O-Rah Gon of the Deep!

Here's a sample painting I did for Gunship Revolution. Props to Kitt Lapena, Tots Valleza and Emman Javier for the tips and encouragement hehe :)

Late November and early December has been blessed, and that's a testament that God is in control. As the year comes to a close, I can't help but be thankful that He's blessed me and my family with a lot and that He's allowed me to live my life the way that I want to.

I am believing that next year will be greater and that it will eclipse the blessings of 2012. More goals will be hit and God will work more wonders into our lives and careers.

Cheers!

Preparation

My client, Renee as Rogue and her husband as Hulk.

I believe that God is always preparing his children for bigger things.

Most of my projects since I went freelance are painting... very few of them, at least until around August or September, required me to make lineart the way  I used to when I was very into drawing comics. Lately however, while my work still focused on painting, there has been some projects that required me to draw specifically in "comic book" style.

A few days ago, a client that I worked with on a comic book pitch emailed me that in a couple of weeks we'll be working again on a continuation of our previous project.

I don't know what my next projects come 2013 will be, although I've talked to a couple of people on stuff that we might work on but I am believing that God will continue to prepare me for what's next. At this stage I am torn between painting and comics, with painting getting the most of my attention but if the Lord wants me to go where he wants me to go in terms of my drawing then I'll gladly take whatever he gives me :)

Busy Days!!!

Turn X!!!

I read this article from Lifehacker that tells of a mind hack to help a person be more productive at work by scheduling moments of procrastination or breaks.

Translated into how I work, it means that for every hour of work I put in, I get 10 to 15 minutes to spend on whatever it is I want to do.

For me that means standing up and working on a model kit (such as the Turn X above), messing around with my guitar or browsing online.

I was skeptical at this method, thinking that it would make me less focused but surprisingly it has worked so far. The logic behind it is that you get to accomplish more by being focused intensely for an hour than by working while browsing or working while the mind is off wandering somewhere else. As a reward, you get to do something that you like for 15 minutes.

Working as a freelance artist, I am tempted to do a lot of stuff when I should be working. Doing the method as described above has helped me to concentrate on my work knowing that later I get to tinker with my kits.

Because knowing that a break is coming after just 60 minutes, even if its brief, is always a better proposition than waiting for 4 hours to do something that you really want to do.

This also has the added benefit of forcefully taking me away from my illustrations so that when I get back to it after a couple of minutes I'm refreshed and I can see my mistakes more easily.

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On a side note... Kris and I are working on a bunch of cards for a CCG Very busy, hence the lack of personal art to share :)

Night Elf: Colored

Night Elf!

Aaand here's the final art... I wish I could have worked on this more but time just ran out and I got my client's feedback so I had to stop :) Drawing time!

Fan Art: Night Elf

Nigh Elf, from WarCraft

Here's something I've been working on while waiting for client feedback. Man I miss doing lineart right now and I'm just so glad that the project I' working on right now requires that I draw a tad bit more than I usually do :)

Jacq!

Here's a concept illustration / turn-around I did two weeks ago along with the Giant.

I'm normally awake until 3am and I can't help but notice a lot of kids hanging out near the Internet Shop outside our house. Not to judge them, but I keep on thinking about what they are doing with their lives and how much of their time is spent playing games online instead of doing stuff that's more productive.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against gaming, I worked in game development before. I think one or two hours is ok. It's no different from having other hobbies... I practically spend an hour or two daily messing with my model kits, tinkering with my guitar or watching anime so there's really no harm in doing stuff like that on a daily basis to unwind.

But to play half of your day playing games daily? That's like throwing your future away.

I wonder how many lives have already been destroyed by DOTA? Which isn't true really, it's just a game, and a good one at that. It's not the game that should be blamed, but the players who've become addicted.

So,  to be more politically correct, how many people have decided to waste their lives playing online games?

Red Bull!

Something to fill in some down time yesterday :)

The Giant... and Wunderlist

Yet another illustration from last week :)

Sharing this illustration and a nice app that I have been using to keep my sanity at the workstation, specially when I work on multiple projects and need something to keep my to do lists organized. I've been using this for a long time now and I have it synced between my PC and devices. Here's their site:

www.wunderlist.com

I also keep a bucket list here... stuff that I want to do but don't have the time at the moment... and I'm just the type of person who is more productive when I take short breaks to work on some personal stuff. When I think of something... say, "Paint the missiles on the a10 thunderbolt", I note that on my bucketlist and during breaks I'd take a stab at working on the items from this list as a reward for being focused at what I am doing for an hour or two hehe :)

The Beanstalk

Ze tower!!!

