I Have Returned, and Bear Tidings!

Okay, I just want to straight up apologize for not having attended to this blog for so long; stuff has tended to get in the way so much, it's absofreakodiculous. But now I'm here to put an end to that. Let there be much rejoicing among my brave and few followers.
 Quite a bit has happened this past week alone; for one, my birthday came and went this past Wednesday, so now I am officially twenty-two! It was a good birthday; nothing big or fancy, I just went out to dinner at Applebee's with my family and had a good time (and for those curious in presents, one was a brand new iPod Nano. Thanks, Mom and Dee).
Obviously, Halloween came up right after that, and this time I got around to dressing up after two years in a suit and tie. The result?

 ...Eh. I'll admit, I was really lazy this year, and just took a sharpie marker, drew a couple of patterns, and attempted to throw a blanet on and call it a cape; the Grey Rider, I called myself, but it lost its novelty. Sadly, I did not go trick-or-treating, but I did briefly attend a dance here on campus. Personally, I'm glad the sharpie came off.
I've also discovered this hilarious channel on YouTube: Glove and Boots, a series of vlogs hosted by Fafa the Groundhog and Mario, the odd little red guy with a beard and a deep voice accented like Peter Lorre, with occasional appearances by an ape named Gorilla and others (yes, they're all puppets, in case you're wondering). They are pretty random, but all in all, very hilarious. Go check them out if you've got the time.
Updates: I'm still plumbing along with the script for my graphic novel; I've made a few changes from the original narrative to make the characters more believable, but I am considering more changes. How to fit them into the story at my current rate of progress is still to be seen. Progress on illustrating the kid's book has been stalling, however. My mom suggested that I try to get the attention of some publishers with a sneak peek and make it so that they would PAY me to finish it. That's a good strategy, but first I believe I need to get an agent first, and I have no idea how much that would cost. Well, I'll never know until I try, right?
I'll bet you're saying, "Alright, enough of your personal life, now how about some art, buddy?"  And that, my friends, is an excellent question, and thankfully, I've got some new ones up for you:

Ah, the start of a new sketchbook; nothing quite so exciting or as frustrating. This sketch embodies all that I've got in store in the coming days.

 Earlier last month, I discovered that the bookstore had started selling brush pens, and BOY, I did not wait to grab one of my own. Brush pens are cool in that you can create a line of varying widths almost effortlessly; you just have to be very precise. Brushstrokes are actually something that I've been attempting to replicate with technical pens for a good long while, but it is so satisfying to actually work with an actual brush. You can see how well it worked out; I'm still practicing with it, but thus far, it's been treating me well.

This is the second sketch to receive the brush stroke treatment. FYI, that's Snow White in the center of all those dragons. Believe it or not, there's actually a variation of the Snow White tale (from Albania, I believe) where she hangs out with FORTY DRAGONS. Holy smack. Just imagine how epic a film THAT would be (if the original tale weren't so already rife with bloodshed. Seriously, even Snow has her hands dipped in blood at some point!). For the purposes of this sketch, I reduced the number of dragons to seven, in keeping with the original story that everyone's familiar with. If there's one regret I have, it's not sticking in an Oriental dragon to the crowd. That would've upped the diversity level quite a bit.

As I understand it, the BYU-Provo museum has a far more interesting museum than we do here in Idaho, but we've still got some pretty cool stuff here, including this Allosaurus skull that I sketched from real life.

This is one that you may have found on Deviantart before I pulled off, and I feel that I must explain the background for this one again; back in the '90's, there was a Gatorade commercial where a pair of Velociraptors from Jurassic Park went up against a basketball player (I'm pretty sure he was from the Toronto Raptors), and ohmergawsh, it was so COOL. Years later, I had to draw a basketball-playing raptor, with some scientific accuracy thrown in for good measure.

