Do it, "for the Fat Lady"

Halloween sketch

2011-10-21T09:53:00.003-07:00

A random warm-up drawing from this morning.

Can anyone explain how this isn't a terrible idea?

2011-10-20T11:15:00.010-07:00

"We had to move to the stand-point where we wouldn't ask anyone to work for free" ?????WHAT????? Is that supposed to be visionary? Seems like craigslist want-ads for artists on the corporate level.

A new way to take advantage of content creators without any liability or benefits?
This is a six part video.

Cancelled Project

2011-08-04T13:21:00.008-07:00

This is from a cancelled game I worked on a few years ago.

Property of Disney Interactive Studios

Here's a link to the teaser Blur Studios produced. All the design, and storyboards were done here at Disney Interactive.

Constraints

2011-07-22T10:33:00.002-07:00

I was curious to work with the constraint of some basic shapes. Originally I wanted to see if I could correlate shapes of different cultures with the colors that represent them. So, for example, pointed domes would be in a color representing cultures that use them, or at least didn't suggest other cultures.

In the end, there were too many shared shapes between the different buildings that made cultural color coding ineffective. I'm thinking that there would have to be at least one more set of blocks with more specific shapes. I plan on experimenting more with these.

I created these in Flash so I could instance the shapes, allowing me to update colors on the fly.

Kitty

2011-07-18T10:53:00.002-07:00

My wife's friend's cat tends to cough while sticking out her purple tongue.

Hear Ye!

2011-07-07T08:49:00.002-07:00

Ghost Rider

2011-06-15T12:16:00.002-07:00

Not that I find this character compelling, just fun to draw.

Spring Time

2011-06-13T11:25:00.002-07:00

It's already mid June and it feels like Spring in Utah. I'm lovin' the mild weather. Hopefully we make it through to September.

Strugglin' Along

2011-06-07T16:21:00.009-07:00

These days it takes extra effort to stay motivated. Sometimes I like to take a break at work and draw something for myself to keep the creative juices going.

Just Keep Swimmin'

2011-05-13T10:19:00.002-07:00

A couple of years ago, just before my wife started an internship at the state prison, her mother told her, "just be like a pitbull. Bite on and don't let go."

Mech-ic Mickey

2011-04-29T16:02:00.008-07:00

I pitched this idea for a game to a couple of guys at work. I thought it'd be a great game to attract the people who are too cool for Disney, yet harbor a secret love for the mouse. The object of the game would be to pick a Disney character as your avatar and then slowly build up your mech, gladitorial combat being the purpose. Alas, it never made it out of my office.

On our honey moon, my wife and I noticed how appealing the Disney cruise ship looked compared to the Carnival ship that we were on. I find it interesting to see how the "Disney Aesthetic" gets applied to various objects and how it triggers feelings of familiarity and nostalgia.

So why not giant robots?

Do I Have Egg on My Face?

2011-04-23T10:57:00.004-07:00

Definition: Have egg on your face
To seem stupid because of something you have done.

Saturday I was cooking eggs for Rachel while she got ready to go out. I got a little to complacent with our cheap pans with no insulation on the handles. Needless to say, I got burnt. The best part was that the instinctual reaction to widthdraw from pain resulted in me flinging hot, moist scrambled egg into my eyes via plastic Tigger plate. I now know the origin of the idiom, "do I have egg on my face?"

The Big Kid

2011-04-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

My wife and I were recently up in the Toronto area visiting my family. While we were there we joined my parents on a few of their outings to the city pools. As I get older it's interesting to see the different stages of life from the top down view. Now there are little kids that are big kids to the even smaller kids. This one was definitely aware of her oldness in comparison to the small fries.

Chillin'

2011-04-06T12:57:00.002-07:00

Crotchety Turtles

2011-04-06T12:28:00.003-07:00

Something for the AvaSketch blog.