Still busy updating my folio :) Here's part of something I worked on last week.

Please visit: www.gunshiprevolution.com

Reward yourself, always.

Celebrating 3 years of being dry!

I quit drinking 3 years ago due to personal reasons. The habit just wasn't working for me anymore and it conflicted with some of my personal beliefs and philosophies in life. Saying no to alcohol wasn't hard for me. Initially I thought that it would take more willpower than I could muster and that it would be heartbreaking to say no to my friends when they offered me a drink but hey, surprisingly, it wasn't... And that's because I promised to reward myself every year that I am dry.

Every October I buy myself something nice as a gift to myself for being able to stay away from alcohol. The gift doesn't need to be grand, it just has to be siginificant or special.

The first year I bought myself an acoustic guitar. I named him Pablo.

Significance: I've never had my own guitar. This led to me buying Gilberto (a tele wannabee from Samick, sounds nice hehe) and Teban that was customized by my brother and a Zoom G2.1u that I am yet to fully use. That marked my return to guitar playing and has then been a reminder that I haven't really grown much as a guitar player haha!

Year two saw me going to Divi to buy a bootleg Master Grade Gundam.

Significance: I was curious. As a long time model kit builder and an owner of a stash of old Gundam kits from way back in college, I was fixated on the idea that I could get my Gunpla fix on a budget. I'm not a noob when it comes to bootlegs, in fact I have been building them since 2003 but this was the first time that I spent more than Php300 on a knock-off to see if it had potential to be displayable. I haven't painted the kit yet but it opened up a lot of possibilities for me as a modeler (hehehehe).

This year I got myself Superion which was ridiculously priced. Yeah... it's very seldom that I buy Transformers on an emotional whim. But I love the aerialbots and I remember my dad buying me one of the jets as a kid so when I had the chance to get this guy I just couldn't resist. I passed up on buying this figure around 4 years ago when it was on sale for Php800 because at that time I was collecting the movie verse and the Animated series and figured that this figure had ugly feet and stupid hands to boot so I really didn't want him. But then I saw what a 3rd party manufacturer did with him and I saw this guy on Youtube who butchered his TF Hulk and came up with a really nice looking Superion. I tried buying him off Ebay but the price was just too high so when Rommel and I went to Greenhills (where I was supposed to buy 4 TFA toys to round up my collection) I saw him and just went ahead and bought him.

Significance: I got for myself a toy where I didn't care much about the price, a very rare Bryan Sevilla moment. Well, of course the price really wasn't that high but I have rules when buying TFs: Either they're 40% off the regular price or I don't get them. I broke that rule when I bought him and now I'm a happy kid.

That was quite long but the lesson is short: Always reward yourself. I do that all the time. When I've hit a career milestone I go and get something that I like. When I'm able to beat a really nasty deadline I go and do something that I want to do. It's that simple, it's a way of disciplining yourself.

Bogs the Barbarian

Finally!

After being put on hold for far too long because of more urgent work, I was able to free myself for a couple of days and was able to finish this guy :) Whew!

Whew! Made it hehe!

Please visit: www.gunshiprevolution.com

Barbarian Update 2

I started to refine the details, hopefully I get to finish this in the next two days :)

Barbarian update

After a very stressful day I decided to work on this painting again. After a few suggestions from a fellow artist at the IFX forums I decided to fix the artwork extensively. I ditched the original grayscale painting after seeing the stuff in there that was wrong. I also don't paint in that way anymore so it was like a struggle for me to go and finish what I started almost 5 months ago. Now at least I feel like I am working on something new :)

Working in a Hospital

Baby Migs!!!

Yup! I spent the past few days in a hospital because my sister-in-law gave birth to my 1st nephew, Enzo Miguel :)

I think I've gotten used to this set up: I just bring my laptop along with my wacom and find a small table to work from while whenever I'm free, same way I did two years ago when my first niece was born. This way my brother and I can both act as runners as needed. It also helps that you've got an artist girlfriend who knows how to work with your style hehe (thanks Kris!).

