Page 2 Update

Lots of stuff in my head, here it goes:

• So yeah, I'm still working on this. I've managed to squeeze in an hour or so of personal art consistently for the past few weeks and I'm kinda happy that after a long while I get to draw for myself again. That being said however, I want to be able to draw a tad bit more and so I'm trying to figure out where my time goes on a daily basis.
• I cannot seem to find the urgency to work when the sun is up. I sort of tend to think about other things that I want to do that's not work related like hitting the gym, cleaning the turtle pond or working on the car. Somehow, I also tend to be asked to run errands so I've practically marked the afternoons (I wake up around noon) for the other stuff.
• I can't get to play guitar for the past few weeks and I do not know why. Not that inclined I guess, or I don't know what to do next. I'm just a hobby guitarist, I don't play as much as when I was younger which is a sad thing because I already have the gear that I wish I had when i was a kid. I wish I could be more motivated to pick up the guitar but these past few weeks have been pretty hectic and playing just doesn't seem as relaxing a past  time as my other hobbies. 
• The model kits are piling up, again.
• I'm thinking of getting Hobby Japan on a regular basis. As much as I am an advocate of digital magazines, HJ isn't available online. That sucks, but the magazine is cheap compared to other model kit magazines, specially to Fine Scale Modeler that I used to collect so I guess its not that bad. 
• I watched the news yesterday and I saw how one lot owner pulled a gun at the illegal settlers that were occupying his property because they do not want to go away and they were becoming violent. When the news crew interviewed the government agency that handled the case they said that they confiscated the gun of the home owner and that the illegal settlers would be moved to a resettlement area. Hmm... Somehow I feel that this is wrong because the government will have to spend money on making people who, in the first place, are doing something illegal and instead of punishing them they will have to provide for them before they move out. I really really feel sorry for the lot owners who worked hard to own properties that are being overrun by these settlers. That being said however, I also feel that the government should be responsible into educating the people that squatting is illegal and make these settlers understand that they deserve better living conditions. I do not know how to solve this issue but I do not blame the squatters for everything. We as a country have lived with the idea that squatting is ok. I have friends from these areas who know better and I admire them for deciding to study hard and work harder so that they can improve their living conditions. I pray that our country find a solution for this. People deserve better and by allowing them to live as illegal settlers we are doing them a great disservice.
• I'm watching Desperate Housewives. Kris made me do it. I used to think that this was a show full of nonsense... I was wrong :)
• I'm thinking of starting to work trad again. I wish I had a drafting table here, but I don't think I have space in the studio for one right now.   

Folio Update... I think

Working on my folio during warm-up :)

Yay!

Slowly working my way through this set of samples...

Just a quick update, I know I haven't been blogging these last few days. I'm just happy to share that, as of this moment, I'm working on two illustration gigs that I've been wanting to work on ever since I was a kid. I can't share anything yet and no its not Transformers (One day! One day!). It's for an RPG that I never got to play and that which I discovered when my brother brought home a photocopied rule book that we spent hours poring over, amazed at the tons of awesome mech lineart in its pages.

Yup, I'm stoked right now :) One childhood dream finally realized.

Also, Kris and I finished working on 5 cards for a CCG set to be released next month (I think) and I was able to join her as a packaging and rule book designer for Transylvania: Curses and Traitors, a card game set to be released next year.

Things are still busy, thank God. On top of the mentioned projects I'm still working on a couple of indie comics and am regularly illustrating cars and other car related stuff for a client.

So thank God for everything, schedule's a mess but all is good. For the first time in 3 years Kris, Kat and I will be taking a break from our drawing boards to recharge, ready for the last two months of 2014.

Future Tech Update 2

Drawing update! I tried painting the mech straight, but the lineartist in me just wouldn't let that happen!

Art Jam 3 Update

Art Jam Update: I shall not be paying for food this week!!!

Updates, finally!

Predaking from Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters

Warpath from Transformers: War for Cybertron

Here are a couple of illustrations I did for an art jam with Kris and Kat and we're currently working on our 3rd topic. Hope I get to finish on time this week, or else I'll have to pay for food and coffee again hehe!