Knife Dude

2011-03-31T11:05:00.004-07:00

An old drawing I found

Josh

2011-03-30T09:22:00.002-07:00

Sketch'ns

2011-03-29T15:37:00.002-07:00

Expecting

2010-12-08T21:05:00.004-07:00

We're expecting a baby boy in May so I painted this up for my wife a little while ago

Epic Mickey

2010-11-30T23:38:00.011-07:00

Epic Mickey was released today in North America. It was developed at our sister studio, Junction point and a small team at our studio had the privilege of helping out over the past year. Here are a few shots I got to paint up for concept purposes. I got a screen grab from the guys down in Austin and then had about a day to do each of these. The purpose was to address lighting and minor texture work. At the stage of production we were at we weren't allowed to touch anything else really. Not all of them are what I had hoped but we were under the gun to get stuff done. All in all I'm happy to have worked on the project with our team here at Avalanche.

More to come...

Matte Paintings

2010-03-26T18:27:00.006-07:00

These are three WIP's of a number of matte paintings I did for a freelance job last year.

Bats

2010-03-26T18:24:00.001-07:00

Salinger

2010-01-29T10:46:00.006-07:00

JD Salinger died on Wednesday. I don't know much about him but that one of his books, from which this blog takes it's name, inspired me to pursue a higher level of excellence. At a tough time in my life it provided me with clarity, and reminder that the discovery of personal truth is the value I derive from my work.
When Mike told me the news I was surprised at the depth of my reaction. Although I did little to cultivate a place for the author, the little exposure I have had with his work has had a lasting effect on the way I perceive - a fitting nod to his greatness.

NY TIMES

Here's a lengthy explanation of what his writing did for me.

2009-04-30T21:53:00.001-07:00

Video Game Art

2009-04-29T16:06:00.003-07:00

Here's a tank design I did for the "Bolt" video game we worked on. I don't think this design got used.

Copyright Disney

Random drawing day

2008-09-09T09:35:00.011-07:00

Here are some random drawings I found that I thought to post.

This post is at the request of some co-workers. Enjoy!

My office mate and friend, Sam Nielson.

Random zoo drawings from one of my regular excursions to the zoo.

Sometimes I'll go over to the State Capitol building accross the street on Sunday mornings to draw. The interior is filled with a wonderfully silencing quality of light that seems to provoke children to play, and which adults revere.

value study

2008-08-14T16:43:00.005-07:00

I got inspired by some friends at work doing lunch time studies, so I thought I'd do one too. This is from Karsh's Winston Churchill portrait. I spent about an hour on this one.

Warm-ups

2008-07-28T09:45:00.002-07:00

I'm pretty busy these days with other things so all I have to post is sketches.

Pioneer Day

2008-07-24T11:57:00.005-07:00

On the way to work I couldn't help but stop and sketch the paraders.

This guy was part of the little convoy representing the Cowboy Poetry festival/reading.

Hoagle Zoo

2008-07-14T14:32:00.004-07:00

Here's a couple of sketches from the zoo on Saturday. Its been a struggle to get back into it but it's starting to be less painful.

This guy was scratching his chin with a piece of straw.

Zoo

2008-06-18T09:39:00.001-07:00

I found out I live 10 mins from the Utah Hoagle Zoo. My wife and I got an annual pass so there will be more zoo drawings to come.

Rachel

2008-04-28T22:01:00.005-07:00

A few quick sketches of my wife as she falls asleep while watching TV.

Franny

2008-04-10T20:50:00.002-07:00

Some more development of this character. I think this one is a little more true to character. It's been a good exercise trying to pinpoint it.

Bill Whitaker

2008-04-04T12:15:00.008-07:00

Bill Whitaker, a great painter, came to BYU to lecture and demo for us yesterday. He is one of the most wise, kind, and passionate artists I have ever met. Fortunately, for us, he is a special individual, equally gifted as a teacher. I could really tell that he loved what he was doing, and that he was a faithful servant of his art. It was a great experience. I meant to draw him intense-which he was, but he may be coming off mean-which of course he wasn't.

Head study

2008-04-03T10:04:00.004-07:00

About 2 hours. We had a sleepy model last Tuesday. Must be finals time. It was a bit of a challenge to paint a nodding subject but it was a good exercise in painting with a clear concept in your mind and using the model for reference only.

