Prototype Garage

Pin-up: Wolalina

2010-05-13T12:04:00.000-07:00

This piece was done for awhile, I was asked not to post in public until now.
Here is a little information on the character to help promote the book:

Orang Utan Comics is the publisher for the Wolalina comics that are about a lady, who is a former secret agent for the M.Y.T.H. (Mythological & Young Terran Heroes) agency, where people from ancient mythologies actually exist and they work together with humans to stop evil organizations from across the universe. Now she works as a time-traveling private detective to find people who have mysteriously disappeared in the past.

There are going to be 5 bi-monthly comics in color with 40 sequential/comic pages in each comic and Wolalina: The 52 Weeks Gallery is a 52 pages long pin-up gallery book to show where is Wolalina during each week in her busiest year that has 2 Eisner award winners, a Russ Manning award winner and tons of artists, who have drawn comic books like 52, 2000 A.D., Action Comics, Army of Darkness: Ashes 2 Ashes, Astro Boy Movie Prequel, Authority, Back to Brooklyn, Batgirl, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Cable & Deadpool, Caliber, Captain Planet & the Planeteers, Castlevania: The Belmont Legacy, Crecy, Criminal, Darkness, Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Deathlok: The Demolisher, Dynamo 5, Elmer, Emma Frost, Excalibur, Fables, Fallen Angel, Fantastic Four, Fathom, Fear Agent, Forgotten Realms, Galaxy Rangers, G.I. Joe, Gravel, Grimm Fairy Tales, Hack/Slash, Hellblazer, He-Man & the Masters of the Universe: Icons of Evil, Immortal Iron Fist, Incognito, Incredible Hulk, Jungle Girl, Justice League of America, Lady Death: Dark Horizons, Lockjaw & the Pet Avengers, The Losers, Marvel Adventures: the Avengers, Marvel Zombies, Micronauts, Nightwing, Noble Causes, Northlanders, Nova, Peter Parker: Spider-Man, Power Rangers, The Punisher MAX, The Real Ghostbusters, Red Sonja, Robotech, She-Hulk, Silver Surfer, Sleeper, Spawn, The Star Trek Manga, Star Wars, Street Fighter, Supergirl, Superman/Batman, Tales of T.M.N.T., Teen Titans, Texas Chainsaw: Massacre: The Grind, Thunderbolts, Thundercats, Tomb Raider, Transformers, Uncanny X-Men, Voltron: Defender of the Universe, War of Kings: Warriors, Wetworks, WildCats, Witchblade, Wonder Woman, X-Factor, X-Force, Y: The Last Man and many more.

Here is the Wolalina site with a youtube trailer and a link to the digital version of the first Wolalina comic

Wolalina #1 that has a cover drawn by Adriana Melo (Amazing Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel) and colored by Dominic Marco (Grimm Fairy Tales, Hack/Slash) is now available as a print comic over at IndyPlanet.com and ComicMonkey.

Cover: Transformers: The IDW Collection vol.I

2010-05-06T22:04:00.001-07:00

I think it's safe to post the cover, since it was made public for quite awhile now.

IDW came to me asked me to be involve with designing the look and feel of this series of hardcover. So in case you are wondering why I posted the typefaces and designs, because I got to design the whole thing this time.

This series of cover will feature one character who would be pretty prominent in the particular volume of collection. The first one stepping up to the plate is Megatron.

The artwork were drawn in ArtRage, I really liked the pencil texture from Artrage. Looks pretty close to authentic graphite pencil. The graphics, logos and title graphics were layout in Adobe Illustrator.

Here's the link to Amazon for Transformers: The IDW Collection Vol. I, you can find out more about the content there.

Weekly Sketch: Poison Ivy

2010-04-13T11:53:00.001-07:00

Sketches: Sketch dump

2010-04-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

So busy for the last few months, but come to think of it, it doesn't seem to ever end. I guess with the state of economy that it is today, it's a good thing.

Restless

2010-02-27T05:30:00.000-08:00

Mylan is not sleeping well tonight. I have been trying to comfort him. He fell to asleep in my arms and drift off to asleep as well. During this time, I had a dream of me dropping the baby, I woke up in cold sweat and thank God Mylan was still in my arms.
He didn't sleep long, had do it all over again.