Anyway, I've been thinking about a lot of things recently and one of them is going back to teaching. I did two semesters way back in 2010 and I really enjoyed it and now that work has become quite stable in terms of scheduling I think I just might be able to squeeze in a couple of hours a week to teach. I'm still praying about this though, I feel that the next few months will be erratic and I know for a fact that after October things will get really really busy so I'll just have to sit still and wait for God's timing on this one.

On a side note: My internet is acting up and PLDT cannot figure out what's wrong. I'm having a hard time getting anything done that needs me being on the internet. I'm just glad that my sister lent me her Sun Broadband and so for a couple of hours during the wee hours of the morning I get a stable connection. The good side to this is that it seems I'm getting more stuff done, albeit I sometimes get stressed out when I need to get connected and I just can't. I remember asking God to help me improve my focus last week and it looks like this is His answer hehe. Anyway, I hope PLDT fixes this and when they do I'll keep praying that God keeps me in this good streak and keep me away from distractions.

Predaking!

Quick sketch for an art jam... I'm hoping I'd get this done before the deadline this Sunday :)

War For Cybertron: Warpath

Just a quick sketch for an art jam :) Toxic sked!

And now, some personal art!!!

And yes, was able to steal a couple of short hours to draw for myself. Yay!

Thrall

Yay! I was finally able to finish something for myself. Whew... actually I finished this off last Sunday but was not able to post because I wasn't happy with my the output. For starters, the lines I used were too thick and midway while I was working on it I sort of lost interest in finishing it because I felt that I've started it too long ago and the enthusiasm just wasn't there anymore. I really wanted to stop this and just move on to the next personal art stuff that I have been planning on working on but I realized that I needed to finish this for the sake of my next personal art project which I think will take quite some time to wrap up.

Something I would like to share: I think that clients in general are very understanding and I haven't worked with one that has forced me to spend continuous sleepless nights. I think, that part of time management, is learning how to politely ask a client for a deadline extension. To be honest I have done this numerous times, specially these past few months when I had to fix my name at the National Statistics Office (which required me having to procure almost all of my government IDs), have my car fixed (no, its not new, and I'm in the process of restoring it. My family has this thing with old cars and working with them), take my parents and Manay to the doctor and work on some of their government papers and a plethora of other things that needed so much attention that I just had to cut back on work and go outside.

This is one of the perks of being a freelancer and something that I take advantage of a lot. There are days when I think that I could earn more by locking myself up in the studio but I know that there is life out there and that there are things that I need/want to take care of outside of my work. I thank the Lord for allowing me to do this and for giving me clients that understand and I'm praying and believing that as July slowly turns into my busiest month yet that I will be able to strike a healthy balance between spending time in the studio and out of it.

Slow Progress...

Life's too busy at the moment and getting a couple of hours a day to work on my personal art has been a struggle as of late but we'll get there, I hope I do.

Line Art Therapy

Yesterday I got burned out.

After falling in line at our local SSS for almost 3 hours and having to endure the long wait while being sick in the stomach, I just could not bring myself to work at full capacity later that evening. So after working on some art tasks I played an hour of DOTA then proceeded to painting a version of this guy only to wake up early in the morning thinking that I think I'd like to draw him instead.

So I did. Yup, sometimes I get fickle-minded when it comes to my personal art. That's not something I could do with client work.

I miss doing stuff like this. In the pursuit of work and career growth, I think I may have forgotten how to draw for fun. It has been like forever since I just drew because I wanted to and winging it last night really felt good. You see, often when I am at the drawing table, it's either I am working on client work or am doing something with the intent of adding it to my portfolio (which badly needs an update by the way). Last night felt different, it was fun and even though it meant I will have to draw double time tonight to catch up with my tasks I think it was all worth it... hopefully I'd get to draw some more before I sleep later.

A Sub-sea Mech for Mr. Mike Bisset, a really really fun project for me to work on.

I haven't been able to upload any new update because I have been swamped with work since a month ago. This means that I have very little time to work on personal art, in fact I have only been able to work on my portfolio again this week. Not complaining though, thank God for work :)

I've resumed working on my sample pages for IDW and so far I'm sketching page 3 of a 5 page sample set. I am not sure when I'd get to finish them since I only get an hour a day to work on them. I wish I could draw more for myself more but well, life hehe. I'll get around to this and hopefully more updates in the next few days.

Menasor

Finally!