By the second night I was pretty much useless to them as I didn't sleep on the first day because I needed to finish an art test. I was dead on the couch and woke up to Baby Migs doing this :

We were waiting for you, Migoy!

We were waiting for him to be wheeled in when I slept and my brother didn't wake me up, saying that it would be better if his first-born son would be the one to rouse me from my slumber. It worked in spades :)

Then I fell dead again.

We're all home and the kid is resting upstairs. As for me, it'll be comic book inking this Sunday till the wee hours of Tuesday :)

Work on them pages, soldier!

Work: Not today!!!

Tonight's inspiration

Things have been pretty hectic in our own respective studios for the past 3 or so months so Kris and I decided that we'd unwind today and just go out and do something that we swore we'd never do again after Habagat...

Hunt for Books.

And the book on the right, my dear friends, is what Kris got for me for our 2nd anniversary: Rough Justice: The DC Art of Alex Ross.

I initially thought that it would be a step-by-step showcase of how Ross creates his masterpieces. When we opened the book for inspection however, we both found out, to our pleasant surprise, that it was focused more on the thinking process behind the artwork of DC's Justice story. And the great part is that most of them are in glorious pencils, with comments, revisions and more.

When I got home I found out I've been sent an email I've been eager to get, and now that the situation has changed I don't think I'll be able to work for a couple of days on this guy (unless mood dictates that I work on him a bit):

Yup, I redid the colors hehe... still in the flats stage

So yeah, it was great that we took the day off. The next couple of days will be hectic fun haha!

On Motivation

WW2 Wolverine (will color this one of these days!)

My mom hated my decision to take up Painting when I was in college. She was very vocal about this and we often fought about my course way back then. My dad gave me just one talk about this, but that was mostly on how I should understand where my mom was coming from. She thought it was a degree that would not lead me anywhere and that she was afraid that unlike my siblings (one's an architect, the other a lawyer hehe) I'd be the one to struggle the hardest in life.
From that moment on I decided that my motivation would be to prove her wrong.

Let me get one thing straight, my mom was never a tyrant and never did she try to dictate what I should do with my life. I never had a "real" curfew growing up and my mom has always been supportive in all the stuff that I did when I was younger. I think it was because we grew up in a family that was very academically inclined. My mom has a PhD as well as two Masters Degrees so a title is important to her because it has helped her become successful and she just wanted the same thing for me.



Now this story is pretty common... it's almost the same with all the kids who decide to take an art course way back then. Now it's different, during my time parents didn't know about the options we had as artists and I have to admit I still find it hard to explain to them what I do. The new generation of parents played video games and read comics or watch movies and they know that artists work in those mediums so they're pretty cool with art stuff and all that. It wasn't the same for my generation.

Mamita recently retired and went freelance and she also encouraged me to do the same so we get to spend a lot of time talking to each other and I can't help but be grateful to her for helping me get my education the way I wanted it. Both her and my dad did what they can just to make sure the ride I took would be as smooth as possible even though they did not understand where I wanted to go.

Nanay, my Mom and Me

When I think about it, my motivation has changed although in some way it is still the same, it's still me trying my best to prove wrong the person who my mom was when I was 17.

But to the person who is my mom right now: it's me trying to prove you wrong in order to show you that I am very thankful that you trusted me when I was younger, even though everything you believed in told you that I was wrong.

Salamat Mamita!

Seeing Again

This morning, after long months of struggling with my sleep habits, I was able to wake up at 5 AM.

Wow... that is like, a career milestone for me. The couple of weeks leading to this morning was me sleeping at around 6 AM and now, as I am typing this at 12:45 AM, I am already beginning to feel sleepy. What got me up? A critique that I got.

WW2 Wolverine WIP

After Habagat I barely had time to work on my own stuff as I was rushing to finish off projects that got delayed. During this time frame too I was in a semi-regular correspondence with an agent who was willing to critique my work and gave me pointers on how to break into the business. Along with some very nice samples from his talents and some really neat pointers on where I should focus my art more he gave me a piece of advice that I am really really digging right now:

"Style is a collection of all things that an artist does wrong, because if everything was done right they'd all look like pictures."

