yeah yeah yeah...

Heather and I've been spending the last half-year or so looking to buy our first house... a soul consuming task to say the least. Now, suddenly, we find ourselves in the position of being able to choose between two different houses who's lenders have accepted our offers. Sure, we've recovered from the shock of having a lender actually accept our offer... but now what? New territory.

In the midst of all that this year I'd received a commission to sculpt an iconic statue from a popular TV series. Cool man. Was fun to do. I'll post photos once I'm sure that it's legally ok to do so.

Paper craft

In between searching for a new home for my family, sculpting new rubber parts for the vintage motorcycles I restore, and my responsibilities at work... I've been focused on some of my paper craft designs. I've had to train myself to use some simple 3-D design software to be able to adequately produce project designs that will unfold into usable flat parts. You can see some of the designs I'm currently obsessed with. The design that is closest to completi0n is the "Kolywopter". A cross between steampunk and science fiction design. The majority of the model has been flattened into parts and even assembled as an actual model in real life. I still need to complete the engine nacelle, and the wings...

I'll post pictures of the Kolywopter later. But for now, here are the exploration sub and the eel powered lantern vehicle as designed in SketchUP. Ready for flattening into parts sheets.

Been thinking 'bout steampunk subs again...

Yep, mechanical things moving under deep water. After making a few more idle sketches here and there... I decided to plunge in and start building the model in Google SketchUp. I'll post that later. But for now, here's the latest little fishie-sub sketch.

StoryBoard Artwork

I was just recently working on some storyboards for a series of 15 second commercials. Now, obviously I can't show you the storyboards since the project is live. But here's a sample of one of the panels.

The panels were drawn quick and fast. I had to complete five storyboards (four to five panels each) within two days. Mostly black and white with some coloring to hi-light desired areas. It works out to ohhhh... about 30 minutes or so per panel.

After about 30 minutes... you have to go with whatever you've got and hope that you can come back to redo it later if you have time.

Stressful.. but fun in a panicked sort of way.

Notice how I artfully slipped a plug for my website into the focal area of the panel?

...smoooth...

10 minute sketch

I've been watching my 2 year-old daughter move about the house clutching a stockpiled bunch of plastic horses to her chest. She hordes them with jealous passion. It got so ridiculous to see all those horsie-legs poking out every which way that I had to take a few minutes and sketch the impression down.