Switcheroo

2008-03-31T14:43:00.011-07:00

A rough pass of a personal animation test.
So the idea here is that the yellow guy is trying to look inconspicuous as he sneeks away with the macguffin (a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise). The green guy bumps him and switches the object for a fake one and hilarity ensues. Enjoy!
ps
I haven't yet put in the object the yellow guy is carrying or animated the camera.

Untitled from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

Zooey

2008-03-13T00:59:00.001-07:00

OH SNAP!

2008-03-11T08:29:00.004-07:00

My friend Nick gave me some good pointers on how to make these better. The originals are posted bellow

Designs

2008-03-11T07:56:00.004-07:00

Some exploration for Darryl and his classmate.

Head study

2008-03-08T12:32:00.005-07:00

This is a study I did of my wife as a baby. It was a color photo but I reduced it to black and white in photoshop and painted it from value. This one was about an hour and a half.

2008-03-06T16:58:00.003-07:00

Untitled from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

Here's an update on this scene I was working on. It's still not finished but they switched the last windows machine I was working on at school over to Linux and so I can't finish it and make it pretty. Oh well.

Darryl

2008-03-03T12:06:00.003-07:00

This is an old character from a pitch for a show my friends Rob,Paul, and I were working on. I decided to paint 'em up this morning for fun.

Design Dump

2008-03-02T23:01:00.002-07:00

Here's a bunch of design exploration for a personal project. The story is about indecision and self-definition. More to come.

Portrait

2008-03-01T14:30:00.003-07:00

This one was last Thursdays painting. About 2 hours long.

Franny

2008-02-26T18:53:00.003-07:00

One of the design projects I have going.

Portrait

2008-02-25T11:06:00.002-07:00

Portrait from class. This one is about an hour and 45 min. Didn't get as far as I would have liked to in building up the color, so it looks kinda yellow still from the under-painting. I didn't get to work the edges either so it looks kinda blocky..but I think it's kinda neat.

Revised

2008-02-23T20:17:00.002-07:00

Here's the same scene but with some revisions. Again, very rough blocking.

Revised from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

Edwards

2008-02-23T12:42:00.004-07:00

I forgot the golden boy, John Edwards. Thanks Ron for reminding me. He always looked like he was smiling so hard his face would explode. I thought he'd do a great job with social policy and feeding the hungry, etc...but I didn't ever get the feeling like he had a strong position on a lot of other issues.

And..the Democrats

2008-02-21T16:58:00.002-07:00

Just to make it clear that I have no partisan allegiances.

Animation Test

2008-02-19T15:12:00.002-07:00

Here's a work-in-progress of a clip I've been animating

Mr. President from Jason Kim on Vimeo.

Presidents' Day

2008-02-19T01:09:00.007-07:00

I was flippin through the ol' sketch book and found some caricatures I did during the republican debate a couple of weeks ago.I did these color versions in photoshop.

Stand and Deliver

2008-02-16T20:41:00.003-07:00

I drew these while watching this movie last night. A little research for a project I'm working on. Lou Diamond Phillips at his best! So smooth

Portrait painting

2008-02-16T12:17:00.006-07:00

I feel I had a little breakthrough with color and edges while painting this. This was probably a little under 2 hours.

Igor

2008-02-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Feedback from GM

2008-01-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Jess Bailie, a designer at GM, did his own version(right) over my design(left).
Thanks Jess

Portrait paintings

2007-12-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a coule of head painting from my final in the class. The first one was done from life while watching an episode of the office, so about 30 - 40 mins..and the second was about the same or less done from a photo off my laptop.

Trans Design Final Poster

2007-12-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

Here's my final poster that I'm going to present to the GM designers.
Hope the like it. It's been one of the best classes I've ever taken and I've learned a ton about vehicle design and just design period.

Concept Car Profile

2007-12-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

Here's the last of the 3 photoshop renderings. I had to do this one pretty quick so I didnt get to finesse it.
I'll post some rough sketches and progression when I get a chance so you can see a bit of my though process.
Obviously the cars in the 3 different views don't match up perfectly..but I found that with each different view there were some proportions and shapes I wanted to experiment with. That's what's fun about design, right?

Car design

2007-12-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here's my second view. I struggled a lot with this one so I build some quick geometry to work over.

The previous post was done in photoshop overtop a graphite drawing.