Hwow... that was an eye opener for me. I've always thought of style as a collection of influences but when he explained to me that the most important thing to do is to develop an eye for seeing things and interpreting them. That is the key to developing style and that my problem was that I spent too much time looking at other people's work and studying them instead of spending my time studying real people and real objects.

What I was seeing was how other artists see their world. I should learn how to see mine and with those mistakes in the way I see things I will develop my own style which would help me survive the competition in the business.

That idea got me revved up again. The fact that I was seeing things through other people's eyes made me rethink of my way of studying and that in turn made me more interested in spending more time doing more personal art to develop my eyes.

And suddenly I wasn't pressured to conform to what I think my drawings should look like. I'm not yet there but I am enjoying the process of undoing the wrong stuff that I learned and I'm hoping and believing that the next few mornings would be fun :)

Update 082812

My studio... that's me on the left.

Around two weeks ago heavy flooding hit our place and my studio, which was located on the ground floor, was heavily hit. Good thing we were able to move my stuff upstairs and most of the damaged stuff that you see in the photo above are just the stuff that we decided we could not save. What has affected me a lot however was that the cabinets on the extreme left, which house our guitars and guitar gear wouldn't close because the wood got warped and wouldn't stay shut. Man... even if I don't play as much now I just liked the idea of having a cabinet with guitars... even if they're not my own :)

So I'm operational now and have returned to my studio which is suprisingly more spacious! Thanks to all the stuff that I threw away! My brother moved his guitars upstairs (around 8 or more I think hehe) and what's inside the cabinet are just the ones that I own. I've bought another big plastic box to house my other toys that aren't on display and I can say that from this moment on... it's plastic for me!

Moving forward I think I should strive to move my family off this place. This part of Malabon just isn't safe anymore. I know it only happens once in a couple of years but I've lived in Obando where it floods regularly and I just don't want that life anymore.

Here's a page I rushed yesterday for a review. I've been swamped by work and am just writing now to ease myself into another long streak of working on a card game to be released this October in Germany. I really wish I could have done better on this one but I was so neck deep in the paid projects department that I just couldn't give it the time it deserved.

At this point I am praying that I start getting bigger priced projects so that I don't have to work on so much. I know it's possible because I know people who do this but in order for me to get them I need to clean my schedule so that I have more time to work on my portfolio. I hope to be able to paint for cards or work on some more comics come September. Maybe do some concept work and such... and a lot less of the projects that I am working on right now.

I've also started to constantly remind myself to finish off the tasks that I have in the quickest possible way. I've realized, based on the last samples for Marvel that I did, that if I drag on working on a page for far too long the image begins to stale. I wasn't happy at all with the last 5 pages that I did for my samples. In fact, once I get a new batch up I will take them away from my portfolio. They remind me that I need to work faster and when I look at those pages I cannot help but be reminded of the times I bored myself pencilling stuff that I started working on months ago.

So I guess it just boils down to refining my schedule. I like to think that I got the hang of this when I was working at Anino and I was scheduling tasks for our art team but with just me here and Kristel helping me when she's free from her projects it just feels different. I think I accomplish less when I work alone.

Today marks the end of the overly busy week that was the other week and I'm hoping that starting tomorrow I get more down time and personal art done.

Cheers guys and God bless!

Hwow!

Hwow! Nothing much really to report... except that I was able to send my second batch of samples to Marvel and to other publishers but to be honest, I wasn't really happy with how those samples turned out.

It felt that since I have been working on them for far too long at them when I finished I felt no more connection to the pages. That's a problem that I need to address: I need to work faster so that I don't lose interest in my drawing but it just gets harder as the days go on.

I've been blessed to be able to work on a lot of projects, and things were supposed to be on track if not for the Habagat floods that set me back more than a week's worth of drawing time so now I am trying to finish my projects hoping that I could free up my schedule next week in order for me to move on to the next phase of my training faster. If things work out I could be training with someone I've always looked up to in the comic book biz :)

I am believing that come September I'll be able to move to bigger projects so that I don't have to take in as much work. So far the projects that occupy my waking hours have been fun: Some card illustrations for a game to be released in Germany next month, some concept work and a comic book pith plus a couple of vector illustrations and a digital painting commission. Half of September has already been booked and if all goes well I'm praying that I may not have to look for additional clients next month and work on the ones that I have right now.

