have all the normal conversations with NPCS and stuff, while spattered in blood.

Okay, so I think it’s funny.

What was most alarming was his hair. It grew in all directions out of his head in clumps that seemed to move of their own accord. As he moved his head, it seemed to follow a fraction of a second too late. The overall impression was of a large frightened cat on the top of his head. The bits of his face that managed to escape from his exuberant facial hair were ruddy and slightly tanned. The man spent several minutes standing in the path, sniffing the air and examining the underbrush distractedly. Eventually, this inspection brought him round to see her standing before him.

“HAVE YOU SEEN IT? IS IT HERE? DID IT FLY THROUGH?!?!”, he inquired in a loud and hearty tone, while continuing to survey the seemingly empty trees.

“Er, seen what?”, she managed to squeak out as she stumbled backwards, since being in front of him while he spoke was like being in front of a firehouse.

“The OWL, dear lady! Tiny chap! Wings, Big eyes, brownish plumage. Cheeky way about him. Hard to miss!!”, He gesticulated wildly as he described it. As he was speaking, a tiny brown bird, which may have been the creature in question, fluttered out of a nearby bush to settle on the strange man’s shoulder. He didn’t appear to notice.

“Ah…er. That owl?”, She stammered and pointed to his shoulder. The man swung his large, fuzzy head to look at the bird and his face broke into a grin.

“THAT’s THE CHAPPY!” He patted the bird and fastened a tiny chain to its leg, before turning conspiratorially to her and adding, “He’s a real escape artist, this one. Almost impossible to keep! But I’m not called the best for nothing!!”

“Er..and what is it that you’re the best at?”, she whispered and then stepped back slightly to be out of the main blast of it.

The strange man grinned and handed her a business card. It was almost completely blank except for a small picture of an owl in a cage and the words, “DAN RODRIGUEZ: OWL KEEPER” neatly printed in the center.

—————-

So several years back, at new years, there was some kind of trivia game from whence came the title (for one of my friends) “Dan Rodriguez: Owl Keeper” and I drew a tiny picture for his fake business card. For whatever reason, I’ve been thinking about how to make The Owl Keeper an actual character and I had a brainstorm the other day and had to get it down. Also I really need to practice painting semi-realistic people in photoshop. Mostly this is just a doodle, but now the idea of the Owl Keeper is kind of lodged in my brain and may take more than one doodle to get rid of him. I sort of imagine him as a combination of over-eager sportsman and park ranger, and probably the reason he’s “the best” is because he’s the only. But this doesn’t occur to him- the owl keeper has a bit of an ego about him. So when people ask what he does, he replies that he keeps owls. What this means is anyone’s guess.

I think he just collects lots of owls and trains them to do things. Or tries to anyway. I can just see him trying to have tea with a great horned owl, a buffy fish owl, a barn owl and possibly some screech owls. Hmmm…

(photoshop cs3, 2010)

I’m pretty sure I’m not going to finish in time, but it’s nice to finally have some kind of inspiration- I work best with art direction. Anyway, here’s a screen shot of my version. I really like the idea of bioluminescence, plus if *I* was the fairy queen, I would want to be tiny and have my city take advantage of the awesomeness of shelf fungi.

T-shirt design for my brother’s dance marathon team . They were really into dinosaurs and I gave them two ideas (one with only the t-rex and this one) and this is the one they liked best. I really like how it came out, especially the stegosaurus. It’s three colors total (black, orange and white) on a dark blue t-shirt. I’m getting an honorary shirt, so I’ll post pictures of the real thing when I get it.

Really dig doing t-shirt designs.

So today I have for you adorable squirrels (actually, more correctly, adorable squirrely butts). Tomorrow? Who KNOWS. Possibly baby rhinos, or camels, or frilled lizards. Very likely there will be more squirrels (I like squirrels), possibly even these squirrels in the aftermath of their peanut buttery indulgence (but who didn’t eat peanut butter from the jar at some point in college?? definitely not me…)

Been working with one of my brothers on his final film project, “Break” (which is loosely based on Euripides’ Medea, and then more loosely inspired by the graphic novel version of Medea I did my sophomore year of college).

The uncolored storyboards are more of the quick and dirty type – the “i only just got our final shots today and can you do these storyboards overnight, please?” kind. I kind of like working on that kind of deadline, but it usually results in the less than perfect storyboards (and this is not super acceptable for portfolios and the like). So I spent the portion of today NOT spent searching for jobs to apply to and applying to them, working on some loose color ideas for page 2 (which is full of gore, so of course I went for that). I was trying out a vector-ish look which I sort of like, until I did the Lucretia smiling panel in a more painterly style (but still with super high saturation), so now I kind of want to go back and do it all in that style…

we’ll see.