I'm just going to come straight out with this; this piece was directly inspired by The Lord of The Rings, along with this other obscure short film that I've seen online (I'll give credit when I can figure out what it's called). When coming up with new creatures, I'll often imagine them playing a certain role in a movie and try to shape them from there on paper. For this one, I went with a giant demon rat, the result of hideous magical experimentation.
 This is normally the part where I close off the blog, but first I have to bring up an idea;
For those of you who may not have figured it out, I love Pokemon. And I have been excited to see some gameplay footage of the latest generation, Pokemon X & Y; the 3D graphics are really unique to see for a Pokemon game, though I miss the 16 bit sprites from the previous generations, and they really give a new dimension to gameplay, no pun intended. But I've got to say, I'm pretty sure the battle mechanics could be better.
 Here's my proposal: what if, when battle started, you literally started to control the Pokemon you've put into battle? Not just select the move to use and watch the results, but to actually play the game like you would in a legitimate fighting game like Street Fighter and the like? For a point of reference, I remind my gamer audience of Super Smash Bros. Brawl; one of the characters you can play, the Pokemon Trainer, has three Pokemon, Charizard, Squirtle, and Ivysaur, that go into battle, and can be switched out quite swiftly to take advantage of their differing elemental powers.

 Just imagine that applied to a legitimate Pokemon Game; in battle, the A, B, X, and Y buttons on the 3DS can be used to unleash different moves, and increasing the speed of play, which would require faster thinking on the part of the player. To use items or to make other decisions, you could pause the action mid-battle and freeze time to allow you to make your decisions. I'm pretty sure internet critic Linkara has expressed similar sentiments regarding the games.
 To justify this, you could say that scientists have finally perfected the means to allow the minds of trainers and their Pokemon to link when the Pokemon is released from the Pokeball and let into battle. I'd think it would certainly justify the fact that this is basically legalized cock-fighting we're talking about; instead of trainers shouting from the sidelines, the partners would share each others' thoughts and feelings psychically, leading to a stronger bond.
HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE??
Write your comments down below, and be sure to invite your friends to follow and do so as well. Have a good week (I promise I'll be more consistent with these blogs!)

Glimpses into Fantasies

My apologies for going on a rant about my love life previously.
This week has been eventful; I went to three dances last weekend, and let me tell you, it kind of messed up my biological clock--but I did get some benefits out of it. And on that note, I was also set apart as the Family History Consultant for my apartment this week! I should've figured that would happen to me sooner or later...
So, how's my day? Eventful, that's for sure; I woke up this morning with only half an hour before my first class and, after the necessary preparations, managed to arrive on time with about five or so minutes to spare (better than yesterday; I had only fifteen minutes before first period when I woke up. It was a good idea to shower the night before), but after that, things went swimmingly for the next few hours. My psychology class was odd; to learn about operant conditioning, we had to train a baby chick to peck at a red dot. I've got to say, the little birds were cute, but that's the last time I work with chickens.
This evening I attended a seminar--type thingy for a Disney College Program. I'm really leaning towards that, but I'm going to talk to this guy here at BYU-I to get a good idea of whether or not it would be a good idea for me to apply. If I do, I won't be able to apply for an animation class/program (for another year, anyway), but I might as well shoot for a character performance gig (total anonymity. That would be awesome).
So, enough blabbing on about my life, I bet you wanted to see some new art, huh? I'm going to be straightforward; I've been running a little dry as far as new ideas for sketches are concerned--which sucks, considering I've started new sketchbook. I guess it's a sort of "in the moment" thing, huh?

 This one made my mom proud when she saw it; seriously, she posted it on Facebook, saying "Look what my boy can do!" It kind of makes me feel like a little kid again. I came up with the concept back in the mission and even did a little rough sketch of the idea. Fortunately I managed to save it, and I was able to pick it back up when I got home. What makes this one especially cool is how I got to use markers with varied sizes of pens to fill in certain details; I couldn't have done a lot of this with your typical sharpie pen. I'm trying to get around to coloring this on Photoshop here on campus.
Anyway, I think this would be a cool cover for a new edition of "Alice in Wonderland"; she comes back out of the rabbit hole with all of her weird experiences, and with the key invites the viewer to share the adventure.

 This one I completed back on the mission. If you look closely (and also depending on whether you're a good art history student or not), you can see quite a few references to Salvador Dali, one of my favorite artists. I also threw in a subtle reference to Douglas Adams, if anyone cares.

 This seemed like a real fun idea at the time, following a group of boys as they go hunting for giants, not realizing that what they're looking for is right under their noses--literally. Looking at this, I could've gone into detail way more, especially on the trees, and make the place a real old growth forest.

 This one's had a bit of a mixed history; I originally set out to go with one background, but then I realized that wouldn't have worked out, and so I went in another direction, but the core characters remained the same.
I hope you guys get some sense of irony from this piece. Just go into serious analysis mode, and see what I mean.