Final Rendering

2007-12-15T00:24:00.000-07:00

Here's the final rendering of this view, updated with my own rims. And a couple of minor adjustments.

Concept Car

2007-12-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

Here's one of my final renderings for my transportation design class. This was one of the coolest classes. The extremely talented Spencer Nugent taught us and it's too bad he wont be sticking around(having to graduate and all). The project was to dissect a brand identity and design vehicles using the same visual cues, value system, etc. Most of the students worked with existing car brands, and Ty and I picked clothing companies to base our designs off of. I chose ROOTS clothing and tried to incorporate some of the eagle beak shapes I saw on native American sculpture. I started with some very obvious visual cues but ended up going for something more subtle. In some ways it was harder, and in some it was easier, working with a brand that didn't established vehicular aesthetics. I'm pretty happy with it but I can't take credit for the rims. I grabbed them off the internet and did some paint touch up over top just for temp place holders. I also put em on backwards. If I have some time after finals are over I'll go in and design my own.

National Eyvind Earle Day!

2007-12-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

So while walking to church I noticed some beautiful shapes and forms, reminiscent of the great Eyvind Earle. Unfortunately it wasn't until a few hours later that I was able to run back home, grab my camera and get back to where all the amazing-ness was going on, so alot of it melted and isn't as grand as it was in the earlier hours of the day. Maybe I'm just seeing things that aren't there..but you can decide for yourself.

2007-11-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Our model got sick and left so my classmate Michelle took one for the team and sat for us. This one was just over an hour long.

Personal project

2007-11-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

From the story I'm working on.

2007-11-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Wednesday figure painting

2007-11-16T13:27:00.001-07:00

About 2 hours.

2007-11-10T07:27:00.001-07:00

For my teachers project.

2007-11-09T15:08:00.001-07:00

Figure painting from last Wednesday. I ran out of time and didn't get nearly as far as I would've like to in this study but I kinda like it anyway.

Figure Painting

2007-11-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

Monday figure painting. I did one I like today as well but it'll need a day to dry so I'll post it on Friday. This one's two hours.

T shirt design

2007-11-07T12:14:00.001-07:00

I did this for a client in Japan. It says Alabama three different ways. It was supposed to have an America theme.

Head painting class

2007-11-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

Some more paintings from class.
these are anywhere from 20 mins to an hour and 45 mins or so.
I've been trying to get economical with my brush strokes and I've been struggling to paint just what I see. The scanning process really takes them for a loop, for better or for worse.

100th post

2007-10-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

These are a bunch of marker sketches from my sketch book. They're not at all to scale with one another since I had to resize them to make them fit together. They were done with a staedler brush pen thingy.

Visit from Sony

2007-10-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

Some nice folks from Sony Animation, Imageworks...etc. visited the school a little while ago. This is a compilation of caricatures I drew of them.

Revised

2007-10-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

Here's the same painting after some talented painters at work Yoda'd it up.

Personal Project

2007-10-21T23:55:00.001-07:00

For a story I'm working on.

Some of my first car designs

2007-10-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

So here are some of my first car designs for my trans design class. Really boring and not to concept-y. We had Jess Bailie here from GM helping us out so hopefully I'll be able to implement some of his wisdom and step it up. We were all supposed to choose a brand and base a design of the values of it. Not being a transportation design major I decided to do Roots clothing to base my designs on. I found some new inspiration so I think the new stuff will be better...I hope.

Wednesday's portrait

2007-10-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

Last class' portrait. this one was about 2 hours.

2007-10-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

A couple of shots of Rachel and a really cool sculpture at school..somewhat reminiscent of Alexander Calder.

My First Head Paintings

2007-10-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a head painting class this semester from Don Seegmiller. I'm really learning a lot and having tons of fun. The idea is to only use 4 colors(titanium white, alizarin crimson, yellow ochre, and payes grey) We have to do 3 a week plus one a class. The first one at the bottom was painted on the first day with no instruction. I guess Don just wanted to see where we were at. (Really frustrating day). These are on either canvas board or masonite and are anywhere from 30 min. to 2 hrs. I've posted them chronologically starting at the bottom taking a few out that were really bad.(not that these are very good...I just kinda like em)I've adjusted the levels slightly because they really went chalky and grey when they dried. The light from the scanner reflected off the paintings so there's a lot of streaky grey where there should be flat colour....oh well.I didn't realize how bad student grade paints were. I got some more decent stuff now, so let's hope they get better.

