The Flannel RabbitDerek's Art Blog

This is a sketch of a plaid zombie.   I am trying to come up with a character for the new art blog I’m starting with some friends.

I went to the Comic-Con in July.   It was my first one.  I did go to Wonder-Con which was fun but nothing compared to Comic-Con.  I was in SoCal for 2 weeks on vacation.  I stayed at Disneyland for a week and went to the San Diego zoo while I was there.  I figured (back in May,) that since I was going to be down there anyway I would go to the Con too.  It was hands down the best part of the trip.  I’m going for all 4 days next year!

I will also be wearing a long sleeved shirt because there are a lot of fat sweaty nerds that bump into with their B.O. laden glandular problems.  Not COOL.  Comic-Con 2010 needs a Purell booth.

I got to meet John K. the creator of Ren and Stimpy.

I don't think I would want a picture with any other celeb.

He did this drawing for me. Awesome!

I hung it above my animation desk to remind me I'm not that good.

Here are some more photos from the best day of my year.

Not a big Trek fan but the new movie was cool and I couldn't resist doing the Kirk lean.

Everyone got a free 15 foot statue but I accidentaly left mine by the pretzel cart. Damn their salty goodness!

Oh and the Twilight movie sucked ass.  So lets hope they don’t make the trip next year.

I like drawing portraits because when you’re done you know if you’ve done something good or not.  These are all around 24x 30 and done with vine charcoal.  I prefer to draw portraits of other people but you learn a ton from self portraits.  Like for instance, I learned that I suck at it.

This is a friend of mine. She wanted a portrait for her boyfriend. I did this mostly from a photo but she had to sit for some of the facial details.

This is a portrait from a photo as well.

This is a portrait of me from photo. And yes that is a blazer with the sleves rolled up. I was at an 80's throwback party. The white charcoal is really bright in the photo for some reason.

I started painting with watercolor a few years ago in college.  I made the first one for a class and the next two were experiments before I learned how to paint.  The big difference for me after taking the class was the time they took and the looseness of the look.  I took the class to learn to paint more abstractly and to stop overworking the painting.

A self portrait from a few years ago for a class. I really liked it because it is looser than the work I usually did up to that point. Panting it was fast and messy. I tried to use colors that were as far from what I saw in the mirror as I could. It took about 25 minutes.

This is a portrait of Audrey Hepburn. It was my first attempt at watercolor but it was way tighter than I wanted and painting it was more of a chore than anything else.

Yet another portrait. This was my second watercolor. I was much happier with the abstractness of this one but I was unhappy with the lack of satuation and some of the details. After this I decided to take a class. I then modified this one a bit. I'll post it later on.

Rejection is a very valuable lesson to learn if you are an artist.  You have to remember most of the time you are being paid to bring someone else vision to life not yours.  You have to learn to separate yourself from your work so you don’t take it personally.  One of my mentors once told me “it’s the things you work the hardest on and the things you like the most that are the first to go when it comes time for review.”  He was totally right!  You think you understand that until the first time it actually happens to you.  Keep in mind if you want to last in this field you can’t become bitter or difficult about it.  You have to take the job for what it is, be creative where you can, and keep a good attitude.   You’ll get to make some calls for sure but if you want creative control of everything you work on you’re dreaming.   If you can be creative within the constrains of the job you will be better for it.

Below is the concept art I started from.  I needed to make it a vector piece in order to animate it and make it scalable to 2 inches tall and even smaller in some cases.  It needed to be simplified in order to animate it of course so I thought I’d see if I could stylize it to make in more fun to animate.

This was the original concept by Brian Backus.

Below is the design I came up with based on the concept art I was given.  Certainly, it was a big departure from the original but it was cute, modern, fun, and simple. I thought it would be great for the 5 to 8 year olds we were designing for. This guy was a cartoon! He looks like he could be flattened in one scene and stretched way out in the next.

This is the style I wanted to use.

It was rejected.  (Immediately I might add.)  It was to much of a departure to handle.  It was a hard pill to swallow because I really liked the design.  (Still do.)  I got caught up in making it and around me everyone really liked it.  So by the time it was reviewed by the creator of the original I thought for sure he would like it.  WRONG!  He didn’t and he had every right to hate it.  I’m sure from his perspective he really liked his design and everyone around him really liked it.  It made me realize I was there to bring his stuff to life not create my own.   So I designed the one below.

This is what we settled on. Still cute and not too complex. I just thought that he looked less like a fun cartoon and more like the type you see in the reserved cartoons of the 80's.