 As you can see from the note, this was done as a birthday gift for a good friend that was away in Germany at the time. I got the idea for it after listening to Katy Perry's "Firework" song, and just wanted to put into ink and colored pencil the emotions that were being expressed.

And now, for the first time ever, a sneak peak at one of the pages of my upcoming children's book!

  And that's all your going to get. Have a good week!

Love can be a $(#*!

I don't usually put personal stuff like this on the blog, but for some reason, tonight I felt like it:
You know, I was actually there when the First Presidency announced the lowering of missionary ages to 18 for men and 19 for women. Quite literally; I was getting close towards the end of my mission in the Family & Church History Headquarters Mission in Salt Lake City. I remember my reaction, and in the ensuing weeks I discussed this with my fellow elders who were also nearing the end of their missions. We all, to some degree, expressed concern over the fact that we could be dealing with a whole bunch of rowdy 18 year-olds, which would make things difficult for trainers and zone leaders alike--but then we all had a good laugh as we declared, "Not our problem!"
Over a year has gone by, and now I'm starting to realize that it really is my problem, but in a different way.
Don't get me wrong, I think that it's a great thing that the Lord is trusting people of a younger age to leave on missions, but that makes things difficult here at BYU-I, an entirely LDS college. Since young women are allowed to go on missions sooner, a lot of them have been taking advantage of that, which puts me, a young RM, in a tough spot. The pressure's on for me to get dating and eventually get dating; how am I supposed to do that when part of the girls around my age are practically packing their bags? It's bad enough that a good majority of the girl's I'd be interested in are already paired up with some guy; my current roommate has a girlfriend back in Canada, and they talk over Skype all the time (I swear I'm not kidding!)!
This fact hit hard tonight; I went to this country dance, and while there I met this really cute redhead girl. She was really friendly, and quite energetic; lucky yours truly managed to get in two dances with her! I tried to get her number, but then she told me that she was putting in her papers, and didn't feel that it would be fair for her to date someone prior to that. I don't blame her; I already know some guys who got 'Dear-Johned' on their missions (even I was indirectly dear-johned on my mission, but that's another story); how bad would it be for a girl to get that kind of treatment?
I am in no way trying to be desperate and plea for help; I realize there's plenty of fish in the sea, but I just couldn't help but voice my frustration. If you bothered to read this long rant, then you get some points.

New Art, New Sketchbook!

I've officially started on a new personal sketchbook today. I'll admit that it's kind of bittersweet, given how I don't have much art to show anyone in person, but it's nice to have a fresh start.
On that note, how about some art from my recently completed sketchbook (which, by the way, took me over a year to finish. Wow.)?

With 'Little Giant', I decided to do some contrast in terms of size. It's kind of similar to another sketch that I did previously, which I will post pretty darn soon.

In psychology, there's a major question over human consciousness; individually we know we're human beings, but how do we know that the people around us think like we do? How do we know that they're not in fact a really well programmed android? I had already thought about this question in regards to a sci-fi short story, but the question was intriguing enough to put into art form. Hence the title,
"Will the Real Human Please Stand?"
(P.S. The guy in the front right was supposed to have red eyes too. I don't know how they turned brown in the scanner.)

 "Checkerboard Woman" is the follow up to "Beneath the surface". I originally set out to do her hair in rainbow colors, but I figured that would make the piece way too busy, so I went with reddish orange hair instead.

Abstraction of Frogs

And now, after a long prolonged break, here's some more art from my personal files. I'm going all out, here, so brace yourselves!

With the piece above, I guess I wanted to do something really random and abstract, something that couldn't be grounded in some real life analogue...and yet I still see a couple of characters in this piece, one trying to eat the other, and the other trying to escape being eaten. Well, so much for that endeavor.

"Below the Surface" is a piece that I wanted to be really special, to push myself on. So I decided to try my hand at an optical illusion, using the checkerboard pattern to try and create the hidden image of a face. However, I had to resort to illustrating some parts of the face with a light colored pencil to bring it more out. I'll be following this up with another piece very soon.

