Nani & Keoni revisited
Some of you may remember a painting I had made of Nani attacking a city of carrots. Recently, Tony and Joyce just had their baby (congratulations!) and asked me if I could tweak the colors to match the nursery room. They also asked me if I could do a cartoon of their new rabbit Keoni. This one is Nani...
... and this one is Keoni...
I wanted the feel of monster film, so I used this scene from War of the Worlds as my inspiration.
I did an initial sketch based upon a screengrab from Google Maps.
I began to paint over the screengrab with brushes and cut out pieces from other photos. I wanted the corner to be reminiscent of Times Square without duplicating it. Originally, Tony and Joyce wanted two square paintings that would be framed next to each other, so I arranged the composition so that the painting could be split into two separate paintings but when brought together they can be seen as one.
Initially, I wanted to do a theme the corner buildings having a fruit basket theme; but then after a while, the shape of buildings were getting a little hard to work with, so I ditched the idea and went with regular building facades. I also changed the positions of the rabbits to make them fit better within the painting.
The next step was to adjust the values since the painting was starting to look homogeneous. I turned off the fruits layers and desaturated the painting so I can work in black and white. I also wanted my light source to be coming in from the left just above Nani's head.
I turn on the fruit layers and begin to start smoothing out the shapes. I also decided to include throw cars on both sides since it's unlikely that a downtown area like this would be missing cars during a monster bunny invasion.
I begin to detail the buildings by overlaying them with elements from my photo collection. Also, the bunnies were unintentionally looking scary, so I puffed up their cheeks and added texture to them to add a little cuteness. You will also notice that I put the original Nani painting on the jumbotron in the center island of buildings.
Here, I begin to put in more color overlays for the foreground elements. I also switched up the composition of the vegetables on the right side.
Jae mentioned that Nani didn't look as imposing as she did in the original sketch. So I decided to bring her up way into the foreground to give her a more ominous presence.
When I started this painting, I used my original painting as reference but was later told that Nani had spots. So I went back and overlaid some color to her. For the eyes, I was also trying to go for a Totoro look for the rabbits, but it wasn't working out. Here's an example.
So I gave them bigger pupils instead.
After a few more tweaks, corrections, and a lens flare, I have the final result. I could spend more time cleaning up the painting, but that involve many, many more hours. Things don't have to be super polished, and a little noise and smudges make for a more organic product.
Big fish
Gabe and I were talking about whale sharks the other day, and he gave me an idea for a cartoon. Enjoy!
From Don’s Send-off
I know this may be a little late, but here's a picture that was commissioned by Clara for Captain Don's deployment in Iraq. I tried to keep it as accurate as Facebook pictures would allow. Anyways, I speak for many when I say thanks, we'll be praying for you, Don.
Hot Dog!
Recently, I wrapped up some t-shirt designs for a competitive jump rope team in Kirkland called Hot Dog USA. I was supposed to help them design a banner and a two sets of t-shirts.
For the banner, they wanted design to contain some Seattle landmarks as well as jump rope elements.
For the t-shirts, they wanted one performance tee and a secondary tee for when they're not performing. The first was to be in cardinal red and was supposed to mirror the banner. The second was to be neon green so that the performers will be easy to spot in crowds during travel and break times. Here's the performance tee...
... and here's the non-performance tee.
Here's the team's homepage. You can read more about them in the Seattle Times.
Here's a video from the same Times article...
Here's a bunch of YouTube videos...
Blockbusters launched!
Here is my shameless plug for the week. Last week, Apple finally approved our first iPhone game titled Blockbusters. It's a 3D puzzle game where you have to get rid of the colored blocks until you're left with the red gem resting on the black blocks.
My work was mainly on the look of the game which included the game elements, the UI, and the logo. You can check out a free demo here and purchase the full version here.
We'll be having our next iPhone game launched within the next couple weeks. I'll keep you posted on it. Come check it out and help me make some money 
UPDATE: The links will only work if you have iTunes installed. If those don't work, you can always go to the iTunes store and do a search for "Blockbusters."
Update time
It's time to wake up from my month-long slumber and get back to blogging. I haven't posted a lot of material lately, mostly because I've been working on a few projects at once. A couple of them are near publishing, and I'll post some of the artwork once I get the OK from the clients. So stay tuned...
In the meantime, I've posted another piece of artwork. You would figure with me being gone so long that I would have a lot of time to make something that's not a rushed drawing of a color-uncoordinated bird-lizard creature with antlers and stump legs when in actuality my next post is a rushed drawing of a color-uncoordinated bird-lizard creature with antlers and stump legs.
