Happy Holidays~

It's Myra's first Christmas, see how happy she is? :)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

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Idea: Holomatter Projection

Most of my comic books are reference heavy, not just on objects and places, but also human characters. In Transformers, Autobots have this "holo-driver" that reflects the persona of each of their counter parts. Simon would write a brief discription of what the driver looks like, and I would find a real life actor or famous individual to "play" this part. I don't like to shoot for exact look of the say actor, but rather the characteristic and hopefully capture his or her personality.

One of the holo-driver that really took everyone by surprise is Bumblebee. I was surprised to find female Bumblebee holo-driver myself. Simon really put a nice spin on this one I think. It also got me thinking, what if Bumblebee was a fan of Herbie? maybe it's why he picked the classic alternate mode? then it makes perfect sense for Bumblebee to project his driver as the driver of Herbie. At the end, I decided to based Bumblebee's holo-driver loosely on the driver of Herbie on the latest Herbie movie, Lindsay Lohan.



and you may wonder who protraits the role of Optimus Prime's driver. The answer is Ulysses S. Grant.

Update: Gallery

I finally got a chance to look over what was wrong with my gallery software before and got it up and running again. There are only a few artworks in there right now, mostly recent covers I've done, and I'll be uploading artworks to the server in the coming weeks.

Click on the "Gallery" link above, check it out and let me know what you think. :)

Cover: Transformers Devastation #5

The cover of Devastation #5 calls for the return of our favorite back-stabber, Starscream. Often times, I would try on new techniques on every cover that I worked on, mainly because I am still searching for the technique that works best for me. I am beginning to think the search will never ends, but I still enjoy experimenting.

I must've went through dozen of sketches, most of them I didn't even save. I ended up going back to my original sketch.



With this cover, I tried to leave out as much lines as possible, I'd like to let the color do most of the talking in this case. Pencil was done entirely in Alias Sketchbook Pro 2, and intentionally leaving the lines somewhat sketchy, and minimum useage of ruler so that the line would feel more organic.



Normally, I would like to color in OpenCanvas4.5, but I've been experiencing weird errors with it. I started color about 2 - 3 different versions in it, and for some unexplained reason, when I tried to save the document, it just quit on me, as if I have just clicked on the "quit" button. Recently, I have been kind of in love with the whole splatting brush effect, and Oc4 has implemented this texture brush function that I really liked, but I can't work with something that would quit on me for no reason. So I ended up turning to good'ol Photoshop for coloring.

Without giving away the plot of the story, the idea is to create some kind of powerful image of returning Starscream. The base lineart of the screaming Screamer is pretty standard, but I try to push the perspective as much as I can with this. Most of the emotion I'd like to convey it through the environment and color scheme.

News: Baby Myra

Well, it's been a long time since the last time I did anything with my website. Life has been busy, and it is especially so when my wife and I have a new addition to our life to deal with. Our first child Myra was born on September 12th, 2007. Healthy 8.5 lbs and 21" long. She gave her mother quite a trouble for 10 hours, I guess she was too comfortable in the womb that she doesn't want to come out. My wife started to have fever after a few hours of pushing, so she had to go into surgery to get our little girl out.

Despite of all that we (actually just my wife really, I didn't do much other than cheer her on) went through, little Myra brings such a joy to our home it's unbelieveable. The feeling has to be experienced to know, there's just no words to describe it.

Welcome to our family, Myra! :D