Book: Mecha Force

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I might do a whole series of these guys.

Happy Holidays~

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

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

Click for larger version:

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

Back to the groove

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

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

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...

I am too busy for anything these days.

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

Year of dog

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

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.