Close up, because me likes to draw details :)

I like robots, that's no secret. But what I like more is the idea of a team of robots combining to form a bigger hulking mech!

This Menasor piece is part of a set of illustration I plan to send to IDW for a review with the hope of being able to get a slot at drawing Transformers. After this I will be working on a five page sample set that hopefully I will be able to finish by the end of this month.  

Last week I was not able to draw as much personal art as I wanted to and that's because of the number of commissions I had to work on. As much as I love working on my projects, I find working on personal art a very welcome break from the pressures of client work. An hour or so working on these things is priceless for me and it gives me the opportunity to try things that I cannot do with my projects and it allows me to pursue avenues in my art that I haven't explored yet.

Moving forward, I guess I need to be more strict with enforcing my personal drawing time. There's just way too many robots out there to draw.

Menasor Update

Here's an update on the Menasor illustration that I am working on as part of a set of samples that I am putting together for an application with IDW.

I'm starting to add the blacks to the images and to thicken the outlines of some of the panels to help add dimension to this piece.  I'm not really comfortable with adding blacks to my illustrations as I am more used to drawing lineart but  it is something that I want to learn how to do. Also, I favor this method over heavy hatching or gray shades because I want the colors to pop out as if it was a grab from an animation cell. 

I love drawing details on mechs. If there is one thing I can do the whole day its probably this. It's just so much fun. Also, I decided that i'd like to get more loose with my strokes. By that I mean that I will not obsess over some of my lines not being perfectly parallel or "ruled" enough. I think that doing so adds more life and character to the drawing specially when it is for comics.

I'm hoping to get this done by tomorrow if my schedule permits. I am itching to start working on some sequentials on my sketchbook that will be part of this set and God willing I'd be able to complete all of them by the end of March.

Here’s an update on my Menasor drawing. I intended to finish this by the Wednesday but my schedule is really really packed right now. Thank God a client of mine is currently on vacation and so I am able to squeeze in an odd hour or so since yesterday to draw stuff for myself again (one of the main reasons I went freelance).

Cliffjumper!

Here's an illustration I finished last week, part of an IDW sample set I am putting together.

I had tons of fun drawing all the little details here as I was greatly influenced by the illustrations on the manuals of MG Gundams and Zoid kits by Kotokibuya. Come to think of it... It would really be neat to be able to draw for toy packaging :)

And here's the rough sketch of Menasor taking on Hot Rod... something I hope I will be able to finish before Friday next week.

Cheers and God bless!

Jetfire Fan Art

Here's a Jetfire fan art I worked on a week ago :)

Jaina Proudmoore Fan Art

Here's something I finished last week, my fan art for Jaina Proudmoore from War Craft III.

The kids in our neighborhood were noisy again last night and I had to go outside and remind them that they were disturbing other people's sleep, particularly the ones that are in my household. For people who know me well, this is an old story and is something that I have already written about before. I tried being angry at them but I just couldn't and instead I felt sad because these kids were wasting their life by staying out late almost everyday doing nothing when they could have been studying or working. Life is too precious to throw away.

What I did was played some YouTube videos of sermons from our Church as well as from other local churches here in the Philippines and suddenly they went quiet. I looked outside and saw that some of them were still there but their voices were lowered and I like to think that they were listening and I am praying that if they were it would stir something up inside of them that would make them yearn to know Christ and want to do more with their lives.

I know it is preachy and people get offended (for reasons I cannot comprehend) whenever Jesus is mentioned but He's got a way of handling people like these and I admit that my noisy neighbors are one of the very few things that really get on my nerves. I hope that I will be able to fully surrender this problem of mine and allow God to take change not only them but also me and how I handle these type of things.

Happy New Year!

Jaina Proudmoore WIP

     I was originally planning on writing something about my realization of last year and how I intend to face the new year more optimistic and hopefully more productive but unfortunately due to the holiday rush and the project deliverables that piled up I didn't have the time to write so let me just share with you a quote from Tim Ferris that has been lingering in my head for the past few days:

“The biggest mistake people make is focusing on being efficient instead of being effective. Being efficient is doing any given task well and in a fast fashion. Being effective is doing the right things.”
- quote taken from this article at this web site.

So there, have a blessed New Year guys! Start well and finish strong this year and let's not forget how the Lord has blessed us last year.