Daddy has deadlines to keep, my dear. please go back to sleep!!
--------------
-E.J.Su
Made in Taiwan
"Talent is worthless without hard work."
| www.protodepot.com | ej-su.deviantart.com |

News: More PSP comic

2010-02-25T22:55:00.000-08:00

Another one of my Transformers comic just been released on PSP. Revelation#4: Sideswipe. This issue holds a special place in my heart because I got to color the entire book myself. It marks a milestone in my creative adventure.

http://bit.ly/b6lG2u

--------------
-E.J.Su
Made in Taiwan
"Talent is worthless without hard work."
| www.protodepot.com | ej-su.deviantart.com |

News: Cyclonus on PSP

2010-02-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know that IDW Publishing has been putting out their comic books on PSP. Yesterday one of my Spotlight, the Cyclonus is out on PSP format. If you are interested, check it out!

Key twitter accounts
@psncomics
@idwpublishing

Transformers: Spotlight: Cyclonus
http://bit.ly/byls5n

--------------
-E.J.Su
Made in Taiwan
"Talent is worthless without hard work."
| www.protodepot.com | ej-su.deviantart.com |

Update: Spotlight Prowl

2010-02-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

I turned in the last page of Spotlight: Prowl last night.
The entire issue was drawn digitally in MangaStudio 4.0 EX. I haven't done anything Transformers in this software until now. I've always thought drawing something as mechanical as Transformers digitally would be kind of difficult because of the more precision lines that they required, but it wasn't as difficult as I had imagined.

I've always wanted to try more industrialized look on Transformers. Something along the line of stuff you may see in Steel Battalion. Military looking and leaner alien robots rather than more human-like. I tried some Prowl design that never made it into the book. Looking back, I may not even go for it myself.

Oh well, going back to the drawing board. :p

Over Heat

2010-02-08T17:28:00.001-08:00

My computer is on its last leg, every operation has been lagging. Even takes a few seconds to bring up the right click menu. Its internal CPU overheating alarm has been going off all the time.
I put a heat monitor program to keep an eye on the temperature, it's almost always around at high 80's while I am working, and if I run any sort of multimedia program, the temperature would spike over 90's. I am not comfortable running the CPU constantly at such high temperature.

I put this computer together quite a few years ago, back when Pentium 4 was new to the market. It served me well, maybe it's time to move on...
--------------
-E.J.Su
Made in Taiwan
"Talent is worthless without hard work."
| www.protodepot.com | ej-su.deviantart.com |

Spotlight: Prowl

2010-01-29T13:43:00.000-08:00

I've been cleared to post the cover to Spotlight: Prowl.

In this cover I used Sketchbook Pro for sketching and inking, then imported into PaintTool SAI for coloring.

This is the first Transformer comic that I'm doing since Spotlight: Jazz, and the first one since the birth of our twins.

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-25T11:25:00.001-08:00

and saying goodbye to 2009. I wish everyone have an even better year in 2010.

Fusion Canon

2009-10-24T01:01:00.001-07:00

So this is most likely won't be used. Direction has been changed.

I have no attempted to use ArtRage for anything professional until now. I really love the graphite pencil tool, it looks almost like the real deal.

[News] Twins Twins!!

2009-09-14T22:40:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note, my wife has given birth to a pair of twins on Sat. September 12th.

The boy is 6 lb 10 oz, The girl is 6 lb 8 oz. They are both pretty good size even for single birth babies. I am amazed by how much my wife could store inside her tummy.

Exclusive Astroboy preview

2009-08-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

On USA Today website, they got an exclusive 10-page preview of my upcoming Astroboy movie adaptation comic. Go read it and let me know what you think. :D

http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/2009-08-16-astro-boy-1_N.htm

Wild Thing

2009-07-01T00:26:00.000-07:00

Eventhough I am readying my humble little home for the arrival of the twins, I still trying to sketch as much as possible.

SNAIL-3000

2009-06-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

I am start posting again, just so my website won't completely go to waste.

This is a mock industrial design practice project at Conceptart.org

I'd like to participate more in the future, just to kind of get back to my root.

News - Gallery

2009-02-15T22:46:00.000-08:00

Ok, my gallery script is broken for the n-th time. I am too sick of fixing it. So for the moment, I will be directing the gallery link on the top of the page to my off-site DeviantArt account. I've had the account for a long time, but never actually used it much until recently. It appears that my DA account is a lot more popular than my personal website...

