Grim Reaper playing violin

Discovered this old design I had done years ago and guess I forgot to post. Just a grim reaper showing off his mad violist skills.

Power Rangers Balloon for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 2014

I work in the very busy Creative Department at Saban Brands and my focus is Power Rangers and kids' entertainment properties. This is one of those projects that when it landed on my desk early last year, I couldn't believe I'd been given the opportunity to work on it.

Me to my boss: "Wait, this is for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon."

My boss: "Yes."

Me: "But... it's the Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon."

My boss: "Yes."

Me: "But...."

This went on for several minutes. (This is normal for me at work.)

And then I got to work.

We knew we were going to feature the Mighty Morphin Red Ranger as the balloon; Mighty Morphin is the "classic" original series from the early 90's in the US and the Red Ranger is usually the leading central ranger and favorite. Originally, executives wanted to see a few pose options: a horizontal to the ground pose, a side action-kicking pose, and a somewhat upright pose. Here are the initial rough sketches I did in Feb:

Sometimes showing visually that something won't work, is the only way to prove that it won't when explanation isn't enough. Of course, Macy's had a team of engineers who would also later consult on the flyability of the designs.

Ultimately a more forward-leaning/horizontal pose was chosen. Macy's had their own artist do some sketches and I did overlays to help correct the anatomy and pose.

After a few more rounds of anatomy and perspective tweaks, and flipping the pose, Macy's next step was to create a large clay maquette of what the final balloon would look like. This was an interesting part of the process and I wish I had been more involved in this part to work with the sculptor (and even know his/her name!) . The sculpt itself was around 3ft tall! It went through several rounds of revisions, to get Red's costume just right (or as right as it could be, given the limitations of details when it comes to a creating a super hero balloon!). Huge credit to the sculptor, who did speedy revisions within hours, usually less! I did some overlays to correct the helmet.

After the clay maquette was approved, it was painted, colors were discussed. The model was then created in 3D software. I'm not sure how this part of the process went, or again, who the artist(s) was/were on their side. Here was an overlay to tweak the helmet.

This is an animated gif, not sure if it will work on blogger.

I believe after the 3D renderings were done it was then output to the final product of the balloon which was then hand-painted with the precise PMS colors it requires. Originally, the morpher was painted grey, and asked them to change it to dark metallic gold/brown color, and did final passes on all colors.

I'm sure there are many parts of the process I've missed in here, but in the end, I was amazed with the amount of detail they did manage to produce in the Red Ranger.

Many many hands touched this project, and countless hours of hard-work and teamwork went into it and in the end, I'm so proud to have been a part of it. Watching the Red Ranger fly that Thanksgiving morning for millions of people to see, after months of work, and all from a rough sketch - was quite incredible.

Red Ranger at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade 2014. Photo from the Power Rangers Official Facebook Page See more photos here: https://www.facebook.com/powerrangers

Separately, I have to mention: it was also a big day for my friend Simon Otto, Head of Animation for DreamWorks, who designed the (How to Train Your Dragon) Toothless balloon (which flew near the Red Ranger!). Go Simon and go Toothless!

These balloons, now that I know and appreciate how they are made, have a whole new meaning to me. I hope you've enjoyed and thanks for reading if you made it through. Ha!

All images and Power Rangers are © Saban Brands LLC. The statements expressed here are my own.

Troll doodles

Rejected character designs: Popples

Here is some 80's nostalgia. Thought I'd share a couple rejected design sketches from last year. I wanted to modernize them in the fluffiest way possible!

Medusa

Quick sketch of one of my favorite characters of all time.

The Journals of Mama Mae & LeeLee

I just came across this in the process of cleaning up & backing up some files and can't believe I didn't post it before now. The Journals of Mama Mae & LeeLee was a project I worked with Bento Box Interactive on two years ago. It's an interactive music/journal/game app by Alicia Keys and BBI, revolving around a little girl named LeeLee and her connection to her Grandmother and music. It's such a beautiful concept, and a personal project for Alicia Keys (of whom LeeLee is a reflection).
It was an honor for me to be able to contribute and end up having some of my designs a part of the final product.
Here were some of the many rough logo concepts:

 

And ultimately the final, still used today.

The yellow oriole bird character is a big part of the story and because it was to be used in the logo I was able to submit some character designs for her.

Alicia Keys ended up liking one of my designs and it was chosen to be used as the final.
Here was an early color version but it was too dark and masculine:

And the cute final version!

Here were also some visual/branding concepts for the inner journal pages and animation.

 

And that's it!

Cafe reader

Wow, a new post! I figured it was time for a new one. This is a little doodle I did last year in Italy, while sippin on some cappuccino and pretending to be painting something else every time this dude looked over.

ISM 10 Year Anniversary Print

This was a limited edition print I did for ISM's 10 year anniversary that was given away to honorees at an award ceremony last week. This was a lot of fun to do and I was honored to be a part of the celebration.

Kitchen characters

This was art I originally did for a mobile game app but I might use them for something else.

I don't know her name.