My first painting

2007-10-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

A couple of quick concept paintings for a project at school. First one's based on a photo..and i was more playing with the treatment.

2007-09-26T14:21:00.001-07:00

This is our second assignment, which was to create some abstract compositions using design principles we learned. The parameter that we had to work with was to shoot an entire 36 exp. roll of one object/subject. These are of a staircase in one of the buildings on campus. There were some nice shots from some of the other students, and I wish I could show them.

2007-09-26T14:11:00.000-07:00

I'm taking an intro to photography class as part of my major's requirements. These are a few shots from our first assignment which was designed to help us learn to use the camera. (f-stop, light meter, shutter speed, depth of field..etc.)

My fiance took this one of me. She never believes me but I think she has a good eye.

2007-09-23T21:31:00.001-07:00

Here's some color studies for our senior year film. That's an upside down grandpa pointing at the boy in the first frame.

2007-09-22T14:28:00.001-07:00

More Sat morning plein air sketches. First one is from sprinville, and the second two are from Sundance. Gouache, or maybe just the ones i'm using, goes really chalky and grey after it dries, so i bumped up the saturation in photoshop a bit.
These are done on small postcard sized watercolor paper.

2007-09-21T16:13:00.000-07:00

These are some quick sketches I did for a project I'm helping out on. While trying to incorporate some of Gauguin's lines and shapes into them, I realized just how great the design is to some of his paintings and figures.

2007-09-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

Some doodles from work that made me smile.
They remind me of how my friend Nick Dubeau and I once went on a sumo wrestler drawing kick in the 5th grade(i think). This has nothing to do with the title of my blog, which for me atleast, has some sort of meaning.
Also, this may not be apparent at all, but I was looking at Bruce Timm this morning and fell in love again with his simplified yet sophisticated shapes.

2007-08-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a little more elaboration.

2007-08-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

More bus ride inspired mountains.
I'll tighten it up a bit at lunch

2007-08-29T09:41:00.001-07:00

BAD / CHEEZY fantasy art

Stargazer the little prince of porpoises.

This is my contribution to the new >Avalanche blog topic, "bad fantasy art."
When I was young I had this tie-dyed dolphin shirt that I thought was the coolest. So cool that I wore it to class pictures in grade 5. I like this guys echo location guitar.
It took about 5-6 hours. I know...that's way to much to be proud of on something like this.

2007-08-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

A doodle from the Disney Interactive meeting yesterday. I threw some light value over it in photoshop to help it stand out a bit.

2007-08-27T11:38:00.001-07:00

Here's another one inspired by the bus ride to work.

2007-08-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Jed and I went to provo canyon early this morning and caught the sunrise creeping over the foothills. It's the start of our weekly painting excursion. It was done in gouache on a postcard size piece of water color paper.

2007-08-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

Morning sketches at work

2007-08-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

At work we started to go out for quick sketching at lunch on Fridays. This is Lael who works downstairs. Thanks to the nice lady at "Skool Lunch" for the rice crispy squares.

2007-08-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

"Flying Lesson" revised

Here's the same image but having gone through some critique by Sam Neilson and Tom Scholes at work and a little more elbow grease. Thanks for the help guys!

2007-08-16T11:24:00.001-07:00

Flying Lesson

This was inspired by a dinosaur drawing That Jed did. It turned out real James Gurney-ish(dinotopia). It was a sort of assignment from the all talented Dave McClellan. I'm sure he'll have some good suggestions on how to make it better once he sees it.

2007-08-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

This started out as an exercise at work we did to learn how to use value and saturation. It was originally all painted using one hue but I added some other colors to accent it. I'll post the original if i can find it.

2007-07-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

Here's one of the initial sketches for a design exercise I've been giving myself lately.

2007-07-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

Random StarWars caricatures and Andy Warhol?

2007-07-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

lunch break sketch from work today