So it's pretty hectic and I've set a calendar for 12 to 15 hour work days, but that's only for this week. God-willing by next week the schedule would be lighter and I could go back to more portfolio art.

Cheers and God bless guys!

Burn Out!

A couple of weeks ago I was neck deep in work that I got totally burned out. One morning I woke up and didn't feel like working at all.

So after two hours of sleep and a sudden urge to go toy hunting I called my GF and went to Divisoria to hunt for bootleg Transformers toys just for kicks.

There's this place in Divi that I used to go to when I was in college and was hunting for model kits that I could practice on. This place was a building that housed all types of KOs from China at dirt cheap prices and I'd go there with some of my friends whenever we had free time.

So I was there and I tried to find the KO Beast Wars toys that used to be so abundant there 6 years ago and I couldn't find any. Granted that it's been more than half a decade since they used to stock them there but I had this faint hope that maybe they weren't able to sell them and that they'd still be there. Nope, they weren't and instead I went home with two crappy TF's and two sets of pseudo-Lego's

The space ships were surprisingly nice... and very very cheap. Lego bricks would cost around 10 times what I paid for these guys.

When I was a kid my parents couldn't afford Legos and now that I've got my own money I wouldn't dare spend them on such expensive bricks.

Anyway, these are fun and a nice break from the model kits that I build whenever I feel the need to sit down and play with something. That's just me, I find it hard to sit and work long hours without fiddling with a figure.

I've been working on this guy for almost 4 months now, I think. I don't get to sit as much as I wanted to with my kits these past few weeks so I haven't been having that much progress but the Sandrock, as pictured here, is ready to be flat coated.

It's shiny because of the oil paints that I used to weather it and the discoloration and color filters that I used. This also brings me back to the roots of my college Gundam building days when I would use artist acrylics instead of Hobby Paints because I couldn't afford them then. I've decided that for this build I won't be using hobby paints since I don't live anywhere near a hobby shop that carries Tamiya paints and because I felt that I could pull off something nice using the cheap paints that I have at home.

It took waaay longer to paint but the results are ok with me :)

Here's a quick update on my Marvel try-out.  I still haven't been able to spend more than 4 hours on these guys daily and there are even days when I couldn't touch them because of the projects that I'm working on and sadly most of them are stuff that I can't post anywhere yet.

Just two more pages to go for my Marvel stuff and I'd be able to start working on new things come August. Thank God for the comic book gig and card illustration projects that are scheduled to start next month.

And yup! Finally got featured in ImagineFX's FXPose gallery hehe! So happy that I subscribed for one year!!! This one feels nice because being published in an industry mag was one of the top 3 goals for 2012. The other one's working from home and the 3rd, well, that's something that I'm praying and believing for right now.

Thank God for the blessings this year, 5 more months to go :)

Going back

Messy work area...

Yup... this is what my work area looks like from 12 midnight to around 3:30 AM. That's when I work on my Marvel samples. I spend most of my day working on freelance projects and because of this I end up waking at around 11 am.

Anyway, I heard one productivity tip and that is to defend your most creative time fiercely. I think I work more relaxed in the wee hours of the morning when everything's quiet.

I've been working traditionally for the past few weeks on my sample pages for Marvel because I work faster this way and that's because I have this nasty habit of zooming in whenever I work digitally. Working with a pencil is also a nice break from the long hours I spend illustrating with a tablet. Also, I feel a tad bit nostalgic when I'm working like this.

The light I am using is something that Manay gave me as a gift way back in 1998. That was the time when I was so in love with comics that I'd spend hours after school drawing. It's often that I'd be home at 5 then sleep at 6 in order for me to wake up at around 1 am to work on my assignments and then spend the rest of the early morning drawing Ghost Fighter and studying anatomy. It used to have a tape with this message: "Rome wasn't built in a day" which served to remind me that I should take my time to study the stuff needed to get what I wanted out of life then which was to draw comics.


The plastic board that I work on is something that I bought for myself in 2005 when I was working in animation. Way back then all I knew was that I wanted to work freelance at from home. When our studio then allowed us to take home the folders I immediately got hold of this plastic and started working from home which way back then was fun but left me in ruins financially.


Eventually I needed to work again so after 8 months I got back to being employed in 2006 and since then it has been a long road to being where I am right now which is almost exactly the way it was both in 1998 and 2006.

