New Book Available

My new book Roughhousing is now available in the shop!

$10.00

36 pages

full color

WonderCon!

Hey everyone!  I will be attending Wondercon this weekend in Anaheim.  I'll be in Artists Alley at Table 21 so stop by for a free business card  and hug.  

This image is from my new book "Roughhousing" which will be available this weekend.  I'll also have the original drawing for sale!

Demo

A digital painting demo I did for my students lats week.  Let me know what you think!

Coming soon...

Character Communicators

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  Work has been especially crazy the past few weeks.  I've started teaching character design again at Woodbury University.  Teaching is fun and challenging, and it also affords me the chance to reflect and learn myself.

I discovered that in my first semester teaching a word kept coming to the fore front of my lectures and discussions with students.  The word is "communication" and as I thought about it more this semester I came to realize that character design is exactly that, Communication.  We are communicating who these characters are to our audience.  Not how handsome or how cute they are or how cool their costume or weapon is, not how well we can push and exploit shapes but WHO they are.  What are their dreams and aspirations, how would they treat the people around them?  That's what character design is.  The "design" only serves to communicate who the character is and that's it.  Design is often thought of as a form of communication.  It communicates purpose and intention, so if you really think about it we are not character designers we are character communicators.

Sorry for the long post.  Just thought I would share my thoughts as I discover these things teaching.  I am in no way claiming to be an expert or that my thoughts are the end all be all.  Character design is a very subjective topic and I think there is room for many ideas and theories behind it and they can all successfully coexist.  Also this is something, since making this connection, that I am WELL aware of I need to work on and will keep this in the fore front of my mind going forward.

Also here are a few drawings from recent @sketch_dailies topics on twitter.  give them a follow some rad stuff going on there.

Islander

The village witch doctor in training

Bad Omen

The elf queen has had a premonition.  First post of 2014.  Let me know what you think!