...and for those who prefers to visit my DeviantArt page, here it is: http://ej-su.deviantart.com

Christmas 08

2008-12-22T15:27:00.001-08:00

I am having a busy holiday... again.
but anyways, here's season's greeting from our family.

Happy holidays, stay safe!

Sketch: Tetsuwan Atomu

2008-11-26T00:16:00.000-08:00

The available time to draw has been significantly lacking compare to my work hours in the past. Myra has grown so fast, she just can't go through the day without having attention on her most of the time. Being a stay at home dad, naturally, I am her only play mate during the day. That leaves me between 2-4 hours of work during the day. My real work day don't start until the mom comes home, and most of time doesn't start until Myra goes to sleep, which is usually 9:00pm. So that really doesn't leave me much hours to work.

So I am mostly doing the night shifts these days, I work when my wife and baby are sleeping. Somtimes in the middle of night, I would get tired from working on regular stuff and goof off on some quick sketches. Which brings me to the title of this entry...

I've fell in love with some of the techniques used by some of the European artists, the crosshatching techniques that creates light and shadow as well as depth. So I eager to experiment this technique. So resulting this sketch of Astroboy. I wanted to finish the background, but I am tired. Maybe I'll get back to it when I have more free time.

News: R.I.P.

2008-11-05T23:16:00.000-08:00

I finally decided to update my blog, but it's a sad sad day. On the day that America made a history by electing a African American President, which I never thought I would see the day, was the day that Michael Crichton Pass away. If it wasn't for him, one of my favorite movie Jurassic Park would never be possible. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel much more so than even the movie.
Thank you Mr. Crichton, may you rest in peace.

Artwork: Spotlight Sideswipe preview pages

2008-06-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to get better at coloring. There isn't a whole lot of chance to do that when I am always rushing to meet deadlines, spare time seems like a luxury item these days. There's nothing better than to learn on the job. When the opportunity to color my own comic turns up, I couldn't pass it on. I started to work on the ongoing series of IDW's Transformers back in 2005, if I remember correctly, I started sometime in June of 2005. Now that the "Dead Universe" story line is about to conclude, there's no better time than ever to end the ride with the best effort I can muster, and hopefully I don't fall flat on my nose.

The first 3 pages are especially difficult to do, mainly because I wanted to find the most efficient way of doing this, I mean doing this 22 pages isn't an easy task, especially I have not ever done this before. 3 pages took couple of weeks to do, but after the initial "growing pain" I think I've started to fall into a better working pattern. Things have been moving along a lot better than I first did.

Book: Mecha Force

2008-05-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

Mechaforce is the result of my laboring over for more than 6 or 7 months. This is the first book that I ever written, so the excitement for me is without word. Impact Books came to me about an idea of a book to show people how to draw robots, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity.

The book was divided into 3 chapters, chapter 1 being fundamental of all things, not just drawing robots. I've always felt that artworks will look better if you could build it up from the very basics.

Chapter 1 deals with perspective and some sketching techniques. No artist should be without these skills, even if you are not drawing robots, perspective also applies everything in life.

Chapter 2 deals with robotic anatomy. I'd like to get novice artists a different perspective on robots, a view on the inside. How to translate flesh, tendons and bones into something might function mechanically.

Chapter 3 is all about step by step instructions. Taking a few different body types of robotic and show you how I would draw them from scratch, and also in various different angles.

Those who are interested in drawing robots, please check it out, and let me what you think of the book. This is my first book, it's far from being perfect, I hope I get more chances to do more books like this. The more comments and suggestions I can get from the masses, the better I can hope to do in the future.

Mechaforce on Amazon

Cover: Revelation

2008-03-20T01:05:00.001-07:00

Here are couple of recent covers I did for IDW's Transformers line. These the first 2 of the 4 connecting covers.
I will be working on interior pages of the first and last issues of the series.

Spotlight: Cyclonus

Spotlight: Hardhead

Update: gallery comments

2008-03-20T00:56:00.001-07:00

I haven't have time to log into my gallery for awhile. I decided to do some maintenance, but when I log in, I found over a thousand spam messages in the comment section. I must have enough viagra ads to last me for life time. Needless to say, It took me awhile to clean all that up.
Considering the fact that most people don't actually leave any comment, I thought that feature will probably hardly missed, I decided to turn off the comment altogether.
I thank those who has made any comment on my artworks in the gallery.