You need to buy a new scanner.

I'm beginning to fall in love with comics again after not wanting to work on it for quite some time, that's other than working on a Transformers comics. I've been watching loads of documentaries about comics and slowly and I know it's surely I'm beginning to understand again why I loved comics and also the super heroes that come with it, just the way it was in 3rd year high school when I started collecting issues. I'm also back to working on my anatomy via Loomis' book which was the same one that I used in 1998. I'm also working from home now like in 2005 and I'm thankful to God for giving me the means to do this now. God-willing I hope to stay in this position until I hit my next career goal.

Things do get around and they only do if you still want the same things for yourself, I believe. I like to believe that things are shaping up right now and I'm thankful for the clients: You guys allow me to pursue my life goals and for that I'll be greatful. It's just nice to feel like I'm high school again and still unwavering in my decision to pursue this career in art.

Oh... and here's a lineart I did for one of my clients. I know the actual painting looked different because I wasn't able to capture the face of her wife here but I had a blast drawing this. I'm in need of a new scanner though and will have to get one once I get the time to go out hehe (and when it's not raining!).

Hectic!

Digipaint commission for JimComp

Whoa... things have been pretty hectic recently and I haven't had the time to update my blog. Actually, I should be working right now so here's a quick round-up of what's been happening:

1. A lot of the stuff that I've worked on last week cannot be posted yet hehe... Hence the lack of updates to my portfolio. I try to find as much long term freelance projects to finance this journey to Marveldom. Let's cross our fingers and hope that what I'm working on right now will turn-out fruitful.

2. Wrapped up some short projects, this illustration here being one of them. I've been thinking too... it seems like I've been getting more projects doing digital paintings instead of comic book art and I guess that's due to the utter lack of sequentials on my folio. That needs to get fixed.

3. Late nights galore! I'm up till 3:30 AM almost everyday drawing and exchanging emails with clients. It's not that bad... in fact its better than when I was working. I stay up late and wake-up late so I still get 8 hours of sleep.

4. I was burned out last weekend and I just couldn't work so inspite of being wasted I decided to head on to Divisoria and scourge the old places that I used to go to when I was in college and search for KO Beast Wars toys. Unfortunately I couldn't find any and what I got instead was 2 crappy TF's that I plan to use on a kitbash project and 2 of these:

Pseudo-Legos: cheap and awesome!

I don't know why but the toys area of Divi has a way of relaxing me and making my mind work again... nevermind the snatchers, I've been going there long enough to know how to take care of myself.

5. And it's back to samples again. I've been messing around with my papers and pencils and hopefully wrap up another batch of samples for Marvel before this month ends. Hopefully I don't get that busy.

Me Grimlock say you baaaaaad!

My baby... my most expensive TF purchase to date (yes, I am cheap)

Here's Grimlock by the way... he's been dusted and is now back on the shelf.

Random Stuff: 063012

This week was pretty crazy... lots of deadlines and tons of good stuff happening right now. But let's start off with something I was able to finish that I can share here:

Valkyrie (BattleTech) fan art

I haven't painted a mech before so when a chance came to try paint one here's what I came up with.

It's a Valkyrie from BattleTech. I wasn't that familiar with the game but when I did a bit of research I found out that the game is closely related to MechWarrior, which was one of the few PC games that I actually got addicted to. It took me longer to finish than I had originally anticipated due to some projects so I decided that I'd lock myself over the weekend last week just to work on this.

I'm quite happy with it but to be honest it wasn't able to capture the essence of BattleTech. I'm very thankful to a more experienced artist who pointed that out to me and shared a lot of pointers on how an illustrator should think. I'm not sure if I can mention his name here so I won't but it is enough to say that in one email he was able to teach me so much about illustration. Plus it made me think about how important it is to have a mentor who will teach you from experience. So thank God for that.

My make-believe Light Box

I'm also going trad again and so far it's been fun! Well... my output isn't great but I'm loving every minute I spend drawing on this piece of hard plastic hehe!

I try to spend as at least 3 hours working on my Marvel samples everyday while listening/watching documentaries or Beast Wars. It's a reward to myself since this is something I really couldn't do when I had a day job.

