a few thumbnails tucked under my belt, and here’s a first pass. maybe i was trying to channel frank miller while playing with flora and fauna, but this slightly odd sketch is the result. it’s technically not there, but the idea manages to come through anyway. practice, practice! more bearish-ness to come.

i had an idea for an illustration where a big shambling bear comes upon a tiny little bug in the clearing of a snowy forest. i did a couple of thumbnails, and did a quick pencil of a lantern that i wanted the bear to be carrying.

so over christmas break, sara (with the help of my mom) sewed up a couple new pairs of jeans for herself. she had a lot of monster fur to flare out a pair of jeans with (photos forthcoming), and she wanted to put a monster pocket on the back to go with the rest of it. so she asked me to do a couple monster designs for her. i did, and these sketches are the result. i really like the guys in the upper right and lower right. sadly, they are the second and third sketches for both pages. *sigh*.

i’m posting from a netvibes blogging module. while that’s neato and everything, i’m not sure i see why this is so much more awesome than posting from my actual wordpress admin interface, which is the next tab over.

hmm. maybe i’m missing something.

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edit:  this post closed for comments, since the spammers seem to really like this one for some fucked up reason.

what a crazy holiday that was. lots of wii sports, lots of family and family dogs (yay!). not as much sketching as i had hoped for, but i’m happy with what i did accomplish. got a couple nice artbooks (frazetta and n.c. wyeth) for christmas, along with a big ol’ sketchpad which i’m happy to have. and man, did i clean up on dvd’s. sara and i keep a list of dvds that We Can’t Figure Out Why We Don’t Own Already, and we managed to cross many off of that list this season. in quick random order: spiderman, free enterprise, back to the future boxed set, labrynth, dark crystal, mirrormask, fast and furious 3: tokyo drift*, and done the impossible (the firefly fan documentary)! it’s nice to have these among our dvd collections, but man — now we’re hurtin’ for more shelf space (yet again).

*: because i have screen credits. and the chase scenes are cool. oh, and seeing the vfx work i did on the Mitsubishi Evolution in the main menu loop of the DVD was pretty sweet. :)

saw Night at the Museum with my family, which was really nice. it was actually quite the entertaining film, and as always, it’s a big ego boost to see my name up in the credits for the visual effects. i was going to take a picture with my cellphone, but mom jumped up out of her seat and starting whooping and hollering, so i missed the pic. but i appreciated the enthusiasm! even though i did a lot of work on the zebras, oryxes (orii?), the rhino, and a couple other animals, it’s still nice to see them on screen and have the illusion fool you, even if only for a little bit. now i just have to go see Charlotte’s Web with sara sometime this week before it goes off the big screen. it’s my first ’3d lead’ credit, and i aim to see it in the theatre!

vacation always ends, and it’s hard coming back to LA again when it means leaving my family behind. i always have such a good time hanging out with everyone, and there’s never enough time to do everything you want to. dad and i (well, mostly dad) made a sweet cutting board that’s on it’s way to us in the mail. you can see pics of it at mom and dad’s site: avant gourds. and mom and sara made some awesome pants. we’ll have some pics of them up soon, but we have to decompress from the holiday first.