A quick caricature, inspired from this image of supermodels wearing no make-up in bad lighting. She stood out to me and had to draw her.

Lots more soon!

Naughty, Naughty School Girl

I thought I posted these awhile back, but I guess not. They're a couple years old, drawn from life at The Drawing Club. (click to enlarge the raunchy details hehe).

The King and the Caveman

A couple silly character designs, playing around.

The Office

Maybe a weird way to start off 2010 posts since New Years, but for some reason I was inspired to do a few charicatures of The Office staff. I've always liked the Office, even though this season veered on a strange course. I don't really have a favorite character either, I love them all because they're just the perfect mixture of weird, together. I started with Dwight and laughed the whole time I drew him, then randomly did five more. I used picture reference online, and tried to spend no longer than 10-15 minutes on each (So, apologies, Angela for your unintentionally mannish jaw, I didn't allow myself to fix you).
Here are: Dwight, Jim, Angela, Creed, Kelly, and Meredith.

Illustration Friday - Wrapped

Couldn't think of anything else. :( Oh well, Mr. Mummy will have to do.
Have a great weekend!

Afternoon doodles

Who wants to work when there are kitties and silly characters to draw and paint?!

Illustration Friday - Impatience

We've all seen her. Or we're related to her. People impatient with her, and she's impatient with everyone.




My good buddy Ryan motivated me to do I.F. this week, tonight being our deadline (you better finish yours and post it or ELSE!!!) So I tried to keep minimal colors, and couldn't decide if I like her with or without shading, so posting both. I'd like to say these were done quick but they kinda weren't. The sketches were, but trying to keep few colors was a fun problem-solving process, as simple as they are. I end up doing too many variations for my own good.
Anyway, and now... back to work. Have a great week!

Colored Heads

Because it was fun! These are random doodles from meetings and such I decided to color before going to bed. Saw "Dead Alive" for the first time tonight with friends, and though it was hilarious, I needed to ensure my last thoughts before going to sleep are gore-less....but now I just reminded myself of the head in the blender part... dammit. This isn't working out so well.

Epically long post.

Where to begin! MrTiki was a massive project and a labor of love. It was a virtual world, based on a magical island where almost every decision you made on the site affected your alignment to good or evil - the inhabitants and animals (called "Spirits") of the land vs the villainous, rich Mr. Woo (and his team) who "discovers" the island and plans to take it over and turn it into a tourist trap. I was invited to come on board as the third partner in Dec of 2006, to be the Co-Creator/Art Director/Artist. We all loved this brand we created, and I absolutely loved being the artist to bring it to life. I worked on it up until the summer of 2008, so you can imagine the amount of work that was produced. It's daunting to even think about it, looking back. To start there were only three of us: myself, "Volte6," who was master programmer and infrastructure, and "mrdweedles," game programmer and marketing person. Then Wee joined us, a very talented game developer. Kinh came on board as our amazing writer (who ended up writing altogether about 300 pages worth of damn gripping story). Much later, "TikiMaestro" joined us as our audio engineer and created beautiful theme songs for the world and sound effects for the games, and his wife "WeeOne," later joined as an artist to assist me with overflow. Aside from getting the actual site design/layout/infrastructure developed, we updated weekly with a continuing story line for our readers that included news images, usually involved site events happening on the island, we had a crazy amount of games (including multiplayer), shops which contained insane amounts of virtual goodes in the economy, a working economy system (currency was called "Tiki Tokens"), maps of the world, quests for users to complete, a system to own a "Spirit" feed it/play with it/care for it, a battle system to fight your Spirit against others, we had downloads for users, ... phew, this was an undertaking... a tiki mail system, a forum for users, collectible coconuts, high scores systems with trophies, etc etc ETC.... It was so cool, the site even changed from day to night depending on the time.
We had a steady and growing userbase - I'm not sure on the numbers but I believe we reached upwards of 10,000 users (I could be way off here), without much marketing at all. We also had a wonderful beginning of a fanbase with lovely fansites such as: http://mrtiki.wordpress.com
It was a HUGE accomplishment.. is, rather, and I'm proud of all of us for what we did. Unfortunately some months ago, there was a mishap with our servers and the site experienced a heartbreaking meltdown. I hope one day it all can be recovered and mrtiki can live on in all it's awesome tikiness. In the meantime I believe some of our games can be found on newgrounds.com
Here is a selection of art I produced. I hope you enjoy and thanks for reading and looking.
Click images for larger view.
Site design for homepage in the day and in the night:

Logo sketches to final (bottom right)

Tiki Island Map

Tiki Village Map

Wootropolis map & a couple shop interiors

Misc art: Konoso gravesite, Anantiki holiday scene, Cave of Impending Doom sketch, Tiki Temple interior

Foggy Coast sketches:

Some character dev:

Some Spirit art:

Some game art:

Some virtual goods:

Battle system and Spirit care system interfaces:

 A selection of weekly news images that accompanied the weekly story:

 Misc art: Calendar for users to download:

Concept backgrounds:





I will try to post animations another time. :)