Last month my cousin and my older brother were cleaning our storage area and they came across this plastic board (I don't know what it's called) and my old drafting board that I used when I was aggressively pursuing comics around 4 years ago. The plastic came from when I was working in animation around seven years ago so it was really nice to see them both and it made me think long and hard about working with pencils again, something that I haven't done in 3 years or so. Sadly all my drawing stuff is gone except these two so I'm in a mode right now where I'm buying again various drawing implements and messing around with different types of paper that I can get my hands on. It's been really fun but I have to relearn all the stuff that I used to do... heck, I don't even know what type of paper to use anymore!

The "printer-scanner-dvd-psp-Bible-camera-vado-hd" rack.

And then there's the scanner... This one's old... like way old. It can't even scan colored images properly now. Kris and I were supposed to go out and buy a scanner about a week ago but decided not to because she found out where her old scanner was. So I took that home and tried to make it work but apparently Windows 7 doesn't support that model anymore so out of frustration I took out one of my old scanners and tried to make it work. It turned out that the only defect it had was that the lock jammed the "scanning light" and that by simply holding it in place the scanner would work. Dang... and to think that I bought another one because of that (that other scanner by the way got damaged by Ondoy). Now it's back albeit it can only scan in grayscale, which is fine because that's all I need at the moment.

It's been raining heavily these part few days and I haven't had the chance to go out and buy hobby paints so my Sandrock will have to sit in the box for a while. My experiment with Nail Polish as hobby paint substitute failed miserably so I really can't do much except get a new kit to work on.

This is the 1/72 Academy A10 Thunderbird 2 aka Warthog. I've lost all the decals so I'm planning on doing a custom scheme for this... probably a Zeon inspired scheme or whatever.

It sucks that Lil's in Trinoma has closed. That was the nearest place for me to get my Tamiya paints. Now I have to go to either Makati or Megamall to get my paints. Bummer.

And to cap off this entry: Grimlock, the only toy in the above 1k range that I actually paid retail for.

Night guys and God bless!

Me Grimlock say, you so small!

The Adventures of Hanuman

The Adventures of Hanuman, please visit
the site :)

Here's something that I finished last week. It's an illustration that my client will be using for a play entitled "The Adventures of Hanuman". I don't know when they'll be performing but please do check out their site and if you can, please watch their show :)

Anyway... I missed Toy Con because I was working on this. I was supposed to go with Kris and meet some friends there... and hopefully snag a toy or two but I wasn't able to come because I was working on this poster.

That's the hard reality of working freelance I guess. While it is true that I have time in my hands in the sense that I can move my schedule around, the reality is that I tend to spend more time working. But that is ok for now.

The thing is I've just gotten back to digital painting and it's been quite a struggle to relearn all the stuff that I've forgotten. I'm praying that this poster sets me in the proper groove to take in more painting commissions. It's been fun however and working on multiple characters are always a challenge.

In other news: I'm off to get myself a scanner tomorrow hehe... I'm going back to pencils when I work on my comics. But before that, an update on what I'm working on right now:

Mechs, I love them to the core!

Beast Mode!

Optimus Primal, monkey!

Remember Beast Wars? I've been kept company by this show while I was working on a painting for a client and I must say I am surprised by how less I know about it. I don't know, I've been a big fan since I was in high school and I used to think I know a lot but rewatching it again made me feel like everything about it is new. I mean, Optimus Primal still looks horrible in the CG but the story is very interesting even by today's standards (well, for me at least).

Anyway, I've been pretty busy working on a poster for a client and I've asked him for permission to post my work... am still waiting for his feedback so there's not much art to post just yet.

So I took a break after submitting the final art for the project yesterday, missed ToyCon and wasn't able to meet up with friends. Good thin I was able to spend the remainder of the evening watching movies with my older brother and cousin or else I'd really be down. Spent my Sunday celebrating Father's Day plus another movie before deciding to watch some more Beast Wars sketch just to cap the night.

Here's Sunny! Hope to paint him real soon.

Making Time

Two hours a day at most for now... client is waiting hehe...

Things are pretty hectic with me right now, what with me working on a painting for a client and doing the samples for Marvel at the same time. To further complicate things, I find it hard to concentrate on working without doing other things on the side. It's just me, I'm a full-time hobbyist.