Experiment

2008-02-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

One nice thing about Nintendo DS is its portability. I put it in my pocket and will be able to paint anywhere. It's light weight, and good battery life too. Although it takes a little getting used to small screen to paint on, I think I'm slowly getting a hang of it. I tried something really quick but I didn't finish it, so the painting is looking rather cruel at the moment.

The next picture is just an experiment coloring from one of the panel of Transformers: Devastation #5.

Batmobile

2008-02-02T01:36:00.000-08:00

My last entry I said I was going to try to post something everyday. The purpose was to push myself to create contents for my blog, as well as pushing myself to do some sketches for self improvement. Unfortunately, it's been several days, I didn't even keep it up for 2 days straight! ha!

I may not keep up with my a-post-a-day, but I'll definitely need to stop being so lazy on blog entries.

Anyways, this is one of my illustration I recently finished for DK Publishing in UK. I believe it's one of those hard cover technical guide. My previous experience with DK was when they asked me to illustrated 2 pieces of mechanical cut-away views of Optimus Prime and Megatron and 2 pieces of their transformation. They were used in Transformers Ultimate Guide. Batman has always been one of my favorite Superhero, of course I wouldn't say no when they approached me for couple of Batmobile illustrations.

Scribble: Girl Face

2008-01-29T00:34:00.000-08:00

Quick sketch of a girl in the middle of the night.
I am trying to update my blog as much as possible, and working toward the goal of a post a day, but having a baby kind of make my schedule hard to predict.

Myra's Snow Day

2008-01-21T12:54:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, a friend of my wife's asked us to go to something called "Snow Day" in a park, something I never knew about it. What it is, is some organization goes around different parks, set up booths for kid activities, games, crafts, concert and most importantly, they brough some real snow and dumped in the park for kids to play in, even made couple of snow sled trails. Very fun stuff for kids.
Our friends' kids are all over 2 years of age, they rolled around on snow and made snow man. Myra could only stare at all the other kids running around, but she really enjoyed it, she was kicking her feet and waving her arms excitedly.
It was really a fun day for us to be out there in the Sun and enjoyed the afternoon.
Myra was wearing her new poncho, she looks like little red riding hood. :D

Sketch: Myra 3-monthes-old

2008-01-04T23:35:00.001-08:00

I've got a little bit of break at this time, so I took the time to do a little sketch of my daughter which I've put off for awhile. My wife wanted it to hang on our wall. She is constantly complaining about how her friends' kids all have a portraits of themselves done by me, but I haven't drew one for our daughter. Now I have a little bit of break time, I'll try to make that baby album that she's been nagging me about as well.

[Sketch] Animated G1 Transformers

2008-01-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

I might do a whole series of these guys.

Happy Holidays~

2007-12-25T03:52:00.000-08:00

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

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

Click for larger version:

Idea: Holomatter Projection

2007-11-14T12:28:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-18T00:58:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-18T00:46:00.000-07:00

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

Back to the groove

2006-09-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

Updating blog seems to be one of the most difficult thing I've ever done. You would think spending a few minutes a day to write something would be quite simple, but by end of a long working day, laziness takes over.

Sometimes I give my excuses like "oh nobody ever reads any crap I put here anyways.", and I assume as much; however, I am surprised to get emails once in a great while asking when I'll be updating my blog. To those who has encouraged my rambling on mindless stuff, I really appreciate your visit, and your encouragement really fuels me each day. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I am just going to ease myself back to this blog thing with 2 quick color sketches from last couple of weeks. I'll share some of the stuff that I've been working on when I get the time.

Cover: Infiltration

2006-03-14T17:51:00.000-08:00

So the six-part Transformers: Infiltration covers are complete. I think I've learned quite a bit from this experience. It is so difficult to not being able to paint them all at the same time.

Update: Gallery

2006-02-08T01:56:00.000-08:00

The Gallery section is not exactly updated. I got the software back up and running, I need to figure out how to categorize the artworks that I want to upload. A lot of old drawings, unless they are significant to me, will probably be left out of the gallery this time just to keep things compact and manageable.