 You will not believe how long this took for me! "Catholic Chapel" was one where I tried my hand again at perspective, and this time with one of the greatest architectural styles of all time. Actually, this isn't exactly a true Catholic Cathedral; being LDS, I thought it would be interesting to use a symbol familiar to LDS audiences, that being the growing seed of faith in the stained glass window.

"Orange Drop" was actually really random; one day I was peeling away the skin of an orange, looked at the white bits left from the peel, and just right then and there started to draw a face on an orange in colored pencil. I'm not sure how I can explain the meaning behind this one, or even if there IS a meaning behind it. Then again, art is subjective, right?

And you thought I would be deep and philosophical all the way through, didn't ya?
"CSI: Swamp Files" is one that has gotten a ton of laughs; it's a nice hark back to my editorial cartooning days in high school, despite being a random doodle in church.

Well, that's it for now. Enjoy!

Pokemon Origins: A Fan Theory

Before I post another piece of artwork here, I have to flash back to the Pokemon blog. Like I said, I like Pokemon, but recently I noticed that a lot of things about the universe of this franchise go completely unexplained. For example, where did Pokemon come from in the first place? Why is it okay in this universe to use them for what's basically legalized cock-fighting, especially given that they're (for the most part) portrayed as sentient creatures? And how in the world did they figure out that they could convert matter into energy and back, and yet only use such technology to capture Pokemon?
I'll bet that there are a ton of fan theories out there concerning this, but might I submit my own?

Thousands of years before the events of the main series, humanity had reached the pinnacle of technological advancement, but the world was wracked with war, with different nations utilizing devastating weapons against each other (we'll assume that this is an era where the nuclear bomb was wiped out, though). Desperate to gain an edge, one nation turned to genetic engineering, and created beasts capable of utilizing elemental powers against their enemies, as well as transform into more powerful forms: the Pokemon. To control the otherwise destructive creatures, the Poke' Ball was developed as a means of quickly transporting these living weapons to the battlefield. The Pokemon were given to elite classes of soldiers who could train the Pokemon to battling perfection, then unleash them on their enemies. Over time, more and more powerful Pokemon were developed, until the Pokemon that would forever after be known as 'Legendaries' were born. However, for all their advancement, the engineers lost control over the Legendaries, who went and wreaked havoc over the entire planet, reshaping entire continents and nearly wiping out the human race, destroying the great civilization that created them. While the Legendaries eventually tired out and retreated to enjoy a rest to last several millenniums, their far weaker counterparts began to run wild. Humanity, meanwhile, was reduced to tribal status. It would take them thousands of years to rediscover some of the technology of their ancestors, and in the meantime, they learned not just to survive a world with super-powered creatures, but also to develop lasting bonds with them not through capturing them against their will, but instead through a sort of spirit quest where a , even going as far as to worship the Legendaries, granting them mythic status even as the past was forgotten. The Pokemons' fighting instinct was put to great advantage, at first as a means of protection against wild Pokemon and bandits, but eventually in small competitive battles that substituted for inter-tribal battles, which eventually became the modern Pokemon battle. It was found that great power and skill could be found when a trainer treated his/her Pokemon with genuine kindness and love, rather than cruelty and abuse.
And thus, we have our Pokemon world.

Again, just a fan theory, but what do you think?

Back @ College & Lovin' It!

Yessir, for those of you who read my Facebook account, I am back again at college. A ton of stuff is different from last semester; for example, now I've got a full apartment with six guys rather than four guys and an apartment to myself (actually, truth be told, there's five of us here; we have no idea where #6 is at the moment.). It's kind of nice to have a roommate; mine's Nick, who's come down all the way from Ontario, Canada. For him, being in Idaho isn't actually all that much different from being in Canada. I was kind of expecting him to be all like, "No sno, eh?", and "What's aboot", that sort of thing, but the only Canadian thing he's done is describe the bathroom as the washroom.
So, boys and girls, how about some art for yah? This time, I'm putting up one I did quite recently:

Entitled "Struggles of the Heart", I got the idea for this one while coming up with thumbnails for a Final project for one of my online art classes last semester. I'll let you guys figure out the symbolism for this one.
But why stop there?

This is one that you can probably still find on DeviantArt somewhere. To describe this story, I shall relate a story told by John Bytheway:
"An old Indian man once told a young boy, 'There are two wolves inside of me, one good and one evil, and they are always fighting against each other.'
'But which one will win?' The Boy asked.
'The one that I choose to feed."