Ed Emberley Tribute

Growing up, I didn't know it, but Ed Emberley was one of my favorite artists. As a kid I had several of his books, and I have to say he was one of my first artistic inspirations. I used to love to draw from his books, follow the steps, use all the fun shapes, and adding all the detail at the end was my favorite part. One of the things I love about Ed Emberley's work is the way he designed his characters off such simple shapes. It's one of the first things that I think we all learn and do as designers when we are working on a character design, or thinking about structuring a layout drawing for a background. Start simple, and play with simple shapes to help vary your design, then go from there. Anyways, even though I haven't thought of Ed Emberely's work for a little while, his whimsical design principles thankfully are permanently burned into my brain and it wasn't until I saw this post on Cartoon Brew today about a gallery showcasing some work as a tribute to him, that I stopped to take a look back at his work, and reflect on the influence his style and artwork had on me as a young artist.

I'm not part of the gallery opening, but I felt compelled today to illustrate a Sasquatch inspired by Emberley's style ( shown above ) and in true Emberley fashion, I illustrated the steps on how to draw this particular Sasquatch. For anyone who either wants to follow the steps bellow, or has kids who would like to create this Sasquatch from the steps below, go for it! and email me a scan of your piece and I'll post it here on my blog. My only request for those interested would be to follow the steps on real paper with marker, pencil or preferably crayon!



Two great artisists in Trip Park and Amy Mebberson showed their love for Mr. Emberley's work by contributing to this post with their awesome work below.



Here are a few images of Embereley's amazing work I grabbed off the internet. To read more about him click HERE , or head over HERE to buy his books online.

Interview on Sketchaholic.com

Recently, I was interviewed by the great Bobby Chiu on his website Sketchoholic.com . Some of the things covered in the interview was my character design contribution to the new film Toy Story 3. If you wanna check out the interview you can see it HERE . For those of you who are new to the Sketchoholic website, here is a little run down of what you can expect to find there:

Sketchoholic.com is where animation artist Bobby Chiu broadcasts live interviews with artists in the animation, film and illustration industry and asks them to share their thoughts and beliefs about art. On other occasions, Bobby also conducts contests where he paints live and encourages people to paint along with him. Winning submissions wins some original art. The site is free to join, just head HERE to do so.

Bobby had asked me to hold a short contest of my own as well for my interview. My contest was to draw/design/create a "Wall Street Cyclops" basically a Cyclops investment banker. The submissions into the contest were awesome! Everyone really blew me away with how many unique, fun and creative ways they apporached the design challenge. You can see the submissions on the page Bobby set up for my interview HERE .

All in all, Bobby has set up a really fun and informative website at Sketchoholic.com. There are tons of great interviews that can be found all over the site with some of the most talented and inspiring artists working today. And in addition to all the great interviews on the site, the drawing/design contests that Bobby holds on the site are a particular favorite of mine, as I love spontaneous character design challenges.

Below is my good friend Austin Madison's contribution to the contest, I just love the putting green and the blue tooth ear piece!



Details on my piece below

Wall Street Cyclops
5" x 7"
Acrylic, Paper Collage & Cold Hard Cash
2010

Toy Story 3 Character Design

As one of the lead character designers on the up coming Toy Story 3 film, I had my hands full with designing a whole bunch of new toys for the film. Once the film is released I'll post some sketches and go into more detail on the fun I had working on the film and all it's new characters, but for now, since I can't post and sketches yet, I thought I'd post one of the posters that was released for one of the characters I designed. Mr. Pricklepants was probably my favorite character I got to work on and design, here is the poster / render of him that's been released, and I have to say, he pretty much looks exactly like the drawings I did back when I was working on his design. More to come once the film is released.

GO SPARTANS!

April 6th:
When I'm not drawing and painting, I love watching and playing sports. I absolutely love basketball, and tonight my favorite college basketball team (Michigan State)is playing for the National Championship. While I'm from California, I have family roots in East Lansing and my Aunt and Uncle worked for the school for years. Not much else to say about this quick painting other than I felt like drawing the school mascot "The Spartans" as I would like to imagine them going into this game ready to kill. I hope they win.

April 7th:
UNC destroyed us last night to put it nicely. Oh well, there's always next year.

Opposites Attract

One of my favorite ideas to play off of when I'm sketching is the concept of extreme opposites. It always gets me laughing and wanting to push the limits as far as I can. This one is pretty tame just playing with the idea of a cute and sexy girl waiting for a bus and a creepy guy who likes looking at cute and sexy girls while waiting for hopefully the same bus. I'm not sure where this guy is, probably bar tending at a bowling alley or hanging around a college campus, but I would love to meet him, as for the girl, I know exactly where she is, which means I should probably apologize to my fiancee Crystal for drawing her into this situation, however it's so much fun, that I'll just have to apologize again because there will definitely be more!

Waiting at the Bus Stop

So my apologies for the extreme lack of posts this new year, things have been so busy for me, that all the stuff I've been wanting to show, I've been working on. As I finish stuff, I'll be posting it, so basically the flood gates are about to open. As for the drawings, here are a few rough designs I did for a project I'm currently in the middle of. There is something fun about drawing un-attractive 50's era businessmen. They can be out of shape, hung-over, un-organized and strung out, yet they are still appealing. I feel like I could draw thousands of these guys, and I probably will, so If it's dead beat dads or creepy office co-workers your looking for, I'll supply them here!

Future Project

So I have been working on so many side projects that I haven't had time to put anything up for a while so sorry for that. Anyways here is a rough color study of two characters from an up coming side project I'm working on, I'll post more when I have more.

I'M BATMAN!

When I was younger I always thought I would be a comic artist. Well, even though I'm not, I still love drawing super heros, so I thought I would start doing some fun sketches and paintings of some of my favorites. Batman is a great character so I thought I'd start in his world and see what happens.

Evil Scientist

Not much to say other than this guy is probably up to no good.

The Ancient Book of Sex and Science

So the guys and I have begun to work on our next book, "The Ancient Book of Sex and Science." It's going to be a really fun mix of sexy sci-fi and ancient modern science sex pulp. Anyways, I'll be posting some sketches and a few pieces in the coming months of what I'm working on for the book, and so will Scott, Don and Lou. So keep your looking balls locked to the internet box for more updates.