One thing that was fixed was the archives of the blog. Aparently I messed up the setting that the archives were not linked correctly. It's all working now. I wish Blogger would provide a "category" function, it is a very common function in most blog software. I can't understand why blogger choose to left out that feature.

Here's a little experiment that I am doing with my art style.

I kind of like the lines being colored over like I did on the right.

Another experiment with coloring. I grabbed one of the panel from a page to see how fast I can color one simple panel. Not counting flatting, it took me about 20 mins or so. The time wasn't bad, next time I want to try to color entire page and hopefully try to push for a better time and still retain a decent quality.

Scribble: It's a bird...

2006-02-05T23:29:00.000-08:00

I am too busy for anything these days.

Just a quick color sketch of the Man of Steel in mid fly.

Year of dog

2006-01-28T22:59:00.000-08:00

This Sunday is the new year on Lunar calendar, also known as Chinese New Year. It is the year of dog, I was born in the year of dog. Normally you would think it's your year, so everything should go smoothly right? not so.

According to tradition, Jupiter is the God of Ominous, and regulate our luck. When your zodiac sign came upon the year, it comes in direct impact with the God of Ominous, so another words, when it's your year, your sign is colliding with bad luck.

Supposely, there are things you could do in the first 15 days of the year to make peace with God of Ominous, to avoid the impact.

so.. anyways, Happy New Year. I hope.

News: How to build a better Mickey Mouse trap

2006-01-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

In the further news of thePixar/Disney combining, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, the Pixar's creative chiefs, will be taking over the creative operation of the combined studios of Pixar and Disney.

"Disney also will surrender control of its world-famous animation studio, the birthplace of Mickey Mouse, to Pixar creative chiefs, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. The companies will combine their animation operations.

Catmull, who is currently president of Pixar, will become president of the combined Pixar and Disney animation studios. Lasseter, who is now executive vice president of Pixar, will be chief creative officer of the combined studios.

Lasseter will also become the principal creative director of the Walt Disney Imagineering group, which designs theme park attractions."

I gotta say, this is a good thing, I am looking forward to see the new Disney.

News: Pixar joins Disney... again

2006-01-24T15:47:00.000-08:00

It's official, Disney dropped 7 billion to buy Pixar, which in turn makes Steve Jobs the biggest shareholder of Disney.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/24/news/companies/disney_pixar_deal/index.htm?cnn=yes

I love "The Incredibles", the pretty near perfection full feature animation, but for the very same reason, I wish there's no sequels to be made, especially with Pixar broke away from Disney. At least now it would be handled by Pixar. I hope all the creative decision making will stay with Pixar.

Cover: Infiltrating

2005-12-31T14:30:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!! Hope y'all having great holidays.

It's the holiday seasons, but it really doesn't make too much difference for me. Eventhough I visit my brother in Northern California, I still take my work with me. I am so glad I got my TabletPC fixed right before I leave, so I get to do some work while I am there.

Transformers: Infiltration is getting ready to launch. I got around to connect the first 3 of my cover together over the weekend. I noticed my own technique has been altered a bit, mainly because I am trying new things, new ways to do things. Now that I look back on my first cover, I wish I have the chance to go back and repaint most of it, but that won't do any good now since it's already gone to the printer.

My sincere apologies to those fans SuperTNT and Super Patriot who has been asking about my other 2 projects and what happened to them, they are both being worked on, but there are things beyond my control. You should hear some update soon, I can't deny that I am taking advantage of the situation though.

Other: I broke my gallery

2005-12-29T13:01:00.000-08:00

I killed it!! >_<
I was updating the software, and it didn't work. Now I can't go back to the old one. I'll just have to make another one from scratch..

Movies: Creature Legacy

2005-12-23T02:22:00.000-08:00

Since I was a little child, I have always been facinated by classic monsters from the 50's, from time to time, I catch some of them on late night TV's, but somehow I've always managed to miss my favorite one of them all, the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Universal has started to release their classic monster movies in DVD collections, needless to say, I gotta get my hand on a Creature DVD collection.

The 2-disc legacy collection set comes in a nice die-cut window sleeve, very classic, and deserving so.

Taking the DVD box out of the sleeve.

