It's all about the Dark Knight!

Over the weekend, I went to see Medieval Times + Batman Rises for my friend's birthday. The first sketch came about because our yellow knight was wickedly awesome, but got destroyed by a cheap knight on a horse. There were no other knights as wolverine-like a fighter as he was, so alas we were sorta rooting for the bad guys... The bottom one is fun doodle! Two kid bickering, because of a out of control rocket.

35th and 36th Sketchcrawl

 

July 14th was the 36th Worldwide Sketchcrawl, and the LA Sketchcrawl group decided to visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I didn't make it out there, but managed to sketch a bit from a coffee shop in Burbank. Some of their artwork (and fun experience) is posted: http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=7946

 3 months prior was the 35th Sketchcrawl. I did a few sketches (above) at the Glendale Brand Library.

 Pages from the good ole Sketchbook!

Applejacks - Desert Stampede

(Click to ENLARGE, much better in high resolution)

Done originally as what should have lead up to a portfolio piece, but had left it alone for months. Mostly because it was really busy with many dark lines, and equal lighting. It sort of looked a little dull! Played with the color overlay to get an atmospheric vibe with the canyon walls and giving a shade in the front helped out the composition. Really glad I came back to this and finished it!

As far as the story of the Applejack's goes...they eventually leave their RC hometown in a fixed up shaggin wagon. Their poor sense of direction leads them into a misadventure, involving rounding up a herd of cattle (farm in a desert), who in turn, stampede them through desert canyons. Their make shift escape plane begins to fall apart upon take off. Mag (the machine) flings himself to hold the wing together. They redirect the stampede back home through flight!

AppleJacks - Hangout

Two band-mates hanging out in the park, only one of them is like a battery.

Played around with some screening affects in Photoshop. 

Definitely like the hipster retro photo effects.

Sketchies - 02

Fresh doodles drawn during lunch and breaks while at work. Colored and stuff on Photoshop!

Have been reading Trigun and a little of bit Assassin's Creed, so the ideas are filtering in here.

A Very Deadly Trap!

Mouse likes to nom-nom

Nom-nomming leads to trap

Trap leads to death

Mouse will nom-nom no more :(

Tis a sad Mouse

Link! Skyward Sword

Death from above!

I've been playing Skyward Sword over the last few weeks. The game is like visual candy, there's a lot of neat textures and patterns throughout. I could walk around Faron Woods and stare at the ancient trees or the symbols on the temple walls for a long time while my heart meter drops to 0. Also, fighting like a crazed monkey seems to work out better than pretending to be a calculating samurai.

Happy New Years 2012!?!

Happy 2012 Everyone! Year of the Dragon! My main resolution is to draw/paint something everyday + continue work on Applejacks. I'm hoping to have a few sketchbooks by the years end and not stressing out after Thanksgiving dinner.

Dog Canyon Exercise :P

My storyboard teacher gave me a note to utilize the entire space to help my storyboards become more cinematic. Having the characters move toward/away from the screen is helping open up a lot more options for storytelling. Am pretty curious if using a long down shot of a barren desert underneath the dog's house would help to better sell that there's nothing to eat.

Plasma Arm Superheroine - Roxy

Sketched her out to be a super heroine of sorts with an plasma arm that activates when in battle/protect civilians. I imagine her to be a swift as elves and somewhat a scout. I would love to see someone sketch out super heroes as friendly tags on allowable walls. This was inspired by the awesomeness of Avengers on Netflix.

Applejacks Exploration!

 

Exploring the Mood/Emotion for Japanese Rock (Jrock!). Some bands are very dark and flashy (Malice Mizer), while others are high energy and inspiring (L'arc~en~Ciel). I'm taking some time to research some well known Japanese bands, which turns out into watching some amazing concerts :) It's pretty amazing how far these bands go to dress and stage, it's almost like a musical. This piece is a mixture of both kinds of moods.

Story Ideas for the Applejacks

 

So, needed to play around with potential story ideas for the Applejacks for Story @ Concept Design Academy: (here's what I got)

1) established band on their first road trip tour.
2) fighting giant monsters with music (and elemental creatures) to protect their RV park home.
3) other band gets jealous of Applejack's awesomeness. They might sabotage them or just be a hurdle for every adventure they go on.

Character Exploration + The King's Speech Comp Studies

I'm taking Story Development for Animation @ Concept Design Academy right now. Our assignment this week is to explore our characters a bit further. This is a vingette character exploration of the Applejacks (a band I made up). Mag, the robotic boy of the group has a talent for rebuilding himself as well as building other robots/machines. He does this in the basement of his parent's RV home. The RV community usually requests the strangest coffeemaker combination machines from him.