Don't get me wrong though, I do not mean that I multi-task. That's not good, specially for the brain. What I do mean is that I need to take time to do other stuff even if that's just 30 minutes a day. Specially on days when I need to work on some major stuff for my career.

Sunstreaker... all dusted and ready to go back 

the shelf.

To keep my sanity I build kits for at least 30 minutes a day. I also occasionally take one of my Transformers and do the ritualistic "clean with a toothbrush, transform one or twice" routine, watch an anime episode and when I can, play guitar.

This has now been part of a typical work day  for me and I integrate them well into my system. According to Bryan Tracey, you need to carve out at least one to two hours for significant tasks and that's what I try to do with the projects and portfolio building stuff.  The hobbies I insert between those hours and do them when I'm really burned up.

Funny how I can set time to do these hobbies and let go of the most important thing that I should be doing.

Sandrock, a gift that Manay gave me way back

in college and has only tasted  primer paint 
this year.

I've recently come across a recent challenge in my spiritual life and I believe that the Lord used this to remind me of what I've been missing out.

You see, when I started getting serious about working freelance I let go of a lot of things. I moved to a Church that was nearer our place but I wasn't able to integrate myself yet as much as I was in my parent church. Before, I used to lead a Bible Study group and I was teaching in the afternoons at Kid's Church and was also doing art for our congregation. These things however, I believed, took time that I should have been spending with my art and so that's what I did: I practically removed myself from church work except to go there to attend service. I know that during that time trimming down tasks was needed but I think I overstayed in that place for far too long and went overboard and it's time to go return.

After I felt the Lord telling me to go back I went to my sister and her husband to get counsel and to ask for prayers. I'm really really thankful for having them in my life and for being the people to introduce me to Christ and I knew that should I get lost they were the ones I could go to for help and guidance. We prayed together and they laid hands on me and my sister told me that perhaps I should make time for the Lord.

Make time. That was what I needed to do all along. I've been trapped in pursuing this goal of freelancing for far too long that I have forgotten the blessings that I've received from God along the way. I know there are a lot of skeptics out there who would say that the good stuff that's happened to me happened because I worked for them but the truth is no matter how hard I worked if God hadn't given me the opportunities then all the stuff I've been doing would be laid to waste. It's quite a long story and one day I'll write them down and when I do I'm sure you'll see how God has been working in helping me pursue my dreams (and even my gf's too.).

So it's time to "Make Time" for Him. I know that even if I don't do this God will continue to bless me out of love. That's what He's been doing all this time. But I feel the need to go back and work in church again. I want to meet new Christian friends and meet the old ones that I've left behind. I also want to get involved in a Bible Study Group again although this time not in a lead position as I feel the need to renew myself. Doing these things won't earn me salvation, he's given that already but doing so will help me strengthen my spiritual life and help me get to enjoy His presence in my life more.

So God bless guys and be safe :)

Art Jamming

Holy Crap!

I have been busy working on a poster project for a client in Texas these past few days and I haven't been able to work as much on my Marvel samples. As much as I'd love to spend all my time working them I have decided to start taking in projects this June.

Vacation's over hehe :)

This was a long time coming. I don't know how long I have been planning on going freelance since I've been thinking about it for so long. What I do know is that I started taking concrete steps towards that goal around almost a year ago when I started doing digital paintings for our art jam.

I remember staying up late every day and being happy with 4 hours of sleep since August last year. I've given up all my other activities save those that I do with my family and some time with church so that I can work on my digital paintings. I did not attend our company outing because I needed to finish the Transformers samples I was working on so I could move on to studying painting, not going out on weekends and the countless hours Kris and I spent talking about art and how we would want our careers to progress. I also cut back on my spending so that I'd have a money to go around with while I rest and practice.

The most important thing I did however, that has had the most impact so far, was the art jam. Every two weeks Kris and I promised to each other that we would come up with a new digital painting. Soon we had officemates join us until eventually people got busy again and we eventually stopped doing them. I had to quit when I started having those illustration gigs that ate up all my free time. It did however serve it's purpose, and I got around 8 digital paintings from those jams that I show to prospective clients.

Last Wednesday Kris and I talked about having our own art jam again because we both knew we needed to do some massive portfolio building. I know we both are terribly busy right now with work but I really do hope we get to do some more art just for ourselves. That got us started on this path and I'm hoping that doing so again would open up more opportunities for both of us.