First Disc contains the original movie, "Creature form the Black Lagoon" and the second Disc contains the next 2 Gill-Man sequels "Revenge of the Creature" and "Creature walks among us". They also comes with extras like interviews with the actors and commentary from film historian.

The original movies were shot in polarized 3D images, unfortunately, these versions are flatten version, I wish they would release the 3D version someday, the underwater scenes were beautifully shot despite being black and white, you can really tell the films were pushing for a lot of shots that would work effectively with 3D.

Watching these films is whole different experience, you have got to appreciate the kind of work that went into to making these films worked. I've never seen anything of the Creature other than still photos and toy figures, finally getting to see the Creature swimming in motion is nothing short of amazing.

Scribble: Prehistoric Lizard

2005-12-06T14:27:00.000-08:00

I've finished my mechanical pteranodon for awhile, but never got around to post it.
Again, for those who are interested in supporting the cause, please keep your eye on Nic Carcieri's Autism Project. Besides getting the artbook that was contributed by numbers of well-known professional artists, there will be original artwork to be auctioned off sometime next year. Check Nic's blog for update.

Also couple of recent artsy sketches.
The link contain nudity, don't click if you are offended by this kind of stuff.
Girl A
Girl B

Scribble: Mecha Ptera

2005-11-27T15:32:00.000-08:00

I've heard stories of women gotten into fight during Black Friday shopping craze. Now there's a part of me wish I was there to see it. Maybe next year I'll just walk over to the mall (there's one just 15mins walk from me) to see if I can spot any shoppers fighting over some small items, just for entertainment value.

So. I've decided to go with the mechanical Pteranodon. I think there will be a lot of people contributing female robots to the project, there's no reason for me to adding any more fembots.

Other: Happy Thanksgiving

2005-11-25T00:48:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! and for those who are going shopping on Friday, GOOD LUCK!!

I was driving home passing Best Buy and the Mall around midnight, amazingly enough, the mall parking lot was full of cars, and there's long line in front of Best Buy. I never realize how crazy the after Thanksgiving shopping is, I mean I've heard of it, but never realize how much untill today. Thanksgiving shoppers have something in common with Star Wars fans, crazy!!

Scribble: flying lizard

2005-11-24T00:56:00.000-08:00

Continuing my development on the robotic Pteranodon.

A very rough structure of Pteranodon spreading wings. There's not enough movement in the sketch for some reason. It looks more like it's posing for photo than taking itself to the air. Perhaps a different angle or better gesture will create more movement to the piece?

I really liked this pose, here it is "crawling" on all four in an ape-like posture. The camera angle will probably need to zoom out a bit more to show more of the creature to be effective.

Detail on the mechanical parts. Still not quite happening yet...

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This is entirely different project. I am working on a cover for a vampire comic book.
A lot of the times, before I go into a full blown illustration, I would draw a small black and white value study, mainly to work out the composition and contrast. Then scan in the value study, blow it up to the finished size and use it as template for the final piece.
I am thinking the floor will have blood smearing all over it, but I am not good with blood, so we'll see how it will turn out, hopefully it will somewhat close to what I have pictured in my head.

Scribble: Weekend Mechanic

2005-11-21T01:02:00.000-08:00

I was asked to contribute to a robotic themed sketchbook that will rise money for Autism Society of America, the deadline is coming up REALLY fast, so I have to get in gear and get that done.

I figure to have some fun and design some mechanical dinosaurus. Although technically Pteradon aren't dinosaurus, but they are my favorite when I was a kid, I didn't know any better at the time.

The design is pretty crappy, and the head is way too small on the full body drawing, but I just wanted to get some basic structure down for now.

This second one is just a doodle.

Scribble: Lack of update gives me the blue

2005-11-07T00:23:00.000-08:00

I tried to post as much as I can, but time seem determined not to be on my side, and more importantly, I am lazy too. I wish that I could share what I've been doing lately, but I just can't. :p
Halloween being one of my favorite holiday, I am so bumped that I had to work, and didn't get to see some of my friend's kids in costume. Hopefully next year, I can take the day off to drive up north to see my niece. I heard she's a tinkerbell this year.

I don't get a lot of chance to sketch much any more, but I've managed to do some last couple of days.

This is Tien-Ding Liao, a lengendary hero in Taiwan when Taiwan was a Japanese colony. A lot of stories were told about how he fought against injustice of Japanese officials, and he was eventually hunt down and killed by Japanese police at young age of 20.