These studies, taken from The King's Speech, were mostly for the lighting effects on storyboards. Also practicing foreground/middle ground/background elements. There's quiet a bit of depth of field camera work with conversations between characters, and the blurry lines look pretty cool on storyboards.

Archaeologist Mickey

A quick sketch in continuation of my lessons with Mickey Mouse. He's still a tough little fella and I feel that with great practice, makes him greatly difficult. Been having a few requests at work for a few Disney Characters, so I hope to be well practiced with them.

Mickey Mouse - Test Animation

At Disney Consumer Products we've been shown how to draw Mickey and his friends once each week by Jeff Shelly. Mickey's surprisingly hard to draw because of the balance between design and draftsmenship needed. Most of which is achieved through a lot of drawing time with him. I've been tinkering around with this scene, finding different ways to make Mickey snooze, yet retain his likeliness. It's summer! so having a lazy summer laid back demeanor felt appropriate.

A Mother's Day Rooster + Experimentation

So every Mother's Day I typically like to custom-make my mother's card. It would be a pretty half-folded bristol card with a beautiful rooster drawing on the front and very meaningful writing inside. Previous years have been a pastel, impressionistic rooster, a watercolor version, and comic-looking drawings with frightened dogs. This year I realized I had an extra frame and was really inspired by the graphic japanese drawings that my Mom likes too. Lo and behold, I drew this for her :)

TADA!

Explored some different ideas with thumbnails. The Japanese style sorta came as an accident when wanting to make the rooster dynamic. Getting rid of the farm and background really helped par the idea down.

60% completion : Was sorta debating on watercoloring, but still strong as black/white

This is an experimentation for a animated piece that would have been a lot of fun to complete. The idea was to have the video feel like a comic book while still having decent animation and looking sorta modern. I have permission to show this is a self-promotion and this content belongs to it's respective owner. Enjoy!

Gift to FedEx friends!

Every day during my time as a costumer service and FedEx shipment handler, the same FedEx tag team duo would show up. As it was the last stop for them with FedEx being right across the street, sometimes they liked hanging out while I had panic attacks from learning to do my job. These two were particularly dynamic has you'd have a tall muscly Gaston-like guy  followed by a tiny spunky fellow that loves to joke around. Half the time, I wasn't exactly sure where he was. I always appreciated their company and they heckled me to draw something for them before starting at DCP.

 Each of them got a FedEx Truck variation!

Star Fox Rough Animation

Star Fox Rough Animation Scenes from Jesse Soto on Vimeo.

So during my internship at Titmouse, I would occasionally have some time to rough out animation here and there to become more familiar with Flash and the techniques practiced there. Symbols, scene organization, tweening, etc. Eventually production for TV shows became more demanding so scenes were carried out at home, on my spare-time. The idea was suppose to turn out as Star Fox crash landing and being tracked down by a persistent, yet animalistic machine that burdens atmospheric entry and mechanical failures. Fox would have the sharper instincts and fight back with his calm and cool foxyness.

On the road to Storyboard Boot Camp

Keep in mind, it's made-up.

I always went with my best friend to the movies throughout my teenage-hood. If I had an itchin' for "Over 9000 Zombees", she would always be with me. And usually, this was on a Tuesday night. Films like "Teamwork in the Spotlight" and "Hidden Secrets" was packed with enough pathos to have us watch it more than once.

"We may have stitched arms and limped movements, but we can't be

ripped apart when united. Hands in, everyone!"

"Grandma carried that box through everything. And we needs 

what's inside. Please stay focused for once."

While my best friend re-experienced the movie, I kinda started noticing patterns in the shapes during certain shots.  Some shapes almost looking like a huge NFL-lineback next to a smaller track-and-fielder, even though they were of the same height and weight. Sometimes I felt a bit of apprehension, and sometimes I understood the moment a lot easier. At the time, it didn't occur to me why the filmmaker would do this, he must have been crazy.

But it drove me crazy to not know it when I was in storyboard boot camp many years later. While it wasn't the most important thing. It was damn important enough to seek everyone's advice, where the multitude of possible compositions confused me even more.

With a hodgepodge of logical compositions selected, I loaded my boards and made way to the presentation room. Nighttime assured quiet "able-to-freak-out-as-I-thumbtack-my-boards" time. If I didn't select the right compositions, would I be caught red-handed?

Lucky for me everyone complemented on the pretty boards (YES!) and could mostly tell what was going on. I survived the pitch, and with hopes of less insanity in the boarding phase next week.

Xerox'ing storyboard drawings was the next step towards becoming a full fledged storyboard artist. The machine ambushed me with paper storm the night before the next pitch. Why must you be so hard!?!