My friend has an adorable 2-years-old boy, who picks up any round object and call it "ball", then bounce it on the ground. He gets a kick out of throwing balls. Today I saw him pick up a small pumpkin and tried to bounce it on the floor. haha, good thing it was too heavy for him to throw hard, otherwise there would be some pumpkin guts all over the place.
I came home and sketched a little boy holding a pumpkin, the boy doesn't look like him though.

trying couple of different look for a girl that might appear in one of my comic.
Please ignore that boxy thing in the middle, that was going to be a Transformers design but it never went anywhere. He looks like he transformed from a lighter... 6_6

Scribble: Green Giant

2005-10-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

Taking a short break to sketch this.

Tools: Robocar

2005-10-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

Haven't have much time to update my blog lately. Having several projects at the same time is really eating up my time, even my sleeping hours have been reduced, not that I had much time to sleep before.

More cool toys! Check out these Toy Biz Marvel Legends action figures.
They seems to be taking a similar approach to the 18" Spider-Man 2 Figure, similiar type of joints. I couldn't find the size of these figures on the website. Although I prefer generic figures for references, but these are very beautifully sculpted. I wouldn't mind getting some of these guys.

Transformers#1 cover
The version in Preview and other news sites are a bit rushed. I reworked it a little bit to hopefully improved on it for the print.

Preview: Do you feel lucky?

2005-10-02T14:41:00.000-07:00

One of the panel from upcoming Super Patriot: War on Terror #3.

The scene called for some crazy amount of guns that comes out of Super Patriot's arms. I was kind of going for something similiar to the scene in the movie Mask, where Jim Carrey popped out hold bunch of guns.

Robot in disguise

2005-09-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

The relaunch of Transformers comic by IDW is almost upon us. Needless to say, I am very nervous how it will be receive by the fans considering that a lot of fans are very fond of the artworks from the previous publisher, and my take on robots are very different from Dreamwave.

Transformers: Infiltration #0 will be shipping in the week of Oct.19th with $0.99 price tag.

In this new series, some of the classic Tranformers will be updated with the modern day vehicles, such as the "Seekers" will receive a F-22 alternate mode instead of F-15 from the 80's.

The series will also be getting covers from Transformers fan favorite artists, such as Adrew Wildman, Guido and James Raiz.

Draw for a cause

2005-09-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

Andrew Wildman, a long time comic book, concept artist and illustrator has asked fellow artists to get invloved with helping out poor children around the world with Draw the World Together. Many well-known and respected comic book artists has already joined the effort to raise fund by contributing original artworks for auction. Go to the website and read more about the cause, check out the artworks that has been donated, maybe some stuff you might be interested.

Music: More than a bird, more than a plane

2005-09-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

I've been inspired by a lot of songs that are Superman related. "Kryptonite" by Three Doors Down, "Save Me" by Remy Zero and "It's not Easy to be Me" by Five for Fighting have found their way into my play list quite often.
"It's not Easy to be Me" I am particularly fond of for its lyrics. It must be pretty tough to be Superman, or to a certain extend, anyone that carries a heavy burden of having high expectation put on him/her. The song sounded a little sad, and I usually like sad songs.

Tools: Microman Material Force

2005-09-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

The best alternative to the wooden manequin is of course the 18" Super Poseable Spider-man 2 action figure. Eventhough slightly exaggerated in anatomy, with 67 articulation points, it allows you to make just about any pose imaginable.
Since I work at both home and a studio, sometimes I even go to a local book stores or coffee shops to draw, carrying the huge and heavy Spider-man figure would be inconvenient and attracts unwanted attention. I found these Microman Material Force Series.

Here's a photo of the size comparison with my PITT pen and eraser. The female figure is roughly 3-3/4" and the male figures are slightly taller. With 30 points of articulation, they are as poseable as the Spider-man figure except the fingers, but the interchangeable hands are more than made up for lack of finger movements.Male figures comes with 6 set of different hands while female figures comes with 7. Female figures are usually sold with a set of 3 pack, small, medium and large breasts size.
Microman doing Kung-Fu

Some body parts can be taken apart

Here's a photo of hands that came with the figures, and a view from their behind
Highly recommended if you are looking for good manequin.